Toku: Mastery

All right everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner. Today I have Toku with us, and he went to philosophy camp in high school and lived in a Zen monastery for 2 years. Now, he is bending the culture of coaching away from mediocrity and towards mastery. So, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks so much, man. I'm happy to be here.

Of course. And we're happy to have you on. So, the first one we got for you today is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?

Hmm. Yeah. So, I think the underlying valuable message— that comes from this story is you just never know the kind of impact you're having on people. So when I was— I moved to Portland, Oregon in 2008, and I've been working in the music business for a long time. And I caught my boss stealing from the bands at the venue that we were working at. And I confronted her and ended up getting fired. And I was at a real loss for what to do with my life. I didn't want to work in the music business anymore. I was kind of tired of being— I was kind of a stoner hippie. I was a stoner hippie for about 8 years after college. And, I just knew that this lifestyle was really a dead end, but I didn't know what was next. And, I went to a party and there was a guy there who just seemed really peaceful. And, before I became a coach, I didn't really understand that it wasn't what he was doing, it was who he was being that made the biggest difference. I was just naturally drawn to this guy and started talking to him about who he was and what he was up to. He was telling me about how he lived at Zen monastery for 2.5 years. At the end of the conversation, he invited me to come try meditation. Because of that, I started meditating. I ended up living at the Zen monastery where I trained at for 2.5 years. Then from that, I got really clear that I wanted to help serve people. That led me on my path to being a coach for executives and also to create this cool container for mastery for coaches who really want to be great. Whether you're a leader, you're a business owner, whether you're a coach, we focus a lot on what we're doing, but the thing to realize is that who you're being while you do it can actually have this incredible impact. If who you're being is really incredible, really inspiring, then just a single conversation can change someone's life. And, it's not about the words that he said to me that had the big impact, it was who he was being as he said it that had me be present to the possibility of having a life that was different than the one I had led for the last 8 years.

[Speaker:BRYAN] So, just to make sure I understand because I think I know what you mean, it's actually really, really big way of thinking. So, it's not just like, "Okay, I'm going to coach someone now. Let's put on my coaching cap." It's like, no, I'm going to actually live and breathe everything that I teach. And in that way, that is me, you know what I'm saying? That is me coaching. Is that kind of what you mean?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's this quote from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind that I love a lot. It says, there is no particular way in true practice. You should find your own way and you should know what kind of practice you have right now. Whether you're a leader or whether you're a coach, there's no right way to lead. There's no right way of doing anything that is like, that's the one way to do it. But it's about who you're being and how present you are to what's working and what's not working for you that makes the biggest impact. I do a lot of work with leaders and those leaders, they'll say, I'm doing all that stuff before that I read all the leadership books tell me about that I should do. And I'm like, yeah, you're doing all the stuff, but who you're being is annoyed, impatient, frustrated, and your team is picking up on that. And coaches the same way, like coaches, I say, well, you know, I'm following all the sales books. I did my niche, I did my marketing, and it's not working. And I'm like, yeah, but who are you being as you do that? When you get on the phone with a client, if who you're being is scared, unsure, doubtful, I don't have any confidence, then the client's going to pick up on that and not hire you. Knowing how to do something really skillfully is important, but who you're being and the impact of who you're being is much more powerful than most of us realize.

Mm-hmm. Then what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?

Yeah. I think the most valuable piece of information is that the pathway of mastery is practice. Anything that you want to get good at, I've studied deliberate practice a lot. I've read books on it. Zen is all about the spiritual practice of practicing sitting meditation. There's a way of thinking about practice of, "Oh, I'm going to practice and I'm going to get to a particular place." Whether you're a leader or whether you're a coach, that way of thinking is really limited. And so if you want to be really masterful, if you want to get really good at something, whether it's leading or selling or coaching or building a business, it's being in the practice of doing it that actually makes you really good at it. And so if you can let go of this idea that at some point I'm going to stop practicing this, I'm going to have arrived and I no longer have to be responsible and I can just sort of take it easy. You can let go of that and learn to really just enjoy being in the practice and the curiosity and the inquiry. Of what it means to be a great leader, what it means to be a great coach, that's actually the way you become a master much more quickly.

