Brad Johnson: Hey, Brad Johnson here and welcome back to another episode of Do Business, Do Life. And this one is going to be a different episode today. In fact, we’re going to get pretty deep. So, if you don’t want to get deep, this isn’t the episode for you but I’m going to go into something, honestly, I’ve never shared publicly before. And as I was thinking about how I can serve this audience when it comes to doing business and doing life, I wanted to share a story with you and something I’ve come to believe, and that’s that every entrepreneur should be in therapy. And that might be a bold statement but really, it comes from the idea that in the last 20 years or so I’ve coached some of the most successful financial advisors in the country who are entrepreneurs at heart, independent, building their own business. And I myself jumped into that as well.
Just over three and a half years ago as I left a very incredible corporate job that I’d really grown up in the trenches coaching some of the most successful advisors in the country to jump in with my co-founder, Shawn Sparks, and start Triad Partners. And, boy, did I not know what I was in for as an entrepreneur and the stress that that would create. And so, today my goal is really on this podcast to serve you all. And from experience, I found the best way to do that is have real conversations, conversations that aren’t surface-level. Sometimes you’ve got to be a little bit vulnerable, go deep. And so, that’s what we’re going to do today. So, I hope this serves you. And I’m just going to share a little bit of my journey with therapy and how I came to that, and what it’s done for me. And I hope at the end of the day that it serves you all as well because that’s the end goal of this show.
So, I’m going to start with a story, really personal story. And some pieces of this if you’ve caught the episodes with Michael Hyatt on them, which we’ve had a couple now. He was really one of my early mentors, is still a mentor and coach to me today. I know many of you out there have probably benefited from his blog, from some of his books. And early this was probably when I was about 33, 34. I read a book called The Richest Man in Babylon, and one of the things it talked about is one of the best investments you can do is invest in yourself. And I was really fortunate. I grew up in a business that had a lot of thought leadership, brought a lot of high-caliber speakers in, but I hadn’t actually paid the money to invest in myself. And I found that when you invest in yourself, you take it a lot more seriously. It’s an investment. Now, you’ve got skin in the game.
And so, as I was seeking out what that first investment would be, this was right as Michael Hyatt drops his first book platform, and that was on building your own platform online. At the time, he was one of the probably most well-known bloggers in the world, had millions of subscribers. This was 15 years ago today before the internet had evolved to the level that it is today. But I went to one of his conferences, and therein began a friendship, a mentorship about a year later. He formed a group called the Inner Circle. This would have been 2015. So, I was 35 years old and this was my first true time in a mastermind. So, this was 13, 14 entrepreneurs all around the country. We flew in quarterly into Nashville and then Franklin where Michael’s based out of. And it was a mastermind format where everybody had some time on the hot seat to talk about their business. Actually, my prior podcast, The Elite Advisor Blueprint, was born out of some of those conversations.
So, to say it served me and it was a good investment is a massive understatement. In fact, I wouldn’t be on this. I probably wouldn’t have started Triad and formed this show had it not been for that first step. So, another lesson is make sure you’re investing in yourself out there. But it was one of those first sessions that I sat down and I think one thing that you have to remember in life is sometimes your perception, your lens you look through is flawed. And I remember walking into that room the first day and these were successful entrepreneurs from all around the country. One of my friends in that group ran a multinational, a multi-international I should say, software company, 600-plus employees, millions of dollars of revenue. Another one owned a chain of car dealerships all around the country.
And so, these were really successful guys. It was a big ticket item. It was a big investment at the time. I think it was a $15,000 or $20,000 investment for a year of coaching. And I remember walking into that room and feeling some imposter syndrome. And I think that’s a really dangerous thing because I sat down and it was almost like in the hot seat. I’ve always found there’s the problems that you’re analyzing. And it was like here was the problem at the surface level that I could still show up as a successful guy but then underlying there, there was like real problems. And those take vulnerability and those take honestly the ability to open up and sometimes get a little uncomfortable. And I remember I had this image of Michael at the time like, “Man, this guy has zero flaws.” He’s a New York Times bestseller.
