Latest / Unstoppable Success Podcast / Grit, Growth, and Grown-Ups: Richard Walsh on Business and Life Lessons

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Grit, Growth, and Grown-Ups: Richard Walsh on Business and Life Lessons · Unstoppable Success Podcast

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to the Unstoppable Success Podcast where we visionary leaders who have mastered the art of growth, purpose, and powerful connections.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Each week we dive into more insights and real conversations and powerful strategies to fuel your growth, deepen your relationships, and ignite transformational momentum.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_02: And why?
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Because you were meant to be unstoppable.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: Now, let's leap into the podcast.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: And they will share their insights, their tips, their strategies, and how they have become the unstoppable successful person or business.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: And today I am a great person to introduce you to, and his name is Richard Walsh.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: And let me tell you a little bit about Richard.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: He is the CEO of Sharpens the Sphere Coaching.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's a 30-year season entrepreneur.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_02: He's a best-selling author of Escape the Owner Prison.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_02: We all can understand that.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_02: The contractor's new way to skill, regain control into the master traffic growth from a loving light.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: He's a speaker, he's a podcast host, he's a husband, he's a father of six children, a US Marine, a champion boxer, a black belt, and an internationally recognized steel sculptor.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_02: But more importantly, let me just tell you that Richard has been, he's seen the good, the bad, and the ugly.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_02: He has gone from having it all to losing it all and back.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_02: So you know he's got great insights to share.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: So Richard, welcome to Unstoppable Success.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Jacqueline.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've been looking forward to this interview.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's great to be here.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so it's so great because you know, Richard, I was actually on Richard's podcast.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: It was awesome.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: And then we were just like, uh, we gotta we gotta gotta have you on mine.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so Richard, as I shared uh just recently, obviously in that intro, you did.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: You had it all.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Then you didn't, and now you are just like beaming.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's been a journey.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a journey, Jack.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was cool.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the the first 20 years, amazing building, struggle, build, right?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I became this custom water feature builder, steel sculptor, and started putting all this stuff together.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: P people were paying me a ton of money, and I was doing what I wanted, living like my dreams, and things were really good.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Until, as the saying goes, they weren't.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: So 08-09 came, the big crash.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_00: No one needed what I built.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was definitely a luxury.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't write water features, sculptures.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: So took a pretty big hit pretty fast.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and not just for the economy.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: The economy was only your final indicator, as a lot of people may learn, depending how long you've been in business.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's like doing what you do.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like I'm an artist and I build these incredible water features and steel sculptures, and that's great.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: But what I wasn't good at was business because I thought making lots of money was business.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: And newsflash, it's not.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fun part of it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really well it's not gonna keep it.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's probably like a byproduct, right?
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's like, well, that's nice, but even it took 20 years to figure out that you gotta you do have to pay attention to the business part, you know, which I kind of did, didn't and hire someone and get an accountant and get this.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I ignored a lot of things.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And when the when the real pressure came, when things started to collapse, why couldn't I weather that?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: That was the whole thing.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I lost everything, November 5th, 2008.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: I lost a half a million dollars on that day.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and that was the beginning of the cliff.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: People canceling contracts, everyone was freaked out.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just just a phone's ringing.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: I I remember hanging up with the phone at the end of the day, Jack, when I looked at my office manager and I go, I think it's over.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: I don't this is not a good day.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it just kept going, right?
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: So by by early 09, I'm like, this, we're done.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and and for me, for the the the cooler part of the story was at that time I had six small children, four years and younger.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm like, I got this, I got that, I'm losing my house, I'm losing my business.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Tried to do some, I call them dumb things to keep the business afloat.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, much longer story than we're gonna get into here, but didn't work.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now I'm losing all that.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I woke up one day and I'm still trying to keep it going.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I started thinking about my kids.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And they're again all in a four.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And when I come home at night, they'd run and jump on me and do all that.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And one day my four-year-old's chasing my truck out the driveway crying because I'm leaving.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, but hey, I gotta go to work.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized I had this epiphany at that moment that if I continue down this path that businesses first, it was who I am.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: I am the best at what I do.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've been in every magazine and TV and all this stuff, right?
