How can this be easy | The mindset approach approach to change | how you build your business

We all start a business thinking that we're going to have independence, freedom of time, freedom of movement, freedom of making money. But for so many of us, in fact most of us, the business we build becomes a gilded cage. We make too much money to leave, but not enough money to really make it worth staying. I can tell you I've been in that position myself and probably to some degree still am. To the good news is that my guest today has written a book on how we can escape the gilded cage. We're going all the way to Austin, Texas. We're meeting coach Karen Eldad, who's written a book and has a TEDx talk with over half a million views. So she's absolutely an authority on this and she's a coach as well. Karen, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jim. It's such a pleasure to be here. And thank you for serving me the intro inadvertently to my sequel.

Oh, what's the. Well, let's do the first one first and then you can.

Exactly. Gilded business. Yes, exactly. Yes.

Well, you see, we like to try and be entrepreneurial on the show. We like to make things as well as. Listen to these.

We're all in this together, Karen.

We. We are. And as you say, at the moment, we've got a lot of turbulence politically, but also technically with the way that AI is moving on, and it's moving on at faster and faster pace. I, I certainly feel as though we're kind of being pulled along now by AI rather than letting AI do the work just for us. It's creating stress. It's hard enough to run a business without these political and technological changes. Tell us about your book, but also, how can entrepreneurs build a business that actually gives them freedom rather than captivity?

The answer is mindset. The truth is that the pace of change really is extraordinary and aggressive, and I don't think anyone would disagree with us. I'm now in my 40s. I know very well that there has been change over the last four decades, but it's nowhere near what's happening here. I certainly understand that AI is posing not only different perspective, but potential threat to so many businesses, including my husband's. He's a journalist. But at the same time, we have to understand that the pace of change is a relative constant in terms of humankind evolution. And though it has certainly gotten far faster and much more aggressive in the last 200 years, the only way to get past it and to run with the times is to invest in and develop your mindset, your emotional intelligence, your ability to deal with Change. Now, entrepreneurs are already ahead of the game here because many of us who started a business realized years ago, okay, this train is not working for me. I better run my own lane, build my own thing and try to get ahead of it. So that's really wonderful news for you as you're already ahead of the game. The less good news is that you're right, indeed, many of us, while we started this business, I remember starting this business thing. I will control my destiny. Then getting shaken around by the very train that we've built. Right. And thinking many times, as you've so vulnerably offered, get me off this. This is. You know what? I've had enough. We're good here. I want people to not do that. I believe that the world needs really fantastic entrepreneurs with big hearts and big ideas to run the show. We are in the United States, entrepreneurs and small business owners, the biggest employer in the country. So we are absolutely vital to the economy and to the health of this country, regardless of who is in power. And so it's my hope that we don't build ourselves fancier and more gilded cages. It is my hope that we build ourselves freedom, which is the intention.

Karen, on your book, the COVID you've got gilded. And people can, by the way, find karen@karenldad.com and I'll of course put a link to her. Her website at the show notes. You, you talk about breaking free from the cage of ambition, perfectionism, and relentless pursuit of more. You know, you. I think you could have had a word with my wife because she's, she's probably said, I'm ambitious, I'm a perfectionist, and I'm always trying to create new things, which she finds exhausting. But of course, it is the hallmark of an entrepreneur, isn't it, that we're always trying to innovate. How do you help us then to at the one time build something because we need to build that cage, but also to leave the door open so that we can fly out and see what else is going on.

By changing your targets. Again, a simple answer that warrants a little bit of explanation. The reason? It's a relentless pursuit of more rather than a joyful pursuit of more. And by the way, for the record, it should be a joyful pursuit of more. A satisfied but eager for more pursuit rather than obsessed with what's going to happen next and can't stop thinking about the next three years, which is really just stressful to even think about. I side with your wife here.

Oh, I won't Tell her. Don't worry.