Prior to leaving Thomas Nelson, he was the CEO. Thomas Nelson was one of the top book publishers, not only in the U.S. but in the world. Published Dave Ramsey’s books, John Maxwell’s books so really was heavy in the thought leadership space as well. And this was the guy that was running the publicly traded company, had one of the largest blogs in the world, had everything dialed in. His calendar was like clockwork to the minute, had an EA that handled everything for him. And I remember just feeling a little bit like, “Man, I don’t want to mess this up. I don’t want to not present myself well where I don’t belong in this group.” And then Michael told the story and I told him just last week when I was out in Franklin, Triad has a private coaching group with him, so we had about 15 of our Triad members there, and I shared a small piece of this story.
I said, “The greatest gift you gave me was the story you told me that day, Michael, in that coaching.” And that is not downplaying on the business lessons I’ve learned from him over the years, the episode I did with Brooke, who’s the EA on my team. A lot of those learnings came directly from that group. So, a ton of business learnings, a ton of learnings on how to level up on the life side as well. But Michael shared a story about how when he was not a CEO, he would show up at the office at about 4 a.m. He wanted to be the first guy out of the office. He was just working incessantly, probably 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and also as a young, married guy with a family. I don’t know how many of his five daughters he’d had but he came home and he had turned a whole division around inside of Thomas Nelson, one that was the lowest performing.
He had actually flipped it and then he had become one of the highest-performing divisions. He came home with the massive bonus check. And he was super excited. He’d crushed it in business, right? And his wife, Gail, sat him down as he comes parading through the front door with this massive bonus check. She said, “I think we need to talk,” and it wasn’t the excited tone. And she proceeded to sit him down and say, “Hey, I feel like a single mom. I know you’re killing it. I’m excited for you but this wasn’t what I signed up for,” essentially, and said, “Hey, I think we need therapy. I think we need to go talk to someone.” And Michael shared like his young, naive self. He said, “Yeah, maybe you need to go to therapy. I’m good.”
And I think as guys, that’s a common response. And a lot of that, there’s this masculine side where, “Hey, us guys have it all figured out.” And that’s weakness. And so, Michael resisted but he continued to share this story. Eventually, he did go to therapy, shared that he broke down crying for the first therapy session. His therapist asked him, “What is it that you think makes you so driven?” And he’d never actually explored what that meant for him. And fast forward, the gift that Michael gave me that day was he made therapy okay. He said the therapist told him it’s the healthy people that come see me that don’t bottle things up, that don’t have toxic relationships, that actually work through their stuff. And I will say really growing up as a small-town Kansas farm kid, many of you know my story, but I grew up in…
So, check it out. Google it if you want, Minneapolis, Kansas. Maybe we throw that in the show notes a town of 2,000 people. Grew up on a farm, 100 plus head of cattle, was driving a combine, I think, when I was probably 12 years old, cutting wheat, the family harvest. And my dad was one of four sons. And I remember he told me one time growing up, “Well, you’ve got it easy. I had to milk cattle two times a day.” And so, that was, number one, I love my dad. And if he happens to be listening to this and my mom, it was a great upbringing. I learned the value of hard work, of being your word. But there wasn’t a lot of coddling going on would be the best way to put it.
And so, I think a lot of that upbringing was kind of like if you get knocked down, get up, rub some dirt on it, and move on. And there wasn’t a lot of, “Hey, let’s talk about your feelings.” And so, I think I naturally resisted it. And I saw it as a sign of weakness. Therapy was weak. That was for people that were broken or had mental problems. And what I want to share with you today is the truth. And that’s back to every entrepreneur should be in therapy. I told you my story. Well, I had been the professor in the classroom as I was working as a coach in my prior organization but I’d never actually been an entrepreneur. I’d kind of read about what it’s like to be an entrepreneur.
