Interview with Aaron Trahan

Welcome to One Sharp Sword Cutting through to what Matters Most with your host, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, the breakthrough

success coach and your powerful presence mentor.

Welcome to One Sharp Sword cutting through to what Matters Most. I'm your host, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, the exponential success coach and the president of Dynamic Leader Incorporated. Today we have Aaron Trahan visiting us. He is an executive performance coach. Wait, he's a performance coach? He's worked with executives and entrepreneurs for the past 15 years. He's been in the corporate sector. He's been in the startup sector. The reason I have him on is because I found him quite interesting, and apparently he found me quite interesting. He reached out and he's like, hey, we believe in a lot of the same things. And I read through his stuff and I'm like, we do believe in a lot of the same things. And that's why I. I just thought it'd be a kind of a fun conversation. So. Aaron Trahan, welcome to One Sharp Sword.

Dr. Wayne, thank you for having me.

Yes, it is a pleasure to have you here. Let's talk about all the brilliance that you know, and we'll bounce off of each other a little bit. This kind of stuff is so much fun. It's just because when you talk about performance, it's about people who block themselves and don't even know that they're doing that. It's about breaking through that. It's about setting a vision for something that seems ridiculous. And then all of a sudden, that ridiculous seems so normal. Those are the kinds of things I want to talk about. What. Let me just ask you, what brought you to the place of being a performance coach? Like, you didn't. I always ask my. My guests this. Like, you didn't wake up one day and go, it's performance coaching for me. Did you start in music or engineering or, like, talk a little bit about what was the path that got you here?

Sure. Yeah. I think, you know, the path for me was being on the other side of the table that I now find myself on. And, you know, when we're the up and comer, when we're the rising executive climbing up the ranks, you know, I wish someone would sit us down and tell us, beware, because sometimes our current success can be the very thing that prevents our future success if not handled properly. And what I mean by that is, as you become more successful, it's a natural tendency to start taking your foot off the accelerator, to start coasting in some areas, to listen to that voice that's telling, telling you, hey, you've, you've kind of arrived. You've got it all figured out. You, you, you're pretty hot stuff. And when you start believing that, you leave that door cracked open for complacency to set in. And so my journey was having to look myself in the mirror. After a period of time where I knew I wasn't operating as my best version. I knew I wasn't in growth mode. I was kind of, I was kind of content with my status quo. And as the famous Marshall Goldsmith quote in book goes, what got you here won't get you there. And so in my quest to find that there, that next level of success, tapping into the potential that I knew was there but was just severely being underutilized, I needed to go out and find some help. I needed my performance coach to help me see around some corners, get some light shined on some blind spots. And that started the slow but steady gravitational pull that led me to just becoming a better overall people leader and realizing my career could be turbocharged if I then shifted the focus to helping those around me get to their next level, helping those around me nurture, develop and grow and position them for the next level. And as it's kind of the short story goes, an interest turned into a passion which led to a purpose and here I am.

That's fantastic. How you were in the corporate sector. You were a rising executive yourself. Not everybody knows that they need help. Were there signals for you? I mean, I do want to point out that the top performers have coaches. And so it was really smart of you to get a coach and to get into coaching and because of that path, you became an excellent coach as well. What were the triggers for you? How did you know? Like, were you running into walls? Were you just feeling what's it all for? What happened that you felt like I could use some help?

Yeah, it was a couple things. You know, the, the, the universe is typically pretty good at sending us the signals that we need to, that we need to hear. As long as we stay open minded and, and we're good listeners to, to look out for them. And you know, I think, when, I think we all know, I'll take a step back and say in my professional career, I've yet to have anyone come up to me and I don't want to see better results, I don't want to improve, I don't want to see better performance. I think we all have that innate desire to want to make progress, to achieve more. And so when we know we're not doing the things required that are ultimately going to lead to those outcomes. I think we have to be in. Most of us are honest with ourselves that we're playing too small. There's untapped potential. We know we're capable of so much more, but so few of us actually take that understanding and put action and energy behind it. And so for me, it was just that feeling year after year after year, after a period of time of saying, I, I'm coasting here. I know, I know I need to be stretching. I'm not challenged. And you can blame your external environment, but quite frankly, it was on me. And, you know, there's some other things. You start getting some feedback. And I still carry with me a 360 degree feedback that I received and, you know, really hearing what it was like to work with me, to work on my team. And it was, it was just pretty eye opening. And it was that moment in time where a couple of other external feedback loops gave the same signal that if I keep doing what I've been doing, this could be my peak at 30, 31 years old. And quite frankly, that scared the hell out of me. It's like, I'm not done. But to not be done, I had to go back to the drawing board. I had to redesign my approach and I had to start getting more uncomfortable being back in growth mode. So that was ultimately the catalyst that kind of, you know, led me to, to make that, that, that very fortunate pivot in the, you know, along my journey.

