Vincent Infante - Therapist, Mentor, and Coach

What if you could transform the emotional turbulence of entrepreneurship into a journey of growth and opportunity? Join us as we explore the profound intersection of personal and professional development with our insightful guest. We uncover the emotional rollercoaster faced by entrepreneurs, especially during transitional phases, and the importance of a creative mindset to unlock business growth. Through personal anecdotes and expert insights, we reveal how internal belief systems and external support frameworks, including mentors and coaches, are vital in maintaining confidence and steering clear of a survival mindset.
What if you could transform the emotional turbulence of entrepreneurship into a journey of growth and opportunity? Join us as we explore the profound intersection of personal and professional development with our insightful guest. We uncover the emotional rollercoaster faced by entrepreneurs, especially during transitional phases, and the importance of a creative mindset to unlock business growth. Through personal anecdotes and expert insights, we reveal how internal belief systems and external support frameworks, including mentors and coaches, are vital in maintaining confidence and steering clear of a survival mindset.
Our episode delves into the special challenges faced by neurodivergent entrepreneurs or those with ADHD, highlighting the potential advantages of a unified support system. We discuss the sometimes paradoxical roles of therapy and coaching in building a resilient entrepreneurial mindset. Listen as we debate the benefits of integrating these approaches to address both personal challenges and business strategies effectively. By weaving together relatable experiences and critical insights, we emphasize that personal growth is not just a side benefit, but a core component of entrepreneurial success.
Transitioning from traditional employment to the unpredictable world of entrepreneurship is no small feat, and our guest's journey from firefighter to business leader illustrates this vividly. Faced with financial insecurities and the fear of failure, they found inspiration and clarity in unexpected places, such as a Tony Robbins event that became a catalyst for change. We conclude by celebrating the passionate spirit and dynamic life of entrepreneurship, acknowledging both its pressures and its unparalleled joys. Whether you're just starting out or seeking to enhance your entrepreneurial path, this episode is packed with wisdom and inspiration to guide your journey.
00:00 - Entrepreneurial Journey and Confidence
04:59 - Navigating Entrepreneurial Confidence and Support
11:07 - Integrated Support for Entrepreneurial Success
14:18 - Navigating Therapist and Coach Paradoxes
27:14 - Making the Leap
33:25 - Entrepreneurial Growth and Diverse Ventures
46:18 - Personal Development Tiers and Goals
51:53 - Passion for Entrepreneurship and Growth
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I don't want to pay my business coach, who's five times more expensive than my therapist, to talk about my feelings.
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But here's the reality.
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They're all interconnected.
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It's all a web To somewhat discover life coaching, even though I thought life coaching was bullshit at the time, because I think most therapists do.
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Because it's like I have a six-year college degree, you have a $25 certification with no credential and there's a little bit of arrogance in there.
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But the way that I'm hardwired between sort of neurodivergent and ADHD and sort of you know and dopamine seeking and these two that I also, I have to learn by sort of like breaking something and putting it back together.
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So for any of you listeners who might be aspiring entrepreneurs, don't do.
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What I did is I thought the money was going to keep coming like that.
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Not only did I think it would keep coming like that, I thought it would continue to get better and then by the fourth month I pretty much couldn't pay my bills.
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Hello, sir, how are you doing?
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Hello, I'm doing good.
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I just got off a client call, said goodbye to my daughter and here we are.
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He was the big guy himself.
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Yeah, I feel like this is the life these days.
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I just got off a client call, said goodbye to my daughter and here we are.
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He was the big guy himself.
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Yeah, I feel like this is the life these days.
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I have another podcast recording this afternoon and I basically pick my son up from the bus and we slide right in and then we record and then we end it and we slide right out and we go to tutoring.
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Yeah, yeah, amazing.
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Well, thanks for taking the time and and jumping in.
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Um, I enjoyed our last conversation so much Uh, you know it was first first time we got to talk but I enjoyed it so much that, like half of me during that conversation was like wait, wait, we gotta, we gotta save this stuff for when we talk on the podcast.
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I think you know when, when we spoke.
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I love and I want to get into your background.
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What we typically focus on from a content perspective is the idea of zero to one, especially entrepreneurial, the entrepreneurial journey.
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I love the book and I like the idea of zero to one.
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It's the one part that sort of gets me.
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I'm in that place where I'm like I don't know what that is.
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I don't know what that exactly means is, and so you know what I'm.
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I really enjoyed having guests like yourself on and really talking about what that journey looks like and what you're, what you're sort of.
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You know, even even from the moment when you sort of switch from what we would consider like a traditional job into the entrepreneurial journey.
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You know what you've seen and faced and how you've battled that, and also your unique perspective as a therapist and a business coach, how you see others sort of tackling that as well and what your advice would be.
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So I guess, to kick it off, I'd love to go back to you know sort of your history, both from a career perspective in maybe making the jump from traditional to the entrepreneurial journey Sounds great, entrepreneurial journey Sounds great.
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So for me, the making the jump from traditional work to entrepreneurship was something I don't think anybody's ever prepared for unless you already know people or are in some form of entrepreneurship within your own family.
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And it's a very weird reality, right Like I was very used to having this set income that was always going to be there and then if I needed more money I could take over time and it was just it was a very safe, secure and easy kind of thing.
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And then when you become an entrepreneur, you don't know where anything ever like it's.
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It's like it's like you threw a million things in the air and you're hoping you can catch at least one of them, and I'm sure that's some of the fear of people jumping into it too is that you know, and and I'm in that place now where, like I am pretty con, I have go, I've grown I will say this I will have grown more and more confident in myself and knowing how to just figure shit out, uh, when I need to.
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But that's one of those things that, obviously, if you haven't done it and you and you haven't been faced with that before then whether or not you can figure it out is is a daunting thing.
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That's the interesting thing that you just pointed out.
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There is that people are always seeking a form of certainty in life, and the reality is that there is actually no certainty in life except for the certainty that you create within yourself.
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You've probably heard this saying before through God, all things are possible, and it's a very religious saying, and that saying is by usually very devoted or pious people, and it's interesting because what that saying also translates to is that God conspires with me.
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Now think about how confident and how much trust you have in whatever endeavor you're about to go in.
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If you feel that an omnipotent, all powerful being has your best interest at heart, that's totally confidence, right?
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The the biggest thing that winds up killing entrepreneurs is that they consistently come out of confidence.
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They get fearful when the income dips.
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They get fearful when they're not sure on client acquisition.
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They get fearful when something doesn't pull through, and those moments of fear put you in a survival state, and in survival state, especially as an entrepreneur, you're going to get screwed because probably 80 percent of the time or at least that's how I've seen kind of my business eight percent of the time I'm doing crap that doesn't directly correlate to a money-making activity, has potential to, but it doesn't actually translate to dollars, and so that's your highest level of opportunity to gain income or gain whatever it is you're seeking is through those creative things, and that needs you to get into your executive functioning, which means you can't live in survival state.
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And so a massive key to entrepreneurship is creating the internal belief systems and confidence that you need to stay grounded through the ups and downs of your life.
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I have felt that so many times, even specifically as we go through a bit of a transition in the story and what we're doing from what we've learned to, let's say, 1.0 to 2.0 of the business.
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In this in-between period where it is all still gray, there's no specific tagline to stand on and say this is the thing You're sort of in that middle period I have felt it where even within a day, you can start that day really low and sort of feeling like it's not going to work and it's not going to sort of like it's not going to work out, and by the end of the day you're like oh my gosh, we're going to take over the world.
