117. Collaboration Over Competition

Foreign welcome back to Leadership in a Nutshell where we're cracking the code of the driven mind that you and I are so blessed with. And I'm super, super pumped to have you back. Episode 117 Today's topic is collaboration over competition. Now I spent a ton of my life as a very competitive individual. I credited much of my early business success actually I'd say probably the first 15, 18 years of my business success, maybe even 2025. Oh, I'm starting to date myself. I've been at this for a minute since I was 23 years old. I have been an entrepreneur and been self employed or owned multiple companies. But I think back to the I've said for years the only way I got out of high school was 3.2. And what does that. Or maybe it was 2.8. Yeah, it was 2.2 and I ended up getting a 3.2, I think grade point average my SEN year, 2.8. To stay eligible to play baseball, which was my life, my lifeblood of what I wanted to do in, in, in my life. I was going to just rock and roll as a major league baseball catcher. I was going to be a lot like Benito Santiago from the San Diego Padres. Many of you might remember throwing people out from on second base from my knees and that never happened. So now you get to share some energy and time with me. And today I want to talk about competition over collaboration. Why? Because, I mean, I'm sorry, I said that wrong and I'm not going to edit that out because what you see is what you get, my friend. And that's why you show up every day. We're just having a conversation. And if I was standing face to face with you and we were having a cup of coffee like we are today, possibly most of you do listen in the morning say hey man, oops. What I meant was collaboration over competition. See how wired we are to think, compete, competitive, compel. I'm going to beat myself. I'm going to beat the other companies in my market. I'm going to beat. Here's what I want you to really challenge in yourself is what got you here won't get you there. And what I really had to get clear about is, okay, so competition served me from a worldly standpoint. Meaning, yes, I built the most successful plumbing, heating, air conditioning company that western Colorado had ever seen. Yes, I dominated the space. Yes, I created more income for more individuals in this space. Yes, I went out and became the number one trainer and developing content at a national best practice group yes. I'm the number one speaker in the space, whatever it is, right? Okay, fine. At the end of the day, what does that mean? Does that mean anything to me? Like, does that give me fulfillment? Does that give me peace? Does that make me live in bliss? Because what it does is it buys cars and houses and automobiles and vacations and different things. And don't get me wrong, I love those things. And I will continue to do those things by my collaboration over competition. Because when I collaborate with what the world would call competitors, when I collaborate with the universe, when I collaborate with my divine connection, amazing things happen. My content gets better, my speaking ability gets better, my influence gets better. I change more lives or give more people the opportunity to change their own lives. Everything works better, my friend. And that's what I want you to think about today. And you go, well, yeah, but Kenny, there's so many contractors in my space and I've got to do this and I've got to win. You've got to just keep on working at getting better. If there is any place that you want to compete in your life, compete with what you can become. And so I want to share a few things. I'm going to help you kind of frame this today. And don't lose me here today. Yeah, I've got some soft skills that I share with you. Sure. We've done some meditation. Yes. I push self massively on this podcast because I want you to be happy. I don't want you to just make a ton of dough. I've got plenty of clients that make a ton of dough and have made a ton of dough and some have had liquidation events and they're still unhappy in their own skin. And that's not what I want for you. I want you to enjoy. I want you to live in peace, love, harmony, bliss, while you're a multi millionaire or at the top of your game, whatever that looks like for you. Here's what I want you to remember. When it comes to collaboration and competition, what we're really talking about is abundance and scarcity. You've heard me talk a lot about abundance mindset and scarcity mindset. Well, if I think collaboration, I think abundance. If I think competition, I think scarcity. There's not enough to go around, there's not enough goodness, there's not enough greatness in the world. There's not enough things. So I've got to beat, win, take away from others in order to get it. It's a bullshit mindset and it's costing you happiness. I'm not saying you don't go out and win, that you do the very best that you can be. You'll have plenty of market share. You might be the number one company in your space, that's fine. But you'll be more fulfilled that way and you'll stop looking over your back and, oh my gosh, who's coming? This and that. Here's the deal. Competition has its roots. And yes, for a while it served you. For a while it served me. I wanted to win. I wanted to beat everyone in my market. What I realized is that cost me a lot of sanity. I actually developed some addiction challenges based on never being comfortable in my own skin. I wasn't competing with the other plumbing, heating, air companies in my market. I was competing with my past self. I was competing with my limiting beliefs. I was trying to beat something that didn't exist. I'm not