And then what is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry-specific.

Yeah, it's a great question. Don't let someone else or yourself pay you a lot of money to do something you don't like.

Got it. Okay. I didn't know if you wanted to elaborate or you want to just keep it simple.

Yeah, I'm happy to elaborate. I think that it's interesting. There's a— I was having a conversation the other day with AJ Leon from Misfit Inc. He sometimes like meets with me and my business partner to talk about business. And he said that right now in our culture, there's this sort of entrepreneurism is like a status symbol. And so like, if you're an entrepreneur, that means like you're successful, right? And if you have a job, that means you failed, right? That's a lot of people look at it that way. And we, you know, we've got, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk and Tim Ferriss. A lot of these people have really talked about how amazing entrepreneurship is. And that's really true. And honestly, most people would probably be happier just having a job, right? They don't really want to be entrepreneurs, but for some reason they have in their head that if I stop being an entrepreneur, if I stop being a coach, that means that I failed. Or if I don't do it on my own, that means that I failed. And that's just a bunch of— that's just a bunch of crap. That's just not true. So if you find yourself, whether it's you're running your own business or whether you're working for someone else and you're saying, well, I'm making a lot of money, or like, I could make a lot of money and I'm totally miserable, but I'll keep going, right? Because I could make a lot of money or because there's an upside here. Just really look at, you know, the impact that has on your life. If I came to you and said, hey, I want to pay you a lot of money, to do something you hate, if I said that to you, you'd probably be like, no way, I don't want to do that. But a lot of us who are business owners and entrepreneurs, we create for ourselves jobs and opportunities that are basically like, I'm going to do something I hate, but I'm going to make a lot of money and that's going to be okay. What I would say is your life can be more meaningful than that, your work can be more meaningful than that. So don't let other people or yourself pay you a bunch of money to do something you hate.

And then if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Man, I hate this question. I'll just be honest, I don't like that question. I'll do it, but, you know, I don't think my younger self would have listened to any advice I would give it. It probably— my younger self thought I knew everything, right? It's so interesting, you know, we, at every age, we look back and say to our younger selves, like, I was so stupid then, I was so stupid then. What's amazing is we don't realize that who we are right now and what we believe right now, some future older, wiser version of us is going to look back on the version of us right now and say, God, that guy was such an idiot. So I'm less interested in going back and saying like, hey, here's what you should do, because the advice that would have served me, I probably wouldn't be able to hear. I guess the advice that I would give to myself right now, because that's the only version of me that's here, is, you know, You can choose to be satisfied with your life right now if you want to be, and that doesn't mean that you have to give up on wanting to create something really extraordinary for the world. That satisfaction or dissatisfaction is not a great fuel for being the kind of person you want to be. So I tell myself that in the past, though I wouldn't have listened to it, but that's the thing I need to keep telling myself right now.

Yeah, dude, I actually love that answer because that is the truth, man. Anything I would have told myself when I was like 18, 19, 20, I would have been like, "Nah, man, I'm just going out to have some fun." I'm not thinking about anything. 100%. So now, kind of going a little bit down a different path here, in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?

Hmm. The key to happiness is creating yourself as happy. I think that we subtly create for ourselves this idea that when we get to someplace that we'll be happy, but then when we get there, we decide that there's some other place that will be happy. So I think it's great to be really clear about what are your conditions of satisfaction. Like, this is the kind of money I want to make. This is the kind of partner I want to have. This is the kind of person I want to be. But if that's it, write that down. And then when you get there, really ask yourself, like, why am I choosing not to be satisfied with this? And so life is this really interesting— has this really interesting duality, right? On the one side, you're whole and complete, lacking nothing. There's nothing you can't have right now that you can get later, right? Anything you can have later, you can have now. It's available to you now. And there are certain things that you were put on this earth to do, and you can declare that, like, hey, I am put on this earth to help people. My mission statement is to serve those walking the path of awakening in a deep and fundamental way. And with my clients, I work on what I call the future of leadership. And it's not AI leadership, it's the future of them as leaders. And so anything you can have in the future, you can have right now. And be honest about what is, for you, a real honest expression of your life. Write it down. And then when you get there, you can choose to be satisfied with it. And strangely enough, you can also choose to be satisfied of being in the pursuit of that.