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This is going to be amazing.
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And so that, like that roller coaster of sort of emotion based on different things you know, I have found comfort in.
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I feel like I've done, I've sort of had my own agency in between, working like traditional jobs and stuff like that.
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So I've sort of been in this a little bit and I feel like I've had some practice on those mechanisms internally.
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But also what helps me is being able to have a lot of conversations externally, especially in this remote world, but having advisors and trusted people as objective observers to sort of pull you out of that.
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And I'll have one of those talks and I'll leave that talk and be like you know what.
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Yeah, this is right, this is the thing we're doing, but getting that established kind of framework of support is so key.
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I mean, that's that's one of the biggest reasons that people typically bring a coach in, right, because if you have somebody that's pretty much unbiased on your side and I have no vested interest in the company winning or you winning, well, I have an interest in you winning it right, but in the sense that I want you to get a result you're looking for, as opposed to like, I need you to work and do this, because I just gave you a hundred thousand dollars to build a company that I'm betting on, and I think that's where, like, it's interesting, because I've worked a good bit in the startup world and people will always say, well, the, the founders should be able to come to the advisors, right, the founders should be able to go to the investors, and it, the founders should be able to go to the investors, and it's like yes and no, they should, but there's some things they shouldn't go to, because how do you go to somebody that just gave you a good check?
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Let's just throw out that number, 100,000 again.
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Somebody just gave you $100,000 and you're like, yeah, I don't know if I can do that.
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You can't do that as a founder.
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The boundaries of the rich.
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I hate shipbusters that have been doing this so long that they see those ups and downs and they know where it's coming from.
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But I imagine you're so right that you can't.
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You also have to create a bit of that, like both culturally and that what was Steve's reality distortion field around what you're doing to sort of make and create new things, because a lot of people have a hard time sort of picturing those new things, because a lot of people have a hard time sort of picturing those new things.
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And so if you go to everybody and tell everybody everything like I don't think this is going to work or I'm having a hard time with this or whatever, you're going to get those people going, ah, I told you you know which is not what you need in those moments.
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Yeah, no, and it's a fine line too, right, because I've come to find that there are differences between therapy, mentoring and coaching, and I think that you know you and I kind of talked about this in our previous call and the way that I typically break it down because I like to do all three is that therapy is about that awareness component.
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Right, it's about being able to kind of look back at somebody's life and say, hey, like you with something right here, right now, but like why?
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And then, once you have that awareness, there's kind of no point to being in the past anymore.
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Right, like you get that piece that you needed now, why are you still sitting there?
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So now it's like move forward.
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Then you have that mentorship component, where mentorship is more experiential.
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Your mentor may not have technicals, he may not have book knowledge, you may not have situations or degrees or any of that, and to degree that really might not matter.
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But then what you're getting from them is a very specific frame of the world, because they're going to tell you what they did that worked, and they're going to tell you based on their own belief system not always looking at your belief system or what really fits you they could just share.
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Well, this is what I did in your shoes, because maybe they don't know how to navigate you out of that, because they don't have any type of classical training.
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They just were somebody that had a good result and got a good experience and you can learn from that.
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But other times it could leave you feeling like maybe it's not applicable or maybe you don't know what to do because you're not them.
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And then the last component is that coaching piece, where coaching is looking at your present and looking about how you're going to bring yourself forward.
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How are you going to elevate your standards, how are you going to evolve, how are you going to grow, how are you going to change as a person or build your company or whatever the case may be, and so what winds up being very interesting is like I found that advisors some of them could be pretty good coaches.
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Most of them have mentorship components.
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They have like those pieces of I'm going to share my experiences with you because I've been there, done that, but that's not always applicable.
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And then you have, maybe a trusted group of friends and they always have your best interest at heart and maybe they're seeing things without that unbiased perspective which would give better answers and better realities, like therapist coach, and so I think that it's really good to understand like there's so many different people that make a life or business in.
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You know.
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I would say, come full circle.
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And it's about analyzing like, who do you need and in what moments, because there's different time periods for every different thing, like, and how you build that, obviously, is ultimately always up to you, but I think, to the listeners out there, if any of you are wondering about who you need, you just got to kind of look at what you're actually missing, like, are you missing clarity, are you missing experience, or are you missing clarity?
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Are you missing, are you missing experience or are you missing a path forward?
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And that should kind of tell you like, oh, totally, and I think there's something so interesting there about, like you know, myself I have had business coaches and mentors and I've also done therapy for years and years and years, and I think it's one of those things that like having them sit on opposite sides, especially when you're going through this entrepreneurial journey, just doesn't work.
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When you're sort of going to one person and saying like, emotionally, I feel like I'm in this place and, and personally and from a better way to say it, but the way that I'm hardwired between sort of neurodivergent and ADHD and sort of you know, and dopamine seeking and these like the way that I'm sort of and that I also I have to learn by sort of like breaking something and putting it back together, that you go to someone in this way and you talk about those things and then you leave and later that week you go to someone else and you say, like how do we increase user growth and how do we do these things and why am I struggling to sort of do X, y or Z or why am I struggling to sort of lead the team?
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To have those on disparate ends of the spectrum is hard, because I could see such a benefit in this sort of the same person being like I get.
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Why, personally, between either neurodivergency or ADHD or other things like that, you may be scattering yourself so much, which is why you are putting your finger in too many pies on this side, which is why you're failing on this other side and being able to sort of make those connections, versus having those two things be separate and not having the same person being able to reconcile that themselves.
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I've come to find so, like you know, to the point of why I started doing what I do is because I really just like any startup I don't know if I'd consider myself a startup, but I consider myself trying to build something that's different and unique because, like any startup, it gets made because you see a gap in the market and, to your point, there's a problem where you're going to go to your therapist and you're going to talk about X, and then you're going to go to your coach and you're going to talk about why.
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Then you see your mentor and you're going to talk about Z and you're trying to tackle three different experiences without anybody having a full scope or picture of you, your problem, your situation, and everybody's lacking a fundamental understanding of you.
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And now some people would say, well, that's great to have it separate.
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I don't want to pay my business coach, who's five times more expensive than my therapist, to talk about my feelings but than my therapist to talk about my feelings.
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But here's the reality they're all interconnected, it's all a web, and so when you have this, it actually winds up costing you more in the long run, because one you're spending.
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Now you spend three hours an hour with each person.
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You're probably spending more time because you're more money, because you're at least paying the therapist and the business coach, maybe, maybe or maybe not the mentor, unless they have equity in your company or whatever, and that still costs something.
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And then nobody again, like I said, nobody has the full story of you, so it winds up being something that you're probably, even if you're getting results, you're probably not optimizing it right.
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So now it's like efficiency issue, because your coach might be digging into something and they have no idea why you can't move forward.
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And then they ultimately have to pause the coaching thing to start doing almost the therapy thing with you, because, let's be real, if the coach is good, they should be able to take you back there.
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But then there's a lot of coaches that are hesitant to do that because they're not trained to be a therapist, and they stay away from it.
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And then you're going to go to your therapist and they're just going to kind of keep you in your past and they'll say, well, this is where you're struggling, but they're not giving you a strong, concrete action plan to move forward.
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And now you're just trying to do two different action items or three different action, and it's such an interesting mess.
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And so my thing is is like can we get more people trained to actually do all three?
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Can we get more people that are capable of providing a holistic, very linear but somewhat able to ping pong if you need?