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Committees and everything.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually gonna destroy their futures because more is caught than taught with kids.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: So they're only gonna do what they see me do.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: I can tell them all the right things.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: We're only gonna do what I did, right?
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: So they might be good at a mere quote in business, which now we know is not really business, just making money.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: But everything else in their life, they're gonna have failed relationships, broken marriages, they're gonna have all kinds of bad things because of what they saw me do, what I prioritized.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I walked in the office that day and said, We're done.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: I said, I'm not doing this anymore.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, oh, and I went to my construction yard and met my guys who have been with me for 10 years.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had our last cup of coffee together.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: So, guys, we're finished.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do this anymore.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna do this.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: And to this day, I've I haven't built a water feature or done a sculpture.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's been like 16 years.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'll never do it.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_02: Now I can use one, just kidding.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'll give you a discount.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: But it it became because Jacqueline, it became my identity.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: When your business becomes who you are, you're gonna make bad decisions because of that identity.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna do dumb things because it's ego and pride and like it's mine.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's me.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Without me, there's no business.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody needs me, right?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's that whole self-centered, just crazy.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I just and I'm like, I'll never, and I know if I go back to it or went back to it, it would stir that in me again.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I've just nothing.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to start over.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: We had to relocate, we lost a home, right?
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: I had to go to change states, and like, okay, now what do I do?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: I was just like, I don't know.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I really like to train people, I like fitness, I'm a boxer, and blah, blah, blah all this stuff.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I'll do that.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to uh anytime fitness, you know, they're everywhere, right?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: And like I'll be a personal trainer because I already had done that in the past, and I'm like, started that doing really well, built this whole program.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Next thing you know, I'm trainer of the year.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm like, oh, that's cool, but I'm also an entrepreneur, so you know what that means.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta go open a gym.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I opened a bootcamp style training gym, really great, you know.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, did that, grew that, like, this is awesome.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: But my key to that, Jack was like, okay, so my goal was we homeschool our kids and everything else, right?
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so now they're you know they're they're growing, they're getting to those ages.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, if my wife needs me to be at home, I need to be there in 15 minutes.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that was like this is what I set as my goal.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Now, how do you build a business where I can have that kind of freedom?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I did.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, So I will hire trainers, I will train them, they'll run this stuff, I'll be here doing this, and it'll never have me, I'll never have to be there.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Other people had keys to the door.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I didn't have to open it up every day.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that went really well.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started the construction company.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like, oh, I'll do that, roofing siding windows, and I built that out, same principle.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: Get subcontractors.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have any employees.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have subcontractors and then do all the work, and I was able to just and scale that and do that.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's really great.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: And then people started asking me, Well, how'd you do all that?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: How'd you go from all that to nothing and back to all this?
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I I go, What are you doing?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I started helping them, and that's kind of where coaching was birthed because I was mentoring, which is cool.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: I love to help people, but I'm an entrepreneur and mentors don't get paid, coaches get paid.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna be a coach.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: So I wrote a best-selling book called Escape the Owner Prison, like you said.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: I built an academy around it, started bringing people in, started helping all these businesses and doing this stuff and turning them around and giving them the freedom that I created.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: And a few iterations later, here we are at Sharp and Spare Coaching, and I'm helping incredible doing incredible things for incredible businesses.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's a blast.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: So let me go back to a couple things.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_02: First of all, do you still have the construction and the gym and the other businesses?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: Nope, nope, nope.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I got too busy with coaching.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: So did you sell those?
