When Your Partners Turn on You: Steve Gallegos

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. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me is Steve Gallegos. Steve, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Chris. How are you, sir?

I'm well, thank you.

Wonderful. What part of the country are you in?

I am in the lovely Sooner State in Oklahoma City.

Oklahoma City. Wonderful. And yourself? Denver, Rocky Mountains. Very nice. Yeah, you guys have experienced some pretty nasty weather as of late, tornadoes and things going through there.

It's normal. I mean, Oklahoma is just, yeah, it's kind of a shit show when it comes to weather around here. It's actually been one of the wettest years on record. We've had a lot of flooding, nothing as tragic as what happened in Texas.

Texas.

But just in general, there's been a lot of water. This year, which, you know, normally we're complaining about the opposite, like, you know, droughts. So chicken or feathers, I guess. So why don't you tell the audience who you are and what you do, Steve?

Well, thanks for that question, Chris. And thank you, first of all, for producing this show and for, you know, bringing guests like myself and the other amazing guests that you've had on to share their stories and their wisdom with your audience. And so it's really cool that we have this platform and that you are bringing it to the world. So as for me, when people ask me what I do and who are you, it's like, well, it depends on what day it is. Because it just seems like every day, these days especially, I do different things. And I'm fortunate enough to have different arrows in my quiver of different colors. So I can serve people in a variety of ways, starting with my background as a US Marine. Law enforcement officer. From there, I transitioned to becoming a board-certified trial attorney in Los Angeles, and I've been doing that for nearly 4 decades now. And through that process of being a lawyer, I discovered that, you know, Christian, there's gotta be a better way to make money than suing people for a living, right?

And so, um, I gotta, I gotta interject my favorite lawyer joke. Um, and I'm, I'm pretty sure you haven't heard this one.

And let me preface that by saying there are only 2 lawyer jokes, the rest are all true stories.

Yeah, that's a good one. That is a good one. Uh, now did you hear about the, the town that was too small for, uh, didn't have enough business for 1 lawyer, but it, but it had plenty for 2?

Plenty for— I, I'm not sure.

Plenty of business for 2. Like, all they had to do was sue each other to Yeah, never mind.

Yeah, if you gotta explain it, like I said, it's probably a true story because it's not one of the two that I know.

I'm sorry I interrupted at this point.

That's okay. So anyway, so, um, I, I love to laugh at myself and, uh, you know, not take myself so seriously in that regard. And it's something that I had to learn to do, by the way. Um, so anyway, so as a lawyer, I realized that, you know what, I'm able to help my clients through this particular scenario, but beyond this, when they leave my office, they're going to do it again, or something's going to be done to them. And I wasn't really being effective in making a long-term change or effect in my clients, whether it's their behavior, the way they conduct business, or the way they, they how they choose people to do business with, which really resonates with your origin story about your client, you know, not having the wherewithal to make the proper decision. We don't know what he based his decision on, but he made a poor decision, which ultimately ended in a negative fashion for him. But a lot of people do this and they go to the lawyers hoping that the lawyers will resolve the problem, but then they go back to their old ways, right? Nothing really changes. Nothing really changes. So I started looking at ways to— I could serve at a greater level. And I found this idea, I came across this idea of personal development. I just really dove into it because I was fascinated by the whole concept that really there's something beyond math and English and science. You know, that makes us better humans. In fact, the study of personal development is what makes us tick, right? It's what drives everything about us and who we are and why and what we do and how we show up in the world. And so I became a personal development coach and I've written several books, teach people about communications and really how to show up authentically in in both their personal and business lives. So that's what I'm, I'm doing now.

I love that. So do you incorporate the law into what you do now? I guess my question would be, uh, being able to, uh, impact the, the, the clients that you weren't able to impact the way you wanted to just as a lawyer.