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And?
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And that's kind of what I do now.
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Right, it's like I'll have a client session.
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Actually, great example Last week one of my clients.
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We were talking about how he could structure a business plan, talk to his business partners, potentially separate their companies and create a holding company, like we did a whole business strategy session.
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This session we talked about something from his past, emotionally, that he can't get over, because he recognized this, came up and now like we're tackling that.
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But we could do that, as opposed to him saying, all right, let's just talk business.
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And then, when shit comes up, when I'm dealing with stuff in my past as I'm trying to sort of disassemble, reassemble my company, there's a thing in there's connective tissue in the middle there that it's it's.
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I imagine it's so nice to be able to have someone that has a view of both of those things, versus having person A like therapist A say like here's how you need to tackle that, you need to do sort of more meditation, you need to go on walks, you need to sort of like journal, you need to, you need to add all these extra habits to your day, while also person B is like you need to hunker down, you need to do this, you need to do that, and then both are sort of saying, oh, like you need to spend more time doing these other things versus being able to sort of have a holistic plan that sort of supports both at the same time.
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I could see 100% and you could probably guess because you sound like you get it, kyle, and for you listeners, maybe some of you have had this experience too, but you could probably appreciate and understand that one most therapists don't understand the entrepreneurship journey and most coaches don't understand the interpersonal journey, because they're both very specifically trained on one thing and that becomes obviously another issue.
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You have no idea how many times I've gone into a company.
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I've worked with an executive who's like I want to grow my company.
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It's like, okay, cool, let's talk about delegation, let's talk about putting in systems and processes and bringing in the right people, and then stop doing as much work as you do like, switch your workload to 20% effort and then start coaching and training your employees to build them as people.
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And then what do you hit?
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You hit that they're not hitting our goals, right.
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And then, guess what?
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I go into my therapist mode and I'm like, okay, let's talk about this.
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You don't delegate, you're the most important person in your company.
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If you stop working, the company falls apart.
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Let's talk about your childhood.
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And then 99% of the time when we go back there, we figure out that this person has a fear of a loss of control.
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They have a fear of not being people, being good enough, and that if they don't rank on something, that basically means that I will confront the things that I need to confront, or something like that.
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That is the root cause of the other piece that you can't also just say you need to directly.
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The coach may say you need to directly confront these employees like this and get a handle on that.
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And the internal part.
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You may have someone that internally is sort of like oh my gosh, that sounds like the word Like you know, they're like I'm just not used to doing that, or I'm not trained how to do that, or or it triggers something in me and so it makes it hard to actually execute against that 100, most of the scaling issues that I've run into, and because I'm I'm I'm a people expert, I know systems, I know processes, but that's not my Like.
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Somebody is not going to call me and be like Ben, I need you to come in and restructure my company.
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Could I help with that?
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I could.
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Would I say that that's my expertise and you should hire me for that?
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Absolutely not Go hire somebody else that really loves and wants to do that I could support, but I am not the guy for it.
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But what I can, the time you're probably not scaling or growing your company the way you should because there's something deeper, internal, that you're afraid of letting go of whether it's that, like I said before, maybe not being needed.
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So you make yourself the most important person in the company because if you step out of that, the fear is that nobody needs you and then you're not important.
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And then and then whatever that transcribes in your mind as like that, you're not good enough and you don't deserve the company.
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And now imposter syndrome gets like there's a million things that could happen, right, but that's kind of the interesting component is, businesses will never exceed the level of development of the person who's running it.
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So if you're a two, your business will never be a three, it'll definitely never be a 10.
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And guess what, if it somehow miraculously gets past, you, trust me, you'll bring it right back to you.
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You'll bring it back down to a two If that company you hire a consultant, you're consultants of 10, he brings it to us heavily, or the company.
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He'll bring it back to us too.
00:19:15.923 --> 00:19:17.355
Thanks for all you've done.
00:19:17.355 --> 00:19:21.922
But we're an eight now and we don't need a two Totally.
00:19:21.922 --> 00:19:23.612
So I want to go back to.
00:19:23.612 --> 00:19:32.347
I really loved when we were talking about your journey from being a firefighter and making the jump.
00:19:32.347 --> 00:19:39.455
I'd love to hear sort of that early, like how you got into firefighting and then also the journey from firefighting into therapist and business coach.
00:19:39.455 --> 00:19:42.064
Yeah, so I'll create.
00:19:42.084 --> 00:19:48.516
The linear path is that I was a therapist first and I was basically doing therapy since I was 18.
00:19:48.516 --> 00:20:01.436
I started at a hospital as a mental health worker and I was pursuing my bachelor's degree in psychology and I was co-facilitating and leading therapeutic groups alongside psychiatrists and psychologists and basically helping along with that process.
00:20:01.436 --> 00:20:04.297
I would come up with ideas, I would introduce them into the groups, try to get.
00:20:04.297 --> 00:20:10.839
It was a clinical program for children and so we would get them talking and we'd start doing things like art therapy or whatever the case.
00:20:10.839 --> 00:20:17.056
So really I was practicing, unlicensed but supervised, as a therapist since I was 18.
00:20:17.056 --> 00:20:29.555
And so from 18 to 28, I did both pre and postgraduate, different kinds of experiences and I had worked in inpatient and outpatient hospital clinics, homeless shelters, private practice department of education.
00:20:29.555 --> 00:20:40.496
I did apply behavioral analysis, I was a traveling home therapist and so I did all these different things within the fields and I kind of felt like therapy wasn't really as helpful as everybody likes to say it is.
00:20:40.576 --> 00:20:54.567
I started feeling like it's kind of a business model and that maybe it's not really here to help people get better, because I think one of the biggest lies is like hey, yeah, just come to therapy for 20 years every single week and take this medication and like you never get over your problem.
00:20:54.567 --> 00:20:56.778
You just learn how to deal with it better and like cope with it better.
00:20:56.778 --> 00:20:57.834
And of course, you're on the meds.
00:20:57.834 --> 00:21:02.761
It helps you and uh, I, I just don't believe in any of that anymore at all.
00:21:02.761 --> 00:21:04.155
I refuse to diagnose people.
00:21:04.155 --> 00:21:33.710
I don't believe in medication no-transcript.
00:21:33.769 --> 00:21:50.903
And this led me to uh, to somewhat discover life coaching even though I thought life coaching was bullshit at the time Cause I think most therapists do because it's like I have a six year college degree, you have a $25 certification with no credential and there's a little bit of arrogance in there, but it is a.
00:21:50.903 --> 00:21:54.213
It is a a kind of contention point between therapists and coaches.
00:21:54.213 --> 00:21:59.653
And so I just I heard tony robbins talking one day and I was like this guy's amazing.
00:21:59.653 --> 00:22:05.762
But he's amazing because he's actually talking about therapeutic principles and and the found and the founders of therapy.
00:22:05.762 --> 00:22:09.534
He's not like sitting here telling you, hey, come up with an action plan.
00:22:09.534 --> 00:22:14.442
He he's actually saying like you know, about the human needs and how your behaviors work.
00:22:14.442 --> 00:22:17.454
Oh, this guy understands psychology Very interesting.
00:22:17.454 --> 00:22:24.201
But he also knows things that psychologists don't know, because he could help people who have been in therapy for 15 years.
00:22:24.201 --> 00:22:27.953
And 15 minutes, and I found that to be really fascinating.