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_02: Which is in itself like a way to hit to be have unstoppable success too.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: Like you built something, now you actually sold it to help somebody else have success with it.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like you started that, right?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's great.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think I I would I would think that a lot of people ask you not just how you did it, but but how did you how did you go from the low out of out of the low to the high?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because that's that's a lot of emotion, that's a lot of mindset, that's a lot of you know, for lack of a better word, pain, suffering, and fear.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, a lot of suffering.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so because I get to ask this a lot, and and really what it is, I'm I'm a I'm I'm very much an optimist.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, so if I take all my training and my how I grew up, what I suffered through that, and how I got to the next stage, then the Marine Corps, then I'm boxing, and then I'm but I'm doing this, and I'm building businesses, and then all this stuff.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: There's it's all kind of suffering.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: But so when everything collapsed, I'm like, well, I have six children and my wife, and I have to provide, I have to do something.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So what what would have been smarter?
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is the joy of hindsight, is like I owned everything I had, all my equipment, all my trucks, all my excavation, everything.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: I owned everything.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: It was all cash, I paid cash for everything.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: And would have been probably smarter to keep a couple things and like do some side gigs, like go excavate for and make that.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: I you know, looking back, I mean, my wife was kind of upset I didn't, but I'm like, no, I I I'm an all or nothing guy.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: I can't have one foot in, one foot out.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: I don't do anything in my life like that.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_00: So like I can't, I'm selling everything, you know, and got like 20 cents on the dollar.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it was a terrible the worst time in history to sell anything was then, okay, in 09.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: So so you know, good me.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: The guy doesn't know business right at that time is selling stuff for 20 cents on the dollar because I'm an idiot.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but I just like got rid of that.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that would have been probably a wiser thing to do, but I'm also a pressure guy, Jacqueline.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: I only perform under pressure.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like if it's easy, like I'll give you an example as a as a sculptor, someone will commission me for a piece and I'll say, Okay, when would you like it done?
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: And say, Oh, whenever.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_00: I go, Oh, yeah, that time frame doesn't work for me.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because you know, the last part of that word is never.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: So I I don't if you don't have a date, I'm never gonna get to it.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Because but if you tell me Tuesday, it'll be done.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what it is, I'll make sure it happens.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: I get creative under pressure.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I solve problems under pressure, I work really, really diligently.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I can't have that loose whenever time frame.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: So that was probably why I was really able to push through and make this happen because I had this pressure, like I gotta feed my kids.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: I got my wife, I have to get a home, you know, to rent a place and then do this.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And and but it was the the the problem, Jack was like, what was I going to do?
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I tried to be like, well, what'll make me happy?
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: Man, training people.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And uh now here's the funny thing about so I want to train people, and I'm I'm very much the warrior mindset.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: You see, spears in the background, okay.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm sharpening the spear.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, I gotta get trained people.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Man, we'll be out in the woods, I'll be dragging them through streams and coming trees and digging hold, man.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna be I'll be rocking their world, man.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Climbing, I'm like, we're gonna do that.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I never got to do that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I ended up at any time fitness, you know, 10 miles away, riding one bicycle, riding my bicycle 10 miles each direction, because we had one car, you know, at that point.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: My wife, my wife need that for the kids.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm getting them a bike, I'm riding, I'm hiking 10 miles one way and 10 miles back with 60-pound rucksack, you know.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, I'm just being fit to so yeah, the dream of dream that never happened.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I mean and anytime fitness, like you know, whatever.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but I made that work, then did my own thing, right?
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then my boot camp style, I created this whole new system, uh like a built system for fitness, and it was really cool and and all that.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it kind of got that was good, but you know, but you have to start somewhere.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: So, like I had to have the forward movement.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: You have to have that forward movement.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: So my ability was like, I'm you've ever read the book Grit by uh Angela Duckworth.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: So I have not read it, but I but I totally get the concept.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: So what she great researcher, really cool.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: She what she discovered after interviewing all these guys at West Point, West Point, and all these other places was it has nothing to do with physical prowess, it has nothing to do with like you're intelligent, it's it's grit, it's the ability to stay in no matter what.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: All the greats have that.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm like, wow, a friend of mine said you got to read this book.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, It's about you.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: I go, okay.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I read it, I go, Oh, that's a great book.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I'm I'm worth 300 pages, but you know, it's it's that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: But what what it was was yeah, there's a there's a test, and you get the grid scale.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Where do you rank on the and you take this test?
