Entrepreneurs have a different set of challenges from the "W2s" in the world...

In fact, it's my belief that entrepreneurs have brains that are wired differently and changes how they perceive everything in life...

It always amazes me that people believe entrepreneurs have an easy life...

It's been said, "Entrepreneurs only have to work half-days...and they get to choose which 12 hours it is." 

The truth is, most entrepreneurs never leave the office...

When most people put in their 8 hours, shut their brain off, and go home to enjoy their downtime, the entrepreneurs is eating dinner while thinking about ways to get more clients, or to pay their employees, or to cut a check for this month's rent without bouncing it.

The bottom line, is entrepeneurs have different challenges, different problems, and different ways of looking at the world. Due to those differences, they require a different kind of coach...

The need an entrepreneur coach. I'll explain the difference in a second...

First, I want to have you read arguably the best description of the entrepreneural life that I have ever read...

If You're An Entrepreneur, This Will WOW You

I came across this quote by Miguel Quintana Pali and felt it encapsulates the entrepreneur experience of a lot of my clients...

"Being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. Your family will say you work a lot. They never see you. 

Your employees will say they feel you’re exploiting them without understanding that they’re sharing the benefits but not the risk. Your creditors will claim they feel like you’re getting rich at their expense. Your health will make complaints, because there will be days you don’t eat well, you don’t sleep long enough, you don’t exercise, nor let your mind rest, only being focused on moving your project forward.

 If things go well, They’ll envy you, they'll talk about you, they’ll say you were lucky, that you must have committed fraud, that it was given to you...

If things go wrong, they’ll say you’re a fool; they’ll talk about you; what you should’ve done even though they have never done it, or even would have considered trying it. They’ll call you, they’ll be outraged at you.

If there is profit, if there’s fame, you’ll have many, many, many best friends. All of them fake...

If there is a loss, no one will ask you, “Do you need help?” “Do you need a loan?” “Can I help you start over?” In general, family, customers, suppliers, employees will blame you and demand from you.

Therefore, being an entrepreneur is one of the most honorable and worthy tasks that exist. There is a lot at stake and almost no one will appreciate it. And yet you have faith. You have hope. You have a longing. You struggle for a dream, and you’re involved in improving life, not just yours but that everyone involved...

Others are worried about their table. As an entrepreneur, you’re worried about bringing food to several tables, plus yours.

So I congratulate you. I admire you. I applaud you. I support you. I accompany you. I hear you because only the person who carries the sack knows what it truely weighs. - Miguel Quintana Pali

Wow...Just wow. 

An entrepreneur coach understands the unique struggle of the entepreneur...so let's get into what an entrepreneur coach is and how one may help you...

The post What Is An Entrepreneur Coach? appeared first on Upgraded Life Coaching | Business Coaching | Entrepreneur Coaching.

About a year ago I met with a coach who asked me a single, profound question that I couldn’t answer.

This question was so stupidly simple that I was stumped by the fact that I was stumped!

She asked me…

“Ray, what do you want?”

I can’t explain it, but that question hit me like a surprise karate-kick in the face. Like you’re chatting with a good friend in a bar and for no reason, BAM! they Jean Claude Van Damm you right in the chops.

I’m not new to the personal development space, having spent thousands of hours studying personal development and training under some of the most well-known experts in the field.

…and it occurred to me in that moment that I had never deeply answered the question, “What do I REALLY want?”

Sure, I had set goals…lots of goals.

I had even accomplished goals…yes, lots of goals.

But somehow, simply listing out all of the “things” that I wanted just didn’t seem to suffice in that moment, I even felt a touch of shame about how small my desires were.

I knew, that she wasn’t asking me about money, or cars, or mansions…

She wanted to know, what I wanted to BE to this world. What I wanted to accomplish…how I wanted to be remembered…what made me feel inspired!

In one of the longest-lived areas of the world, Okinawa, the locals have a word for this profound desire…

They call it an “Ikigai”.

What Is An Ikigai?

Loosely translated, ikigai means, “Reason to get up”.

It speaks to something that “pulls” you out of your bed in the morning.

Contrast that to how most of us are “pushed” out of bed in the morning by the “need” to accomplish something.

The need to make money to feed our families.

The need to exercise in order to lose weight so that we don’t feel like a beached whale in a suit.

The need to do work we hate simply to survive and pay the bills.

At that moment when my coach asked me “what do you want” it occurred to me that the reason that I was stuck in the mud of life was because…

Nothing PULLED me out of bed in the morning.