00:22:27.953 --> 00:22:31.834
So that piqued my interest in coaching the fire department.
00:22:32.355 --> 00:22:39.776
I wound up taking a test and here's the thing the fire department was a childhood dream of mine, just like being a nurse those are my two childhood dreams.
00:22:39.776 --> 00:22:48.932
And I took the test the first time while I was going through my master's and I didn't get a high enough score and so I couldn't actually become a firefighter.
00:22:48.932 --> 00:22:57.019
Now, most people don't know this, but in New York after 29, you can never become a firefighter in New York City.
00:22:57.019 --> 00:22:58.299
I didn't know that because you age out.
00:22:58.299 --> 00:23:06.247
So right, see, most people don't, and so you need to take the test before you're 29.
00:23:06.247 --> 00:23:12.733
And they only release the test every four years.
00:23:12.733 --> 00:23:14.681
So, realistically, you probably only have two chances to take this test before you age out.
00:23:14.681 --> 00:23:16.448
So the first time I didn't get it.
00:23:16.448 --> 00:23:21.180
The second time I got 103, which put me in the second class, was number 12, 17 on the list.
00:23:21.180 --> 00:23:28.590
With that being said, I decided to take it and, at the same time, I decided I wanted to start building my coaching business.
00:23:28.590 --> 00:23:30.435
So I started building it part-time.
00:23:30.435 --> 00:23:32.099
I opened my business in 2019.
00:23:33.082 --> 00:23:40.486
Um started seeing clients on the weekends while I was going through the fire academy and covet hit while I was a firefighter.
00:23:40.486 --> 00:23:44.119
But that allowed me more opportunity to actually be building my coaching business.
00:23:44.119 --> 00:23:50.401
Uh, mostly because the fire department was put on the schedule of 24 on 48 off because of that.
00:23:50.401 --> 00:23:54.665
You know that two day incubation period, so they actually forced us to be off.
00:23:54.665 --> 00:23:56.932
Usually, that's not the norm in the firehouse.
00:23:56.932 --> 00:23:59.800
Like most people think, you only work two days a week, and it's not true.
00:23:59.800 --> 00:24:05.618
You work your, your two 24 hours and whatever overtime you called in for.
00:24:05.618 --> 00:24:09.005
So it's it was a.
00:24:09.005 --> 00:24:12.472
It was a lot easier for me to do that because we were outside of the norm due to COVID.
00:24:12.472 --> 00:24:13.115
That's amazing.
00:24:13.336 --> 00:24:18.571
And so then you, you started, you started building your, your practice and then what was the?
00:24:18.571 --> 00:24:19.034
What was?
00:24:19.034 --> 00:24:28.739
The moment when you started felt like you got that little inkling that it that may be time to sort of jump full-time into, into the coaching therapy as as the singular focus.
00:24:28.739 --> 00:24:35.013
Hey, um, I, I felt like I really liked being a firefighter, like I think it was.
00:24:35.013 --> 00:24:38.401
It was a really interesting job, it was very cool, it was.
00:24:38.401 --> 00:24:41.012
It was one hell of an experience.
00:24:41.653 --> 00:24:50.059
However, I also felt this deep sense of responsibility to my clients and, as I mentioned to you, you know there's a lot of overtime.
00:24:50.059 --> 00:24:52.471
I was still a new guy, so I was.
00:24:52.471 --> 00:25:01.397
I was only a firefighter for a year and because of that, I was still a probie, and as a probie, you're tasked with coming in the most.
00:25:01.397 --> 00:25:08.172
You're tasked with being there for every single holiday, being there whenever anybody doesn't want to be there, being here on weekends and whenever.
00:25:08.172 --> 00:25:19.269
And one of the issues that I kept encountering was you have these set level of expectations as a new guy and you want to live up to them because the firehouse won't like you otherwise.
00:25:19.269 --> 00:25:23.656
Because, let's be real, if you're not playing as a team, why would they feel you're a part of it?
00:25:23.656 --> 00:25:26.999
And so it was a very big balancing act for me.
00:25:26.999 --> 00:25:37.442
It was I'm going to set all of these sessions with clients and then I'm going to get called in without 24 hours notice to go to the fire department, which is like that's pretty normal, right?
00:25:37.442 --> 00:25:45.218
But then I have to cancel on these people who took time out of their day, who are investing in themselves, who I also have a responsibility to show up for.
00:25:45.931 --> 00:26:11.978
And the moment that made me realize it was time to leave was um, for, and the moment that made me realize it was time to leave was, um, it was a friday, it was like a friday night and, uh, I got I don't know how many, I think I I wound up getting like four or five clients vigiled for that saturday for for my coaching biz, and friday night, I think at 11 o'clock, mind you, my first coaching client is supposed to be at like 9 am, at 11 o'clock, mind you, my first coaching client is supposed to be at like 9 am At 11 o'clock.
00:26:11.978 --> 00:26:17.818
I'm getting a call and a text message saying hey, I want you to come in in the morning.
00:26:17.818 --> 00:26:22.680
I can't go in, you need to go in for a while.
00:26:22.680 --> 00:26:32.230
And he's like well, this was the moment is where I looked at my phone and this is going to sound like for any firefighters out there.
00:26:32.230 --> 00:26:33.463
You're probably going to think I'm a piece of shit and that's okay.
00:26:33.463 --> 00:26:39.635
But I looked at my phone and I put it down and I pretended that I never saw it because I couldn't.
00:26:39.635 --> 00:26:44.172
I just said to myself I'm not canceling on all these people again, like I'm just not.
00:26:44.172 --> 00:26:58.769
And that made me realize that if I felt that strongly about what I was doing, that was probably where my heart truly was, which also then made me come to the reality and the acceptance of you're not doing right by anybody.
00:26:58.769 --> 00:27:08.625
By trying to do both, you're screwing somebody and you should really leave or leave one of these things right.
00:27:08.625 --> 00:27:14.231
You should really leave one of these things and give your a hundred percent to somebody, because right now you're giving your a hundred percent to nobody.
00:27:14.693 --> 00:27:21.616
So I made the very difficult decision to give up on my childhood dream, because entrepreneurship was actually something that I discovered later.
00:27:21.616 --> 00:27:23.101
It wasn't like a childhood dream.
00:27:23.101 --> 00:27:30.445
My childhood dreams were to be a therapist and a firefighter and I just I felt very called to do what I was doing.
00:27:30.445 --> 00:27:33.955
So I paced around for a few weeks with the letter of resignation.
00:27:33.955 --> 00:27:40.397
I had to change the date like five times and print out these news every every time and event.
00:27:40.459 --> 00:27:41.721
I tried to find another solution.
00:27:41.721 --> 00:27:44.353
I said, hey, can I take a leave of absence for a year?
00:27:44.353 --> 00:27:48.353
Leave of absence for anybody who's listening is a year with no pay and you get nothing.
00:27:48.353 --> 00:27:49.654
There's no benefits, there's no nothing.
00:27:49.654 --> 00:27:51.920
You just you're a firefighter but you're not right.
00:27:51.920 --> 00:27:54.530
And after a year you can either go back or quit.
00:27:54.530 --> 00:27:57.261
And at first they said they'd give it to me.
00:27:57.261 --> 00:28:01.194
So I was like spectacular, I could try and figure out the business and then I could go back to the fire department.
00:28:01.194 --> 00:28:14.714
However, after about a week, once they submitted that paperwork, they came back and they said you actually can't take leave vaps, so you either need they're like we're going to give you a like a week to figure it out.
