Ep.16- Reach Your Potential Through Entrepreneurship

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, owner and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

LMFT 🎗️️ Jason, it's awesome to have you on the show.

For having me, I'm really excited to be here.

No problem. Super excited to have you on. And what I wanted to do was just read a little bit more about Jason so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Jason Wasser is a licensed therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and a certified entrepreneurial coach. He believes that every business owner, whether an entrepreneur or intrapreneur, should have a therapist and a coach in their life to help them reach their potential and minimize their stresses. Jason utilizes a mind, body, spirit approach when collaborating with his clients and their families. Jason owns The Family Room Wellness Associates in South Florida and works with entrepreneurial clients and their loved ones all over the world. Jason, are you ready to speak to the I Am CEO community?

I am ready and excited.

Awesome, let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Absolutely, so having grown up actually in an entrepreneurial family, I'm actually the second generation, Shel. My grandfather started a family furniture business after he survived the Holocaust and moved to Pennsylvania, up in— close to your neck of the woods. My father eventually took it over, they moved it down to South Florida, and then a bunch of years ago my younger siblings, my brother and sister, kind of started getting involved in the business and pretty much managing on the day-to-day. Meanwhile, as part of my journey, I've always been involved in the informal education, the nonprofit world, the student programming, whether it's high school or college level programming, and never really saw myself as this person who's an entrepreneur. I always saw myself as a healer and a therapist more than I saw myself as a I'm a business person. And a bunch of years ago, I opened up my own practice, still not accepting this idea that I'm an entrepreneur, that I'm a CEO, right? And saw the struggles of what it was to be a solopreneur, right? A person who's trying to run a business by themself. And while I was doing that, I was hitting my head against the wall. I couldn't grow the business while I was seeing clients. And if I was seeing clients, right, and servicing the people I cared to service, I couldn't grow the business. So I was stuck in a catch-22. And meanwhile, I was still fighting this idea of being a business owner as opposed to this idea of, right, a therapist. Until a colleague of mine who's a chiropractor, who's also an NET practitioner, took about a year and a half to try to convince me to join him at this entrepreneur conference in Dallas, Texas. And finally, once I summoned up my strength to be really uncomfortable, where I saw myself probably being less than all the other people that were there, even though I had this business for many years, I jumped on a plane and went out for a weekend and walked out with the realization that not only am I an entrepreneur, but I'm actually really, really passionate about it, but I've just been thinking about it and defining it the wrong way. And that is some significant limitations. Year 1 alone of changing my mindset and putting into play of this program that I'm now a certified coach through brought not only radical, massive increase to my bottom line and profit in my company, but also made it much simpler to operate. And now I use these same skills to help other companies and families change their life through that world of entrepreneurship.

I love that. I love that because while you were talking, I was immediately thinking about like this, the book The E-Myth, which always talks about the different aspects of running a business and how in order to go to a different level, Well, you can't be the technician, I think it is the technician. You have to move from the technician to the business owner to the kind of person that can see everything. So I love that because so many business owners I find struggle with it. Do you find like the exact same thing? Absolutely.

And I share this with everybody, especially people who are reaching out to me for ideas about going into graduate school for therapy or any other type of business like that, that I really correlate that technician-manager-entrepreneur, which is what the E-Myth talks about, to anybody who's getting a salaried position and/or they're that solopreneur person that they're the, they're the technician. Right? Whether you're a janitor, whether you're a barista at a coffee shop, whether you're a therapist, whether you're a doctor, you're only getting paid when you're doing the work. And a lot of times that comes with also a lot of administrative work as well, a lot of extra paperwork, all that stuff. But going up to the level of a manager, you're— someone like me was doing all three. I was trying to manage my paperwork, marketing, answering phones, scheduling everything, and trying to network, right? Going to networking groups and advertising and manage all that. And I didn't have enough time in the day. So when people come to me now and I, and I walk them through each of those things, it radically shifts a person's idea, whether they're a student or they're already running a business, on how to change from that paradigm. And in fact, that's one of the first books— or I'll say skip the book, just go on YouTube and listen to as much as you can. Yeah, you can get all that in a much shorter, more efficient time. But I know that we've been trained to go to school, go to college, get a job, get that salary, have that safety and stability. And, and but meanwhile, you're still trying to do all those other things. My paradigm, my new paradigm is to become the person who is the most successful, you have to give up practicing the trade in which you're trained in to learn to go to the next level so you don't become Superman or Superwoman and trying to do it all. And that's what I help both my therapy clients as well as my coaching clients really let go of. And it really does help change everything for them.

Yeah, I can definitely imagine that because, you know, so many people kind of struggle with that. Usually a lot of people that start businesses have some type of expertise. They're really good at something, but sometimes that can limit your growth because you're so good at it that no one else can do it better than you, which it kind of touches on in the beginning of the email. So I know you touched on a little bit. Is that kind of like what you do for the clients you work with and what you feel kind of makes you unique and it's like your, what I call your secret sauce?