big on horror films, but it reminds me of like the villain that you're trying to slay that's actually a ghost and it doesn't exist. It's just a figment of your imagination. And that's what the reality is. It comes to you needing to compete. When we think collaboration, you've got to think trust. See, I don't trust the world. I don't trust the universe. I don't trust myself that I'm doing everything right or many things right. I'm not going to do everything right, but I'm always going to do things that give me the lesson that I need, right? So maybe I am doing everything right, but collaboration. I've got to trust myself, the universe, the information that I get, my coaches and I've got to trust that they're doing the best that they can and everybody's doing the best that I can and myself as the operator, as the leader, I'm doing the best that I can. And I'm going to collaborate with all those around me that are trying to help me, which is everybody. I'm going to explore other areas of Win. Win. I was, I was just having a chat with who the world would call a competitor. We would be labeled as competitors. He owns a training and coaching company in the trade space. I obviously own the Blue Collar Success group and him and I are labeled as competitors, but we're friends and we just had a chat sharing some different strategies and some of the things that I run into as the CEO of my business, some of the things he sees. We share information, we help each other and that's what it is. And that's what it's about now. A lot of people go, oh, you can't have that conversation. What if he gets your trade secrets? Here's the deal. Businesses compete, if you will, on culture, on team members, on what you do, why you listen to this podcast mindset. That's what it's all about. So as you explore areas of winning, you're really exploring how can you collaborate with yourself at a deeper level. I used to try to win and succeed in life and business by competing with myself. Now I win in life and business by collaborating with my greatest self. Let that land for a minute. Where are you competing with yourself? Because that's ultimately what it all is. Forget your market, forget everybody else. Forget the person that just wrapped the trucks. Forget social media. Ultimately, you're competing with yourself. And I'm telling you, my friend, to set yourself free to step into another level of greatness, fulfillment and happiness. It's time to collaborate with your greatest self, to collaborate with your intuition, with your intuitive self, with your divine connection. That's where magic begins to happen. Consciousness has to level up for this to take place. One of my purposes in the world is to up level the consciousness of humanity on my watch while I'm here on this planet. And as I say, on my watch, as I'm watching and I'm observing and I'm doing everything I can to influence myself and those around me, that's ultimately where you're at as a business leader. So here's a couple things I want you to think about when it comes to competition. Stop. There's four areas I want you to stop competition and challenge myself. Challenge you on these things. Number one, stop competing with your old self. I just mentioned you're competing with yourself. What I want you to realize is you're not competing even with yourself today. You're competing, competing with yourself. You're competing with something that doesn't exist. All you have is the present moment. There is no past. There is no future. There only is the now. And so when you decide you're going to compete with previous behaviors, previous beliefs, previous understandings, you're competing with something that's fictitious, it already came and went, and it therefore is not real, doesn't exist. All you have is right now. So stop competing with something that doesn't exist. Don't compete with your old self. Embrace your current self. Collaborate with your current self. So, number one, stop competing with your old self. Number two, stop competing with other managers in the business. And I'm also going to say, whether your spouse is in the business or not. Stop competing with your spouse. Many of us unconsciously compete with our spouse. I think about the lovely Christy. When her and I first got together as driven individuals, she was incredibly driven and a creator. I was an incredibly driven creator and I thought I wanted this strong woman. My first two significant relationships in my life were with kind of, I would say, just ladies that kind of just followed me or went whatever direction that I kind of wanted to go. I'm a natural born leader or I work hard at leadership. I don't know if I'm natural born or not, but whatever pain was created in my life, whatever pain I created for myself, I decided to become a leader. And that's where I hang my hat. So I did that in relationships. Well, I want a strong lady to stand by my side and to take the lead once in a while. Well, I got that in the lovely Christie. And then I said, oh, damn. Wait a minute. What do you mean you're gonna do that? Wait a minute. Hey, wait, no, what I say goes. What? All this dumb stuff, right? So we got to the opportunity to work through that. What I realized there are certain levels. I was competing with my spouse. That's crazy. It's crazy. You want to collaborate with your spouse, but here's the deal. I was competing with myself and then she was a mirror of that. So I certainly must need to compete with her. Now that I collaborate with myself. It's so easy to collaborate with my spouse because she's not out to get me or prove me wrong or beat me or embarrass me or whatever the stupid things I had in my head. Not