I'm so glad you said that. All of that, the idea of backing off a little bit, the idea of taking inventory, personal inventory, you had the, I'll call it luxury. Some people find it torture because I've been on the giving and the receiving end of a 360. I don't know if you can hear my cat, but she wants to chime in as well. No. Okay. Just in case you do. It's not a squeaky chair. It is a catch. Yeah. And anyway, for our, for our listening audience, if you hear something, it's like that, the, the idea of, you know, a360, it's not always easy. And so, you know, what that is, is getting feedback from the people that you report to, the people that you, your vendors, your customers, anybody around you that you engage with. It's kind of like, how am I doing? And that is a tough question to ask. You know, I've worked with executives and I asked them to ask their spouses that, you know, their family members, their Kids, what is it that you need more of from me? What would you like to see? This is. Do you actually understand the direction that I'm heading? What matters to me? Have I made that clear? Have I made that clear to you? And that's for you. The family, that's for you. The team, that's for you. The organization that you're leading. So I love that. The other piece that I love so much, Aaron, is, Is the idea of getting uncomfortable with growth. Yeah. That, you know, we each. The idea, I believe. And I. You, you said it. I say it slightly differently. We're both saying the exact same thing, which is you're bigger than the life you're leading. We all ache for that. We know that we're bigger than the life that we're currently living. And we know there's more. And for some people, that scares them. I'm actually in conversation with somebody about that right now. Like, more. Yeah, it's out there. I don't know if I want the responsibility. And for you, on your path, you, you said, I'm coasting now. A lot of people would go, that's cool. You could get paid big bucks and you could coast. How cool is that? And for you, that was like, that's not good enough. I need to grow and stretch and grow and stretch. So, So I just wanted to bring it back to get uncomfortable with growth. That's huge. That's really, that's, that's great. And I'm, I'm commending you for that because that's, that's part of what becoming a good coach is about, too, is that you put yourself through that because you know there's more.

Yeah, I, I, with all of my clients, if there was a headline, that headline is, growth and comfort do not coexist. Growth by design is not meant to be comfortable. It's not meant to be easy. Sure, there's no shortage of thousands of thousands of books about growth and growth mindset. And you know how it, it feels good reading it. It feels good learning about it. And you're like, yeah, I want to grow. But the fact of the matter is, when you're in a growth mode, it's always going to be hard at the beginning and messy in the middle, and it's going to be stress and anxiety inducing because you are being pulled to the very outer edges of your current capabilities. And if you're not that developing that stretching, that challenge, that growth is not meant to feel good. No different than going to the gym, you work out, and you're sore as hell the next day. That's an indicator that there's growth. That's not a bad thing in most cases. You can always overdo it to the point of injury. But that soreness that you feel is no different than the uncomfortable feelings that we have when we're in growth mode. And so I like to think of it as don't look for comfort, actually look and celebrate the discomfort because you will get no better signal than that you are in fact growing than that.