I kind of poured myself in and I was the guy that if one of my clients, one of my advisors had that problem, and then I realized how they fix it, I was like, “Oh, well, if it worked for that advisor, it can work for this advisor.” So, I kind of share lessons and business principles. But what I didn’t have was empathy for what it actually meant to be an entrepreneur because I never lived it. And so, here’s the second part of that story. And this is the one I’ve never shared publicly. So, November 1st of 2020 was really the official formation of Triad. And what a, you know, for those of you that have started your own business, there’s this kind of honeymoon phase where you’re excited, you’re doing things on your own terms, and you’re finally able to build the business the way you wanted to build it.
And sometimes that honeymoon wears off pretty quickly. Once you jump into the trenches and all of a sudden the internet’s not working, the printer’s jammed. You’ve got a team member calling you on the way to the office about a personnel issue that they can’t get along with another team member. And really quickly, you figure out as an entrepreneur, you get pulled in a lot of different directions. And some days it’s that entrepreneurial rollercoaster of the highest highs you landed the client, the lowest lows, all of the other chaos you’re faced with sometimes on a daily basis. And I was about three months into this journey and my wife Sarah and I, one of our favorite places in the world, many of you know I love wine, is Napa and California wine country. And we actually had the opportunity to go out there.
And this is about three months into the Triad journey. And my wife sat me down. And this was, you know, there was some wine involved. A few glasses of wine sometimes will be some truth serum. And we were out there and she sat me down. I remember exactly where we were at. We’re out at Dakota Shy’s property, one of the most beautiful properties in the world. If any of you get a chance to visit, please do. Todd is incredible and what he does there. And we were in a little kind of like it’s almost like a pool house and beautiful evening. And I could tell something was off. And Sarah sat me down and we kind of left the party and she sat me down and she said, “I think we might need to separate.” And I remember that hit me like a ton of bricks.
Because my Enneagram 7ness is everything will always be okay, you know, “Hey, we’ll get through this. It’s just a tough season.” And the truth was the stress of being an entrepreneur and the strain and the weight of that when you have a team of five trying to compete with teams of hundreds in our space that’s very competitive can be often very cutthroat. The stress and the strain I was putting in at the office, I would come home and I wasn’t showing up as the husband that I needed to be. I wasn’t showing up as the dad I needed to be. And as you go into therapy, you start to realize how your brain functions and fight or flight is a real thing. And it’s not just the physical side of it, it’s the emotional side often.
And so, I would come home worn out and just there wasn’t any more of me left to give. Well, guess what? That wasn’t the deal my wife signed up for. I wasn’t present at dinner. I was there physically. I wasn’t there mentally. My mind was racing. And that started to create conflict. And oftentimes I would escape. I’ve talked to some of my other entrepreneur friends and you get home and now there’s a Netflix binge or, honestly, I love sports cards. And that was a time period where I’d rather go spend hours on YouTube researching sports cards as an investment than actually lean in. And it was a tough season. It was an early season. I know many of you probably listening in, you can think of a time in your business when there wasn’t enough of you to go around, and you weren’t actually winning on either side of the business or the life equation.
You weren’t winning at the office and you weren’t winning at home. And it’s this really, really tough season and spot to be in because it’s almost like you feel helpless and sometimes, quite honestly, why did I do this in the first place? And thank God, Michael had given me that gift because of Sarah sat me down out there in Napa. She said, “I think we might need to separate and we probably need to go sit down and talk with someone.” And in that moment, I’m grateful for that gift that Michael gave me because had I not had a guy that I really admired tell me that it’s okay to go to therapy and how much it had served him and his wife, Gail, who he’s still happily married to, and his five daughters, and how he started to learn some of the drivers of how he showed up when he was in his best version of himself and not in the best version of himself, had I not had that gift, I probably would have been the typical guy out there that’s like, “No, that’s for people that have problems. I’m good.”
And so, therein began Sarah and I’s journey in therapy. So, that was right around Valentine’s Day 2021. So, I went to my first therapy session as a 40-year-old and it probably saved our marriage. Hindsight’s 2020. I don’t know, had I not gone, but it was definitely trending in a very bad direction because we weren’t able to communicate in a healthy way. And then if any of you that are in marriage have ever been there, where I call it the doom loop, where it’s the finger pointing at the other person, “Well, I’m acting this way because you’re acting this way.” Or the famous entrepreneurial lie we tell ourselves, “Well, don’t you know I’m working so hard at the office for this family? All of this I’m doing for you. Why can’t you appreciate that?”