Great question. In some respects, yes, especially when dealing with business clients, because when somebody comes comes to me and they say, Steve, I have this problem. You know, I don't have, you know, I'm not getting enough clients. My clients are not being responsive, da da da da da. They usually think it's a sales issue. It's a marketing issue. But fundamentally, it's really a personal issue, right? Who you are at the core. What, who are they representing themselves in the marketplace? How are they connecting, communicating, if at all, building relationships with the marketplace? Place, right? And so we get to those discussions, and then if those discussions open the door to the way they do business and how to conduct business and how to transact business and it touches on the legal realm, then yes, I'm able to bring some of those ideas and some of those thoughts as to how to do things better.

Perfect. Yeah. So I am curious, was there something that, like a trigger event that brought this realization to you that, like, you know, I got to do something different or there's got to be a better way?

There's always a trigger event, isn't there?

Usually.

Yeah. No, there always is. There's always something that happens. And what caused you to think this or do this or to make that decision? It happened that after 16 years of my practice in Los Angeles. I was a partner in a firm that I helped start, right? I'd become a partner in that firm and I was the minority partner in multiple ways, not only because I'm Hispanic, but also because I had the lowest equity share from among the other partners. And one day they invited me to a meeting in the conference room and I felt walking in like There were 3 foxes and I was the chicken coming into this meeting, right? But there was 3 foxes and they were trying to decide what they were going to have for lunch, right? And so that's what it looked like if you can imagine that scenario in a big Beverly Hills conference room. And it turned out that one of the partners wanted to have more money because his wife wanted a bigger house, all of the trappings. And so they all 3 decided that that partner's additional share should from me. And this started an entire dispute, right? It's like I was one of the founding members of the firm well before this new partner was even brought on board. But it turns out that he went to college with the senior managing partner. So there was already, you know, a long-standing relationship between them. And then the third partner was their neighbor too. And, you know, so it was like 3 against 1. And so Long story short, they pushed me out of the firm. They locked the doors because I wouldn't go along with their little game plan. And we had a written contract that says that they couldn't make these financial changes unless I too agreed. And of course, I wasn't going to agree to that nonsense. And so, I ended up suing them. I won my case against the 3 of them. But it got me to thinking throughout that whole period of, you know, I was like, I'd invested many, many years to develop this practice, to develop a name for myself. I was an entertainment lawyer in the entertainment industry at the time. And I had to really come to terms with what the practice of law is all about. And do you know, Chris, that all of those law books in my library at the time and in any law library existing anywhere Those books are nothing but stories about how Steve should treat Chris and how Chris should treat Steve. And that's it. They're stories about how we should treat each other. And it's like, my God, do we really need this, right? Apparently we do, because there's decades and decades and decades of these stories filling these books. And that's why we go to court and say, Your Honor, in Steve versus Chris or vice versa, The court said this because, you know, Steve did that to Chris and Chris got mad and blah, blah, blah, right? That's what the law is. It's just stories about how we should treat each other and behave as human beings at the end of the day. So, it got me on this line of thinking. That and I was also pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter at the same time, right? In fact, That's a plus first. Chris, that's why I went to law school to begin with, because I was in law enforcement working in the courts in Santa Barbara, California, and the judge that I worked for, he said, "You know what? You've got a talent for this, for law, and I know that you wanna become this international superstar." I was working to become the modern-day Julio Iglesias, if you know who that is. I do, I do. Enrique's father, Enrique's father. Okay. And so he said, "Go to law school because lawyers run the entertainment industry, so now you can open doors that you'll never be able to open as one in a million singer-songwriter." And I thought, "What a great idea!" That is probably the worst career advice I've ever heard. It was brilliant at the time because I said, "I love that, and I can pursue my singing career, and I can wear Armani suits too?" I'm in, sign me up, right? And so that was my, that was the foundation for me getting into law. It wasn't because I wanted to fight for equal rights and justice, although I eventually did that, but that wasn't the compulsion, right, to get into law. So like I said, I was pursuing a career as a singer-songwriter at the same time, and I had some success with it, but that And the conflict that I was having being a lawyer, not really being able to help a lot of people because they couldn't afford $400 an hour. I had to turn a lot of people away from my door. It just really got me to thinking there's got to be another way to serve rather than just suing people for a living. And so that's how I made the transition. And although I still do practice law, I handle a few cases. I'm essentially what you might call semi-retired in that area, but mostly I focus on helping people in any way I can.