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, go figure, I was 97 on the grid scale, okay?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm to use a marine, a marine corps term, I'm too dumb to quit.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I'm just like I'll keep pushing through.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I have to get where I want to go, and it doesn't quitting isn't part of what I do.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: You know, failure is totally okay.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: Like I try to encourage people, right?
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Quitting is very different.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it's disgraceful.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just say okay, so I don't allow it.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, but so it it's interesting.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: So have you always been built with that uh, you know, opportunistic mindset?
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't, I don't I guess you're you can be born with it.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can train grit.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: You can I learned that, you know, you can do all that, but I think again, you know, a lot of us have some rough past, you know, like upbringing and stuff like that.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: So abuse and stuff and all that, and like for whatever reason, whatever, I'm blessed to turn that into power.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like overcome that, okay.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'll get through that, I'll get through the next thing and the next thing.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep going up the next level.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I noticed too, Jack, as I was doing things in school like sports, I was only drawn to individual sports.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was a cross-country runner.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I was the biggest cross-country runner.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like 190 pounds, six foot, six foot two, and I'm like running cross-country.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are you sure you go?
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can do it.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I was one of the top runners, you know, really good.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: But then I go in the Marine Corps, you know?
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's yeah, there's a team, but it's really individual, right?
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because you gotta gotta put your own weight, right?
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then I boxed.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's one-on-one.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: Two men enter, one man leaves.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's that's that.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then Taekwondo.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's me.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta train, I gotta work on do all this stuff.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So my business, I have to do it, right?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm doing all this stuff, and then this is where it becomes a problem.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: Individual sports are great, like cross-country running, every step is suffering.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's horrible.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you if you want to experience suffering, go run.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, like and run cross-hand, like just run all them.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's horrible.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and I did it for her.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: I I stopped running at like 50 years old, okay.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess I embraced suffering.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: But but it's like it's it's that kind of thing, like you get, and all of a sudden that do it all yourself in my business.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: That's what hurt me.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't accept help.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and again, we're going back a little bit.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't like a coach at every corner like there is today on the internet.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't have the internet, right?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm building all this stuff, and I had billionaire clients giving me advice.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: But do you think I took it?
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I did because what do they know?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: They don't build water features, they just own a couple of professional sports teams and manufacturing plants.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: But how could they possibly help me?
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so that's the level of stupid I operated at.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: Still succeeded in the kind of the the front-facing way, but I just was not going to accept that help.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: So it was hard.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: So two things.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, I wouldn't call, you know, let's be kind to yourself.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the level of stupidity or that you were.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Everybody has that point in their life where they're when they are when they're not ready or when they are ready to receive information.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: So at some point, you know.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, you weren't you weren't ready.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: You were not ready to take in that information and process it, or you took it in, but you didn't do anything with it.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: But then you reached a point where, or you know, you reached a point where, like, you know what?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: They were wise.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: And I think there's also something in there, too, where there's a level of um there there's humility, but there's also a level of confidence to understand that that comes out when you are ready to accept and hear from other people.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: There's insecurity or fear is a way of stopping us from hearing and taking on information, right?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so you reached, you know, it's it's a you reached a point where you were ready, and there was probably a point when you were like, oh, you know what?
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: Inner confidence came out in a different way, or confidence came out in a way that you were able to actually take in that information.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I it took losing everything.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that time, again, hindsight, the best thing that ever happened to me.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like would never change that.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like I needed to be at the bottom.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: You know, because I was always doing, doing, doing, and doing great things.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: As I tell people, I was only concerned about the next great thing I was gonna do.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: The next great thing I was gonna create and build, and that's all that mattered to me.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't thinking past that next project.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't thinking about business sustainability.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So when I lost everything, I looked back again, back to the hindsight thing.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_00: All those suggestions, my great clients who just they truly love me.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're like just really like me.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like they were right on every point.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: I went, okay, so now this is my main folks is gonna be asking for help.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: How do I do this?
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: Where do I go?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: What conference do I need to go to?
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: What what do I have to do to to to regain not not just knowledge, but like how do I apply what I want to do?
