Coaches Council Podcast Episode 41: Eliminate the Distractions

It actually has nothing to do with COVID that i haven't been able to lose the fifteen pounds that i've wanted to i actually said it january first twenty fourteen i've talked to a number.

Of entrepreneurs when covid first hit or even partway through that said you know what i know this year is a write off and i was pissed off.

At them what i can control is the amount of money i make i cannot control whether or not a politician decides that i have to pay more taxes.

This is the coaches council made up of six elite coaches dedicated to serving and ending personal struggle for high performers in business health and relationships as a collective we have built and helped build six seven and eight figure businesses dominate in multiple industries coached and played in professional sports leagues and developed some of the strongest and most intimate relationships both professional and personal this isn't your average podcast it's for the hungry the dedicated the doers for those that have a dream and truly want that dream to become reality people who want to take action leave their ego at the door and own every level of their life if that's you then step into the coach's council as we rewrite the truths to living that high performance life welcome back to another week of the coaches council happy december everybody we're embarking on christmas hard to say christmas i can't believe it and mister romanello i'm sure it doesn't look anything like christmas out there in california i mean it's.

You know it's still sunny but yeah it's a weird it's weird as a new yorker as an east coaster it is odd for it to be this warm around the holidays it is strange and i do not approve i don't know i feel like christmas should be cold you know you should wear sweaters.

I agree man there should be snow.

And that takes us to mister sanga who's living the complete opposite life up in toronto where it probably looks very.

Much like christmas well not quite yet we're not getting snow but we are putting up the christmas tree this weekend so the kids are dying to do that they've been asking me for the last week every day are we going to put the christmas tree up i'm like okay saturday is the day i.

Love it i love it as the festivities slowly become more like kris kringle's workshop we are embarking on again some more continued uncertainty and twenty twenty didn't turn out the way anybody thought it would and i keep getting calls with clients and talking with people and going at different parties with people and it's complain complain complain complain there's always something to put in and at what point do we start taking the power back at what point do we start owning it at what point do we start saying hey you know what this isn't an everybody else problem this is a me problem because it actually has nothing to do with COVID that i haven't been able to lose the fifteen pounds that i've wanted to i actually said it january first twenty fourteen that i wanted to lose these same fifteen pounds and it's now coming up on january first twenty twenty one or wanting to start that business or wanting to change my relationship or wanting to step up and build that house or whatever it was that you wanted to do and so guys as we're coming up here on december and we all know in sports it's always better to be on the offense than on the defense it's always better to be proactive than reactive and the best way to continue a winning streak is what to do win one game and then keep the momentum going so let's not wait until january first to start implementing some things but what can we start doing today and pradeep anytime that we're trying to create a new vision a new mission what is the number one thing or what's the first step people have to take in order to start creating that vision or mission of change yeah the first.

Step is being in that state of mind because if you're in a state of mind which a lot of people are in right now which is contraction basically they've contracted they're not looking at expanding whether that's the personal life for their business and a lot of people are just down and out right now if you do your planning if you do your vision setting if you do your target setting and your goal setting in that state you're not going to be ideal and your business is not going to be ideal so the first thing i would say is be in that state be in an optimistic state there's a lot of research that shows that whether it's athletes or in business or people in general optimism is one of the number one characteristics when it comes to success so keeping that in mind going into twenty twenty one is going to be essential i always do you know this is the exercise that i do with the entrepreneurs i work with is we get them into the prime state before they actually start doing the planning whether that's pumping up the music that they need to be in but they need to be high energy and they need to be optimistic those are the two characteristics that you need to have whenever you're planning your next future your next stage your next quarter whatever that looks like the one thing i think that people will easily overlook is how we finish this year off so my word of advice is finish strong even if you're behind the game whether that's your revenue or if that's your health target your weight loss target whatever it is finish strong it's like that last rep that you do when you when you're at the gym and you're working out you want to make sure that it's your best rep so that your body your mind is conditioned so next time you come back you're still in that mode you're really to push you're ready to push even harder i think a lot of people have just let go of they're taking their foot off the gas i've talked to a number of entrepreneurs when covid first hit or even partway through that said you know what i know this year is a write off and i was pissed off at them and i said how do you know it's a write off because it's a write off if you choose for it to be a write off you've already given yourself that ticket now but if you choose that it's going to be one of your best years which some of the entrepreneurs it was actually a better year they had record breaking profits because they've had to change their businesses they've had to modify their they found new opportunities they are doing things differently it broke them out of their existing pattern that was keeping them at a specific limit so those entrepreneurs actually got ahead so i'm going to say right now if you want to be ahead be optimistic because ninety percent of the population right now is down and out they're feeling down and out they're thinking down and out they're planning down and out they're planning for a gruesome year next year just by having an optimistic outlook you're gonna outcompete your competition so that's one thing i would say is finish strong be optimistic plan appropriately as john talked about in the last episode is planning is important and don't just sit there and plan plan out you have to have certain scenarios so scenario planning and i would recommend that you do a best case scenario an average scenario and a worst case scenario and do multiple because when you have those in front of you you know that hey look if things are going great i can put the gas down or put my foot down on the gas in this area these are the signs that i'm looking out for that things are going well if things are going not so well then you have some strategies to say how do i overcome this how do i get past this you can actually keep your eyes open to see those signs of things not going so well and you're going to be able to react a lot faster so you know to sum it up those are the two things i would say is be optimistic finish this year off strong and and the third one is plan effectively.