Nothing Profound Happens In Your Life Until You Find AND Pursue Your Ikigai

That sounds like a lot of pressure…but it’s not.

In fact, it’s the opposite of pressure.

When you give yourself the gift of experiencing the freedom to pursue your profound purpose, it’s a release of pressure.

Here’s an epiphany for you…

You’re reading this because you feel stuck. True?

Epiphany: You feel stuck, not because you have no purpose, but because you won’t let yourself uncover and pursue your profound purpose.

Here’s the scary truth…Your purpose IS scary.

Something inspires you…

AND…

Something REAL prevents you from dedicating your life to the pursuit of that inspiration.

Perhaps you have a family that you need to feed and you must keep the job that you hate to put food in their mouths.

Perhaps that thing that inspires you is something that you feel that you can’t make money pursuing…like painting pictures or being a professional singer.

Perhaps, you’re like most people stuck in a rut whose real desire has been buried beneath a pile of responsabilities that seem to never end.

The point is, finding your bliss isn’t your problem. Having the personal FREEDOM to uncover and follow your bliss IS your problem.

The Solution…

Stop focusing on trying to find a purpose, or ikigai, and start focusing on building the freedom into your life that will allow your to pursue what you want when you want it.

Purpose cannot be discovered when it is. buried beneath bills, responsibilities, and burdens.

If you’re in a job that you hate, work to free yourself from the things that keep you in your job. Pay off your credit card debts, sell that Mercedes that you can’t afford, stop eating out every damn meal…

Prioritize FREEDOM.

Freedom for you and, if you have one, freedom for your family.

Once you are free from the burdens that pile on top of your freedom, you will have the peace of mind and open fields needed to uncover and chase your dreams AND to enjoy the process.

When FREEDOM becomes your focus, you’ll be amazed at how your inspired purpose appears in everything you do…even before you are actually FREE!

Purpose wants to be uncovered…in fact, for a happy life, it NEEDS to be uncovered.

The funny thing is that you only need the promise of freedom for that purpose to start poking its head from the shell.

Start building a freedom-focused life and nothing will stop you from uncovering and pursuing your inspired purpose.

The post Stop Searching For Purpose, Do This Instead… appeared first on Upgraded Life Coaching | Business Coaching | Entrepreneur Coaching.

I once wandered upon a book titled, "Caution: Soul Mate Ahead". The book went on to suggest that most people believe that a "soul-mate" is the fairytale lover that enters your life and ultimately brings with them the fairytale life.

In fact, the author continues to explain that although it's true that some soul-mates are delightful and bring great joy to your life, many times a soul-mate brings challenge and sometimes chaos and catastrophe. The hypothesis goes like this...

A soul-mate isn't so much about delivering a fairytale life, they're about teaching you an important life lesson or helping you to transform and transcend into a new, upgraded version of yourself.

Once the lesson is delivered and learned, that soul-mate leaves your life. "Leaving", from the spiritual sense, might come in the form of moving away, divorce, or even death.

It's an interesting hypothesis. Is it accurate? Honestly, I'm not sure, but I think it is a whole lot closer to reality than the prince or princess model of a "soul-mate". You know the one that we were taught as kids...find "the one" and then live an amazingly awesome life full of bunny rabbits, rainbows, and puppydogs.

Enter Your Business Soul-Mate...

This new definition of soul-mate fits nicely into our discussion on business and entrepreneurship. The title could be applied to entrepreneurs by rewriting it, "Caution: Self-Employment Ahead" or "Caution: Business Ahead". 

As an entrepreneur we have a tendency to be optimists and I've heard on multiple occasions from business owners that if they knew how much time, effort, blood, sweat and tears it was going to take to get the business profitable, they never would have started. 

It's true. When we start, we believe in the fairytale business, primarily because we read about successful entrepreneurs and almost never see the horrendous struggle and uncertainty that it took to get to the point of massive success. 

I once saw a TV show where a guy found out that he had a son and was watching this young child for the first time when the kid suddenly comes down with a fever. Having no experience with raising kids, the new found father makes up a story in his head that the kid is dying and so he goes on a quest to get the child to the hospital.

Having no car, he starts running frantically down the street towards the hospital carrying his child, who has nothing but a slight fever.

Needless to say, the kid had a cold and the fever was nothing to worry about. When the mother comes to the hospital, the new dad talks about how afraid he was for his son and how he felt that he had already failed as a father. The mother then said in true sitcom fashion...

"Look, parenthood is nothing but a series of events where you think you've killed your kid." 