Mm-hmm. And yeah, I mean, one thing I always say too is like, I think if you can find— and actually Gary Vaynerchuk says this— is like finding joy in the journey, in the process. Because I think like you're saying, it's like, I think we all look and we see these like mountaintops and we're like, oh, we'll be happy when we get up there or when we get this job or when we make this much. But if you can actually like switch that and just like turn the process into what brings you joy, then typically getting to those mountaintops is actually a lot easier because your goal isn't necessarily the mountaintop. The goal is to just enjoy the process and do the right thing, you know? So I don't know, it's just a different way. When I was younger, once I stopped like thinking of things of like, once I get there, I'll be happy. And I just said, oh, like, I'm going to make what I'm doing now to get there the fun part. It was a lot easier after that. So I'm excited for your answer on this next one. What is the best book that you have read and what's the number one thing you learned from it?

Hmm. Man, that is another tough question. There's so many really great books out there. So the book that I'm really loving right now is I've been reading again Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Suzuki Roshi, and it's a book all about Zen practice. But I mean, you could spend an entire lifetime on a single chapter. The thing that I'm really in the practice of learning right now from that book is that everything is practice, right? And so long as I keep choosing to be in practice, so long as I don't decide that at some point I'm done with practice, where at some point I don't have to do practice anymore because I'm so smart, then I can create whatever I want. I can be whatever I want. It's just all about being in the practice in the moment. And what's interesting is that my goals don't mean less. What I'm doing with my business doesn't mean less. I mean, I built a 6-figure coaching business in 18 months, which is pretty unheard of in my industry. I didn't have any contacts or networks. I didn't come from a Fortune 500 company. And, I did all that just being in the practice of creating a business. And so, everywhere I go, everything I'm doing, if I can just keep choosing to be in practice in everything I'm doing and choosing to embody the person that I want to become, if I can practice my future instead of my past, then I can have and be whatever I want.

And so, I don't know.

It's a very hard book to talk about and explain, but all I can say is that if you're a leader, if you're a coach, just notice how you're practicing the past, how you're practicing the same dissatisfactions, the same communication patterns, the same way of leading, the same way of coaching, and just see if you keep practicing the past, you're going to get the results you got before. And, if you want, you can start practicing the future.

And then, what is your favorite quote and why?

Hmm. My favorite quote is a quote by Rumi. It's, um, forget safety, live where you fear to live, destroy your reputation, be notorious. And the reason why I love that quote, um, is that it dispels immediately the illusion that you're safe anywhere and you're not. And safety is completely an illusion that we create. It's an experience we create. We're never safe. A meteor could land on the planet. A bomb could go off. You just never know what's going to happen. And that can feel really scary, but in truth, there's just an incredible amount of freedom in that. And so if you are willing to live where you are afraid to live, you're willing to destroy your reputation, the last level of success that you created, which has now become the barrier to your next level of success, then you can continue to grow, continue to deepen. You can continue to be the kind of inspirational leader or coach that you want to be.

Mm-hmm, I love that, man. Dude, thank you so much for coming on. This was a really insightful episode. The last one I got for you is where can our listeners find you online?

Sure, so if you're a business leader and you want to have a conversation with me about creating yourself as a future leader, especially if you have problems with your partners or employees, feel like you can't communicate with them, don't know how to make them do what you want them to do, you can find me at unexecutive.com. That's unexecutive.com. And if you're a coach and you want to become really masterful, if you're fed up with the mediocre crap that's out there in the coaching industry, you can find us at samuracoachingdojo.com.

Perfect. Thank you again for coming on, man.

Thanks so much, Tyler. The podcast you just heard was made using Anchor. Ever thought about making your own podcast? Anchor makes it really easy for anyone to get started. It's a one-stop shop for recording, hosting, and distributing podcasts. Best of all, it's 100% free. Sign up now at anchor.fm/new. That's anchor.fm/new to get started.