There'S a saying and it goes poor planning prepares piss poor performance and it all goes back to how you show up for that state of planning and i know for myself i started this back in twenty sixteen was december instead of being this like pradeep said just this throw in month where yep it's here but we've got holidays we've got thanksgiving we've got this no man's land between christmas and new year's and all this time that kind of seemingly just goes by and december is a write off it's actually where i take a four day period and it's blackout and what i mean by blackout is nobody knows where i am nobody knows what i'm doing i'm out on social media i'm not doing anything but i'm preparing for what twenty twenty one looks like and you are getting a complete focused analysis of what you want to do you get so clear cut on your goals you get so clear cut on your vision that you can see it you can taste it you can smell it you picture yourself one year from today what are you doing who are you around what does your business look like what does your family look like what have you had to change in yourself to get those results and so as you come out of that there's this sense of just like pradeep said this sense of optimism this sense of purpose this sense of mission this sense of vision for what you need to do and you have a game plan it's so often we just go in and we send out these cliches of oh i just need to be better today or oh i just need to communicate more effectively well what do these things mean what is an actionable tangible takeaway that we've been able to implement so that we can get the results we want because otherwise it's these empty promises it's these basically come infatuations with success that we actually don't utilize and our brains a lot of times we see it all the time in the self help development space is we become these hoarders of information and actually don't implement anything that we do it's like people brag about i've read five hundred books this year fantastic that's great good for you how much of it do you remember how much have you implemented how much have you taken action on and it's john is going to correct me on this i know because i'm not one hundred percent sure but i'm going to throw it out there anyways but i think it was jackie chan that said fear not the man that does one hundred kicks one time but fear the man that does one kick one hundred times john was i on it or who was it.

Googling i think it's bruce lee yeah bruce lee said i fear enough man who has practiced ten thousand kicks once i feel the man who has practiced one kick.

Ten thousand times yes exactly and that's what it goes down to is being so clear on what you want to do and identifying that one area you are singularity focused that one area of focus that you want to get to and you're so clear on it everything thereafter becomes a step in that direction and john i'm curious on your take on this as to what your experience has been like because i know you're a guy that in writing it must be the same thing you can't go in with and having your brain all over the place and then produce a new york times selling book you have to know hey i'm going to produce a book that is about a and then you're able to go and write it and we want to write our own book of our life of our vision of our story before do you.

Mind if i just jump in here because i think justin you made some really good points here and this has been very prominent especially with you guys being in the states is there's a lot of distractions around so justin what you said about going dark for four days is so awesome man because i think a lot of guys need to do that so many people are distracted by politics right now even though people don't want to talk about or maybe not you know whatever it is political views it's impacting a lot of people i know a lot of entrepreneurs i just had a half an hour conversation with an entrepreneur about politics when we could have had more constructive conversations about his business and he was so worried about the fraud in the voting system and what's going to happen i said forget about the distractions all of that stuff is holding you back from where you want to be and where you want to go so i think your four day what you talked about is so important because the number one thing i want to say there in this little bit is remove the distractions that's going to help you be more clear going forward so john over to you.