If you're a parent, you know what I'm talking about. Having three kids myself, there have been numerous occasions when I thought my child was a goner whether it be a choking spell one of my kids had as an infant that was nothing more than reflux or another child somersaulting their way down a flight of stairs. A few childly tears and a fatherly heart attack later, the kid is just fine and playing like nothing happened. 

That's how most businesses are...a series of events where you think you've bankrupted yourself. 

After I earned my blackbelt in the martial art ninjutsu (yes, I am literally a ninja). We were training some defense against a knife attack and my instructor, a tough, ex-special forces guy, told the class...

"When you are defending against a knife attack, the goal is NOT to avoid getting cut...you're going to get cut, accepting that now will save you later. The real goal is to not die from a knife wound as you disarm the attacker." 

Business is a lot like that...in the early stages of business your goal is to survive and limit the damage until you are able to fail your way to success. When you're starting out, we all suck at business, but it's ok to suck as long as you don't get mortally wounded in the battle we call business. 

Successful Business Owners Are Big Failures 

When you speak with high achievers in the business world, you start to notice something peculiar. They fail a lot AND they quit a lot, but they fail and quit differently than the general population...

Business successes fail a lot but they fail forward into learning. In their failure they transform into something different, something stronger, something better prepared for future opportunities. 

If they sign a bad lease and ultimately waste thousands of dollars either paying too much per square foot or not demanding more in property build-out or free rent, they learn how to valuate a property and negotiate a better lease the next time. This then serves them when they move into a larger property later in their careers. 

If they get hit with a huge tax bill, they learn how to get better tax breaks  and set aside funds for the future and this serves them in better and bigger ways as they grow in success. 

If they get into a bad business partnership that falls apart and leads to bankruptcy, they don't go out and find the same partner in a different body...they learn, grow, and DO things differently the next time. 

Going back to our discussion on soul-mates. Sometimes a person will get into a bad and abusive relationship. Eventually they get out of that relationship and they find someone else just as bad, who abuses them as badly or worse. 

This is an example of a lesson delivered but not learned or embodied. It leads to what author and psychologist Wayne Dyer called, "The turd that wouldn't flush. It just circles the bowl but won't go down." 

That's what happens when you refuse to accept the lesson.

So, let's circle back to the title of the article and get to what you came here to learn...

On the surface, most entrepreneurs look like HUGE failures until they're not. 

When I married my wife I told her not to marry me unless she was willing and ready to push our kids in a shopping cart on the streets of Baltimore. That was my attempt to prepare her for the uncertainty of marrying an ambitious entrepreneur. 

Sure enough, shortly after we married I "discovered" that the person who managed my business had been hiding business debt from me and we were days away from defaulting on a $125,000 American Express bill...

Shortly thereafter,  an ex-girlfriend from almost a decade earlier decided to sue me for custody of a condo that I purchased as an investment property and rented to her for cost. She claimed that she lived in the condo since I had purchased it and therefore it was hers and she was entitled to the equity. Of course I told her she was crazy and after a year and a half of legal fees the courts agreed with me and dismissed the case.

Life is uncertain already, add entrepreneurship to the uncertainty already baked into regular, everyday life and you get a life on par with a figurative bomb-squad career. 

Prove Them Wrong!

So...your spouse doesn't believe in you. Your friends are telling you to get a job. Your father or mother wants you to get a nice, secure W2 with benefits...

It hurts. It hurts bad. In fact, one of the greatest forms of suffering I see among entrepreneurs is the feeling that people don't believe in them.

You're an entrepreneur though, and once you taste that life it's really difficult, if not impossible to become a W2 again. A butterfly can't turn back into a caterpillar just because you're flying outside the cover of the weeds and in a new kind of danger.

If we're being honest, as dangerous as it is to paint your wings beautiful colors that scream "hey look at me, here's I am, come and eat me" and fly outside the cover of the weeds, would you really want to go back to being a caterpillar in the dirt?

Nah, that's not for me. It's not for you. I've got nothing against being a caterpillar, after all, the caterpillar is probably pretty happy because it has never tasted the sky. I'm just no longer a caterpillar and I couldn't go back to the dirt even if I wanted to...

...and if I did, the world would suffer. The world needs what I have to give AND the world needs what YOU have to give.

So, here we are. Butterflies in a world of caterpillars who are screaming for us to come back to the dirt, beneath the weeds where it's safe. What do we do when no one else believes in us? 

We use it. 

When I was 12 years old, I told my mom that I wanted to start taking martial arts. She said to me, "Ray, you said you wanted to learn piano, you quit. Then it was guitar, you quit that too. You're going to quit this too." 

