74. The Setback is The Set-Up

Foreign Kenny Chapman here, your host of leadership in a nutshell, where we're cracking the code of that driven mind for you, a home service contractor. I'm super pumped for you to be with me here today, and I'm going to challenge you a little bit, and I'm going to give you a little bit of an exercise, and I want you to do the work that we're going to talk about today. You say, wait a minute, work? I thought this leadership stuff was so we don't work. Aha. The reality is, the more we step into our greatness of leadership, the more we realize, damn, I got some work to do on myself, baby. And that's where really the major shift happens. And I would say that truly in the evolution of consciousness on our planet, as we observe different leadership and different influences and different powers and forces, which are very different things, we get to start really observing where ego is involved and where true spirit comes through. And today I want to talk about the setback being the setup. This is episode 74. The setback is the setup. And you go, man, Kenny, that was a long time to get in here. Here's the thing. How many of you have had a major setback in your life? Give me a wave of hand, okay? Obviously now the people driving next to you are like, why are you waving your hand at me? Stop that. I gotta have some fun while we're doing this. Here's the thing. We've all had major setbacks in our life. We all go through what the world makes us. Condition, respond as pain. We have pain, we have trauma, we have turmoil. I'm not minimizing any of those things. I've had an experience, and I coach people through all of those things. The key is that we honor what's happening, when it's happening. And today I want to spend a couple of moments helping you to maybe go deeper into a realization that can change the course of not just your career or your business, but truly your life, your emotional regulation, your happiness, your relationships, your financial situation, how you show up in the world. All of these things tie to how you handle setback. And how you handle setback has to do with how you view setback, how we label setback. Put a pin in that. I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute. Here's the reality. We all want what we want, right? We all want what we want. There's a tongue twister for me. I probably shouldn't do that on a podcast. But here's the thing. You Know, I mean, give me a head nod if you're like, yeah, of course I want what I want. Let me challenge you as a change expert and as a behavior coach. And really I spend my time in the life mastery world now really coaching groups and teams and people to really master life. Because when you start mastering life, you start mastering your business because your business is simply a part of life. Your leadership is simply an execution of different accumulation of relationships and things like that. And so I think we have a little bit of a false belief or a misunderstanding around what we want. And you'll hear me say, and I write about it in books. I got another book coming out in the first part of, of 22 that's about blue collar leadership laws and some of the things that I believe to be true that just universally you can't change it. It is what it is and we're going to lean into it because there's a broken success model in the trades in the blue collar industries and I want to help right that ship, if you will. And so what I have come to realize through myself and working with thousands now, certainly hundreds individually, like in a one on one setting of being able to help understand how people's br brains work and where our subconscious and our conscious minds come into conflict sometimes, which we don't see, by the way. What I want is usually not what I want. And that can be challenging. And I'm going to talk about that a little bit more in another episode. But I want you to just honor that it's okay to want what you want. And the reality is that there's some things that come into play. And so when you set a goal, what happens is you give a finite set of ways to win, right? So here's my goal. I'm gonna go to 4 million in revenue. I'm gonna do 10 million in revenue. I'm going to run, you know, I'm gonna get to 25 team members, I'm gonna get to 125 team members. I'm gonna have a net profit of 15%, I'm gonna have a pro and I'm profit of 28%. Doesn't matter, right? The point is that you set a goal. Here's where I want to challenge you. First point here today, goals are limiting. And you go, oh God, Kenny, I wouldn't think hearing that from a success coach, from a guy that helps people create the next level of greatness in their lives. Like what are you talking about? What, what is that? Here's what I mean by this. And go with me for a moment. Goals. The. The goals that you set right now and the goals that you are executing upon right now are set with the belief, the understanding, the lens and the view that you have in the world when you set that. And that's fine, and that's great. And I'm not dogging goals. I think goals are important. I think there. It's important to know where we're going and why we're going there and different things. Like that's all super, super important. The challenge becomes when we get stuck on. It's only this and it's only that. And I get it. Get upset. If you want other quote gurus can be upset about. No, you got teach this specti. That's