Yeah, I love that definition of tort as just stories of people and how they should treat each other and how they don't know how to treat each other. Because, you know, to me, I've always viewed law, most of the practice of law, as adversarial. I don't think it necessarily has to be. I mean, I think you can be a lawyer and not be adversarial. But from my perspective as a business owner, I've always preferred cooperation over conflict. Like, you know, um, I, I screwed up and didn't get my intellectual property, um, filed timely and found out that somebody else had beat me to the trademark. And, uh, rather than try and dispute their trademark application, I, you know, I just reached out to them and said, like, you're, you're doing this, we're doing this, can we do a you know, some type of agreement, right? Like, yeah, work together. There's no— we're not going to, you know, we'll see if that works out. I haven't heard the end of that story. But, you know, it's always about cooperation because conflict is reductive. It's destructive most of the time. And whereas collaboration is almost always productive. And, and so, you know, I think that's why lawyers get a bad rap. My mother was a lawyer. Um, I, I have lots of friends that are lawyers. I, I— but, but the, you know, everybody says, um, they hate lawyers until they need a lawyer, and then they're their best friends. And I, I, I also think that the, um My thought just left me. Hold on, because it was good. That— oh, yes, it was this comment that someone made that in business, lawyers are a lot like soldiers. They're expensive. And if you have to use them, you screwed something up. And that goes back to resonating with that whole idea of conflict. You don't use soldiers unless you've you know, you've screwed up the diplomacy somehow. Exactly. So in this, in this modern version of Steve, where you coach people, what do you— who do you primarily work with?

I work primarily with professionals, entrepreneurs, and people that are in the public eye.

Okay, that's an interesting angle. So why that public persona? Why is that?

Because they're the ones that have much more at risk, right? You go out there and you, I mean, you see it every day from the most powerful man in the country all the way down to every CEO, managers, et cetera, putting their foot in their mouth and saying the wrong thing at the wrong time at the wrong place. And this comes back to haunt them, right? I have a talk that I deliver that's called, "Who you are in the bedroom is who shows up in the boardroom." Meaning that everything you do in your private life is inextricably intertwined with your business life. Because if an individual might have a bad day at home the night before, you know, let's say he goes home to screaming kids and complaining wife and not having, you know, sexual relationships, not having hot dinner on the table, your kids are in trouble at school, bills are piling up, etc. That individual is not going to go to work the next day happy that he's got a job or career and people to supervise. And that's when they start kicking people around and yelling and causing havoc at work. And so now you've got the workplace dynamic that is all disrupted because of Bob's attitude., right? And it's not that Bob's not a good salesperson, a good manager, a good executive. It's that Bob's having trouble, right? Whether it's addiction, trouble at home, trouble in the paradise, gambling, whatever it might be. And unless we get to that core problem, we're never going to fix what's happening in the workplace.

Yeah. Now let me ask you, I want to, I want to dig on this because it's interesting. I was just writing a Substack post that kind of touches on these issues from telling my own story. But do you think that's more, more predominant in men? And in the, in the sense that I think that men tend to compartmentalize better. And so like, they, and this may be counterintuitive to what you're saying, but they, they have this perception that they can be something different in different places. Like, you know, the problems at home are not going to affect me at work and vice versa. Like, am I making any sense? What I'm—

what I'm— You are. I know exactly what you're asking, and it's a very good question. I think that we fool ourselves into this idea that we can compartmentalize. I think that we as men because of the way that we are groomed by society to appear strong, that you can't be bothered, that you've got a solution for every problem, that you have all the answers. So most of us grow up and we step into those environments and we think we do, but in reality, most of us are just playing the imposter role. And it's in that little— it's in that darkness, if you will, right? Because the imposter is the dark side of who we are, of our identity, right? We want to appear to the world that we're strong and capable and we have all the answers and that we can manage all these problems amidst chaos and those kinds of things, and that we can forget our problems at home. But That's not how it works. That's not how they— that's not how we're wired. It's impossible for you to leave home, at home, and go to work and vice versa. Don't tell me that there's a man alive that can leave the office with all the problems that he or she might— that they might be having at the office, lay in bed at night and not think about those problems.