Absolutely. I think the secret sauce is not only do I have the therapy side and this coaching side, and the coaching program, I was actually trained under a capital venturist who is radically, radically successful, has over, I think, 50 companies under their portfolio. And their passion is specifically, his name is Rick Sapio. His passion is training and helping other entrepreneurs reach their potential through entrepreneurship. And he does that through core values, values-based decision-making, managed by objective. What my other buddy Matt Manero, I don't know if you've heard of him, through the You Need Money podcast, is also now co-owner of this program called Business Finishing School. He talks about a lifestyle by design, and that's kind of the way that I coach my clients, where we typically think too small, right? We think about a goal that we want to make, you know, the next 3 to 6 months, but I push to 5 to 10 years out and reverse engineer. And I know the anxiety is going to be provoked in them because we usually make a goal or what we want to attain, and then we take a step back from that just below the level of resistance on emotions. And my job as a therapist and a coach is to push you into that anxiety-provoking state because that's really where I believe your potential lies once you get past that. So by doing that reverse engineering, put the— putting together this lifestyle by design. And then when my clients are in person with me, I throw a neuro-emotional technique at them, which is a mind-body stress reduction protocol. We find out what the self-sabotaging, self-limiting stories are that hold them back. You combine the therapy, the coaching, and the NET, and you have a game changer that I don't believe anybody else in the world is doing.

What I wanted to do was switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

So one of my favorite things through this program that I'm a certified coach through was the accountability groups, right? There's so many masterminds out there.

There's—

everybody's offering a mastermind, which I see more as like a first buy-in sale to get that person to buy more of your products. What I mean by this situation is that you find 2, 3, 4 other like-minded people that are equally committed to doing the work through a very specific lens. To help you get to a goal in each of your personal and professional lives. So for example, I have through this program, I have two other people that I work with. One's a chiropractor out in Portland, Oregon. Another one's a buddy here in South Florida who is a business coach and also does kind of like outsourced CEO and works in online education. And we each of us are going through different themes and how it applies to each of our problems, both emotionally and practically about our business, our limitations, our delegation, time management. So we go through themes as well as the module from this curriculum to help us do better as well as to hold each other accountable to do the work that we say we're gonna do. And I think that's something that most people don't realize. To hold yourself accountable is really difficult. And a lot of people don't have that. And that's why all these great books out there, you know, The Way of the Seal and all these things about like, how do you get up and rise and grind and all those things, all these cliché phrases. But to be in a space where you have, you are holding someone else accountable and they're holding you accountable is radically, radically, radically part of the success factor.

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. A lot of people say, you know, how successful you are is determined determined by your environment. And if you want to— and even you touched on it a little bit when you mentioned that you went to the conference and you said you felt like you weren't up to the par with these other people, but you put yourself in that environment and all of a sudden you start to manifest itself. So doing that on a regular basis like you guys are doing, um, I think that's definitely a great CEO hack.

Well, I think that's also part of that story, right, that people carry about their success factor. I grew up, I was a scholarship kid, and to know, know that— and I also wasn't a great student, I barely graduated high school— to know that not only am I a successful therapist with a great reputation, but to know that I came from a parent's divorce, scholarship right? Not doing really well in high school and then finding out what I'm passionate about and then putting myself in that environment. I want to challenge your listeners to not be afraid to take that risk, to do that, to now be coached by some of the big name people out there and have a personal relationship with some of the big name people that are out there in the entrepreneur space is really something that I've leveraged through this in the last 2 and a half years. So I was nothing to having leverage with this community of people who are radically successful, making hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And I'm not saying that from an ego place. I'm saying it by those influences influences become part of your network, right? And I think that if you bring value— and there's also a difference for people out there who, like, you know, the thing of a CEO— just because you're selling a product doesn't make you a CEO. But when you have a business, right, when you're— when you have products and a company around it, that's what makes you a CEO. And I think that people out there need to understand that there's more than just a product in order to do that. And a lot of times the product they're trying to sell them is themselves. And that's really tough because another 15 minutes and we'll be done and we'll be done. But to leverage— to leverage the people that you're engaging with is really powerful.