I knew that this was different because I was HIGHLY motivated because I had discovered girls, and I thought if I know how to fight like the karate movies of the 80's then girls would discover me too. 

So, I convinced her to give me one more chance, I told her if I don't see this through I'll NEVER ask you for anything again, and four years later I got my blackbelt. Side note...it turns out martial arts do NOT impress girls.

I digress...

The point is, when the motivation is big enough you stop failing and you start transforming. It's what Daymond John calls "The Power Of Broke" and what the ancient Spaniard, Cortes, called "Burning The Boats" before he took his small, inferior, now highly-motivated force of 600 and slaughtered the poor Aztecs. 

When I ask a coaching client to invest in coaching, I am happy when they have to stretch to afford it because I know they're all in, I know they're dedicated and ready to jump into coaching and start accomplishing their goals. 

Some time ago, my wife and I were considering purchasing a house and so she got in touch with the VP of a local bank and he asked what I did for work to which she replied, "He's a pharmacist."

He continued, "Oh! I have a friend who is pharmacist, he does very well. Where does your husband work?" She replied, "He's self-employed."

"Oh, that's interesting, how much does he make?" She replied, "$50,000 a year." He was shocked, and said, "Why does he under-employ himself? He could be making so much more money." 

As my wife told me the story, I could hear in her voice that she was embarrassed by the incident and embarrassed by me and my failures. 

She proceeded to go into a monologue about how I could get a job as a pharmacist in a retail pharmacy and provide more to our family in a W2 and I could do the "business thing" on the side. 

She felt that being a business owner was not living up to my potential. What I heard was, "Put this caterpillar suit on for most of the day, then when you get home you can take it off a fly for a bit."

She wasn't wrong though. I didn't blame her for wanting more security. I wasn't contributing as much as she was financially, I was stressed by the difficulties of running a business with little payout. I simply couldn't contribute more. I was complacent. We were not uncomfortable. We lived in a great house. The kids went to the best school. We were paying the bills. She had a good job...

If you remember anything from this article remember this...

The enemy of success is ambiguity. Ambiguity leads to lack of motivation to focus on important things. This leads to stagnation.

When you feel comfortable, you just won't have the motive to do the uncomfortable things that grow you and your business. Uncomfortable comes in many forms, it can be scary, painful or it can simply be boring. 

A lot of business owners that I have the pleasure of coaching are in a pridicament simply because they don't have the motivation to do the boring stuff that actually moves the business forward. 

As a life and business coach, the most important thing I do is force people out of their comfort zone. In fact, the best definition of a coach is "A coach gets you to do what you don't want to do so that you can be the person that you want to be." 

A lot of our work together is in getting crystal clear about what you want and then uncovering what steps you have been procrastinating on because they are simply too uncomfortable to start without support. 

Look, the best solution to doubting minds is to prove their worries and concerns wrong. You do that by taking action on what you don't want to do so that you can become the success that you want to become. 

It's a hard pill to swallow, that's why we burn the boats. If we don't burn the boats, and cut off all other options, we will never be all in. We'll retreat back to the comfort of our ordinary life at the first sign of discomfort. 

Sadly, when others don't believe in us, we start to doubt ourselves even more which can lead to a phenomenon called "Imposter Syndrome". This imposter syndrome then makes progress more difficult! 

Here's a brief video I made to help you bust through the plateau when you're suffering from self-doubt:

The post What To Do When No One Believes In You appeared first on Upgraded Life Coaching | Business Coaching | Entrepreneur Coaching.

The Shiny Object Syndrome Cure

One of the most common complaints among entrepreneurs is something called "Shiny Object Syndrome".

Shiny Object Syndrome is when you are constantly buying new stuff or learning something new under the flag of "growing your business". It can be a new piece of software, a new training program, or going to a new seminar, workshop, or summit...

Let me be clear about something...learning and growing is a good thing...in fact, it's a great thing. Tools and software are not inherently bad. The problem arises when these seemingly helpful steps are acting as an obstacle to your success rather than a solution.

Growing and learning can be a double-edge sword. Every time you buy something new, you are reaffirming the belief that you are somehow incomplete. You are affirming that you don't have what it takes right now to be successful. 

You think...

Once I learn that new tactic or strategy, then I'll be successful or once I get that new piece of software, then I'll be successful. The problem is sometimes it's the truth. Sometimes you don't have the tools or knowledge to accomplish a goal. That's not what we're talking about here...

Sometimes, we are using learning and tools as an excuse. In other words, success is always just one more training or software product away. 