00:28:14.714 --> 00:28:18.323
If you have a mental health week, figure it out, that's it.
00:28:18.323 --> 00:28:20.718
They're like you can have a mental health week, you can figure it out.
00:28:20.718 --> 00:28:37.045
And so at the end of the week I just said I'm going to go do this entrepreneur thing and I hope it works out, and maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but I feel like I have to do this and you know it's funny because people said, well, you know you made that decision knowing you could go back, and it's like, actually you can't.
00:28:37.045 --> 00:28:38.906
Like, once you leave the fire department, you can't go back.
00:28:38.906 --> 00:28:51.643
It's not as simple as like reapplying for done so.
00:28:51.643 --> 00:29:01.290
I actually made that decision to completely leave, knowing I can never go back, and I truly just burn my boats to go for what I believed I'm supposed to be doing.
00:29:01.391 --> 00:29:04.278
I love those moments, by the way, just as a call out.
00:29:04.278 --> 00:29:32.113
It's either that day when you walk away for the last time, or the next morning, or whatever, and I mean everything is sort of fresh and new and possible and like also sort of like I don't know, we're going to figure it out, but like those moments in life where it's just like completely deaf, your, your whole sort of structure of how things are and and life is, is completely sort of taken apart and and now you're in the process of building a brand new one.
00:29:32.113 --> 00:29:55.917
So I love those moments, um, those that's so great though I love that you, you were able to also, um, you know, you've been able to do both of your of your childhood dreams, which is which is amazing, and but I love that call also, that that call feels so specific and strong that it just feels kind of like, yeah, I just have to, I just got to do it.
00:29:55.917 --> 00:29:58.258
And making that jump is amazing.
00:29:58.258 --> 00:30:03.381
How was, what day was that like when you made that jump?
00:30:03.470 --> 00:30:06.289
This was actually on kind of the tail end of COVID.
00:30:06.289 --> 00:30:18.922
It was in 2021, when I left to full-time start a business, when most people shut their businesses and, even more funny, my target audience.
00:30:18.922 --> 00:30:27.271
I didn't really have one, so I just took everybody, because anybody who started a business before knows when you first start, you just need money.
00:30:27.271 --> 00:30:29.558
It doesn't matter who, who do you work.
00:30:29.558 --> 00:30:33.589
You work with whoever pays me, people who need to talk about things and people who need guidance.
00:30:33.589 --> 00:30:36.434
Yeah, and it was actually.
00:30:36.434 --> 00:30:45.883
It's very funny because I keep getting, um, I keep getting friends send me this video, but in 2021, my coaching business.
00:30:46.305 --> 00:31:26.517
Surprisingly, I didn't know what I was doing and it wasn't doing well and I was struggling and I was almost kind of ready to give up on entrepreneurship and say, well, maybe I could go back and they'll take me as a firefighter if it's only been a few months or maybe I could go back as a therapist and work in an office and it was scary and it was hard and I was about ready to quit because I've never faced, even as a firefighter, firefighting was difficult and it was hard and it was rigorous, but I never faced an emotional challenge Like I don't know if I could pay my bills this month, or the sense of anxiety that you looked in your account and you have a dollar left because you just finished paying your bills and you knew that you just made it Right.
00:31:27.239 --> 00:31:29.396
And I've never faced a fear like that.
00:31:29.396 --> 00:31:33.582
I I mean I went into burning buildings, I went to see help people that were dying.
00:31:33.582 --> 00:31:39.357
I mean I I've worked with schizophrenics and inpatient units and I've never been that kind of afraid before.
00:31:39.357 --> 00:32:07.856
It was a new feeling and so, with that being said, before my income got really, really bad, I invested in a business mastery event by tony robbins and I took it and it was in my home because it was during covid and, funny enough, out of the 40 something thousand people there, I got called on to do business intervention, and so people now continuously send me this video because it still circulates.
00:32:07.856 --> 00:32:11.472
They use it as ads, they have it as a training in their program.
00:32:11.472 --> 00:32:14.359
It's on youtube and people be like is this you?
00:32:14.359 --> 00:32:15.570
And I'm like, yes, that's me.
00:32:15.570 --> 00:32:17.194
I had no idea what I was doing in business.
00:32:17.194 --> 00:32:21.359
If you watch it, you'll probably cringe all the way through, like I do, because he was like who do you help?
00:32:21.359 --> 00:32:22.143
I'm like people.
00:32:22.143 --> 00:32:24.090
He's like, yes, but what are the problems?
00:32:24.090 --> 00:32:26.413
Oh, my god, oh man, that's hilarious.
00:32:26.413 --> 00:32:27.115
Yeah, it was.
00:32:27.595 --> 00:32:33.782
It was an interesting experience, but it kind of, if we go back to the start of this conversation, it gave me a certainty.
00:32:33.782 --> 00:32:50.057
How does Tony Robbins, the guy that inspired me to quit therapy and become a coach, that inspired me to believe I could be bigger than I am, how does he call me out of a crowd of 40,000 people when here's the real experience?
00:32:50.057 --> 00:32:51.115
He called on somebody else.
00:32:51.115 --> 00:33:01.476
Oh, the audio wasn't working and they were going to be the last person he did an intervention with and people that may have seen him do virtual calls.
00:33:01.476 --> 00:33:06.183
For those of you that don't know, when Tony does the virtual events, he has these giant screens in front of him but he still can't see everybody.
00:33:06.183 --> 00:33:09.489
He has to actually swipe the screens to see people him but he still can't see everybody.
00:33:09.489 --> 00:33:12.234
He has to actually swipe his screens to see people.
00:33:12.234 --> 00:33:14.539
That means he picked on somebody else.
00:33:14.539 --> 00:33:24.757
Their audio wasn't good and, by chance, I just happened to be on the screen that he saw me while he was swiping it and called me out of 40,000 people when I was ready to quit.
00:33:25.578 --> 00:33:31.320
You can't see something like that and say, oh right, it's just random luck, because I don't believe in that.
00:33:31.320 --> 00:33:36.439
I truly believe that was God nudging me and being like you're not meant to quit.
00:33:36.439 --> 00:33:37.902
Believe in yourself.
00:33:37.902 --> 00:33:38.983
Here you go.
00:33:38.983 --> 00:33:46.626
Here's the guy that's literally the best coach in the world, who's about to give you a coaching session to tell you to stop being a bitch and believe in yourself.
00:33:46.626 --> 00:33:47.309
That's what you said.
00:33:47.309 --> 00:33:47.611
That's a.
00:33:47.611 --> 00:33:48.452
That's a mad.
00:33:48.452 --> 00:33:49.414
That's those the.
00:33:49.414 --> 00:33:53.334
You get so few of those in life, if any, and those are such great moments.
00:33:53.334 --> 00:33:54.637
That's amazing.
00:33:54.637 --> 00:33:56.000
Yeah, that's so good.
00:33:56.000 --> 00:33:58.076
So was that like when?
00:33:58.076 --> 00:34:02.895
When was that in the, in the, in the journey within the first year of making the jump?
00:34:02.895 --> 00:34:09.882
Oh, yes, in 2021, I left at the tail end of 21.
00:34:09.882 --> 00:34:12.204
I think it was probably somewhere around October or November.
00:34:12.244 --> 00:34:17.929
So I did one year in the department and this event, I believe, was early 22.
00:34:17.929 --> 00:34:20.030
Now I could tell you exactly what happened.