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_00: I said that 15-minute thing with gives them one.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: How do I do that?
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I don't know how to do that because I never did it.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: It was always business first.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: So now I really had to reach out.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I'm gonna try something that I've never done before because what yeah, because for 20 years, what I thought worked didn't work.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: So that's enough time to test something.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, 20 years of doing enough time to figure out like maybe this doesn't work, you know.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that that's what really helped me uh going forward.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, and I love I love I love the fact that you understand that having to ask up solicitors, I want you to understand something.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: This is the way to have unstoppable success, and that's something that Richard has been able to do, and that is ask for help.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: You cannot have unstoppable success with by yourself.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Now, it's so funny that you were talking about about sharing how you um like the individual sports.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_02: Because it's very true.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's you're it's like you only have to rely on you.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: But then you learn, like business is a business is a multi sport team.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_02: It is right, and you have to ask for help.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_02: You have to be able to collaborate, you know.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_02: In order to take those steps.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: You you have to build teams.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, team.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you can't do everything.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can't you unless you like because most owners, when I talk about the owner prison, they're their own jailers.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: They go in, they shut the door, they turn the key and lock it, then they toss the key on the floor out there, and they're trapped.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where they're at because they don't build the team.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: They think not everybody, but like I'm the best at what I do.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: My clients would not accept anything less.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, okay, we're gonna start with the first lie and that's it.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, because if I have someone who's 95% as good as I am, or 97% or whatever, I I guarantee you your customers will not know the difference.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's where you begin.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're really concerned, train them up the next the last five percent and get them as good as you.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta put your ego in the little box.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I do it for clients now, and this little wooden box.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: I said a nice beautiful hinged little box, and I said, and there's a brass plate on the front that's engraved, and it says my ego.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, So lock it in there and put that on the shelf and like look at that every now and then go, Yeah, I put that in there.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't come out.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: There's time for ego a little bit, not really, you could define it differently, but like you understand that ego can't play anything in your business.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: Your business is not about you.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's not about you.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_02: Your business is not about you.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: But that's a hard concept.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Man, you birthed this thing, you birthed this business.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: You built you struggled those first couple years, right?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: You did everything, and you have to.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's no secret sauce of not working hard when you start a business.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: But the problem, Jacqueline, is people they hard work hard the first two years, but next thing you know, 10 years has gone by and they've repeated the first two, five times.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: And they're on the hamster wheel.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: It might be a golden hamster wheel, but it's a hamster wheel.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they can never get off.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: They can never leave, they can never shut it off when they when they go home.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: They gotta be there.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: They it's a it's not just a it's not just a control thing, it's I don't know.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how to get out of this.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: What I create, I have momentum.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: If I jump out, the momentum stops.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the driver.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right, and that's not good.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: You need to get these people who are better at you at all these things.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: You're not great at accounting.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: No entrepreneur is.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, unless you're an actual accountant who started an accounting business, then you might be really good at it.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but like you can do you don't know marketing, you know, you don't know any of this stuff, but there are people who do get them on the team.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: And even if you are the marketer, even if you started a marketing business, guess what?
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: Hire people who but who are smarter than you who actually know something different because you know what?
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_02: At some point, and this is the other key thing, and I think this is something listeners, this is so important.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, as Richard is saying, you know, he had to understand how to build the team.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_02: In order for you to actually build the team, you have to be able to work on your business, not be in your business.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_02: In order for you to work on your business, you have to be running the other things.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: You're the, you know, you know, you're the grandmaster, right?
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: You're the grandmaster, you're the conductor who's putting all the pieces together.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_02: Or you're the coach of the team, right?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: Or, you know, there's so many different analogies, right?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: That we could talk about in like you know, but you become that grandmaster and you have to learn how to work on your business and have other people work in the business and have those people who are working in the business tell you what is be open to listening, what needs to what are the needs that the business needs to have to keep going, to get bigger and to build for you to work on the business.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's you know, it's kind of like this, like you were kind of, you know, right?