Right. It's interesting. When I started working with my business coach several years ago, we spent the first 6 months talking about my marriage. And I, which I found strange, and my wife found strange. But, but the reality was that the problems that I was having at work were the same problems that I was having at home. I just couldn't see the connection because the connection was me. Like, it's, it's, um, the, the underlying issues in a person show up different in different places and under different environments, under different stresses. But the, the— what, what going through that made me understand was the common denominator, the common, uh, problem was me. But I, I, I, I couldn't see it because the symptoms weren't the same, that it wasn't, it wasn't clear. Um, I could tell you that like, yeah, I'm not happy both places, but I didn't see a connection between the two, right?

It's a very smart coach you have.

Well, in his defense, he started his career as an Orthodox rabbi, and he and his wife had done marriage coaching before they did business coaching. So they, they, they knew, they knew what they were talking about. But that insight, you know, and again, my wife was like, it sounds like he's a life coach. And I'm like, no, no, he's, he's a business coach, which, you know, whatever, you maybe he is a life coach, that that's not relevant. I think Um, it's just a label. It is, it is a label, and, and unfortunately it's a label that is misused, uh, misunderstood. I, I, for a long time, uh, I had this perception of coaches as, like, probably most people had. Their, their experience with coaches was like when you were young in athletics and they were, um, you know, teaching you some skill and, you know, organizing, uh, the team, you know, executing the plan for the team or whatever, as opposed to like— I, so, so I looked at it as like, well, I don't, I don't have any skill that I need them to teach me, and, and I don't, I don't need them to come in and tell me how to run a business, so I— why, why would I hire a coach?

But that, that I, I I had it completely wrong. And a lot of people do. And because we have the same framework of, you know, what a coach is, you know, this whole idea of life coaching or executive coaching didn't pop up until early '90s, right? I mean, prior to that, we had Zig Ziglar and Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn and all of the other experts in the personal development space. But it didn't become a quote-unquote cottage industry until early '90s people started adopting it. And it was at that time looked at very woo-woo, you know, like you. Yeah, I don't need that. You know, is what, we're going to sing around, hold hands and sing Kumbaya and everything's going to be better at work? No, I don't think so. I need my sales, you know, fixed. I need my clients to pay their bills. And, you know, I need my employees to do this faster and better and, you know, work on time and all those things. But as you saw, it's all related to— it's all related to the leader, how the leader shows up at work. And that's the dynamic that is going to be exemplified throughout the rest of the company.

Yeah, I suppose all along, you know, during the '90s when everybody was learning about coaching, I mean, you know that the elite athletes had coaches. But I never made the connection. Like, you know, Phil Jackson is not teaching Michael Jordan how to dribble or how to do a jump shot. Like, okay, he already knows how to do that. So like, what was, what was Phil Jackson actually coaching Michael Jordan on in his head? Exactly. It wasn't, it wasn't a skill transfer. It wasn't like, this is how we run the play, Michael. You're not running the play right. You know, that's not what that is. And I think there's this misconception among entrepreneurs that coaching is the equivalent to therapy. And I think that there are common elements in the sense that, you know, like self-discovery, understanding your feelings, those things are common elements. But to me, the distinction is Coaching is outcome-driven. And so it's not about like going back and analyzing your trauma. It's like, okay, stipulate the trauma exists. You understand how it impacts you now and how you can work through it to achieve what you want to achieve. Correct. Yeah.

Okay. Yep. And, you know, a lot of people think that happy hour is therapy too. Oh.