00:34:20.030 --> 00:34:34.788
The first month that I resigned from the fire department, my income quadrupled, which was fascinating to me, and I see that much money in my life and I was like, holy crap, I'm here.
00:34:34.788 --> 00:34:36.382
And so I did the.
00:34:36.382 --> 00:34:42.454
Yeah, I did one of the other mistakes that a lot of people that don't understand entrepreneurship did.
00:34:42.454 --> 00:34:48.253
So for any of you listeners who might be aspiring entrepreneurs don't do what I did is I thought the money was going to keep coming like that.
00:34:48.253 --> 00:34:52.070
Not only did I think it would keep coming like that, I thought it would continue to get better.
00:34:52.070 --> 00:34:59.525
So that's where I bought that $15,000 Tony Robbins mastery package which allowed me to go to the business event.
00:34:59.525 --> 00:35:07.530
And then the second month the income was about the same and it went down maybe $1,000.
00:35:07.530 --> 00:35:10.195
I was like, yeah, that's fine, we'll get another client, It'll be whatever.
00:35:10.195 --> 00:35:13.088
And then by the third month my income halved.
00:35:13.088 --> 00:35:16.885
And then by the fourth month I pretty much couldn't pay my bills.
00:35:16.885 --> 00:35:26.007
And it was good that I didn't do all types of exorbitant spending, because I was still somewhat responsible where I didn't like, oh, I'm making money, let me go buy a car in this.
00:35:26.007 --> 00:35:31.190
Now it was really just like I'm gonna invest in my business, I'm gonna try, and, you know, go to this and do that and blah, blah, blah.
00:35:31.190 --> 00:35:34.793
But with that that was pretty much at the low point.
00:35:34.853 --> 00:35:44.940
Now my girlfriend at the time, um, who's actually still my current girl, but she was just, you know, like brand new kind of girlfriend, um, we were living together despite us being somewhat brand new.
00:35:44.940 --> 00:35:56.322
It's about two years or a year into the relationship, at that point she helped me, uh, with bill, she believed in me and she said you know, I, I believe in you, I believe in your vision, I and you know, I know you want this.
00:35:56.322 --> 00:36:01.012
I like you'll figure it out, you, you will, and uh, I've got your back.
00:36:01.012 --> 00:36:02.302
Like, if you need help, like let me know.
00:36:02.302 --> 00:36:04.168
And she was still working full-time and all that stuff.
00:36:04.168 --> 00:36:09.943
And so by that fourth month was when this all occurred and then that kind of reinigorated me.
00:36:09.943 --> 00:36:12.425
And then just again, the moments of grace.
00:36:12.425 --> 00:36:14.025
And then all of a sudden, my income like skyrocketed.
00:36:14.045 --> 00:36:32.501
They launched, they had a, they had someone come on that had a huge audience and huge newsletter audience.
00:36:32.501 --> 00:36:40.507
That came on early and almost immediately there was like $100,000 worth of revenue in flux and so of course everyone's going signal, signal.
00:36:40.507 --> 00:36:41.751
This is amazing.
00:36:41.751 --> 00:36:47.081
And then he said it was like it was like three or four years before they ever had anything like that happen again.
00:36:47.081 --> 00:37:29.090
You know, and it's sort of like I think it's so interesting, the early signals that you can't take any major wins or any major losses, as like as as anything, um, you, you gotta, you gotta have at least a good sort of duration and period that you look at everything in in the aggregate and make sure that you're not sort of looking for any specific single signal as, like, this is going to be X, because you know, but that's so great, I love you know, and so great too that you had the support there from your girlfriend and then also just having that life moment of that shift, of being like, nope, keep going, keep doing it, and then and then you found your groove.
00:37:29.090 --> 00:37:30.594
That's, that's amazing.
00:37:30.594 --> 00:37:35.271
How's it been since that that period was set over the next three years or so?
00:37:35.271 --> 00:37:37.664
Yeah, I mean, now it's been interesting.
00:37:38.306 --> 00:37:40.911
Through that, the market has essentially chose me.
00:37:40.911 --> 00:37:47.318
So my, my desire to work with everybody, translated to you, shouldn't work with anybody.
00:37:47.318 --> 00:37:58.076
You should work with who you get great results with, and the people that I wound up getting great results with were entrepreneurs, executives, business owners and organizations like working with the C-suite and the upper level teams.
00:37:58.076 --> 00:38:03.452
That translated to referrals and more clients and conversations and things like that.
00:38:03.452 --> 00:38:07.250
So it's been in a steady growth stage since then.
00:38:07.250 --> 00:38:14.974
We're just continuing to go out and meet people and have these great conversations that then turn into something, whether it's in the immediate or long term.
00:38:14.974 --> 00:38:20.708
I've also started a few other businesses, so I have a boring business.
00:38:20.708 --> 00:38:23.829
Me and a business partner own a large mass together, so that's kind of fun.
00:38:23.829 --> 00:38:27.659
I do CRMs for people, for companies.
00:38:27.659 --> 00:38:33.608
We have a white people go high level agency, so basically build people's back ends for them.
00:38:33.608 --> 00:38:39.831
And another client of mine we are in Q1 launching a real estate investment fund.
00:38:39.831 --> 00:38:45.846
So we're going to start taking the networks, the connections, the high value people and bring them all together and build these things.
00:38:45.846 --> 00:38:46.688
That's so great.
00:38:47.099 --> 00:38:48.664
And I imagine, how do you like the?
00:38:48.664 --> 00:39:09.445
How do you like the diversity of, of entrepreneurial like so different from, from the single focus as a therapist or as a fire or as a firefighter, into the, into the sort of multi-focus and and sort of not task, not task switching but but sort of focus, focus, switching on a regular basis into different things.
00:39:09.445 --> 00:39:11.809
I mean, my life is fascinating.
00:39:11.809 --> 00:39:19.326
I am extremely blessed and very lucky to be someone who gets to support amazing people all day, every day.
00:39:19.326 --> 00:39:21.420
I mean, that's really what it comes down to right.
00:39:21.420 --> 00:39:25.711
Like I get to sit with someone and understand the inner workings of business.
00:39:25.780 --> 00:39:31.463
So, like, as I said before, you wouldn't call me to be the guy to build your business systems and processes and roadmap.
00:39:31.463 --> 00:39:38.489
However, I can do that, and the only reason I say I wouldn't be the guy is because I didn't formally learn it.
00:39:38.489 --> 00:39:51.338
I learned it because I was fortunate enough to work with executives and organizations and entrepreneurs that when they would be bitching and moaning about what their problem is, they would have to explain to me because I didn't understand the terminology.
00:39:51.338 --> 00:40:03.099
And so I've learned everything I know about business through just absorbing knowledge and information when I'm trying to support these people in what they need to do, because they'll tell me things I don't understand.
00:40:03.099 --> 00:40:06.166
Like a guy was complaining one time this was like one of my first executive clients.
00:40:06.467 --> 00:40:08.181
He's like I'm pissed my employees.
00:40:08.181 --> 00:40:10.284
They're not hitting the KPIs we set for them.
00:40:10.284 --> 00:40:12.429
They're messing up the data in the CRM.
00:40:12.429 --> 00:40:14.574
They don't know how to do client outreach.
00:40:14.574 --> 00:40:17.106
They're messing up these drip campaigns and the automations.
00:40:17.106 --> 00:40:18.351
I'm like, damn, that sounds crazy.
