Chasing Financial Freedom
Chasing Financial Freedom
Ep 293 | 3 Game-Changing Mental Shifts for Explosive Business Success
Discover how mastering your mindset can transform your business success with insights from our esteemed guest, Steve McCready. In this episode of Chasing Financial Freedom, we promise you’ll understand why having a well-defined roadmap and the right mental approach is crucial for entrepreneurs and small business owners. With his extensive background in psychotherapy and coaching, Steve breaks down the importance of clarity in goals and positions, which act as essential filters for efficient decision-making, saving energy and time. Listen as he addresses the dangers of extreme cynicism and optimism and shares strategies for maintaining self-awareness and continuous improvement amidst the business's challenges.
As we navigate the world of entrepreneurship, Steve helps us uncover the unique hurdles those transitioning from corporate careers face. He emphasizes the significance of implementing effective systems and delegating tasks to the right people. Our conversation highlights the mental shifts necessary to thrive in unpredictable business environments and the value of focusing on processes rather than immediate outcomes. Steve also demystifies the roles of psychologists and psychotherapists, providing a nuanced understanding of their contributions to business success.
Finally, we delve into personal productivity strategies that can revolutionize your work. Learn about effective filtering and time management systems to align with your natural energy peaks, optimizing your productivity and energy levels. Steve shares his experiences with time blocking and offers tips on constructively reframing past experiences to fuel future success. This episode is packed with actionable insights and strategies that will help you master the mental game of business and achieve your financial freedom. Don’t miss out on this enriching discussion with Steve McCready!
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Hey guys, Ryan DeMint from Chasing Financial Freedom podcast. Hope you guys are having a great day. Today on the podcast we have Steve McCready, and Steve is gonna help us master the mental game of business, and I know I can use it. The mind is a little slow today, guys. I do sound a little bad. I do have some sinuses going on, but we'll get through this. Sir, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on Ryan. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me on Ryan. It's good to be here. Always enjoy getting to talk with folks about the mind and how to get better at using it to your advantage instead of having it be a disadvantage.
Speaker 1:It is such a it's a huge tool that sits on top of our shoulders and I don't I know I don't use mine fully, so I'm excited to hear what you're going to talk about. So, before we get into that, can you give the listeners a little bit of your background?
Speaker 2:Sure, like I said, I'm a coach these days. My background is psychotherapy. I actually got licensed to open a therapy practice in 2006. I had worked in technology for a few years before that but did therapy for a number of years in private practice and over time I started to have opportunities to expand on that and to work with people in a little bit of a different context, more of a business coaching type context, and what I found is that I'd really enjoyed the psychotherapy work and found it very meaningful.
Speaker 2:But this was even more powerful and it felt like a better fit for me and really gave me the opportunity to help people who are doing cool things in the world right, try to use business as a force for good, try to do interesting stuff but struggled with getting in their own way because they lacked some of the psychological knowledge or skill or training to optimize themselves and their performance. And so as I did that more, I was like, oh, this is really the thing. And so over the last several years have pivoted over to a point where now, while I still do have a few therapy clients, I don't take new therapy clients. My business going forward at this point is exclusively in the area of coaching and helping people. Another way I put it is helping people get out of their own way or overcome the mental limitations that keep them from them and their business from being what it's capable of being.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to unpack there. So let's, I guess we get started from the beginning. Let's you're an entrepreneur, a small business owner, and you're struggling to run your business. How do you come in and help him or her or maybe it's a team to get out of their own?
Speaker 2:way, sure. So the first thing we've got to do is figure out how they're getting in their own way. So we've got to see where they are, and also we've got to know where they want to be. We've got to figure out the roadmap, and one of the first things that I find I'm often having to do is one to really get people clear about where they want to go, because we have an idea, but it's often a too vague or too fuzzy, and that leaves too many doors open, which starts to cause real problems when it comes to making choices. Right, most of us really don't understand how energy consuming it is to make a decision, and the more we get clarity about what we stand for and what we don't, what we're here to do, what we're not here to do, it acts as a really powerful filter that makes decision-making quicker and easier Huge energy savings. So that's one piece, is getting that dialed in.