And there were a lot of those stories I was telling myself in my head. And in reality, there was just not a healthy communication stream that could be created because there was a lot of hurt on both sides. There was a lot of blame on both sides. And so, we started a weekly therapy session with our therapist, Megan, who’s amazing, and we slowly started to unpack. And the beautiful thing about therapy is you have a third party, an unbiased third party that is able to call time out. And there were many of those early therapy sessions where we needed a lot of timeouts and we needed a lot of leaning in, and it wasn’t what’s wrong with the other person? It’s, why do I think that way? Why am I reacting and behaving that way?
And I can say happily as I record this Friday, June 14, 2024, we are now over three years. Let me think about this, 2021, ‘22, ‘23, ‘24 over three years into couples therapy where we haven’t really missed a week, weekly 50-minute session. The beautiful thing about and I was just on the back end to COVID and so many therapists were telehealth and it was done via Zoom, essentially, or their version of Zoom. And so, we’ve actually never met our therapist in person. We were laughing with her the other day. But this is very easy now. I actually do my session from the office most times, and it’s the 50-minute block, and Sarah and I log on.
But I want to share three lessons that I took from being in therapy with my wife, Sarah, for over three years now and why I believe every entrepreneur should be in therapy. Every married couple, now, I was just talking with the friend the other day. He’s 26. His name’s Chris. So, Chris, if you’re listening, he asked me for marriage advice, and I said, “Well, the first piece of advice I would give you is start couples therapy at the beginning versus when the problems occur because when you’re married to another human and you live in the same home, it is only a matter of time before conflict arises.” And so, I’d say I’d just start on it when you’re in a really good spot so it’s not unpacking all the baggage that can occur if you don’t address it.
And so, here’s the three lessons and I’m going to dive into these a bit. Being a husband or wife is hard. Being a parent is hard. Being an entrepreneur is hard. But being both is exponentially harder. And if our mission on this show is to help you level up in business and life, that’s not a separation. That’s not a balance. That’s an integration. And so, that’s something that you need the proper systems in place to be able to handle as a human, as an emotional being. So, that’s lesson number one. And I’ll dive into that a bit. Lesson number two is people don’t follow, your team does not follow volatile leadership. And if you aren’t able to recognize your own emotions and how you’re showing up when you’re in an unhealthy place with the stressors of running a business or having a family, then you will never be an effective leader. And you need systems in place to help you become that and grow into that.
And three, therapy needs a rebrand. It has a negative context, and that’s one of the reasons many people resist it. So, let’s go into lesson one being this is really a Do Business, Do Life lesson. Entrepreneurship is hard. Michael made a joke at this coaching session we just got out of in Franklin last week, and it was just such a powerful group that we got together. Everybody was playing all out, and he said there’s two people, two groups of people that tend to have emotional baggage or trauma, I think was what Michael called it, prisoners and entrepreneurs. And he was sharing a story that someone that had worked in a prison system. And he said every prisoner in that system has some form of trauma that typically has led to the decisions they’ve made that why they ended up in jail.
And if you look at entrepreneurs, many of us have traumas, things that we’re fighting. You know, “I’m going to prove dad wrong. I’m going to prove that old boss wrong, whatever, and I’m going to go do this myself.” And so, it’s a blessing and a curse really. It’s what creates the drive but it’s also if it’s trauma that’s not dealt with, it’s what creates the negative behaviors. And if you look at entrepreneurs in general, that leads to a lot of self-medication, which is alcohol, drugs, infidelity, retreating and vegging out and saying, “I’m going to just binge Netflix while my family is out doing family dinner because I can’t take anymore.” There’s all kinds of self-medication. And I’ve seen many unhealthy versions of this.