00:40:18.351 --> 00:40:20.976
But it's crazy not because of the fact that they're messing it up.
00:40:20.976 --> 00:40:22.922
It's crazy because I don't know what the hell you're talking about.
00:40:22.922 --> 00:40:38.199
You need to stop hitting the acronyms and making me I know that stuff, because I don't, and that's how I started learning what all that stuff meant and that ultimately, has continued to pour into my knowledge base to now help different stages of growth within companies.
00:40:38.199 --> 00:40:50.485
Because I could take a company now that maybe they're doing like about 5 million or so and I could basically help them roadmap up to 50 million and then I can help them implement those systems and the processes and the chain of commands.
00:40:50.485 --> 00:40:52.534
Again, that's not my main function.
00:40:52.534 --> 00:41:02.534
My thing is I will focus on optimizing to make sure that the company gets there, but I give them a very good baseline of how the people should be operating within those positions.
00:41:02.815 --> 00:41:15.333
Well, and taking your mentor and coaching and therapy and and the experience there and applying that and sort of in the aggregate in a company right, yes, exactly, and then you know to to that and sort of in the aggregate in a company, right?
00:41:15.333 --> 00:41:15.652
Yes, exactly.
00:41:15.652 --> 00:41:17.215
And then you know, to that point too, I've had a very again.
00:41:17.215 --> 00:41:20.583
I've had a very diverse array of working with clients.
00:41:20.583 --> 00:41:23.273
I've worked with clients in maybe 20 to 30 different industries.
00:41:23.273 --> 00:41:27.630
I've worked in multi-billion dollar finance firms, hedge funds, p's.
00:41:27.630 --> 00:41:38.222
I've worked in startups, from pre-seed or bootstrapping all the way to companies that were funded and raised 5 million, 10 million in their series A or series B even.
00:41:38.222 --> 00:41:41.751
And then I've worked with companies that have 400 employees.
00:41:41.751 --> 00:41:43.384
I've worked with companies that have five employees.
00:41:43.384 --> 00:41:46.802
I work with C-suite teams of 15 people down to two people.
00:41:46.802 --> 00:41:50.619
So this across different industries, different experiences.
00:41:50.880 --> 00:42:04.661
Like I part of part of one of the companies that I was helping build the roadmap with, I was able to do that because I'm working in the company that has 500 employees and has hit X revenue, and then, at that point, because I really understood all of it, cause I'm I'm like, hungry for this knowledge.
00:42:04.661 --> 00:42:07.081
Now I'm just like hey guys, here's what we're going to do.
00:42:07.081 --> 00:42:15.186
We're going to copy and paste X, y and Z, because this is how they run it, and obviously there's tweaks along the way, but you should always model what you're trying to build.
00:42:15.186 --> 00:42:32.998
So in psychology they call this modeling is see someone who has a result you're looking to get and then basically model after that, with the exception of making tweaks unique to you, your experiences, your industry or what it is that you need, because you won't always be able to copy and paste, but you can get a damn good framework.
00:42:32.998 --> 00:42:59.166
Looking at all of it, oh, that's great, and I imagine that experience inside of organizations and building obviously has sort of supportive expertise and knowledge when you're dealing with a single individual and vice versa, that you can sort of empathetically know what it is in an organization as an organism, uh, and then understanding when working with a business leader or an executive, uh, on a personal level.
00:42:59.166 --> 00:43:14.568
So that's so, that's so great from uh, from a business coaching and and their uh therapy perspective, like who typically is your sort of ideal persona or archetype that you enjoy working with or that should reach out to you if interested.
00:43:14.568 --> 00:43:23.853
I like to be an expert generalist and what I mean by that is I don't like niching into a specific industry or whatever the case.
00:43:23.853 --> 00:43:32.465
I like to say I want to work with and I really enjoy working with, and the people who get the best results in our work are intrinsically high performers working with and the people who get the best results in our work are intrinsically high performers.
00:43:32.826 --> 00:43:34.851
If you're somebody who's very used to taking action.
00:43:34.851 --> 00:43:38.719
Maybe you're somebody who's been in therapy for 20 years but feel like it hasn't really helped you.
00:43:38.719 --> 00:43:43.880
Maybe you're somebody who has a coach, but you feel like the coach isn't really helping you overcome your problems.
00:43:43.880 --> 00:43:47.887
They're giving you maybe some good structure action plans, but you can't follow through on those action plans.
00:43:47.887 --> 00:43:54.822
Or maybe you've had a little bit of both and you never really found the best effects from either of them and you want to try something new.
00:43:54.822 --> 00:44:00.784
And those honestly tend to be my clients, because most people you don't start working with me.
00:44:01.346 --> 00:44:14.282
I've come to find if you've never been interested or done any form of personal development because usually people don't have an understanding well enough of what I do They'll come in being like oh well, you're a therapist, so do you take insurance and can I pay you $10 an hour?
00:44:14.282 --> 00:44:22.608
Or oh, you're a coach and I just need help with my anxiety, so an anxiety coach is only $50 an hour, so I should probably just pay you that.
00:44:22.608 --> 00:44:24.172
Right, and it's like no.
00:44:24.172 --> 00:44:31.273
But then when you have somebody who's been like listen man, I've been in coaching therapy for like 20 years and I know that there's another level and I'm still missing it somehow.
00:44:31.273 --> 00:44:36.692
That's the person that wants to talk to me, because I'll come in and I'll say hey, you've been doing this for 20 years.
00:44:36.692 --> 00:44:51.626
In three months I guarantee we'll get you better results if you're somebody who takes action, which is why I say you need to get a high performer to work with me, because if you put in the work, I can give you that framework.
00:44:51.646 --> 00:45:02.581
I resonate with that so much because I think one of the things for me and I know therapy helps a lot of people but for me personally, of all the therapy that I ever went to, I always hit this threshold where I felt like we are talking so much and what I need is a like.
00:45:02.581 --> 00:45:16.771
I need an instruction manual that says if you go, do work on these four things and come back and tell me the progress you made and then we're going to tweak them and you're going to work on four more things and like and then I can see that sort of incremental and it never really worked like that.
00:45:16.771 --> 00:45:21.931
It was always like let's go back again or let's talk about what may be leading to this or whatever.
00:45:21.931 --> 00:45:48.021
But but I sort of hit that point where I was like I just need like concrete, you know actionable things and that sort of led me to you know people like you watch like a Dan Coe or an Ali Abdaal or the things that, like people are sort of working very specific on sort of personal hacking or personal habits or you know, and how you can sort of set these frameworks that you can tell within a day or a week whether or not you're sort of getting better at it.
00:45:48.021 --> 00:46:00.663
I started to gravitate more towards that, where it felt like I can tell that these habits and these things that I'm putting in place are quantifiable and because I've been doing this, like I'm sleeping better, I'm less anxiety, whatever.
00:46:00.663 --> 00:46:18.431
And then I'm like you know what this feels more tangible to me and so I can totally relate with that and I and I love what you did there, because I want to just explain to the viewers something too, because I've come to find that what's really important is understanding what level you're on in personal development.
00:46:18.916 --> 00:46:20.043
I believe that there's three tiers.
00:46:20.043 --> 00:46:24.826
The first tier is like go do as much as you can for free, don't really make a good investment.
00:46:24.826 --> 00:46:31.143
Go listen to podcasts, go read books, go get audiobooks, youtube videos, whatever it should cost you the barrier to entries.