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like you got the team and you're up here, it's a routine and you're always growing and you're moving.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Like I like to think of it also in terms of like a baby, right?
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: Babies, babies, you know, obviously there's a team, you know, you got the parents, they're feeding the baby.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Babies start out, you know, whatever their size that they're starting out of, right?
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'll take my kids for a minute.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like my son came out, nine pounds, 12 ounces, long skinny things, right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: We as parents were feeding him.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: So what does baby babies do?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: They go fat and they go skinny, they go fat and because they're always evolving, right?
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: And they're growing.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to get a little fat, but you know, and then we're learning because we're the team, we're the work, we're, you know, what is he, what are the needs that he has, right?
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_02: So think of your, you know, it is the baby, your business is your baby, but it's gonna have that growth.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's gonna do that ebb and flow.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's you know what we teach is we want our owners to focus on the five percent of the business only they can do.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's your goal.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: To keep it super simple, it's like that's vision, that's growth strategies, right?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's reeling into big clients.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: Little appliance or salespeople can do it.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: You get the big ones, you know, because you've got everything, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to get them to focus on that.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that takes from their 60, 80 hours a week down to about 10 to 12 in the business, right?
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: But everybody else is doing things, they have their systems, they have processes.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: People in their team, here's the thing about any kind of team, okay, you have to know how to win.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: What does winning look like on the day, on the week, on the month, on a quarter, on the year?
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, if your team, all the people who work for you and with you, if they can come to work every day knowing how to win, and they win every day, do you think they're gonna ever stop coming to work?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: They get to come there and be a winner every single day.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: Try to do that in regular life.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, like you're giving up a place to like come and win and feel great about themselves if you build it right.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is a really good, it's it's a concept I had to learn later.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, but I really like we when you turn your eyes out off of you, which again, I was very much me, me, me.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, you know, I literally was like, Well, that's enough about me.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let's talk about me.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I was that guy, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like once you turn out facing to your teammate to build that, that's what you start to create.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: Man, it's an amazing place to work.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_00: And people love their everybody struggles with retention.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: Client or employee retention, right?
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a huge thing.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: I go into companies all the time and see, like, oh, you only have a 565% turnover rate.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's a little massive.
• 28:44
  unknown: Okay.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Why?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, here's why, right?
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we want that, but once you create that kind of stuff, you start to realize, wow, and these and they can excel and they start bringing ideas to you to make things more efficient because I tell them to.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: The door's open for that.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here we're gonna have these meetings every week, and you're gonna bring what you got.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: Tell me how and it might be as simple as minimizing some house clicks.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we got to click so many things just to get to this page?
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, fix that.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: You know, come up with an idea.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll give you a bonus.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_02: And the key thing is, I love that because it's also, you know, again, but you have the key thing is also listening.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_02: You have to at some point, you know, as the owner of a company or the person who's built it, again, it's not about you.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_02: You have to remember, you know, even the day one, your business is never about you.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_02: It's about the people that you're serving.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's about the people who you are trying to help.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_02: Then it, you know, then it becomes about the people that you're serving and the people on your team who are also people that you're serving, right?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, but those people that you are serving, you have to be ready to listen and open to listen from day one.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_02: About you have to hear suggestions, you have to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly, and be able to take it in, not make it personal, but be able to use that information for the greater good of the business that is not you.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: That's right, that's right.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_00: You basically, I do this.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: They bring in, they give me an idea, and I'm like, well, let's workshop that real quick.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Get on the whiteboard and say this, and they run it, and we run some scenarios, and what do you think?
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And you get the input, it might be the greatest idea ever.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: And it also might get to the point where, like, like, oh yeah, I didn't think of that.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess that won't work.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: Totally okay.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: Bring me more next time.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we want to stay on this.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: This is why we do this.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, everyone's got a good idea.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm air quoting, right?
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't mean it you once you pressure test it, it may not be a good idea.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've had more than most that don't work out.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I do things, I literally get them done.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: I go, This is spectacular.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: And then two days later, I go, No one's coming to this.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm taking them out of it.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what did I do?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to talk, but man, I was hit.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I this is the greatest, no one can taught me.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, literally, I still deal with that, but I catch it way sooner now.