It's okay. I never tell my husband. He's right. I get it. It's really important for us to understand that what's happening is our targets are off. We have become extraordinarily tantalized by the very things that that excite the brain the most, that are very base instincts. And they are the desire for status and the desire for certainty, also known as the need for money. Money represents safety for the mind. And therefore, when we start orienting ourselves towards the money and the status, we end up trapped in an endless cycle that, by the way, will never be enough. I know. I've coached billionaires. Believe it or not, this never gets resolved if these are your targets. But even worse, this also disconnects you from your. Why? It disconnects you from service. It disconnects you from service to the world and to others. It disconnects you from the nobility of your soul and the desire to contribute bey yourself, which is the main reason for any of us to shine in the first place and the only sustainable emotion. So if we can learn. And gilded walks you through a 12 step process. Yes, just like the 12 steps in alcoholics Anonymous, this is my Workaholics Anonymous. It guides you to a loosening of that valve so that you may pivot more and more towards service. This will relax you. This will give you purpose and meaning. This will allow you to joyfully pursue more rather than exhaustively pursue more.

You talk about purpose there, Karen. And are you suggesting that it's about servant leadership? As an entrepreneur?

Yes. I always serve in marketing and servant sales. Let's talk a little bit about this. Any person in a solopreneur business or in a business that's running 10 to 15 people teams like me is trapped in marketing and sales hell. That's basically how we're growing from the 1 to $10 million zone, right? This can get exhausting. That's why it's called sales fatigue. It gets exhausting, it gets boring, it gets repetitive. And it's also because the cycle is so oriented towards numbers. It's so about the bottom line. The only way to play this game in a way that isn't horrific and perfectionist and punishing, and by the way, I think negligent and unethical is to truly remember whom you serve and to make this about whom you serve. And when you do, your marketing is far more authentic. Your sales process is more authentic. And believe it or not, you don't relax more and lose business. You relax more and make More business.

And Karen, I'm really appreciating the fact that you said remember who you serve because there's a large body of conversation around the sort of Simon Sinek and before that about, you know, your why, but I personally think that that's quite self interested. And if you start with who you're serving.

Yes.

Then it changes the dynamic and the conversation because instead of being a little bit narcissistic about, well, I'm doing this because I want to accomplish this, it's, I'm going to serve these people with what they need. And as Zig Ziglar says, if you help enough people get what they want, you will ultimately get what you want as well. So I'm really glad that you've called out that if you're serving a group of people, that's more important than serving yourself. And is that if you're like at the head end of the gilded cage.

Yes, you're right. Narcissism and self gazing is what attracts you to those wrong targets. It's what's exhausting. It's funny, you know, Jim, I never could put my finger on what was bugging me about Simon Sinek, but there it is. I too agree that is completely a narcissistic point of view. It actually leads to higher degrees of anxiety and depression which we know are correlated very, very heavily with entrepreneurs. We are 50% more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression. And it's that it's when you start to think that your why is you're high, that's wrong. But that actually also allows me to say that orienting yourself towards others is also not self interested and shouldn't be. It's truly because it'll make you feel better. Try, try volunteering, try raising children, try elevating the lives of others. You will, you'll get a high like no other.

And I think when we, if we frame the concept that actually we're in business to serve others rather than to serve ourselves, what does that do to your 12 step process? Karen? Because if you like, you start the whole journey from a different place, don't you? If you start thinking about the people you're serving, then all the questions about your business, all the ways that you treat your staff, all the ways that you build your marketing and your investor relations, for example, it's fundamentally different, isn't it? Because you're in a position of giving rather than taking.

Yes.

So with your, with your approach, how do you work with people on a, like a practical basis with those things? Because it's easy to say this stuff, but then they go, yeah, but actually I've got a 401k to pay and I've got school fees to pay. So you kind of end up with this theory versus reality clash.