all fine. Do what you want with goals. What I'm telling you is how the human mind works and how emotional regulation is crushing your fulfillment if your goal shifts a little bit or changes a little bit because the universe knows that's really not what you want. I understand where you're going in the direction, but here's the reality. Once you get there, that's not really what you're after. So I'm going to serve you up a setback, my friend. And the big old universe goes, here you go. We call it get the, you know, rug yanked out from under us. Oh, my gosh, I didn't see that coming. It shows up in different forms. It, it's economy, it's tragedy. It's, you know, we lose people, people quit, we fire people, we have housing crashes, we have pandemics, we have, you know, line it up. There's setbacks all the time. Right. But setbacks of perception. I remember when I was a kid, there was used to be a phrase that went around that like, one person's trash is another person's treasure. Right. And I never really understood that, but I was recently talking to a client who's a friend as well, that recently did a trip to Africa and, and did some really good mission work down there and helping out and different things like that. And, and when you start traveling. I haven't personally been to Africa, but I've been a lot of third world countries in a lot of different places, and even within the United States, Canada, you see how different economic situations are. And so all of a sudden it's like one person's trash is another person's treasure. Huh, that's interesting. I also want you to realize that with goals, with what you produce in the life, with your own business, with your own situation, with Your own personal finances. This is a reality. And so we set this goal based on our current set of mind. But a goal can be limiting. How can I say that? Because as you evolve, as you raise your consciousness level, as you understand, as you become more aware, which I'm going to talk about next week, awareness a little bit more. But as you become more stepping into your greatness, the goal, you might blow right by the goal. I just had this conversation with a friend of mine who owns a bunch of real estate agents. He's going to close over 2 billion in real estate this year. 2 billion with a B. And we were talking about. He's like, dude, I think if I would have set a goal for this, I wouldn't be at 2 billion. Because who has a goal when they're starting out as an agent going, I'm gonna go do 2 billion. Yeah, there's a few, maybe, whatever. But what happens more often is I set that goal, I'm gonna go do 2 billion. My. My subconscious mind goes, dude, you are frickin nuts. I don't use my tools to get the subconscious mind out of the way. I buy back into my limiting beliefs and I go, what am I thinking? Let me go buy a frigging lottery ticket. Because that has about as much chance of happening as me going. And Bill, you know what I'm saying? So. So I want you to just be mindful of how the setback is the setup. And the setback is called a setback because it eliminates the direction that you're going toward a specific goal. So I want to give you an exercise here today and I highly encourage you to do this and share this episode with friends, family, you know, even if somebody's not in the blue collar. I record this specifically for the blue collar industry, but industries, I should say. But I think this is a valuable exercise where I. I want you to just think about three of your biggest setbacks in your life. They don't have to be the ultimate three, the holy grail of setback, just whatever, right? Just three substantial. Where if we were in a room together, one on one, or we were on a phone or a FaceTime or a Zoom call, and I said, tell me about three setbacks in your life. These are three that come to mind relatively quickly. Right? So what are these three setbacks? And I want you to answer four questions. Question number one, what was it? So I've asked you the question. Just answer that. Was the setback. Write it down. Then I want you to go to. What did you Do. So when it happened, what did you do about it? How did you handle it? Did you go drinking? Did you take a vacation? Did you fly somewhere and get out of your mind? Did you cry? Weep? Did you journal? Did you write? Did you curse? Did you scream at God? What did you do when you had this setback handed to you? By the way, any and all of the responses are, okay, I personally don't drink anymore. But I used that strategy many, many times in my life. Trust me. So as we do what we do, as you honor, what did you do? Then? I want you to write, what did you learn? Because now you've moved past it, and now you're in a different place with it, and you might have chose something very, very recently, and you might still be going through it. So then you would say, what am I learning? But what was it? What did you do? What did you learn? Now, the big caveat question, would you change it? And I think that's one of the most powerful questions we can ask when it comes to setbacks in our lives, when it comes to challenges that we create, that we bring into our existence, that God, the universe serves up to us, and go, you know what? I think this might serve you a little bit better. And we go, oh, my God. I don't want to go through that, man. I don't want to have a challenged relationship. I don't want to have a financial crisis. I