That's so well said. The, the concept here is the confidence competence loop, right. That we all live in a place called agency. We're good at something and we're so good at that thing. We got good by doing it and doing it and doing it, and now it just becomes part of us and we are competent at it and we have confidence with us. And the way to grow is to deliberately step further out of our competence level and go, okay, I'm going to do something I've never done before. I don't really know how to do. And your confidence gets shaken a little bit, but. And the more you do this thing, the more confidence you build. So there is this confidence competence loop that expands and now you're better at something new. I, I think that's great. The whole idea of get uncomfortable with growth, right? The get on, get, get comfortably uncomfortable, you know, get comfortable recognizing that what you're doing for yourself is actually in service to other people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm so glad you brought up the competence confidence loop because that's, that's, that's something that I love to kind of think about and work with with clients. And I would almost add kind of a third piece of that. And sure, once you're in the loop, it's, it's going well with the more experience reps you gain, the more confidence that you get in any type of area, the more confidence that follows that increase in confidence. But the biggest issue I see is people not able to start. And I think, I think we're wired to wait for the perfect opportunity. We're waiting for the stars to align. We're waiting for that person to show up on our doorstep and give us the green light of saying, hey, now's your, here's your all clear signal. Now is your time to go. And the problem is people spend their entire lives waiting for a perfect moment that never exists. And the perspective that I would like to share is forget perfect. Forget perfect moments, forget the perfect first step. Forget about there being a Better time than another time. Part of being uncomfortable is taking imperfect action and coming to grips with the relationship, that every action we take to some degree is going to have a level of imperfection in it. So the more that we can just understand that, yeah, it may not be the perfect opportunity. There may be risk, there may be fear, there may be uncertainty on the other side of this action. But I'm going to take imperfect action because what sits at the other end of that loop is imperfect action leads to greater confidence, which increases your confidence that now makes you more willing to take more imperfect actions. And so when I hear people talk about, you know, now's just not the right time, I'm. I need to wait till next quarter, next month, or I'll start Monday. It's my biggest piece of advice for them is like, don't. That's you.

You're.

You're basically losing before you start. If this is important to you, if this is your next level, if this is where you want to make progress, start now. And understanding that imperfect action is the key to all progress.

Yeah. One of my sayings is, begin before you're ready. Exactly. Because most. Right. Most. Most people feel like, oh, I'm not ready yet. It's like, well, how do you get ready? You get ready by learning. So, like, beginning now, you know, if you wait, oh, you know, I'm gonna put it off. I'll wait five years. You know, I'll start then. It's like, well, if you started now, where would you be in five years? If you wait five years, you're just five years older and doing the exact same thing. So I. I'm a big fan of start. Now. The other funny thing that sort of came to me as you were talking about, you know, take imperfect action. You never hear anybody go, right. In retrospect, no one ever says, I took perfect action on that. That was the ideal time to start. Nobody ever says that. Nobody ever looks back and goes, that was the perfect time. Because there's no assessment of, wow, that was perfect. Everybody's like, oh, I could have done it better. I could have done it better. It's like, no. Knowing that, right? Knowing that.

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When I was in grad school, I, I found myself like being in my own little world and do the exact same thing every day. You know, I was at my computer, I'd go to school, I'd, you know, eat a certain thing at school, I'd come back. So this was grad school, this was a few decades ago, maybe more than a few. And, and I, I came up with this thing where I gave myself a five by seven card and in bright orange letters I wrote a four letter word ending in K on that card and I posted it on my door frame so I would, it would be the last thing I'd see going out into the world. And that word was risk. R I S K risk. Like and, and it's something I taught my kids growing up. Like can you do one thing different today? Can you do just one thing different that pushes you out of what you would normally typically do? And so for me that was go to, go to my grad school classes a different route or talk to that person I was a little shy about talking to or try a different food or a different restaurant. One thing different and it's, it makes a huge difference in the world. And you know, I raised my kids not with be careful, be safe. I raised them with risk. Well because they're smart enough to be careful and safe Risk. Well right, make it's critical thinking and we need to teach that too.