• 31:09
  unknown: Yeah.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I I had a guest on my podcast, and one of the things that we talked about, and it's sort of it's the same thing, you have to be ready to listen.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_02: And as soon as you say to somebody, as soon as your business, or if your business is a business where somebody says, you know, I have I have an idea, or you or the people in your business say, Well, this is how we do it, and somebody says, Okay, but there might, you know, I think I have an idea to do it better.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_02: And you say, and you, if you say no, because this is how we do it, you're automatically closing the door, and it's and it's a c it creates a culture immediately of people who don't want to raise their hand.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so again, as a to have unstoppable success, key thing is you, you know, what Richard is really, you know, what you're saying is you have to be open to listening, you have to be open to suggestions, you have to let people raise their hand on the team and share.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you need a mindset of innovation.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Innovation you have to encourage that, like you gotta bring me that innovation is messy.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, and you tell everyone that.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's messy.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna bring ideas, you're gonna have a great idea, you're gonna bring it again.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_00: We'll workshop it, it may it may go right in the trash.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, after three iterations, we'll throw it in the trash.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't mean you don't continue to innovate.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because if we all got got it right the first time, like we'd be in constant change.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like we'd never we wouldn't actually get in any kind of routine at all.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to understand that, you know.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we really uh doing it just because we've always done it that way.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: You ever hear the one about the Easter ham?
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So this guy gets married, he's a newlywed, Easter's coming up.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Honey, I've got this unbelievable family recipe for the ham for Easter.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Oh, that'd be great.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we gotta do it that way, we gotta follow it to the letter, we're gonna do that.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it comes, they here comes Easter, he gets a ham out and he cuts the end off of it, right?
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, Oh, why do you cut the end off?
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're questioning the recipe?
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like, this is how we do it, right?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is part of the recipe.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_00: You do it that way.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: So he gets and she goes, Well, I just want to know why.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: He goes, Well, let me call my mother.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_00: So he calls his mother, he says, Mom, why do we cut the ham off?
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, It's the recipe.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: Why do we cut the ham off?
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_00: They go, but no, we just want to know why.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, call call your grandmother and ask her.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_00: So so he call her, goes, No, and and and he goes to his grandmother, grandmother, why do we cut the end off the ham?
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, Oh, you don't like the recipe or whatever?
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, No, we just want to know why.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_00: She goes, So it fits in the pan.
• 33:55
  unknown: Okay.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: So it's it's it's that kind of mentality.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, come on, man, like you, you're not even like we have bigger pans now, right?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: So it's the whole, it's it's it's that mindset.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'll tell you, I do a lot in manufacturing these places, and you see that, and it's and that's that's how things kind of work.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's the best way to put it, you know.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love it.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_02: I absolutely love that.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that is really great.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Richard, you have given us some great tips, food for thought, wonderful information.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: How can our listeners connect with you and get more of the greatness that you have?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sharpenthespearcoaching.com.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, sharpenthespearcoaching.com.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_02: Fantastic.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, listeners, you gotta do me a favor.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: A couple of them, actually.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: Number one, go and connect with Richard at sharpenthespear.com.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then you also need to do me the favor, hit subscribe if you haven't already.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: But really, what I need you to do is to share this episode with other business owners, your friends, your colleagues, and people that are in your circle and even out, because this is great information.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_02: We need and want everyone to have unstoppable success.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Jacqueline Schuminger, your host.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you all for listening, and thank you, Richard, for being a great guest.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for joining me on the Unstoppable Success Podcast, where we don't just talk about growth, we lean toward it.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: If something today led a fire within you, sparked a new idea, or gave you the extra push forward, please don't keep it to yourself.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: Share this episode in the podcast with a friend, colleague, or fellow.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: Be sure to subscribe, read and with you, most importantly, connect with me.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Leave it to your success.com.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_02: Keep leaving with intention, keeping your network with compass and most of all leaving because you are meant to be unstoppable.