Dude, I, I have a, uh, one of my founding guests on this show, uh, and the inspiration for this show, a gentleman by the name of Pish Patel. He, um, had a, had a business, had an exit, and, uh, decided he was going to go back and become a clinical psychologist. And he just received his doctorate, um, a couple of months ago. He's going to be on the show here later this year for the second time to talk about his research that he did for his doctoral, which is— you're going to want to listen to this because I've heard the overview and I'm like, now we got to have you on the show and you got to dive into this. But one of the things he said to me was, he said, you know, entrepreneurs— and the reason why he wanted to be a psychologist was because his experience in therapy and couples marriage therapy was it was like this doesn't work generally. And, and two, it really doesn't work for entrepreneurs, um, because a lot of these therapists, uh, don't have any context for understanding the issues that entrepreneurs deal with, right? And so there's just kind of a, a fundamental disconnect. But he made the comment to me, he said, you know, entrepreneurs don't have very good coping mechanisms. And, um, I, I had never heard it put into clinical terms like that, but I'm like, yeah, no, they don't. And, um, there are a lot of things that we use to cope, um, you know, drugs, alcohol, pornography, gambling, whatever, that, that entrepreneurs get wrapped up into. But the last conversation I had with him It was this realization that the business itself is often the coping mechanism. And he postulated that a lot of entrepreneurs start businesses as, as a way to solve their trauma. They don't think about that consciously, but it's, it's essentially a control thing. And, and if you think about that in terms of addiction, that's all addiction is, is a control. It's like, I, I, I, I don't have control out here in what's happening around me, but I can control my body and I can put this substance in it, or I can watch this, or I can do this activity, and therefore I am in control. Um, you're just in, in control in a negative way instead of a positive way. But the entrepreneur shows up and is like, well, I can control the variables now. I can fix it. And they hire all the employees, they decide who they do business with, the vendors, the whole thing. But it is a grand illusion in not dealing with the underlying problem that they're not addressing. Would you agree with that?

In many respects, yes. Most people, entrepreneurs included, professionals included, embark on careers or work-related activities not of their own choosing. In other words, we think we made the decision, but the decision was made for us. When we consider that prior to the age of 7, everything we learn is programmed into us by our parents, other adults that are around us. We're not making our own decisions. We don't have the mental capacity to discern what's real, what's not, what's good, what isn't. We just take it all in. We're just sponges. After the age of 7, we begin encountering those same conflicts, opportunities, situations, circumstances ourselves. And how do we react when someone is aggressive to us? Or mean, right? Mean girls. We were watching a Hallmark movie last night about a mean girl who turned out to be a really good girl. And anyway, but mean, mean kids at school, right? You go to school at 7, 8 years old, 9 years old, and you're approached by a mean kid. How do you react? You're going to react the way that your father did to your mother or your brother did to your sister, right? How did they react in the home to a similar scenario? And so you might act aggressively, you might react passively, you might cry, you might do whatever. That's learned behavior. Most of us carry that with us into our adulthood.

Yes.

Okay. And so we enter these businesses, we enter these careers, not because that's what I really, really want to do more than anything in in my life, Chris. That's what I want to do. Very few people know that. Most people you ask, how did you get into what you're doing? Oh, well, you know, I just ended up there. I just took a job and before you knew it, you know, 20 years go by and I'm a senior manager at X company. Or it's because my dad was a whatever— lawyer, doctor, Indian chief. My mom was, her father was, my uncles were. And so they expected me to be as well. Right. But we get to this midpoint in our lives, what people call a midlife crisis, which I don't believe exists, but a lot of people refer to it as a midlife crisis in your 50s and 60s when you finally start asking those questions that you should have asked when you were 18, 19, 20. Who am I? What do I want from life? What do I want from life? Not what do my parents want for me, not, you know, what what institution, academic institution they want me to go to and get, what degree they want me to get. What do I want? That's why people have this midlife crisis, because it's then that they start asking those questions. And then they start, you know what, I don't want to work in the corporate world anymore. I want to run my own business. I want to write a book. I want to create a podcast. I want to make pancakes for a living. I want to have a donut shop. I want to travel the world. I want to become a chef. I want to become an artist, a painter, a singer. I want to do, you know, whatever. And 9 times out of 10, whatever it is that they want to do is such a deviation from what they did in their prior careers. And you ask them, what took you so long to find that? You know, it's just you get stuck in this rut, you get stuck in this program that you've been living that is not yours. Yeah. And so, yeah, I'm coming up with a book right now called Unshackled, and this is for women who are ready to yell "cut" and write and direct their own life. I saw that smile. Because as the director of any movie production, television, music production, if the scene isn't going the way you envisioned it, what do you do? You don't just let everybody run amok.