Well, the first thing I'll promise you is that A, I'm on your side and B, you're not going to become more poor. So let's establish some trust and some rapport. I guarantee that neither scenario will occur. If you are willing to accept that and you believe this, then you will be able to go through the first step. And the first step is to admit that this is not working, just like in Alcoholics Anonymous. Admit that you don't have it under control, that it's actually exhausting you, that it's not producing the results and the dream life that you desired. It's not producing the freedom. And in fact, it's beginning to take a toll on your health, on your relationships, and on your life in general. If you're willing to go through that gate with me, then you will get all the rest. But this is the most profound, most important shift. By the way, this is also the way we go from solopreneur to just entrepreneur. Entrepreneur is person running team of about 10 people, a person who's actually running a team rather than a person who's running everything themselves with perhaps the aid of a few agencies. The big difference is that you start to recognize and openly admit that you are working for a crazy person yourself and that that crazy person knows no bounds. This is too much for anyone to sustain. And it's my hope that once you recognize that, you loosen that mindset and turned to what we just talked about, which is, you know what, it's not your business, it's not your money, it's not yours to control. This is for other people. How can we serve them best? Who will help us serve them best? What moves will serve them best? You start thinking clearer, bigger, different. And that's the whole point around here. That's the place from which we can make some tactical maneuvers that will really land.

Karen, you're really moving into maybe a sort of a more open handed, almost more Buddhist approach then to entrepreneurship rather than the sort of mercantilist acquisition style. How have you found clients to be sort of succeeding? Do you have some, some case studies you can share with us? Because once again, people go, that's all good, that's so rah rah. And that works for them. But you know, I can't imagine that working for me I'm a hobby entrepreneur who's got to do all the work. He's got to take the responsibility.

Yeah, well, enjoy that neurosis if that's the perspective that you want to continue with. But there are two valid points of proof here. The first is causal. In other words, there's enormous amount of research that has pointed to the servant leadership model and the Buddhist approach, if you will, in the servile approach, the offer approach, to be far, far more results driving in business, in all levels of business. And I point you to, for example, the research conducted by Brene Brown right here at the University of Texas at Austin, the research conducted by Adam Grant that is regularly published in publications like the Harvard Business Review and in the New York Times. The data doesn't lie. We know that it's less revolving door, more productivity, higher results, period. The end. The second thing I'll say is it actually works for solopreneurs too, because it releases them from mom and pop shop mentality, which actually allows them to scale their businesses. The first case study that comes to mind is a beloved client who is a mortgage lender. She was already at the volume of millions of dollars in transactions a year and still taking her own phone calls, running her own show, running her own calendar. I mean, really basic stuff that not even an ea, an executive assistant, but a virtual assistant could have handled for her. It was only when she started to understand that this maniacal control style of management was not serving her and that this wasn't about her anyway, but about really giving the very best service to clients that were increasingly large, complex and demanding, that she actually oriented the business around serving them better, around making the offer scalable, more scalable and tighter, and removing her ego from this. This I and I alone can serve you is ridiculous, as you and you alone are one person. And so her business has grown. I believe the volume of transactions that they did in the last quarter was groundbreaking at around $50 million. So it's really a huge shift that again, truly results in far better results than you could have possibly imagined by yourself. In other words, if you're only worried about your 401k, you're thinking way too narrow and you're placing way too much importance on yourself.

Well, and if you're really at that mindset, you may be better off having security of a job.

That's right.

Right. Even though a job isn't secure.

Oh, I couldn't agree more. There was a gentleman at, at a dinner party the other day who said to me I'd really, really like to start a business, but I care too much about health insurance. Health insurance, really good health insurance costs about 700 bucks a month here in the United States. And I thought, if that's what you're worried about, if it's 700 bucks a month, don't ever leave corporate. Enjoy.

Yeah. I met a young man the other day with his brother and the brother went off to go in a cycle race in Wales and the brother had to stay back in the, in the office because he had a job. But he had to fly out to Helsinki on Monday morning. So he had to finish all of his work late Friday night. So he couldn't get to the race until late because he said, my boss said I've got to get everything done before I leave and I'm on a six o' clock plane on Monday morning. And I said, you know, when I was your age 27, I went to Singapore to start my first business because I had a similar experience of being told to go from New York to Hong Kong and Amsterdam in, in a week. And he said, yeah, but you know, I like, I like the guaranteed income and it's that trade off. Right. Time, freedom versus money. But if you're self employed with the mindset of insecurity, you've got the worst of both worlds.