Man sorry yeah well yeah no thank you for that so the political thing is interesting because we cannot leave twenty twenty particularly as americans without having the discussion of like oh man this year was this was there was a lot there was a lot but so while i am on an individual scale i understand particularly since we speak mostly to entrepreneurs the importance of optimism i think that it's been really challenging for so many people who have great empathy for the people who have been suffering the communities who have been suffering my own city of new york the unemployment has skyrocketed it is a place because of population density where a significant number of people reply on the service industry and when that shut down because of COVID tons of people lost their jobs tons of people left the city many people who had the means to do so left manhattan and there are marquee neighborhoods with up to forty percent vacancy rents have careened downward et cetera and so we're entering twenty twenty one in a very different world than we entered twenty twenty some of it is positive i personally have had a phenomenal year in business it required me to make some pivots which required a lot of creativity and i could take credit for that and i could point to people who have not had similar years but ultimately i had things in place to do that because i was relatively prepared and because the pivot required a skill set that i had in place but to go back to the real heart of the matter when we're looking at closing out the year strong or when we're looking at what this conversation is really about which is why wait until january first how do we begin to make changes now it's focus and implementation which requires a different view if you walk away with nothing from this episode nothing else from this episode i would like it to be this everything happens iteratively you don't set out to build a business and just build the business you have to iterate things happen slowly by degrees and so with everything that i teach my clients it's about a big vision chunked down into smaller steps and then each one of those steps gets iterated over time and as you achieve one you game out how that affects the others justin your question was about writing a book right so you don't just say i'm going to write a book what's your book about and then when you have the answer and by the way this is something that i do i help people write books we figure out what's the core message of the book it's very interesting helping people write books there's always one of three things that happens when i ask people what their idea for the book is about they tell me and eighty percent of the time it's one of two things i either say that's not a book it's an article maybe or more likely i say that's actually three books what you're talking about maybe twenty percent of the time somebody's idea is narrow enough that i'm like oh that's exactly one book yes you should write that just go with that idea usually their ideas are so broad that i'm like actually you should write a book but let's chop that down because it's three books but once you have that central idea of what it is you have to think what are the eight to ten to fifteen core components that constitute that idea that you're trying to teach and how to do it now each of those is a chapter now what three things will you outline in the chapter what story will start off each chapter and then you just break it down like that and then writing a book becomes a lot simpler than you thought when you sit down say i'm going to write a book and even if you know what it's about there's still roughly two hundred pages between you and being done but if you break it down into ten chapters and each chapter is twenty pages you could do that pretty easily each one just becomes a very long article or if it's fifteen chapters and now each one is fifteen pages or thereabouts and you know that each chapter has to have a particular topic and a story around that topic and a couple of supporting points now writing a book becomes easier so chunking things down and iterating is the easiest way to do the thing that we all need to do which is control what you can control pradeep with regard to your client who is all up in the political mess there are things which affect us there are things happening in the political sphere which affect us biden winning the election may wind up with the result that as entrepreneurs who earn high incomes we may have to pay more in taxes the only thing we can do now is pay those taxes that's literally that's what we have to do or we can be dishonest and try to find a way to squirrel out of paying those but if i've decided that i'm going to live my life honestly and i'm just going to pay the taxes that i'm supposed to pay then i do the calculus and i say well now with biden in office if i don't make any more money even if nothing else changes for me maybe i pay twenty thousand dollars more in taxes so what am i going to do with that what i can control is the amount of money i make i cannot control whether or not a politician decides that i have to pay more taxes so you're right it is a waste of time to have that discussion at this point what is helpful is well how can i generate an additional twenty six thousand dollars worth of revenue so that or net profit so that even after taxes both originally and the taxes on the new income coming in i'm where i want to be that's the only thing i can do so control what you can control make your world as small as possible figure out what are the exact steps you could focus on if you are trying to get in shape if you'd like to lose fifteen pounds don't set out to lose fifteen pounds set out to lose five and when you do that start a new plan for losing the next five and how do you do what are the steps that you take every day to do this and you'd be surprised what i tell people all the time is little hinges swing big doors you really would be surprised by once you break it down to a viable minimum number of steps that those things become less challenging obviously they become more complex the more advanced you become the higher you go it becomes a lot harder to make more money down the road in some respects or it's harder to get from eight percent body fat to six than it is to get from eighteen to sixteen but it's all doable and it's just a matter of execution.