00:46:31.143 --> 00:46:34.266
You need 20 bucks if you buy a book, but most things are free nowadays.
00:46:34.266 --> 00:46:40.333
Right, and why you would do that is because if you're starting to get into personal development, you maybe don't know exactly what you need.
00:46:40.333 --> 00:46:43.257
So buying a high ticket coaching package doesn't make any sense.
00:46:43.257 --> 00:46:54.264
You not only can't justify it, you don't know if you'll get a result from it.
00:46:54.264 --> 00:46:56.789
So there's usually a lot of reservation around signing up for these bigger tiers or if you can implement it as a person.
00:46:56.789 --> 00:46:58.673
Tier two Exactly Because you also don't know, and that just comes back.
00:46:58.673 --> 00:47:05.224
You don't know what you need specifically, so it's very hard for somebody to help you get there, I mean, unless you really want to do that groundwork right.
00:47:05.706 --> 00:47:07.711
Tier two is look for the communities.
00:47:07.711 --> 00:47:12.088
You're going to get more generalized info, but it's now more generalized, specific.
00:47:12.088 --> 00:47:24.572
So now it's like hey, I'm going to join Vin's community, it's probably a medium to still lower ticket barrier to entry, and you're going to get like I talk a lot about self-mastery, so you're in my community, I'm going to talk about self-mastery.
00:47:24.572 --> 00:47:27.443
The problem is it's not going to be specific to you.
00:47:27.443 --> 00:47:40.972
However, it's helpful because now it's a step in the right direction and you're now more sure about what you need, because now you're more ingrained to a specific focus and there's a benefit of like watching a YouTube video or reading a blog by yourself.
00:47:40.972 --> 00:47:46.427
It's so different being immersed, even if you're not sort of like doing and actioning everything.
00:47:46.427 --> 00:47:59.248
Being immersed in a specific way of thinking that everyone is sort of trying to work towards helps you shape your sort of daily view of how you go about things, which, more likely, you're going to sort of.
00:47:59.248 --> 00:48:06.291
You may not be seeing it, but there are incremental updates about how you view the world, which is super helpful as well.
00:48:06.291 --> 00:48:11.311
Yeah, exactly, and that's not just the communities, right.
00:48:11.391 --> 00:48:19.070
In that tier two, you're talking about events and seminars and workshops and all that other good stuff, the one-offs or the very consistent recurring model, right?
00:48:19.070 --> 00:48:21.467
And then I'd say tier three is the top tier.
00:48:21.467 --> 00:48:23.605
Tier three is when you really know what you need.
00:48:23.605 --> 00:48:28.967
You know what has worked, you know what hasn't worked, you know what your barriers are, you know what your barriers are, you know what your goals are Like.
00:48:28.967 --> 00:48:31.909
You are really dialed in and now you're like I just need the one-to-one Like.
00:48:32.050 --> 00:48:40.005
It's great being in Vin's community, where Vin is like hey everybody, today we're going to talk about the five aspects of mastery and how you can control everything in your life.
00:48:40.005 --> 00:48:50.050
But now I don't just need Vin to talk to everybody, I need Vin to look into my life and this is where you sign up for that really heavy one-to-one involvement of like Vin.
00:48:50.050 --> 00:48:53.315
I know what I'm struggling with, but how do I actually really apply it to me?
00:48:53.315 --> 00:48:56.188
Because now it's going to be like all right, kyle, I see where you're stuck.
00:48:56.188 --> 00:49:00.568
You're stuck on this specific thing because now I have a better insight into your life.
00:49:00.568 --> 00:49:04.605
I'm not just trying to keep it broad enough to speak to a hundred or a thousand people.
00:49:04.605 --> 00:49:16.021
Now I'm like in your life and I'm analyzing it personally to you and so I tell people, if you follow these tiers, like depending on where you are, you'll typically get something out of personal development.
00:49:16.101 --> 00:49:26.065
But then you have some people that don't really understand personal development and they don't know what they need, and they go straight for tier one, and then they're like the coach stuck, the program sucked, everything sucked, and I spent all this money and it was a waste.
00:49:26.065 --> 00:49:39.949
Or like tier two and they're like I hate this career and it's like save your money, save your time, save your energy, follow the tiers properly, look for what you need, know what you need no, totally, and I think knowing yourself definitely helps that.
00:49:39.949 --> 00:49:55.516
I know myself is one of those things that, like, I have a lot of really good aspirations for doing stuff, but I also will get sort of I'll get pulled in different directions, and so I am definitely the one that signs up for the personal trainer prepays for a year.
00:49:55.516 --> 00:50:41.023
That sort of says like it is the forcing measure to be like someone's calling me, being like you're going to be there tomorrow at 6am, right, and it's like you know I'm getting sort of pulled in that direction, whereas I may sign up for a bunch of apps no-transcript um, that's so great.
00:50:41.023 --> 00:50:42.186
What would I guess?
00:50:42.246 --> 00:50:53.702
As the last question, where do you see either specifically your, your coaching and and and therapy practice or sort of as you start to expand out in having other businesses?
00:50:53.702 --> 00:51:10.273
Where do you sort of see yourself in five to 10 years in that sort of like have you now expanded out into you just have a suite of businesses, or do you feel like you're sort of still kind of focusing on any one thing Is most likely always going to be my main thing.
00:51:10.273 --> 00:51:24.773
My biggest mission is to impact a billion lives positively and change the way that entrepreneurs, executives and organizations view mental health and mental performance, because I think that that's extremely needed, especially in today's world, because more and more people are in therapy and they're getting worse and worse results.
00:51:24.773 --> 00:51:31.253
More and more people are trying to hire coaches and they're getting worse and worse results because most coaches suck and most therapists, I think, they suck too.
00:51:31.253 --> 00:51:34.809
I'm very happy to be candid about that.
00:51:34.809 --> 00:51:36.365
Anybody who wants to add me, please do.
00:51:36.365 --> 00:51:52.869
With that being said, I really want to build something that maybe becomes my own coaching certification program where people can learn how to integrate hybrid aspects of therapy, mentoring, coaching, and I want to just keep being an entrepreneur.
00:51:53.010 --> 00:51:54.155
Entrepreneurship is fun to me.
00:51:54.155 --> 00:51:55.701
I love building businesses.
00:51:55.701 --> 00:52:02.686
I think it's a great time, especially as I've learned more and more through working with all of these founders and startups and execs and entrepreneurs.
00:52:02.686 --> 00:52:04.210
It's just more and more fun.
00:52:04.210 --> 00:52:15.306
It's bigger problems, it's bigger issues in life, it's more stress, it's more high pressure, but to me that's a fun life, like if you guys out there, uh, who are listening, or even you, kyle.
00:52:15.306 --> 00:52:22.461
If you've ever seen Seuss, one of the famous lines in there is life's like this and I like this, and that's kind of how I say yourself.
00:52:22.461 --> 00:52:23.284
I love it.
00:52:23.284 --> 00:52:25.186
Um cool.
00:52:25.186 --> 00:52:27.768
Well, that's a great place to end it.
00:52:27.768 --> 00:52:31.775
I appreciate you coming on and I look forward to continuing conversation.
00:52:31.775 --> 00:52:42.414
Amazing, all right, mikal, see you later.

Vin Infante
Licensed Psychotherapist, Mental Performance Coach, Keynote Speaker - On a Mission to impact 1 Billion Lives. Here to support your personal development Journey.