Yeah, I, I, I love that and I think, yeah, it's, you know, I'm just a big fan of, I just, I think it's okay to think about worst case scenario. Think about what, what's the absolute worst thing that could happen when you're measuring any amount of risk? Let's just go to the worst possible outcome. And for a lot of my clients, not only on the business side for their, for their operations or for their businesses, I also have them look at this on a personal side too, is let's do a pre mortem exercise, let's say, let's say the next 12 months, if we were to bump into each other in a restaurant and you said this was the worst year of your life, this, you know, this initiative, this plan you had ended in a Burning dumpster fire. Like, let's go there. Let's sit in that mess. Like, let's sit in that failure. Now let's think back. What are the leading indicators? What would have caused such an outcome? What would be the things that shown up as true for this disaster to happen? And it's, it's kind of shocking for some, right, because most of us, especially in the planning stages, when we're building strategies or building initiatives, it's all rainbows and sunshine. We're in such a utopian state that we almost put strategies together where we just can't even imagine things happening outside of the way that we expect them to. I like to go the exact opposite. Let's almost imagine everything happens differently than we expected and the worst case scenario happens. And what we typically find out is that fear of the risk is usually an ocean that's a mile wide but only an inch deep. And as soon as you take that first step, you realize it's not quite such an ocean. It's more of just a big puddle that I can walk all the way across. But it's like, yeah, go there. Like, put yourself into that position of failure, understand what would cause it, and then create the strategy to lower those probabilities. And all of a sudden you find out you could get pretty damn good at managing risk in the probability of failure.

That's so great. I, you know, I, I am a fan of seeking aspiration and moving away from the anchors. What you've described is something that is used in rational emotive therapy where, you know, okay, let's imagine the absolute worst now rationally, da, da, da. You take people there and you have them sit, sit in it. And I love that it's such, it's. What a great exercise. Because the truth is, and I forget, you know, I'm gonna slaughter how it was said, but it's. I think it was a Mark Twain ism where it was like, you know, I've had, you know, a thousand horrible things happen to me and, you know, 999 of them were absolutely not true. They were just in my imagination, you know. And so we think about the worst and the idea of real risk and the idea of what that means, you know, what's. What will happen if you have that conversation? What will happen if you invest in a certain way? What will happen if you treat yourself in a different way and you find out that you actually value yourself? Might you lift the people around you? Might you lose some people around you? And if so, is that the worst? Thing that happens. Right. So that's usually what stops in, in my world, that's usually what stops people. Oh, I'm afraid of losing this relationship. That's okay. You could be afraid or you could invest in the relationship or you could find out that you've been holding on for the wrong reasons. And you know, exploring that is a big deal. And when I say relationship, it could be a partner or a team member or you know, being in the wrong job. Like, and, and I, oh, one more thing. And then I want to turn it back to you just to kind of bounce off of you. I, you know, I explore whether people are in the wrong job or in the job wrong. And that's a mind state thing too. So let's talk about some of your successes and then I absolutely want to talk about your, the five key areas that you focus on when you do your work.

Sure, sure, yeah. You know, for me, when I look back through my career, most especially from the personal experience of my missteps, my failures, my setbacks, I compare them to the others that I've seen. You know, my, let's just call it the five level methodology that kind of makes up my operating system. It's essentially every single failure, misstep or mistake can be attributed to one of these five areas. When one of these five areas becomes a weakness or starts to weaken, it increases the probability that of those mistakes. And so when I kind of reverse engineered my own peaks and valleys, I kind of thought to myself, what was it that I wish I could have had back then in the form of tools and a systematic approach that minimized the risk of these areas becoming weak. And the areas are pretty straightforward. It's not rocket science here, but it all starts with mindset, right? And I'm just a firm believer of the, of the Henry Ford quote. Whether you think you can or think you can't, you will always be right. Nothing great has ever been achieved by someone who didn't think that they could achieve something great. So I think mindset is so important. And then that's, you know, that steps us up to level two, which is awareness. I think awareness is such a foundational attribute that you simply can't improve, enhance, or change something you're not aware of. And so I think it's a, it's a key element to then get us to the third level, that once we have the right mindset, once we have that internal awareness, we know why we're currently where we're at. The good, the bad and the ugly, we can now look externally out to the world with greater clarity. We can better understand how we're defining success for ourselves. We can better understand how we're, what happiness looks like for us. And we can better understand whether those two things are in alignment or contradict each other. From there we're, we're kind of developing our, our GPS system. Right. So when we know where we're currently at, we got a, a good idea of where we want to go and what that looks like. We can now use goal systems to build the route to get there with all the supporting milestones along the way. And then the cherry on top is accountability, staying disciplined and staying consistent, to continue to show up and do the things that, you know, are required to do to drive progress. And so when you take a step back, it's always one of these five levels or multiple that show up with essentially every one time high performing professional that either loses their growth, plateaus out or starts to decline. It's one of these areas that will always be kind of the, the, the crack in the foundation that develops a weakness that then starts to cascade their, you know, their decline.