Hey coaches council listeners coaches council has partnered with cannibrands a trusted sport fitness and wellness cbd company and to be honest i've been using canysleep all natural cbd oil for probably the last two and a half years and the spray specifically has been able to help me get a good night's sleep and truly affect the way i show up every single day to optimize my performance and that's just not my own personal take on it because i track my sleep every day with the whoop band and have been able to see the trends that have happened my deep rem sleep has improved my slow wave sleep has improved my overall recovery has improved my hrv is on the upward trend all the things that we are looking for as entrepreneurs and executives to optimize our performance day in day out so their products are trusted by professional athletes and coaches just like us on the council alike so be sure to check out their website at canibrands dot com that's c dash a n i v r a n d s dot com and use the code coaches twenty for twenty percent off all products just like can i sleep and other cbd solutions to help with pain inflammation energy mental focus and anxiety now back to the show and it goes back to john what i was talking about when we go dark and pradeep's right it's blanking out all the distractions because there's so many distractions around us that can pull us off course so that we lose out on that singularity of focus of what we're actually trying to accomplish and what twenty twenty one could be for us and so we are not left here on this date of december fourth twenty twenty one saying oh my goodness i remember when i was listening to this podcast a year ago and i had this mission and vision that i've yet to accomplish because i let the distractions come in the way and so like you said with this iterative state typically the process in which we do is we become so narrowly focused we know on what that goal is then what we have to do is we have to declare it we have to make date we have to put a date on it we have to declare on this day i am going to be done here tell people about it talk about it and it's not bragging it's not saying oh yeah this is what he's doing why it's because those people are going to help hold us accountable but they may also help us because why if we are hanging out with the right people if our network is surrounded with the right people they're going to want to see people succeed as well and they're going to help get you to where you want to be so declare it set a date tell people about it and then something else i always come out of this dark period with is how am i going to resource up because i know i can't do it myself how am i going to resource up who do i need to hire who do i need to invest in who do i need to surround myself with how am i going to level up because who you are today how you are today is not going to get you where you want to be it's just enough to get you to where you are and my guess is if you're going and doing this then it's not you are this person that wants more you're this person that wants to continue to strive and lastly it's about owning it and truly living with faith over fear and taking massive action because a lot of times we may not know exactly how it's going to go yes there's going to be some twists in the road yes there's going to be some storms that we come across as they say in game of thrones as mister romanella has thrown out winter will come again and winter is coming and so it will come and it will go and it will come and it will go but guess what if we take faithful action if we lean into the discomfort and we do today what our future self will thank us for that is enough so that we stick to the plan and and all of a sudden that goal that you had set out for twenty twenty one gets accomplished and just like rome said because it's an iterative step you're going to have to go and maybe have to do another dark room in march or april or may to figure out what that next step is so to be able to gain that momentum going into twenty twenty one give yourself a mission give yourself a vision you don't have to go dark for four days but that's a way in which i've done something that's really worked to create that clarity and create that avenue for where you're wanting to go and ultimately it allows you to create momentum which allows you to win.

As we crest to the rise leading to the twilight of this year we have to ask ourselves what can we do to make sure that we are in position to maximize our time both at the end of twenty twenty and at the beginning of twenty twenty one what we have seen repeatedly throughout history is that those who have careful analysis and construct plans that can be carefully executed are always the people who are going to succeed there will be more things in twenty twenty one that we cannot control hopefully they will not be as dramatic or as unfortunate as things like the pandemic and some of the social unrest we experience in twenty twenty but we can pretty much guarantee that twenty twenty one will not be a year of butterflies and rainbows we will still be dealing with the aftermath of everything from some of the political outcomes we've seen to the health crisis that we are still in so it behooves you it is necessary for you to control that which you can control so focus make your world small find out where you can prepare and iterate over and over and over.

With that everybody start december choose your darkness choose where you create clarity stay hungry stay humble and we'll see you next week thank you so much for joining us for another week of the coaches council if it wasn't for you viewers and listeners we wouldn't have a platform so again it's all about you guys and we want to give you a reward just for listening we want to give you access to each one of our coaches for a little bit deeper intimate experience so if you go to coaches dash counsel dot com coaches council dot com subscribe and like to whatever platform you're viewing on you're going to be entered to have that one on one experience so be sure to go coaches counsel and really interact with us because we would love to interact with you until then stay safe stay hungry stay humble and thanks for listening.