Exactly. You, you've built yourself another nonsense.

Yeah. So your, your concept of the gilded cage is a wonderful one, Karen. So you're helping people to change their mindset and they have to change their mindset first, don't they? Or all the business process work, outsourcing and so on, can't really function, can it? Because if the entrepreneur doesn't let go, no one else can really take the baton over. So how do you help them once they've gone? Mindset, oh yeah, I need to let go. What about the practical side, Karen, and of actually implementing the lesson? Go.

The first thing to implement is a vision. The first thing is to really excite your brain. The brain is so certainty driven, so safety driven, so status driven. It really is at the in the clutches of loss aversion, which is one of the principal biases that has a hold on the brain, by the way. The brain, I don't know if your listeners know this, but it was never evolved to make you happy and rich. The brain has evolved to keep us alive. So you really have to understand you've got a formidable opponent. It's right inside your head. So the first thing to do is to get yourself a vision. So tantalizing, so exciting. That it actually makes you want to move. And for that, I dedicate the longest chapter and the most exercises in the book to really help people get a hold of a very compelling vision. When I started to see what was possible for my life, and I could see that it was possible by using expanders like other human beings who actually have built this as living proof that this vision was available, you couldn't stop me. I was like a racehorse. I was just going to start to go after this. And I, I, you should know I do not have a classic entrepreneurial behavioral style. I am designed to sit in bed and watch Frasier for the rest of my life. So the fact that I found something so compelling I was willing to burn it all to the ground and just go is amazing. This is really critical. The next thing is to understand that the first goal of entrepreneurship is just don't die. That's it. Your first couple of years, as Jim Collins says, he's completely correct, is to not allow anything to truly sabotage a very good idea. And this essentially means keep the money rolling. And for that, I always recommend hedging your bets. Hedging your bets means instead of thinking, all right, I'm only going to produce income from this job, from this new business that I'm launching, which is not yet proven. I would also have a side job for a while, an anchor job. Don't worry, that will die out as your business grows. But jumping off a plane that is slow and steady is way safer than jumping off a plane that is charging at full speed. And that's pretty much it. That. Those are the two biggest things that I can say now. If you're scaling the business, if you're already past about a million dollars in volume and you can truly start to maneuver around here, then I think that the biggest next step to allow you to graduate from solopreneur to super is to ask yourself, how can I let this be easy? How can I let this be easy? Is what hires marketers that are very good, hires sales teams that are very good, allows operations managers to come in and do the brunt work of the business. How can I let this be easy? Is also you starting to open the door of your own cage.

And I think, as you say, letting other people in is really a key part of that and getting some feedback, honest feedback from other people. And one of the things that you've been doing, Karen, is to organize groups of business owners because there is also the loneliness of the long distance runner, you know, the old Alan Siller tote book. And so many of us exist in isolation in, in a way, in our own cages. Tell us a little about, about the, the work that you do in groups and the importance of entrepreneurs being surrounded by peers.

You know, I, like most solopreneurs who are finally recovering solopreneurs, resisted for a very long time the idea of Masterminds and embraced enormously. What is kind of, I think, the, the main principle of building your business to a certain extent, because you have to be in isolation. It's a concentrated and very focused mode. But after a while, the African proverb becomes more and more salient. And that proverb is, if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. After a while, you're done going fast. You're really ready to go far, if you were ready to go far. There is absolutely nothing else than hiring and joining masterminds. Masterminds are something that I myself launched only two years ago. My business is eight years old. And they've been just so powerfully useful to everyone in the mastermind, because instead of having one coach and the coach's resources, which of course is exceptional, you now have 20 people at your disposition to enlighten, to inspire, and to connect you further to. That's something I couldn't possibly do by myself. It's exponentially more useful. Not to mention, you have the support along the way that you've needed for quite some time. Again, in this era of volatility and change, it's not really just mindset that will serve you. It's also having a group of people on your side. Yuval no, Harari is my favorite author. He wrote sapiens. He wrote 21 Lessons for the 21st Century. He wrote Nexus, which is unbelievably depressing, but everyone should read it about AI just in the last year. And Yuval Noah Harari says that we alone cannot do almost anything to affect real change in the world, but the power of groups is undeniable. So I want everyone to just challenge themselves and ask, what tribes can I join? What tribes can I form?