What do you think is the easiest way to get someone to move off of where they are? You know, because starting with you, you know, mindset or mind state, starting there with the idea of what the difference between hope and real belief in self. Like, you know, well, I, I hope to be, you know, at this level someday versus oh, I'm heading there. I, I don't know exactly how, but I'm heading there. Right.

Yeah.

What, what for you is the difference and how do you get people to move off of the. It'd be nice, but you know. Right.

Yeah, I, I tend to take a very direct approach. Right. And it's, and it's, it's two things. One is action. Right. You can hope all you want to, you can believe, you can think. All those things are great. That's why, you know, Carol Dweck from Stanford did a lot of great work around a growth mindset. But if you only think and believe that you can, you'll be in the exact same place a year from now than you are right here. And so until you're ready to commit to action and not wait till Monday, not wait till next month, not wait till next quarter to start, now then your aspiration or your goal, I tend to tell people it's not really a goal, it's an idea. Well, you're ready to put action behind that idea. Now we have something real that we can work with and Then I want

to, I want to underscore something for you. Yeah, go ahead. Right, so you're saying take action. I want to underscore something that you said. We said we were talking about earlier. Yeah, take, take imperfect action. Like just take action. Do something in the direction of. And it doesn't have to be pretty. It can be really ugly. It can be the, you know, it's like if you want to learn guitar or French or whatever it is, it's not going to sound right at first. Right. And you decided to get your mouth to move a certain way or your hands to move a certain way. Awesome. Right? So you take imperfect action. You're moving towards that. What that does is proves to your subconscious that you're actually serious about making that a part of your life versus it's just a dream that's out there somewhere. So I wanted to underscore that because love that. When do you take action? Now. Right now.

Right now. And I, and I think that what we pair along with that is we are going to go deep and stress test the hell out of.

Why.

Why do you want to go there? Why is that important to you? What does that get you? What does that look like? What, why are you chasing what you're chasing? Because what I found is if it's just the shiny object of the day, even that imperfect action, you're going to have a hard time staying consistent and accountable to the discipline to keep taking action. It's, it's going to be a sugar high. It's, it's not going to have the sustainability that you need to make long term pro progress. And so what I pair along with that is we get very clear on why it is we're choosing to go down this path. We can always, always make sure that we can be flexible on the journey, but stubborn on, on the destination. But when you have a strong enough why, you'll always figure out the how. Even when those obstacles or the inevitable setbacks that come along the way, if your why is weak, you're so much more likely to get thrown off course or throw in the towel and say, I'll try again later, I'll try again next year. I'll wait for New Year's resolution next year to kind of start that back up. And so I aggressively challenge, are you ready to take action right now? And then let's make sure we've got an ultra crystallized definition of why and how important that why is that we're taking action. Because when those two things come together, that's when you're starting, starting the process of being unstoppable, well, your step three is clarity.

And you know, when, when people are absolutely clear about what it is they're headed for, then there is a lot of discernment and you're able to say, well, this, this thing is now a distraction that's out. One of the things that I have found is to get absolutely clear about the goal. A lot of people will say things like, and you know, our audience members have done this. I am certain, oh, I'd love to have a million dollars. Right? And, and what does that mean? You know, what do you do with a million dollars? What is that? When you, when you talk about the why, it's sort of like, well, why is that important to me? And you know, in my first book that came out right around the time that Simon Sinek came out with his look a thumbs up. When Simon send it came up with his start with why. I had buried my questions, asked why four times in my first book called choosing your power. And, and it was for the same reason, ask yourself. Like it's. I have a, I have a list of watchwords and I actually suggest that why be eliminated from your vocabulary with one exception. Because when you ask somebody else, you know, why, why'd you choose that jacket? Why'd you choose, you know, it actually creates this sort of, it's like a shame based conversation. When you ask yourself, you have to be really specific and it's not, oh, why did I do that? Because that too is shame based. And so to go to a place of why does that matter to me? And you, you land there and you go, okay, and so why does that matter to me? And you land and you go deeper and deeper. It becomes like, well, I want a million dollars. Well, why does that matter to me? Because then I'd be able to do this. Well, why does that matter to me? Because then I, oh, so you don't really want the million dollars. You want the, the thing, the, the freedom, the, the ability to travel or visit or live luxuriously, whatever you want that. So it's not the money, it's the, let's move towards that thing. And I think, you know, as you, as you work from mindset to awareness to clarity to goals and then pull in accountability, I think it's a beautiful framework that you've developed. And I just, I'm saying it because I wanted to underscore it for you. So the whole why thing is all about the clarity and the goals and it's like Once you have those, you know what's in and what's out. And I think that's, that's a beautiful thing. So, you know.