Speaker 2:Another part, though we've got to figure out where they are, and most people have some idea of that, but they don't necessarily always have, again, a clear picture there, because often there are parts of that picture that are uncomfortable.
Speaker 2:Right, they don't necessarily like it, and they might feel bad about themselves or about where their business is, and that gets in the way of seeing that picture clearly, and it's if you aren't willing to acknowledge where you are, any directions that one tries to follow or give are going to be pretty problematic, right, it's like I'm in Sacramento, california. Are going to be pretty problematic, right, it's like I'm in Sacramento, california. And if, like I told somebody who is trying to give me directions to I don't know wherever let's just say Reno Nevada, that I was in, that I was actually in Los Angeles there'd be a problem, right, they would give me directions that wouldn't work. So we've got to really work on getting to a place where we can accept where we are, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's scary, even if maybe it triggers some negative feelings, and really understand that what it is. It becomes a treasure trove of data that we can use to structure how we move forward.
Speaker 1:So can we go back to the start of that? Is is yeah, they don't have a roadmap, and I struggle with that at first. That's why I had two failed businesses and a roadmap is critical to everything. But I heard you say it, but I want to come back around and ask is mindset? Because if they're doing great things for their business, that's awesome, but if their mindset in the roadmap is not in place, how do you succeed?
Speaker 2:It's going to be pretty tough, right, because there's going to be a lot of obstacles and bumps and things that show up, right. They're going to if something negative happens. The way that they internalize and interpret that is going to really impact how they use it, how they move forward from it. They might. This can work both ways, either. If somebody is overly cynical, but also if somebody is overly optimistic, right, somebody has a couple of wins and they think, oh, I've got this all dialed in. And then they take their foot off the gas or stop doing things. Then they're like why did this ride come to a stop? It's because you didn't keep doing the things that got the ride moving.
Speaker 1:And I would say in my first two endeavors and I would say in my first two endeavors mindset was strong, roadmap was a little cloudy, but the other thing was there was times where I got a little too big for my britches, just like what you said. I got, I let the foot off the gas and it came back to bite me. And now it's an inverse to where I don't just have one business, I've got three. It's an inverse to where I don't just have one business, I've got three. And the challenge is I've been working on for several years is to get out of the business and it's been a slow, arduous process but it's starting to work and starting to pay off. But the only thing I can say that's keeping me going, and I don't want to say keeping going, making sure that happens is being consistent and persistent.
Speaker 2:Consistency and persistence are both huge things and what that, what consistency is or looks, might be different at different points in the business.
Speaker 2:For sure this is the like getting another way. I often will use this analogy of spinning plates and running a business successfully is spinning a bunch of plates. The work of getting the plates spinning is very effortful, very challenging, but we still once we get them spinning. It doesn't take as much effort to keep them spinning, but we absolutely have to work to do that and to build systems and processes to do that. And that is a spot where I think especially entrepreneurs and business people starting businesses struggle because they're used to being reactive, they're used to chasing new things. They're used to that and they don't necessarily always or embrace systems and repetition right. It can be boring, it can be dull, which, I would argue, makes it a really good thing to work on outsourcing as soon as you can, because it's probably not the best use of your time or energy anyway but the keeping the plate spinning does take a lot of work, but then it's also fragile because they're going to fall.
Speaker 1:And I like how you talk about putting systems in place. I too love technology, but I fought the, the systems because I thought I was being replaced. But as soon as I found that I'm 50, and I would probably say in the last five years, I finally realized that time is my most valuable asset, not money, because money you can earn it, lose it, earn it again. Time is gone, man, you can't get it back. So why not focus everything around time and make yourself the most productive entrepreneur, small business owner, leader, whatever it is? And by doing that, putting systems in place, but also, once you get systems, can you find the right people that can run those systems?