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely would, you know, agree with that. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget, and this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice, or if you can hop into a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

So the younger business self of me would realize that I am an entrepreneur. I think if I were to go back to the time I was in graduate school, we didn't have social media. So I did graduate school 2003 to 2005, and that was right after Facebook got started. No one was using social media for business. I think maybe around that time Gary Vee was probably the only guy who was using AdWords and for all this stuff, but no one is leveraging a personal brand. So I have two friends from here in South Florida who just started their graduate school, they're twin sisters, and they just started the family therapy program that I'm in. And I said, throughout your entire, from day one you start, create an Instagram that's just your professional Instagram. So by the time you graduate, where you have two years of graduation, 'til you graduate, and then you have another two years until you get fully licensed. That's four years to build up a social media presence and your brand in that timeframe. So they, that night I got requests from both of them on Insta with their business brand, right, with their therapist brand. And this is something that I feel like if, you know, and I agree 100% with Gary Vee, if you don't have a brand, if you're not leveraging social media, not to tell us what you do, but to show what you do, how do you solve the problem? What's the problem you're trying to solve? I wish I knew that back then. And I also realized that the— and this is something I teach my clients— is that entrepreneurship, I 100% believe, is a therapeutic modality. That you can heal and figure out your purpose through entrepreneurship, probably more profoundly than you can in many other ways. And I think that's an incredible actualization of personal through through that. So those are just some, you know, those nuggets of bone up on all the reading, but know where your role is, right? Back to the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. Some people are really great at baking cakes and they need to hire the partner to be the marketer. Some people are really good macro thinkers. So know your role, know what you're really good at, and don't try to like force yourself into something else as if like there's an ego thing there. I think that would be the biggest nuggets I would give to someone.

Yeah, I absolutely love that. And I love that I usually always say entrepreneurship to me equals hope. And a lot of times, like you were touching on, you know, the healing and how you're able to deal things through entrepreneurship. And I think that definitely is something I would echo as well, too. So I love that, those CEO nuggets as well. So I know we touched on it a little bit and we talked about the definition of what it means to be a CEO. I wanted to see if there's anything additional you had or like how you would define and what you look at as far as being a CEO.

So it's interesting. I don't see myself as a CEO. I have a very, very niche practice. I have a chiropractor and a nutritionist that work out of my office as my associates. But I feel that unless you're really running a larger-scale company, this idea of having this CEO, really, people are still holding on to that Superman, Superwoman principle. I think to really be a CEO means that you are a master at delegation. You're a master of implementing and getting people around you that are aligned with core values of your business. You're a master of brainstorming objectives and action steps and holding each person in that business accountable, but you have to have a business. Right? I, I like the idea that people aim to be a CEO, but there's a difference between being a president or a founder of something than being a chief executive officer, which means that you have an executive team, which means you might have a board of directors, which means you might have, uh, stakeholders in your company, investors. But I want to challenge people to think bigger than them being Superman or Superwoman. And that's the only way that you can eventually become a CEO, is that when you build something that's much bigger than you, where at the end of the day, the business does not revolve around you, that if you disappeared for a month, it would still run. I think when we get to that point, then you can officially call yourself a CEO.

Nice. I absolutely love that. And I love that perspective because a lot of times, like, I love the phrase, the master of delegation, because when you are and you have that perspective, you're thinking long-term and you're putting the people in place to be able to execute on those specific things that they're great at as well too. And it makes you a masterful leader and a master of delegation, as you said. So I truly appreciate the time, Jason, and I wanted to pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know. And then of course, how best they can get ahold of you.

Absolutely.

So I know I know that people out there are kind of figuring out, like, this coaching thing is such a big thing right now, and I really want to make sure that people know where to go and where to look for, for coaching. And obviously I'm not here to be the therapist and coach for everybody. As a therapist, I can only see people that live in the state of Florida, but when I'm doing coaching, the background that I have as a therapist is where I can separate between what's an emotional challenge and what's a solution-focused challenge, is to find someone who does have that background in solution-focused work. Unfortunately, a lot of times there are coaches out there that are doing therapy, and I Unfortunately, that also— you can wake up in the morning tomorrow and anybody can call themselves a coach. So know who you're working with, know what their experience has truly been, and know the difference between working on a therapeutic issue and a coaching issue. And I'm happy to answer anybody's questions and point them in the right direction. Like I said, I'm not here to take everybody. I don't have the caseload and the bandwidth to take everybody. I take very, very specific clients. And— but those— I do take people who are passionate, who are committed to long-term change in their life, committed to realizing that mind, body, spirit has to be part of it. Work-life balance has to be part of it, accountability has to be part of it, defining core values has to be part of it, and making themselves really uncomfortable to figure out who they are capable of being has to be 100% part of it. So happy to help anybody out there. Please point them in the right direction or even set them up with some coaching time with me. And the best way to get me is through my website. It's, uh, www.thefamilyroomsfl.com. And the SFL is South Florida abbreviated, so it's thefamilyroomsfl.com. I can also be found on Instagram at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. We'll have those links in the show notes as well too, just so that anybody can click through and follow up with you and follow you on Instagram, of course, just like the students you did that you spoke to before. So again, I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Thank you so much. Right back at you.

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