Yeah, and I think what's, what's baked into there, and I think it just kind of highlights the point that you're making is along that journey, what, what the awareness, what the clarity and what the goal systems allow you to do is to say no a lot. Yes. Right. And so if you're, if you're striving to do something great, I mean, the, the gap between good and great in anything is so big that if you're trying to be great, you have to, you have to essentially know that everything outside of the supporting catalysts and mechanisms to get you to great in that area is basically a no. And so I think saying there's, there's almost an art to say no. And it requires that clarity to understand what you're going after, why you're going after it, and why that's so damn important to you that it just, it makes everything else is almost an immediate reflection of like, no, non priority for me, not starter. I'm here, I'm in this lane, and I'm staying in this lane.

I want to plus one that. Because. And, and right. So it's, it's like, yes. And, you know, I got really excited as you're talking and me on my journey. I didn't know that when I went to grad school to become a psychologist that I would end up with a podcast with a blog with five books and two more in the works with becoming a movie producer, becoming a feature in a featured character in a film, becoming a producer of Broadway stage, that never occurred to me. And the idea of saying no, the reason I bring that up, like, it's a, it is a very odd biography for me to look back at. And when I give people a bio to read or whatever before I'm introduced, it's like, that's a really strange life and it's amazing and I love it. And it's partly because I said no. And here's the paradox and why I got so excited as you were talking about saying no is that when you say no to the mundane, when you say no to the distractions, the opportunities that you really want actually start to show themselves to you and you become more aware of them because you've said no to the distractions. And so saying no becomes a practice. And saying yes is like, that might be imperfect action. And you can always say no later. Lean in when those opportunities show up.

Yeah, that's it reminds me of a story. And full disclosure, I have no idea if this is true or not, but it highlights the point so well. And it's the Warren Buffett pilot story, which I'm not sure if you've, if you've come across, but he asked his longtime pilot one time says, you know, you've been very good to me. I want you to make a list of the top 25 things that you want to do before you die. The thing, the top 25 things that are most important to you, bring that list back to me next week. Pilot comes back next week with his list of 25. Warren says, okay, now what are the top five? Just give me your, your top five come back next week of just that. If you could only choose five out of this full list, what would it be? He comes back next week with his five. And now Warren Buffett says, now here's the life lesson. These 20 items that didn't make the top five cut, this is your no list. These are going to be the things that are most likely to get in the way of these five things because they're of interest to you. You want to do them to some degree, there's going to be some appeal there. They're going to be viewed as exciting opportunities. But you can't do both, right? And so if you, if these are your top five, then this list of 20 has to be your no list. And again, whether it's true or not, I have no idea. But the wisdom behind it is, is to be so clear on what's most important. You've got to also have the clarity on what's not the most important, even if it's things that you may actually want or enjoy or have an interest in doing. And so it's, it's, it really comes down to, and this is life. It comes down to being able to effectively prioritize the priorities.

Love that. That's amazing. That's amazing. The, you know, I would call it a no for now list. That it's, that's right. It doesn't belong until I do the other things. And then I'll reevaluate. I, you know, I have a, A to do list, right? And I have 31 priority two priority three, and the unprioritized. And it's sort of like, am I ever really going to touch the unprioritized? They need to come off like, right. Seriously. And, and that's, I think that's something that we can all do for ourselves. The the someday stuff, is that a priority or is it really someday? Because if it's a priority and you've put it off to someday, you know, this is what I call. Listen to the whispers. That someday stuff that you've put off and you're calling it like, you know, someday I really want to do this. Start making that your priority. Because here's what most people don't get. You can have the success that got you here and you can build on that to get to the things you put off, knowing that growth is a part of the process. So you're nodding as I say this, so that's great.