Speaker 2:So one other note I want to add in there relates to time and systems. The thing with systems that's really powerful is they produce consistency, they produce predictability and reliability and, as a result, they are, from an energetic standpoint, much more efficient. And yes, we want to optimize our use of time, and part of how we do that is being mindful of our energetic expenditure right and really optimizing our energy utilization, and systems are a fabulous way to save energy, Amen.
Speaker 1:So can we go on that topic? Since I always like learning about systems, they intrigue me. So, as you're working with small businesses or entrepreneurs, I got asked the one question how much how should I say this nicely? How much pushback do you get when you try to implement systems with it?
Speaker 2:It depends, but it is. I don't know. What I find is there's less pushback on the idea of systems, but there's often a lot of difficulty and bumpiness in getting the systems established and then keeping the systems running, although that's often because I find, with a lot of folks I work with, that one of the biggest challenges for them is letting go, like finding a good qualified person or resource and handing the system off to them. Yeah, which is really the key. Like an entrepreneurial mindset, a business owner mindset is not the same as someone who's a process, a optimization oriented mindset. Those are very different and so it's.
Speaker 2:You shouldn't try and do it. You should find someone who can, and that's where the stuff gets bumpy, and so we have to have a little bit of experience of seeing what happens when you don't do it and gathering some data which helps to convince them. Experiential data is a very powerful teacher, and one of the things I've learned over the years of my business is that I can tell people things all day long, but really they need to experience it and they need to feel things. It's emotion that generally is what drives change, and when they start to really see and experience and feel those uncomfortable negative feelings repeatedly. That starts to provide some motivation for them.
Speaker 1:I'm going to bounce around a little bit, but it just brought up a couple of questions. Can we talk about the difference? Because I think I know, but I'm not sure the difference between a psychologist and psychotherapy?
Speaker 2:Sure, so psychologist is, you can really label it. So all of these terms can go a bunch of different places, right? Because you could have a psychologist who practices psychotherapy, but you could also have a psychologist who does clinical research or other sorts of things, and so a lot of it relates to training and education, like for me specifically, like my psychotherapy license is licensed as a marriage and family therapist and my my graduate training is in what's called counseling psychology, which is obviously more focused towards that, but you have a psychologist who could be focused on clinical research or any number of areas. So psychologist is a broad umbrella term. Psychotherapist is more specific because there are also psychiatrists who do psychotherapy, although a lot of them these days primarily are concerned around medication management, prescribing psychotropic meds and such so how does that all play into and I'm going down a rabbit hole with working with your clients as entrepreneurs and small business owners, because we are.
Speaker 1:I know we're a rare breed- Right, and so it's.
Speaker 2:The thing is really comes down to is it's about using the tools and using them really in a different place. Like in psychotherapy, we're often working with people who are struggling with some mental health disorder of some kind, whereas with entrepreneurs. For them, it's more about trying to optimize, trying to improve, trying to go from good to great. But the same tools apply. Right, the same tools apply. It's just using them in a slightly different context. But what I've seen is there's no lack of books, trainings, courses, consultants out there to give you tactics, what to do, even why to do it, but what often is missing is navigating the space in your head. That is often the real obstacle. Right, most of this stuff is not rocket science, but if you have these mental obstacles, they can keep you from doing any number of things. And so again, same tools, different context.
Speaker 1:Okay, I got to go, even more, I got to go.
Speaker 2:I love this.
Speaker 1:I love what you're doing and I think it's great, but when I say, but is we? I know all the struggles I had as an entrepreneur at first and it's. I got a million questions to ask you because there was just so many things I didn't know. I came from a 25 year career in corporate America which taught me to be fat and full because I got a paycheck every two weeks, I got a bonus every year, I got stock options. It didn't teach me how to go out and fish every single day and be able to bring my food in, Otherwise I starved. Hence the failures. So to that analogy how many entrepreneurs do you see that have come from a long, maybe just a career outside of being an entrepreneur and then hop into the space? And then how do you help them differently than somebody that's been an entrepreneur most of their life?