Right.

What do you do? You yell "cut!" Right. And then you call everybody over. You call the actors over and say, "You need to do this different." You call the screenwriter over and you say, "I need you to change this language." for this individual. You call the costumer and say, "I need a different wardrobe for Tom Hanks here." You know, you make all these changes. And so I realized with my entertainment background that we can do this in our lives. We can express this in our lives and become not just the actors in someone else's story, but become the writer, producer, and director of our own lives. And when we do that, man, we are in control at any moment, in any situation.

And, and I think, you know, the reality is that most people don't want agency over themselves. And it's scary. And, and, and that, that's an observable fact. They, they would rather have someone else tell them what to do, how to act, what to think, how to feel rather than own that themselves. I think entrepreneurs have a slightly different bent in that they are, I think, usually nonconformist. You know, they don't accept reality as it is, like, as it could be. They see potential, but it's still very very easy to get sucked into that programming that you, you speak about, that you learned behavior, um, if you don't, um, bring it into your conscious mind and think about it, correct? Right. Um, I think that was Carl Jung that talked about that. I'm not, I'm not a psychologist. I don't profess to be one, but I've heard a lot of you people talk about it. But that, you know, you have to take— one of the ones that just— one of the beliefs that fascinates me among entrepreneurs is this idea that— well, and I don't think it's just with entrepreneurs, but it's a belief that entrepreneurs struggle with— is that you have to work hard to make money. Which, you know, is a belief. It's not a law. It's not, you know, an observable fact. Sometimes that belief is true. Sometimes it's not true. Sometimes that belief works for you. Sometimes it doesn't. But when I flip it open for some of our clients and say, what if that weren't true? What would that look like? And they start to contemplate it. It really opens the doors because the beliefs that we have that serve us well in certain circumstances, such as you have to work hard to make money, can actually become impediments in the future. One of the ones that I struggled with mightily is, uh, I don't give up. And, and I don't know where that belief came from. I've, I've thought about it and I can't really pinpoint it, but like, you know, quitting to me as a belief is, is like foundational. You don't quit. And I got to the point in my business and in, in my personal life, like Yeah, that's not working for me anymore. I'm holding on to the rope and it's burnt down to the bone. I need to let go of the rope. This is not working anymore. And I think that's the thing I would encourage any listener is like, if you're feeling pain, if you're feeling sadness, if you're feeling anxiety, that's your, that's your body and your brain telling you something's not right. Don't ignore it. Like, you've got to stop and ask the question, why do I feel this way? What, what is causing this?

Correct. You bring up a very good point about quitting and this whole identity we have around our beliefs, right? Beliefs in many ways, as you indicate, can become crutches and impediments to our success. Because you say, "Well, I can't go and get a master's degree because I don't have the money, I don't have the grades, I don't have the time, I don't—" whatever the case may be, right? Or, "I can't move up in my job I'm Black, I'm Hispanic, I'm fat, I'm skinny, I'm, you know, I don't have the academics, I don't have the proper last name. Those kinds of things. Those are beliefs, right, that we've been ingrained with. And said, you know, you're a woman, your job is to be at home and raise the kids and take care of the house, right? You're not supposed to build a career. Even to this day, there are many, many women who teach that to their children, to their daughters. And the same thing with men, right? We get taught still to this day, don't cry, don't show emotion, don't show vulnerability. And if someone, you know, confronts you or challenges you, you punch them in the face, and that's the way to get respect. That's what the Marines do. Well, you know, Marines, we have a job. And like you said, once everything goes to crap, that's when you call in the Marines, because that means diplomacy didn't work. That's exactly right. Right, exactly. So So, we build these identities around our beliefs. And until somebody challenges us or asks us to challenge our beliefs, like you, you had the idea that quitting was not in your vocabulary. It wasn't part of your DNA. It was a core value that Chris does not quit. That means to me that Chris had this definition of quit that disallowed him from discontinuing something insane that wasn't working. Exactly. Right? Like, let's say you got into something bad. I'm not saying you did, but if you did, you know, were engaged in something bad and, you know, you knew it was negative for you and your family and your career and your body and those kinds of things, but because you're not a quitter, you can't quit this thing. Let's say it was smoking, for example. Right?