stupid at the time, very real. But as I look back, my ego wants to label him as stupid. It wasn't stupid, it was necessary. It's a necessary part of my growth. So don't compete with managers in the business or your spouse. You unconsciously, if you're a leader in the company, sometimes you realize, oh, I ran a better meeting. Oh, I beat the other department in the business. Well, if you're a multi trade organization, you got three or four different service managers with their own P and L responsibilities. They're competing with each other. We see it all the time. If you're a multi location, business, locations are competing. If you're part of a private equity firm or publicly traded, perhaps now you're competing with other locations, other regions, so on and so forth. How about you collaborate and everybody wins together? Third thing, stop competing with top performers. So we compete with our old selves. We compete with with other managers and spouses and then we compete with top performers. I got these high, high ticket sales people, I got these rain makers in my business. But man, they're frustrating and I'm competing unconsciously with. Stop it. Stop competing with them. Embrace them, Collaborate with them. They do something that's not part of the process. Engage with them, ride with them, get out there, understand, do a desk along with somebody in the business if they're not following process but they're winning, they're getting better results than what your training might be. Learn what it is. Collaborate with them to understand at the highest level and last and absolutely, Certainly not least 4. Stop competing with perceived success of social media. And I would just say leave it at Stop competing with social media at all. When you really look, I took a massive break from social media just for a few years. I just needed a break and started really questioning what was out there. And then I kind of got mad at the platform and went through this whole phase. It's a story for another time, actually. Maybe I'll record a podcast about that whole process of what I went through, what I learned and why I'm doing more on social again. But I really, when I look at, at some of the posts that goes on and I don't judge anything like I, or I do my best not to judge it or when I judge it, I catch it. But sure, you've got the different perspectives and markets and who's doing what and who the movers and shakers are and all the different things. And that's all well and good, but you don't know what's behind any of that. And I'm not saying that it's not all 100% authentic and genuine. I'm just saying that everybody's having their own walk. And when you start competing with certain part of somebody's life that they let you into, there's a concept called Jihad Ari's wind that as a psychologist concept or psychological concept around you've got these window panes in your being and how big of a window pane do you open in different things. And when you think about that, to let people in. And when you think about that social media people let people in on certain levels. I know for myself, I, I used to post a lot of positive things and different things. I was doing the best I could. And I look back at those posts, those were all true. Everything I posted was how I felt. But there was still this, like I was in this dark kind of grasp of still in pain and in Some suffering that I hadn't quite broken free from yet. I was as authentic as authentic could be for me at that time, but I still wasn't completely connected with my true self. So I was doing the best that I could. Just as everybody is in the world, everybody posting everything on social media, they're doing the best they can. But when you look at something and go, my gosh, this person did this much in sales, or this person has this many trucks, or this person drives this car, this person took this vacation, this person has this home, forget about all that and just focus on collaborating with yourself. Comparison mindset creates a competitive mind. And when you start looking at what. What you've done, who you can be versus who you are and who you're becoming. And I was just talking to a buddy this morning that has a pretty lofty goal for the next few months. And he's like, I'm really excited to just see who. Who I need to become. And I told him, I said, the cool thing is you already are everything that you need to become. The only thing that needs to happen now is you need to release some of the things that you're not. And I would encourage you that, my friend. We have this concept in this world, and collective society agrees on competition and fighting and arguing and just disconnect everywhere. And I want you to just think about, how can you collaborate? How can you collaborate with yourself? How can you collaborate with your family? How can you collaborate with your leaders? How can you collaborate with your front line? How can you collaborate with your top performers? How can you collaborate with, quote, competition in your market? How can you collaborate with your coaches, with your trainers? How can you collaborate and keep on elevating your consciousness to elevate your results and elevate the game and elevate your happiness and elevate your fulfillment and elevate your life and all of those around you? I am fired up and I'm going to leave you with that. Let's call that a day, my friend. Episode 117, collaboration over competition. Thank you so much for being here. Do me a favor, Kick this episode to somebody that you care about and want to share some positive info until we talk. Make it a better than fantastic week. I'll see you next time. Thank you, Sam.