Speaker 2:I think it's. You're exactly right about that difference between having not necessarily having to go hunting and chasing. That is a thing that, depending on your job history, if you've worked for someone, unless it was in sales you might not have had to do one. Unless it was in sales you might not have had to do. And so understanding that and understanding and finding a way to get comfortable with the dynamics of that is a really important place, and it's an obstacle for some people that, if for some folks it's exactly why they probably shouldn't start their own business, because, as any of us know who've done it, that's not for the faint of heart. No, because sometimes you can be, you can spend a lot of time hunting and you're not catching a whole lot, and then suddenly you catch a whole bunch of stuff and you're like, hey, this is great and it's it's just, it's not consistent. There's ups and downs that are not always predictable, and so getting people to be in a position where they are more able to live with uncertainty, to focus more on process than outcome, because a good process will produce the outcome over time and to get people to operate on a bigger time scale, right, rather than focusing on this week, it's this month or this quarter or even this. These are all mental shifts that folks have to make. Some people can, some people don't.
Speaker 2:If someone comes to me and says I'm thinking of starting a business, we're going to have a lot of conversations around this to see if they're really up for it, and I would be exploring around times in their life where they've had uncertainty and how they've dealt with it and what have you. Because that is. It's a challenge Like I know it. I've been. I've been self-employed for whatever 18 years and it's still uncomfortable. I still don't love that part of the business, all the other good things that come with it. For me it ends up being a good deal overall. So I'm willing to do that and live with that, and I've learned tools to be okay with it.
Speaker 1:I love that you talk to him about uncertainty, because there's a ton in being an entrepreneur, small business owner, and I was running the business that I my first business as a side hustle.
Speaker 1:So I probably worked 60 plus hours in my corporate job my day job, and then I'd work another 30 or 40 hours a week on my side hustle and I thought, as it's rocking and rolling, doing it, blah, blah, blah, and I thought I had systematized it well enough, clearly not to make that happen. But it's false hope and if I had somebody like you but I also look at it too as experience I wouldn't have learned the things that I went through to become a better person or whatever the case is. It's life experience. Did it suck in the financial burden? Yes, but there's a lot of great wins that came out of it and, like you said, being an entrepreneur is not meant for everybody and you being able to have that conversation with somebody is great because it really it cuts them off at the past because I, rather than not, go through that financial turmoil that I did. But the other thing is, what about if someone comes to you and they want to buy an existing business? That's its own right.
Speaker 2:That's its own whole set of challenges, right? Because the good news in theory, you've got something that's built, that's established, that might have systems and processes that are in place, so that's cool. But you've got to have really good analysis skills and really good assessment skills to be able to actually audit that and see number one and number two just because it's there, unless it's already got again all the infrastructure. As far as the people in the team's doing, you're just buying it and you're going to be completely uninvolved. You're still going to have to do things and even then you're still going to have to keep an eye on things. You're still going to have to be watching it. So it is potentially less effortful, depending on the thing. But all of these things one really has to step back enough to really assess the deal. Is this a good deal and I don't mean that just in the context of a business deal but is what I'm going to have to do to learn to face, to stand up to right Sacrifice? Are all those things I'm willing to do for what I anticipate? My best guess I will get in return, which could be revenue, could be freedom, could be flexibility, could be status, could be any number of different things, right, and so it comes down to what's a good deal for a lot of the folks that I work with, the freedom piece. The freedom, the autonomy, the independence is huge, like I've increasingly been finding entrepreneurs who are of similar age to us because I'm 54.
Speaker 2:And these are folks who may or may not have had their own business at some point along the way, but what they often have is 20, 25 years of experience in a field.
Speaker 2:They're experts, they know things, they actually understand a lot of the nuts and bolts of business.