I can tell you that I was THE BIGGEST shiny object addict out there...in fact, if it were a disease, the doctor would have declared me terminal and given me three weeks to live. 

I was buying programs, plugins, and software like it was the solution to all of my money woes, however, it wasn't the solution, in fact, it was the problem...not the solution. 

One day I was looking through my spreadsheet of hundreds of SAAS products, training programs, ebooks, and worksheets and I was stunned at the realization that I was more broke than when I first started accumulating these resources and tools.

It wasn't that these programs and products were bad, many were absolutely phenomenal. My problem, I determined, was that I was in a perpetual state of consumption and I was not creating and producing! 

Then, I determined the cure for my shiny object syndrome...

So what's the cure? 

The cure is to STOP BUYING SHIT! At least, without preconditions. 

My problem wasn't that I loved to learn and grow, my problem was I assumed that learning something was "doing something."

Learning is my drug. I like to say, if we awoke and found ourselves amidst a zombie apocalypse, and you needed an emergency appendectomy with no doctor in sight...take me to a Barnes & Nobels and you'll have a 50/50 chance of living.

The problem is it's easier to learn something new than it is to do something old. When you assume that learning something is doing something, you will always be learning and never be doing because there is no risk in learning. With doing there is risk.

Until we get your shiny-object malfunction fixed you are not permitted to buy a single piece of software, training program, or seminar. I'll tell you later when it is ok to start buying stuff again, but for now...you are not permitted to buy anything new.

You will say the following to yourself every single morning...

"I am the guru".

That is your new mantra. 

Every time that you are tempted to buy the latest, greatest marketing info-product or sign up for your favorite guru's latest training seminar, stop yourself, and say to yourself...

"I am the guru". 

STEP 1: STOP BUYING THINGS WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS

That's the cure. STOP BUYING OTHER PEOPLE'S STUFF until you are so super successful that you can afford to do so without racking up debt. 

Look, I know...

You are an entrepreneur and because you are an entrepreneur, you are likely super smart and super motivated, you LOVE to learn. 

I get it...so do I. 

Here's the problem though...

Read that again. It was my own epiphany, and now I give it to you. 

Learning something new will ALWAYS be easier than doing something OLD! 

You have everything you need, right now, to achieve AMAZING success. USE THAT "OLD" KNOWLEDGE to build NEW things that people will buy from you!

The gurus are often not buying training programs because they're too busy selling YOU stuff! 

Gurus DO, wannabes BUY, wannabes TRY. 

"I am the GURU."

Say it. 

"I AM THE GURU!"

That's the cure. That's your first step. 

Now, your second step...

STEP 2: START UNSUBSCRIBING

Start today to unsubscribe from all of the internet marketing lists that you have subscribed to...I know, you don't want to miss out on all of the deals and bonuses for the software or training program that is coming out tomorrow. 

Trust me. You ain't missing out on anything that won't either pop up again later or go totally obsolete in a month. Another, better program or software will come out next month. 

Every day, unsubscribe from 10 lists until you are subscribed to no more than a handful of your favorites. 

STEP 3: LEARN BASED ON IMMEDIATE NEED

The time to learn about putting on a webinar is when you need to make a webinar. All learning is experiential. You truly learn when you do something with knowledge. Knowledge has a half-life. The moment you learn something new, you start to forget it. That is, unless you start using that knowledge to do something and then you do it again and again. 

Think of all training programs as apprenticeships. Only learn what you need to DO something right now. If you are ready to build a website, start in on learning how to build a website and follow the steps as you learn them in the production of your website. 

You probably have a ton of wonderful programs that you already purchased that you can use right now to produce something for your customers. That could be a webinar, a membership site, an email campaign, and infoproduct, etc. 

From this point forward, should you decide to purchase a new program, the pre-condition of purchase needs to be  immediate utility!

What I love about coaching someone is that coaching is all about getting people to do what they should do and already can do to achieve what they have always wanted to achieve. 

I go into coaching a client with the assumption that they ALREADY have what they need to make massive progress. My job is to sit with you and work together to mine that gold and those diamonds that are often inches below the surface! 

It's so gratifying to see a client have a breakthrough without having to purchase a new program or training. When that happens enough, you start to believe in yourself more and more. 

That's awesome to see and it's even better to feel. 

So there you have it. Three steps for eradicating shiny-object syndrome...you're welcome!  

The post How To Overcome Shiny Object Syndrome? appeared first on Upgraded Life Coaching | Business Coaching | Entrepreneur Coaching.