Let's use our real-life example. That's up to you. I wanted to be This is 4 years ago. I decided I wanted to be a private pilot. My grandfather's a pilot. I want to, right? And I start the process. Halfway through it, I'm in a solo flight coming back to my home base and I hit some turbulence and it was like a really bad roller coaster. It's hot. And oh yeah, it's up to you to get this plane back on the ground safely. I like— I swear to God, I said, I am never getting in a plane again. If I just get down, I get down. A week later, I'm like, I can't quit. And I finished my private pilot's license, you know, another 12 months, knowing that I had no intention of ever flying. But I couldn't quit. So I wasted that time, that money, that energy. I mean, for what? Mm-hmm. You know, I'm not a quitter.

Right. And it's the idea that you have that quitting is bad, quitting is shameful, quitting is disgraceful. And we could probably look back at your childhood and probably find a coach or some adult that, you know, ingrained that into you, right? Sure. But there comes a point in time when you got to quit. You got to quit on your relationship. You gotta quit on your marriage if your husband comes home and beats the crap out of you every day. Right. Right? Or, you know, there's times when quitting, if you will, is the appropriate thing to do. You don't want to go to work every day and get manhandled by your boss just because what, it's your job?

And what I didn't realize was how that was impacting the business. And so like, I was holding on to the marketing role because no one else wanted to do it. No one was more qualified to do it. Not that I was qualified, but no one else would. Right. And so, like, I had to get my teeth kicked in again. And, you know, like, we were spending more money with less results. And I'm like, I literally said to myself, I quit. Like, I literally have no idea I don't know how to do this. No, I don't know how to fix it. And it turned out to be the best thing. It did. It did. But I didn't— I mean, I didn't realize I made that decision 2 years ago. Okay. And I didn't completely understand the impact that it had on my business until this week. Oh, wow. Right. But as the further I moved away from it, I had the perspective and I could see how it was affecting others. Right. And that's the thing that for me is, I think, hard to deal with as a leadership— as a leader is understanding the consequences of your decisions, how it negatively impacts others. And, and, you know, there's some things that are very obvious, like if you run the business into the ground and your employees all lose their job, that's okay. Yeah. But, you know, there are much more subtle things that happen, like putting somebody into a position that they don't really want, but they're raising their hand because they want to be that team player and they want to make you happy. And then you just— the, the job and you just crush them. And you're like, God, that was awful. Like, why, why did I do that? But I didn't— I didn't know what I know now of like, just because someone says I want to do it doesn't mean you, you should let them do it. I mean, like, you know, That seems kind of self-evident as I'm saying it now, but it wasn't obvious then.

No, and I can imagine because when you're in the middle of it, it's hard to see because we have blinders on, right? We have this idea. We think we know the way out. And so, let me just try this, right? Because again, the quitting idea, right? I have this concept of how we can get the company growing and moving forward progress. Let me try this. And then you hit obstacle after obstacle, wall after wall after wall. And it takes some time for executives, for leaders to learn. And that's what makes a good leader is these experiences, Chris, because you weren't born with it. Neither was I, right? Nobody is born with this idea that— might be born with the ideas, but nobody's born with the experience, right? You didn't know. Are you a parent? Are you a father? I am. Okay. Where'd you learn to be a parent before you became a parent?

I remember sitting when they discharged us from the hospital with our first child, and we got Katie, uh, into the car seat that was too big, and her head was flopping around in the back seat. And I remember looking at my wife, and they're like— I'm like, what now? Like, they're just sending us home with this little human, and I— neither of our families lived nearby. So it was kind of like, I guess we go home.