Speaker 2:What they don't want is they don't want to deal with all the bureaucracy, all the headaches, nuts and bolts of business. What they don't want is they don't want to deal with all the bureaucracy, all the headaches, all the other stuff that goes with that, and so they're like they found a thing they can do individually and they want to do independently. That's, by design, right. And they are aware like they come to me often because they want someone who can act as almost a silent partner, who can be there, to be a second set of eyes, who can challenge them, who can provide accountability, but who doesn't have an ownership stake in the business. Right, they can do whatever they want. Still, they still have the autonomy, but they've at least got someone else who's going to be like poking at things and looking at it for them. But the freedom, I think is a big thing I know that was true for me just the being able to be like I be like I can work when I want.
Speaker 1:I can work how I want, I can work with who I want, and I don't have someone telling me what to do when I'm like I don't think these people actually know what I should be doing. I agree 100% on that. This is going to wrap back around to the beginning is if I'm an entrepreneur or a small business owner, what would be three nuggets? And I'm thinking about starting a business or buying an existing business, what would be the three nuggets that you would want to share with them to help them make that decision?
Speaker 2:you decide to go forward, and that is not just you studying it yourself. That's getting other people who are able to provide a perspective other than yours to offer an assessment. So I think that's one thing that I would say to make a real honest assessment with yourself about what you are able to commit time, energy resource, etc. And three, from an execution standpoint, working on learning how to optimize your energy use is one of the most powerful and underutilized strategies that I see. People are always focused on time, they're focused on money, and that makes sense, but at the end of the day, if I'm not in a good energetic place, it might take me four hours to do something that if I'm in a good energetic place and I've structured my system properly to be energy efficient, it might take me an hour. You add those things up and it becomes the difference between miserable 80 hour weeks that you're not getting anywhere and working a more reasonable schedule and really making an impact.
Speaker 1:I love that because that is like the epitome of being an entrepreneur is you've got to find that focus, but also how to use that time effectively, and we could keep talking about this forever.
Speaker 2:We should keep on going this forever, so we should keep on going. Uh, I want to say one more thing about the energy piece actually is why we're there. Because in 2024, in our world today, this has never been more challenging because we live in an interruption driven world. Yes, we've got our phones, can interrupt us eight ways to sunday, same with our computers, all these systems, everything is trying to get our attention, our eyeballs, to pull and take our attention and thus our energy. And this is why learning to have good, clear, strong boundaries, which can be anything from just how you structure what devices can talk to you and whether where they are in your environment, to also just getting super clear about things like saying I don't do this and really, as much as possible, making those black and white. So I'll give you an example it is way easier to be someone who says I don't eat meat than it is someone who says I try and limit my meat consumption. Because when we say that that's a fuzzy boundary and every time I say, let's see how much meat have I had this week it was my birthday, so maybe this week, see how fuzzy that is and all of that starts to get into having to make decisions, which is very draining to the brain from an energetic standpoint and when we just I don't do that.
Speaker 2:It's simple. It is a very clear filter. Filters are really powerful, as anyone who does online shopping and knows the frustration of a shitty filter system. Sorry for that, but a poor filtering system makes the shopping experience really annoying and hard to find what you want. A really good, strong filtering system makes it very easy. You need your own filter. It needs to be really well dialed in and it needs to be maintained ruthlessly if you want to make sure your energy goes where it matters to you, not everyone else.
Speaker 1:What are your thoughts? Just a couple more questions, we'll wrap this up. But what are your thoughts about time blocking?
Speaker 2:I think time blocking is a tool that can be very powerful, but I think so. I think with all of these tools here's what I'm going to say One size doesn't fit all right. I think there's very few tools that work for everyone, and I think it comes down to this I do think the greater clarity we have about what we're doing when the ease again, we're removing decisions from the process or we're pre-decided. So I like that part, and I think we have to have enough understanding of how our energetic cycles work, which varies from person to person.