Just to put an exclamation point on that. I like to think of it as focus and speed are. It's like a fine wine going with a great cheese, right? And so the, the greater that you can focus, the more speed and progress that you can get. Right. So if your focus looks like a roulette and it's just a little bit of focus in a lot of different places, you won't have speed anywhere. You won't have substantial progress anywhere. If you applied and harnessed that focus to as close as 100% on the one or few things, it will immediately be correlated with faster speed and progress. And so I like to focus or I like to treat focus and attention to correlate directly with speed and progress.

I'm writing. That's a. That's fantastic.

Don't be the roulette table.

Focus and attention correlates with speed and progress. I love that. That's it. Aaron, what haven't I asked you? You know, what were you hoping that. Wow. Of, you know, because we got your. We got your top five focus list. Yeah. Is there anything that you were hoping to discuss that I haven't asked you about yet?

No, I don't think so. I think it was a great, wide ranging conversation. And, and you know, if I could add anything, it would just be, you know, another one of those key lessons that I learned along my journey and kind of my quarter life crisis and kind of goes back to that principle of sometimes 6. Your current success can be the very thing that prevents your future success. And what all of the incredibly successful people have figured out that I've seen throughout my life is the realization that they can't get there alone. And the second that they think they have. I mean, the second that you think you're the smartest one in the room, the second that you think you have it all figured out, regardless of the external success, I can assure you, it's the start of your eventual decline. But the leaders that I continue to see find new level after new level after new level of success have figured out that, you know, the person with the best team wins. I can't do this all myself. Who can help and support me? Who can be that blind spot detector? Who can be that thought partner? Who can help me see things that I can't see on my own? Those are the ones that usually always win.

So good. It's a theme that's come up and I'm hoping our audience gets it, that you can't do it alone. That support is important. A coach like Aaron Trehan or me or, you know, a bunch of others were scattered about the country and around the world. Aaron has some, some stuff to check out. I'd love for you to describe what is at Performance Mindset Coaching co. What is that?

Yeah, that's, that's where you can get more information about my approach, my methodology. Learn a little bit more about why these five levels make up the five levels of the operating system. Don't just take my word for it. Go to my website and listen to what my clients have said. I think their, their word is far more important than mine because the way that I like to engage with high performers is it's all about taking action and it's all about generating results. And so you'll find all the information there on what that actually looks like.

So good action leads to results. And whether they're results that you want or not, you get to course correct along the way. And you can't do it if you're not moving. I think of, I think of like a, like a gps, you know, you, you know where you are, you know where you said you wanted to go. And unless your car is moving you, it's not going to tell you a road is blocked or, you know, go around or here's an alternate route. You've got to move yourself. Action is going to get you the results you want. I'm just, I'm underscoring the stuff you talked about. Aaron, it was so good having you here. Thank you.

Thank you, Dr. Wayne. Yeah. To your point, no amount of books will ever teach you how to swim.

So it's true. It's true. All right, well, my guest today is and has been Aaron Trahan. I'm certain you're on LinkedIn.

We.

You and I should be connected if we're not. So please do that. Go to Performance Mindset Coaching Co. Aaron is Aaron Trahan. T r a H a N and you can find him on LinkedIn. Aaron, thank you again. Appreciate you being here.

Thank you, Dr. Wayne.

Alrighty. This is One Sharp Sword Cutting through to what Matters Most. I'm your host, My guest today, Aaron Trahan. And I AM Wayne Pernell. Dr. Wayne Pernell, Dr. P, the exponential success coach and president of Dynamic Leader, Inc. I would love it if you would like this podcast, if you would share this podcast, if you'd comment on this podcast, One sharp sword is here for you and it makes a bigger ripple the more we can put it out there. So please appreciate that. We will see you here next week. Thanks for joining us. Thank you for listening to One Sharp Sword cutting through to what Matters Most

with your host, Dr. P. Dr. Wayne Purnell, the breakthrough success coach coach and

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