Like, I don't know what to do. Yeah, exactly. We don't know what to do. Years later, you know what to do, and now you can coach and guide others, right? But in those positions, for the business owners, entrepreneurs that are listening, and you're struggling with something right now, and you're beating yourself up, and this is what we do, we just, God, I'm so stupid, I'm so dumb. You know, I'm an imposter and I'm a fake, and they're going to find out, you know, that I really don't know. Give yourself some grace because unless you've been through it before, there's no way that you should know what to do. You can ask someone. You can read a book. You can watch the videos. Attend the courses. Right? Educate yourself and do the best you can. But at the end of the day, that's all you can do is do the best that you can. If you make a mistake, tomorrow don't repeat that mistake because you know it was a mistake. Right? It didn't turn out well, so don't repeat that. Yes. But give yourself some grace.

You often will come back to the same issues in business because business at its core is simple. You either have to figure out how to get the work or how to do the work. And you're balancing between those two your entire existence. That's business. So it's uber simple. And so you're going to come across the same issues like, and you're going to see them again. The question is, are you responding the same? Correct. If you're responding to the same, most likely you're not making any progress in the business. Right. And you have to be— I like the word you use, imposter, because there, there is this idea that you're supposed to know. Like, if you're a business owner, you're supposed to have—

you're an adult, you're supposed to know, right? You've got gray hair, you're supposed to know, right?

I'm still— I've learned more in the last 18 months about myself, yeah, than I did, you know, the 30 years cumulative before it.

That's a beautiful thing. Yeah.

And, and so, you know, I, I think The willingness to involve others, I think, is key. I think coaches play an important role. Mentors, you know, play a very important role. I think your peer group plays an important role as long as it's constructive. I mean, you can get into peer groups that, you know, just sit around and grouse and complain and there's not any solution-oriented. But as entrepreneurs, I found being in a group where you could share those things that you weren't comfortable sharing even with your spouse. Like, I think I'm screwing this up. Like, I, you know, and having a group of peers that say, no, you know, I felt that way too. And just not getting locked into your own head is, is critical because you can drive yourself insane.

Literally. Absolutely. And one of the reasons I think, Chris, that many entrepreneurs, professionals, and others don't reach out and participate in these types of groups is because of trust, right? They think that, hmm, my competition is going to be there if I show weakness. If I show my vulnerabilities, if I show where my company's falling down, they're going to step on me and take my clients, right? So we need to find organizations or groups or friends, right, that have our best interests in mind, that have a sound ideology, that have, you know, a good head on their shoulders. They don't necessarily have to be in the same business or industry as you, but just find someone to talk to. It can be a professional. It can be, you know, reach out to Chris. That's what I say. Call Chris, everyone.

You're welcome to call me, but you're— I'm a amateur, so you're going to get amateur results.

But you're a good facilitator, so you can, you can direct them out to the people that you've interviewed who you know are brilliant and say, hey, contact John, contact Bob, contact Tim, Steve— you forgot Steve— or Steve, certainly, why not Steve?

So where do people find out more about you, working with you, buying your books? How do we How do we find you?

Well, thank you for that. And again, thank you for the opportunity to share my ideas with you on this most excellent show. The first thing I'd like to do is invite your audience to contact you. So those of you listening, contact Chris and thank him for producing this show for you, because it's not easy. It's very time-consuming and intensive. He's got to gather all the guests, prep them, prep his studio, prep his gear, all these things. And he's got to run his full-time business and be a great husband and father too at the same time. But he's doing this for you so that you get excellent information for you to make progress. And so call him up and thank him. Email him and thank him. And you can also ask him how to get a hold of Steve because Chris knows. But if you do try and get a hold of Chris and he's too busy to answer you, well, in that case, you can then reach out to me directly. I'm on Facebook and Instagram at Stevie G Success, LinkedIn at Stevie G Success, and my website is steviesuccess.com, and there you can learn more about me. In fact, go to the website steviesuccess.com, go to the resources page, because there you get free access to all kinds of great audios and content that'll be helpful for you in your personal life and business. And you don't have to give me your email address or buy me a cup of coffee or anything. It's all there for you. It's my gift.

I love that. Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, remember, you are not alone. You're not alone.