In finance, I’ve seen some of the most successful advisors externally whether it’s the biggest producers running the largest businesses where they’re broken inside. And they’ve got unhealthy habits because they’re medicating the other side. You know, whether it’s not taking care of their health, alcoholism, drugs, infidelity. I’ve seen it all, unfortunately. And so, I think as entrepreneurs, if you have the most successful business in the world and now your kids don’t know who you are or your spouse, you’re more roommates than lovers, that’s not success to me. And so, the mission here at Triad on this podcast is to help those that listen in or find this valuable to level up in business and life.
And so, as it comes to that, you just need the systems in place to do that. And that’s one of my realizations with therapy. I will get out of a therapy session with Sarah and I’m like, “Wow. This applies to my team too.” You know, this person showed up the other day. They were emotional. They reacted in a way they know they shouldn’t have, whether it’s a burner email that somebody fires off or an unhealthy interaction in a tense meeting. And by the way, I was guilty of a lot of that. Sean and I, we kind of joked the other day like wow. And we always loved each other like brothers but there were many days as business partners, we sure didn’t like each other in those early days of Triad. And it was the stressors of a business, the stressors of cash flow, and not having enough people to deliver on the promises. And so, I just think that’s a really important lesson. Like, if you know that going in that already being an entrepreneur is hard, I think what’s the statistic, 90% plus of businesses fail within the first handful of years.
So, the odds are stacked against you already as an entrepreneur. And then try to show up as a great husband, wife, parent, that’s just a really tough dance to do. And so, having those systems in place and I found therapy has just allowed me to realize, “Wow. This was how I was showing up. This was a blind spot.” And oftentimes that was in my marriage. That was as a parent, but also as a leader to the team. And so, I think that that’s a really important thing to think about as you’re on this journey of entrepreneurship.
So, let’s get to lesson two. People don’t follow volatile leaders. Think about… I’ll challenge you if you’re listening into this. Think about the best leader. Whether it’s on the life side, maybe you had a father or mother that just was that incredible leader in the home or maybe it was in a business. Maybe it was one of your favorite jobs. A common theme I’ve found with leaders is there’s trust there. And the quickest way to break trust is to be a volatile, emotional leader. And one of the best ways to earn trust as a leader, as Michael has coached me, leaders are calm and confident. And you think about, I think there’s this scene out of, it’s a Mel Gibson movie. We are Soldiers, I think. Is it? And maybe we find this clip, Charlie, if you’re grabbing it for the show notes.
But there’s a scene in there. I think it’s the Vietnam War, and they’re in a battle, a dogfight. And Mel Gibson is standing up. He’s the general leading the troops. He is literally in the middle of this all-out war, and he’s talking calm, “Hey, flank this side. Go over here.” And he is instilling calmness and confidence in the heat of war. And the best leaders, that’s how they’re wired. And the only way you can wire yourself that way is to actually think about your own thinking and then your behavior, and how you need to show up so you can lead others. And if you think about here’s another Mel Gibson movie for you, Braveheart, the famous scene where his face is painted up and he’s rallying the troops to take on this army that’s so much bigger than them, but he’s inspiring them with the sense of calm, “We have this.” Not a, “Uh-oh, we’re all going to die,” right?
And I think as a leader, sometimes we don’t realize this, the toxic leadership of emotions. And there’s a really simple analogy I’m going to give you right now. Take your fists if you’re listening in. If you’re watching on video, just watch this. If you’re listening, take your fist, make a fist, and tuck your thumb inside of the fist instead on the outside. And I remember one of the early lessons that Megan shared with Sarah and I is the way the human brain works. This is a physical thing. This is years of evolution thing, and it’s actually our brain is designed to protect us, to help us survive. And sometimes that’s our own worst enemy. And if you think of the thinking piece of the human brain that is the frontal lobe, the frontal cortex, that’s where we think logically and thinking through what is the best decision to make here, and that’s evolved. If you look at the reptilian brain, that’s where a lot of the fight or flight.