Yeah. And I think, you know, I was involved in setting up the eo, you know, the Entrepreneurs Organization. A good buddy called Rich Robinson and I, we set up the China chapter in Beijing. And that for me was transformative, being in a group. But a key part of Masterminds with EO and I imagine with yours, is that it's Gestalt Karen, which is that you're in a group of peers, but you don't tell each Other what to do. You listen and share experiences. And I think that's really important for anyone thinking about a mastermind because we had a group of people that set up their own EO style forum. They said we don't want to pay the fees to eo. And they said, we're like an unofficial board of directors. We tell each other what to do. And ironically enough, in the short term they did better because they were giving each other instructions. But then what happened was that those instructions started to fail because they were not shared experiences. They were often given without full knowledge of all the details of the.

Exactly. They don't have nuance. Exactly, exactly.

So what happened was within about a year that group fell apart because of the recriminations. And so if someone's thinking about joining a mastermind, just encourage you to think about the format being gestalt, which is where you share experiences, you do not give direction. And that's why EO as a group has survived since Fern Harnish and Michael Dell set that up all those years.

I mean, I'm a huge fan. I speak for EO all over the country. Who knows, maybe I'll go international at some point. I really love the format. I want to say something about personal coaching. That's also why I continue to do one on one. Because it's the only thing that actually allows me to understand that nuance, to really understand your business, unfortunately that I have not figured out how to scale. I really need to get to know you, get to know your business. This takes months to do and it has to be done individually. It's still very useful though, because then if you are ever didactic, if you are ever truly approaching things in a way that isn't gestalt, you can offer very valuable insights and very valuable trial methods too.

But in a way, probably you do need that one on one coaching because just in the same way, if you're an athlete or a sports member of the team, you need to do some work on your own game and then you do some work on the team game. Right. And training on your own all the time means you won't be match fit. But just training all the time with the team means you won't maybe had that individual skill. So Karen, I can, I can really recognize that you need both of those. I'm sure you're a brilliant coach and a brilliant facilitator as well. You've run your business now, you said for eight, nine years.

Eight years now.

Eight years, yeah. Congratulations, you got over the first.

If we make it to 10. We're beating all the odds.

You, you will do. You will do. And you're also, you know, an advocate for female entrepreneurs. Should we just touch on the. If you like the difficulty or the opportunity for female entrepreneurs. What's your view there of the gilded cage? Is it different? Is it made of platinum or bronze rather than gold?

No, it's the same gilded cage and it's absolute nonsense. But here I'm much more passionate about it because I believe that financial independence is our only real ticket to equality. And so when I say just don't die for all entrepreneurs, I mean that six fold for female entrepreneurs. I also come with enormous assurance here. Entrepreneurship, when done correctly, isn't just financial freedom, it is also freedom of all other kinds. When women make the association that having a family would cost them or that having a happy partnership will be cost the sideline cost of running a specifically heavyweight business, they're wrong. The statistics tell a completely different story. Not to mention my marriage. If you just want to go with correlational evidence, completely wrong. This is about reframing our relationship to ourselves and allowing ourselves to be as awesome as we are. I think nothing matters more than anyone's self actualization. That's not just me, that's Maslov when we really must be all that we can be. And I hope more and more women will take the challenge and stop making this a trade off and a difficult thing. Start showing people. More and more of us have to start showing people that it can be done. And actually when it's done right, it is about leverage and delegation. It is not about the obliteration of our soul.

And I think, you know, very powerful there. And I think the other thing though we should mention for women and also for fathers who spend a lot of time looking after children, I'd be very blessed to have two daughters I used to take to school every day. And I'm very blessed to be home for them every day. If you're serving others all the time, one of the skill sets you have to learn is how to set boundaries so that you can still meet the needs that you have for yourself. And so I sometimes think for women and for men that have stayed at home, when they come back into the workforce, they've lost some of the self confidence that comes from being self determinant because they're so busy looking after everybody else's needs, getting to school, getting the hockey kit ready or whatever. And so what would be your guidance for men and women who struggle with the boundary setting because I think some of it comes from this. Who do I serve first?