Speaker 2:Some people can do two hours at a time and really dial it in. Other people it might be 60 minutes, and so you need to think about that. You also need to think about what time of day you do, what sort of work, because of where you are energetically, and what sort of work does better at different times. It's because it's one thing that's like my energy might be high or low, but my focus might also be different, right? So there's a whole, there's like multiple variables that we have to understand a map of and then plan our days around that, and I think that, when used with time blocking as a context, can become really powerful if we can get out of the way of our day having to look a certain way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then those, like you said, those distractions every which way to Sunday, about about being distracted by the phone, but all this other stuff. And I've started time blocking about a year ago. It helps, I only I typically do it in the morning because that is when I am fresh and I feel like I'm ready to go. I tried it in the evening, did not work. I was worn out and just it didn't work. So I focus on the items that are the most of the things that I can make the biggest impact on in the shortest amount of time. Started with 30 minutes, I got up to an hour. I'm at four hours right now. On days like this, unfortunately, mondays, mondays and Thursdays record podcasts. I have 45 minutes in there for the podcast that I have to move around, but I try to keep it in a manner that doesn't shift as much. But I've realized that once I do, once I get into that zone and I just stay focused, I lose all touch with the outside world.
Speaker 2:It makes life so much simpler am, whether it's every tuesday from six to nine am, it doesn't. Our brain gets in that oh, it's this day or it's this time, and that's a way it gets trained into basically operating as like a habit of sorts and a habit is another way of describing a system. Actually right, they're the same and that's a way that gets efficient. We get there, we're there and it also is. It helps our brain be like that's this time, I'm in writing time right now, and it makes it easier to mean like these other things are like not now. So it's really powerful.
Speaker 2:The consistency piece is key, as is again honoring when right, my partner. She's an artist and she's not a morning person. I am, she's not. I'm up like 5am, she's not even close. She's like don't talk to me, but she, her energy cycle is more later in the day and so she'll sometimes be up at 10, 11 midnight painting away, because that's when that fits for her. Me I'm like you, like after about after dinner. I'm like I'm not good for much of anything usually, except like hanging out and playing games or whatever, but I'm not going to do any work productively, no way, yep.
Speaker 1:I totally agree. One last question We'll wrap this up is are you working with new clients?
Speaker 2:I do have a little bit of space for new clients right now, and I was always happy to have a conversation with someone who's interested or wondering to learn about what's up with them, what they're looking for. Cause, whether or not I can help, I always like I know how it feels to be like feeling lost, to wanting support, and so, even if I can't help somebody, I want to try and at least point them in the right direction, get them access to some resources or point them to some people. So I'm always at least open to a conversation. Also great to connect with new folks. But, yes, right now I do have a little space for new clients.
Speaker 1:Where's the best place for them to reach out to you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:So what I would suggest is they can go to my website and in the process of transitioning I've got some new branding stuff coming online. But what they can actually do is I'm going to have something set up for them. They can either go straight to my website, which is impactunboundco, or, if they're interested in this, they can go to impactunboundco forward slash chasing, and what I'm going to do is set up a thing where they can get a free short email course called friction fix. That's basically a four part course that get them some strategies to help them really see where they're getting stuck and some tools and things to try to help them get unstuck. There's also a link there where they can set up a consultation call if they want to just connect with me, or they can always email me. Steve at impactunboundco is great.
Speaker 1:I will put those links in the show notes so they can reach out. I'm going to sign up and get the free emails because I want to see what friction I can get better at, so I'm going to take advantage of that, sir. Thank you very much for coming on. Love what you're doing. I honestly it's great that you're out there using what you were trained in to help entrepreneurs and small business owners, man, that you're out there using what you're trained in to help entrepreneurs and small business owners, man. If you were there when I was back I said it earlier totally different story. But again, I wouldn't give up those experiences either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and that's. There is a lot of value right To be mined from experience, which is often also a thing that I end up doing is helping people. Let's look at your experiences in a way that makes them constructive, whether they're good or bad. It's all data. The key is how do we use it. So if I find a time machine, I'll go back and find you back there and we'll see what we can do, but until then, thank you, sir, for coming on. Hey, thanks for having me on.