And so, a simple example she said is whether it’s a physical altercation, someone comes up and pulls a gun on you, you’re either going to punch them or you’re going to run away. That is going to a survival mechanism in our brains that literally is why humans still exist on the planet today because that was hardwired into our brains. Your heart rate elevates. Well, the same thing happens in communication. If you get into a verbal conflict, it’s the exact same response in humans. And basically, what happens if you take your fist with your thumb tucked inside and open it up, your brain stops using the logical part. It starts going to the fight or flight part, which is this thumb tucked inside. That’s really the brain stem, the survival brain. The reptilian brain is taking over, which just means like fight, verbal conflict, defend, or run away.
And the more that I learned about this, you start to look at the behaviors when you have conflict. It’s either I’m going to stand my ground and defend and I’m going to win this fight, I’m going to prove you wrong or I’m done with this. And you go maybe if in the office you leave the conference room, maybe at home, you go walk into another room and that’s the flight side. The other side is you might freeze or you might retreat, and that might be I’m zombie’d out. I’m watching Netflix for the next hour because I need to take my mind off of this. These are all protection features on the human brain. And when you start to understand that as a leader, you start to realize that it’s actually a non-negotiable. You’re not allowed to be emotional if you want to be a leader and you want to build any team, any business of substance. Because guess what? It takes humans to do that.
As we say a lot inside a Triad, it’s not a big enough dream if it doesn’t require a team. And if you’re going to have a team of people that trust your leadership, you cannot roll into meetings, into your office in an emotional state if you want people to be there for long. And as you start to understand that, sometimes you just might say, “Hey, I need to take a break, take a walk around the block here,” or, “Maybe today’s a day where I just need to go home and chill out, and I’m going to come back a better version of myself tomorrow.” But this simple example, oftentimes Megan in those early conversations would say, “Oh, we just flipped our lid, basically. We’re going to fight or flight.” And when you start to realize that, you’re like, “Wow. I didn’t even realize I was showing up that way.”
There’s breathing techniques. There’s all kinds of ways to combat this survival mechanism. And that’s just one of the things, as a leader, that I often see sabotage. Many advisors out there, they don’t even realize it’s happening. And then they wonder why I have to replace my team every six months because of high turnover. They wonder why people don’t follow them or trust them. They wonder it. I’ve seen this a lot. Like, there’s a lot of marriages that don’t last in our business because a lot of those behaviors are showing up at home when you’re carrying the stress of the office home with you. And so, as I think through that, being calm and confident takes work and I think there’s another one other lesson as a leader here. And I’m going to go back to the story I shared about Michael.
Vulnerability is a strength. Now, obviously, I’m not going to come on here and air all my dirtiest laundry and go too deep into the sessions. That’s between Sarah and I, and our therapist, Megan. But I’m going to guess right now if you’re out there listening in, a lot of what happened with Michael and me when I was really in his mastermind, what happened when I saw Michael as a New York Times bestseller and the guy that didn’t have a chink in his armor, I actually wasn’t able to fully connect with him because I didn’t feel like I could truly be my authentic self. I felt almost like it’s an Instagram post where you only show the good stuff, right? I felt like I could only show the side that he would be proud of. But the moment he let me in and said, “Hey, I’ve struggled with this. I’ve been in therapy. Things have not always been rosy in my marriage either, but I was willing to put in the work,” I immediately felt a deeper sense of connection with Michael.
Like, “Wow, this guy’s willing to share this? I can be real with him, too.” And I’m going to guess some of you listening in are probably feeling that right now. Like, “Wow, Brad’s keeping it real here. We’re having real conversations. We’re being authentic.” And I think that’s another leadership lesson is I’ve had this same conversation. In fact, I had this conversation this week with one of our team members that’s just in a tough spot. And I said like, “Here’s my journey. It’s not always easy in life. And guess what? If you’ve dealt with this, congratulations. You’re normal because every human that I’ve ever talked to that’s actually vulnerable enough to share their real self has dealt with it too, dealt with anxiety, dealt with issues with their relationship, dealt with their own trauma.
