Business Coach : The Support You Seek
-This is not a spiritual show. This is not a show about spiritual health and that sort of thing. But everybody watching this probably has some type of religious view, whether you’re an atheist, or you’re a Christian, or you’re a Hindu, or whatever you are. As a business coach, d o you schedule time for spiritual development, devotions, prayer, or is it a constant conversation? What is your thought there?
-Well, I go back to Mississippi. Faith has always been a great part of my life. And I have come too far with it to leave it on the side of the road, as it were. It graduated from high school with me. It went to college with me. It went to the military with me. When I was speaking at the Library of Congress and the Supreme Court justice was standing there in front of me, trust me. I called on my faith, don’t leave me here by myself. This, this.
But it’s a real part of my life. But I think it’s more pervasive than scheduled time per se. But what I do have, I have friends who are on the same plane of thought as I am, that I can give a call and we talk. And we reinforce each other. That has been very helpful for me.
-Now, on to the other area here of finances. We have one guy on the show the other day, Braxton Fears. He is a mid 30s guy who’s kind of in this quasi retirement where he doesn’t have a house payment, and he has a lot of money in the bank, and he’s able to take a job working in commercial real estate, where it’s a high octane, work hard, big pay job, and go work at a ministry because he’s been able to save enough money to do that. In terms of finances, Braxton was saying he takes two nights a month, and they look at the financial situation. Do you take time to look at that? Is it a weekly thing, is a daily thing, is it– what do you do?
-I have a good point, and I have a bad point. The bad point is, I should schedule that with my wife and with my son so that they can know what I know. The good point is, I review this almost constantly in my head. The bad point is, I’m not good at sharing it, and I’m trying to change that. With the help of a business coach.
-Well I, right now, am feeling inspired, or I don’t know what– moved– to be more open with my wife about my schedule. So thank you for that. Now what drives you to keep going and work hard? You obviously have sold a ton of Stairmasters. Your books, I don’t know how many copies of your books in total have been bought and sold. That sort of thing. But you’ve sold tons of copies of your books. Your life’s been made into a movie. You’re on the board at a bank. You help started a bank. You have all this success. What keeps you motivated to keep going and work hard? Does a business coach help you?
-I’m a Thriver. I have no desire to simply be a bystander to life. I want to be a participant. And there’s no better way to be a participant than by participating. I always look for opportunities. We just started the coffee company two years ago. And I never imported anything in my life. Now we have a business that goes all the way back to the country of Rwanda. And I didn’t know what a roasting plant was, but I had to learn all of that. And all of that is good, because I think it keeps your internal mind fired up. You’re not left sitting on the side of the road thinking, this is the end of my day. No. Every day I wake up, this is the beginning of my day.
You said something, and I want to make sure I understand it properly. I hear a lot of people, and maybe you’re watching this, and maybe this is you, but when someone asks you what you want to do? You’ll say, I want to be successful so some day I can retire on a beach somewhere. Basically you’re working five days a week at a job you can’t stand waiting for two days a week you get off, so you can retire– hopefully if you live long enough to live into your 70s, right?
And I remember hearing for the first time– and it was a conversation I had with you. I don’t remember exactly the words you said, but I remember leaving going, I don’t ever want to retire. I expressed it wrongly. I told my wife I wanted to DJ till I’m 80-something years old, which was not a healthy choice. But the idea that you could enjoy your job, and enjoy it, and then you could never actually want to retire. So this whole idea of, I’m just going to save every dime I have, and neglect enjoyment for 5/7ths of every week so that I can retire someday, you’ve kind of rejected that whole thing. You’re like, no, no, no, no. I’m an active participant. Talk to me about your thoughts on this whole wait to live until you retire idea.
-No. I like the idea of not wasting the wisdom that has come along, that comes with age, that comes with time. And to retire out all the mainstream is to take from the mainstream gifts that they might need. And I don’t want to do that. The thing that I want to do, perhaps, is to be better positioned to do those things that I best do more frequently. Whereas now, I’m doing a lot of things. Business coach is one of them.
-What do you best do?
-I think for me being able to travel back and forth from my days as a kid in the Mississippi Delta, where the opportunities were limited, where the possibilities were few. But at the same time, because of these incredible ordinary people who became extraordinary leaders in my life, I was able to have a vision. I was able to be a dreamer. I was able to be a Thriver, even though I didn’t even know the word was there.
Because of that, and that to me, holding that conversation, to give other people hope, to give other people a reason to believe that their tomorrow can be as they dream. But also to help them understand that it’s not going to happen in 15 minutes. You’re going to have failures. You’re going to have challenges. You’re going to wrestle at midnight. You’re going to have to work hard. And sometimes, you’re going to even have to swim upstream.