don't want to reinvent my business. I don't want to change my pricing. I don't want to fire customers. I don't want to. Whatever it is. Right? It's. The reality is that's part of the cycle of life, and that's part of your own evolution in the human experience and as a leader. So go with me on this and do this exercise. What was the setback? What did you do? What did you learn from it? And then would you change it? Because here's the reality. Setbacks are an incredible education. They're just not one we would sign up for. I know for me, I would have considered. I went to the first Gulf War in 1990, and I would have thought, you know, that was a setback in my life. There's zero way I would go back and change that. A setback's a label. The challenge is when it happens. At the time. Most of us aren't conscious enough to call it a growth opportunity, to know it's an amazing education, because it's not what we would have chosen at that moment. But if you believe in vision, if you believe in the God, universe, spirit, all working together on your behalf, then you realize this is part of the algorithm that needs to play out. So I, I was recently talking to a buddy of mine that we, God, I've known him since I was in second grade, I think, and we've stayed lifelong friends. And he ended up becoming a school teacher. And he was a contractor by trade at gc. He was a general contractor. He built homes and different things like that. And what was interesting is he started investing in real estate and getting involved in that, you know, doing those different types of things and whatnot. And he started building up his real estate portfolio and he was buying some, I won't say bad buys, but very leveraged buys and challenged, you know, just working non stop on these fixer upper type situations and whatever. Long story short, he got caught in the bubble crash back in, you know, 0809, whatever. And actually his was even a little bit before that, I should say now that I'm thinking about the timeline, he had actually had an issue before that. So he was already teaching school by that point. But the point is he called me one day and he's like, dude, this is a disaster. I don't know what I'm going to do. It looks like I'm going to have to file bankruptcy. And so we did some exercise together and worked through it and he ended up filing bankruptcy. And it was really, really hard on him because he's not one of these guys that was like, oh, I, you know, went out and did a bunch of drinking and ran up my credit cards and needed to file bankruptcy. He was trying to do the best he could as an investor and he got caught and he didn't see it coming. So I was like, dude, hey, it's a moment in time in life and we talk through it, we coach it, he did some writing exercises and he did it. And he worked through all the emotional turmoil and pain that went along with it, but he came out the other side. So he had a major setback. He took massive action and he learned that he did just because he was a builder, he didn't have to go build houses and stretch himself and go into all that. So he went into his teaching certification, degree, whatever you want to call it, and he became a teacher and now he teaches at VO Tech and he teaches building. And long story short, he's one of the most financially independently regulated individuals that I know. And I know some pretty wealthy people, or rich, I should say. Wealth is a very different thing. But I Know people that make a lot of money. How about that? But my buddy that's a school teacher is one of the wealthiest people from the vacations that he takes, what he does, living within his means. And he's going to retire in four years. That was why he called. We had this conversation. He's like, dude, I'm a freshman. I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, I'm retiring in four years. It's like my freshman year. Remember when we went into Palisade High School as freshmen? I'm like, yeah. He's like, remember how fast high school went? Yep. That's when I'm gonna retire. So he was joking about it, but he's going to retire at 55 years old. And when he was in the building world and when he was faced with the challenge and had to file bankrupt, the worst thing, and he had suicidal thoughts, he wasn't a worthy. He wasn't all those things. And now he's completely turned his life around. Why? Because of that setback. If he wouldn't have had that setback, he would have kept on going. Kept on going. It might have stayed in that pa. Embrace these setbacks, my friend. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not telling you go file bankruptcy. I'm not saying make wild and crazy decisions and let the universe clean it up. I'm saying when something hits you that's not in alignment with a goal or, you know, takes you off track, so to speak, maybe there's a reason for it. My friend, the setback is the setup. Lean into it. Embrace it. Please share this episode with somebody. Make sure you write us a review. I know on Apple's changing their stuff. There's a review at the bottom there that could write and give us a rating. That would really help us out. We really appreciate you passing this around and helping grow our community here at Leadership in a Nutshell, where we're cracking the code of that driven mind for blue collar leaders just like you. Until we talk, my friend, make it a better than fantastic week. See you next episode. Cheers.