My advice would be to serve yourself first and to learn how to do that because you are not serving anyone else until you are serving yourself. You know, they don't just tell us to put that oxygen mask on on the plane because they want all the kids to die. They put it on us so that we can actually serve other people. I was raised in the 80s by two working parents who had absolutely no qualms about the fact that they worked all day. My dad came home at around 7, my mom came home around 5. In other words, we were on our own a lot of the time. And with due respect, I think I have the closest, almost freakishly close relationship with my family and with my parents than anyone that I know. So this is absolutely not a trade off unless you make it a big problem. If you decide to make anything a big deal, it becomes a big deal. But if you decide to make this, this is my lifestyle, this is my decision, this is what I must do for myself. You will be serving them at an enormously, unusually gifted capacity. Now, we are three daughters of my parents. All of us are very successful. We are able to give the children a life that they could never dream of. I'm sorry, but that's a phenomenal trade off. If you want to see it as such, that's a very, very big blessing for everybody's life. That allows people to live stress free and to contribute freely. That's exactly what you want. So if you want it, you're going to have to go develop those boundaries. The best work for it, by the way, is the work of Brene Brown and in particular the book Dare to Lead.

Great. So, Karen, we're going to put your details in the show notes and you're going to get them in a minute. But we have to then help you to understand that we, we serve others first economically, but emotionally, we need to serve ourselves first. Absolutely right. So that this is maybe how we can make a distinction. Karen, as an entrepreneur, what would be your number one piece of advice to all entrepreneurs, regardless of where they are or gender? Anything else?

Well, I already said it, but I'd really like to put a fine point on it. Ask yourself every day, how can I let this be easy? If you don't seek ease and you don't seek peace, you're effectively telling yourself you don't deserve peace and you will continue to be on a hamster wheel for the rest of your life. But if you just start every day with that Question. How can I let this be easy? Everything changes.

Wonderful. Well, I should look forward to waking up tomorrow morning and saying, how can I? How can I make this be easy? But it's a wonderfully positive the mindset. Karen, you plainly read and listen to a lot of great information as well. If you've got a book or podcast you'd like to share, what would that be?

Absolutely. There are two that I share all the time. They're the books that changed my life. And I know they have a really cheesy title, but please give them a chance. They're very funny and they're very good. The first is you are a badass, by Jensen Chero, who was my first coach. And the second is her sequel, you are a badass at making money, which I think every entrepreneur should read by Jensen. Cheryl.

Okay, perfect. So we'll put those in the show. Notes Jensen Cherra. How do you spell her surname?

Sincero. It's spelled like sincere. S, I, N, C, E, R, O.

Okay, perfect. Thank you so much for that. You've been a badass. Am I allowed to say that?

Yes, of course. That's not a bad word.

Don't worry, it's not about I. I'm now I'm so worried about being politically correct. Karen, if people want to find out more about you, how can they do that over there in Austin, Texas?

Well, it's very easy. It's karenelda.com and Karen is spelled with two E's. So I like to say I'm not a Karen. And of course I'm at Coach Karen on Instagram.

Wonderful. Well, and you've been at the Unnoticed Entrepreneur today. Karen, thank you so much for joining me on the show today.

Thank you. It was been a real honor.

Well, it's been eye opening and I think the one reason I wanted to have Karen on the show was because I do a lot of work on the tech side and on the the process and all the other marketing side. But if we don't have our mindset in the right place, we're simply going to be living in that gilded cage. So I wanted to have Karen on because it's so important for us to think about how we make our businesses easy and our businesses serve us whilst we're busy serving others. I hope you've enjoyed this as much as I have. It's been a stimulating conversation and if you have, please do share it with a fellow unnoticed entrepreneur because I don't want anyone to get left behind. And until we meet again, I just encourage you to keep on communicating.