And this is a thing in leadership. Being vulnerable lets people in. And as a leader, I’ve found that when you share some of this, you’re actually able to better serve your team because they’re going to go through these seasons too. Life throws you curveballs. The only constant is change. And if things are rosy today, guess what? You never know what tomorrow brings. And so, you’ve got to have this toolset to be able to deal with it. And so, not only can you serve yourself but you can serve your team when you start to let them in. In fact, just out at the mastermind we did in Franklin with Michael, we realized as we went around the table we do something called a one-conversation rule. Every single couple, I believe, at that table was in couples therapy, which is awesome.
Because guess what? As Michael said, it’s the healthy people that talk through this stuff and work on themselves and work on communicating better as a couple. And it’s crazy because we opened the conversation, I shared a small piece of this story. I now normalized it and made the room a safe place to talk about real stuff. And I think you’ll find that as well with your team if you decide to share your journey or your struggles with them. And obviously, they still need to be able to be led so that people also don’t follow a train wreck. So, be careful. Pick selectively what you share. But I found that to be something that many of our team has expressed to me as like, “Brad, I like that you keep it real. I like that you’re authentic. And in fact, you’ve helped me be able to talk about this and feel safe because you were cool talking about it.” So, that’s lesson two.
Lesson three, therapy needs a rebrand. When you say the word ‘therapy,’ I’m guessing many of you, unless you’re already in therapy, have felt the same thing. It’s like, “Oh, well, that’s for the broken people. That’s for the mentally ill people.” And I have a stance, I believe therapy is just a different form of coaching. And if you think about the words ‘therapy’ and the words ‘coaching,’ there’s such a different context between those two words. You have probably a business coach if you’re successful out there and you’re listening in. You probably have a golf coach, a golf swing coach if you’re a golfer. There’s all forms of coaching. Think about working out. If you’ve got a trainer, that’s just another form of a coach.
Those of you that played sports, my guess is if you had any success at any level of success, it went back to the coach that shared those lessons that gave you the breakthroughs that gave you the programs to follow. That’s therapy. And one of the things Michael shared, which was kind of cool, if you’re in an unhealthy place, so say my hand here is normal level baseline. If you’re below the line, if you’re in an unhealthy place, it takes therapy to get back to baseline and then coaching to excel. But if I just kind of set that idea aside and just say, “Hey, therapy is coaching, whether it’s coaching for yourself, your own mindset,” I remember Jason Khalipa shared on a podcast episode. He said anybody that…
You know, I think about Tom Brady. He talks about therapy. Any athlete that competes at the highest level think about the NFL, think about the CrossFit games. They’re all freak athletes. They’re all trained incredibly hard but it’s the mindset that gets the GOATs to the next level. And I remember Jason Khalifa sharing how he won the CrossFit games and then he finished almost dead last. He was dead last at the next CrossFit games because he didn’t have the mindset to perform at the highest level, and he was getting in his own way. And he said once he actually had a mindset coach, which is just a form of therapy, that was what allowed him to have the breakthrough. Tom Brady, when he was at Michigan, he was placing the blame on his coaches and the therapist said, “You got to work on you.” That turned out okay for Tom.
So, if I look at therapy and coaching and I just cross out the word ‘therapy’ and replace it with ‘coaching,’ think about the most important relationships in your life. If you’re married, hopefully, that’s your spouse. If you’re a parent, hopefully, your kids are in that group. Think about your team at the office. You can’t serve your clients unless you serve your team. How do you multiply the impact you make? You multiply the team and the leadership on your team, and then they serve your clients at a higher level. So, if you look at that group of people, why would you not get coaching on how to better interact with them and serve them and show up as your best self and not let your own psychology and physical, the way our brains work to protect us get in the way of that? And to me, as you start to unpack this, it’s really silly why you wouldn’t.
And I told Megan this the other day, our therapist, Sarah and I were laughing. So, we went from a place of very unhealthy where we could barely get through a 50-minute session without kind of going at each other because we were in the doom loop of finger-pointing and just it gets worse because you don’t know how to get out of it to laughing with Megan in our last session. And I said, “Wow, Megan. I wish knowing now I don’t know that I’ll ever stop couples therapy because for me, how awesome is it? I get a 50-minute session every week with my wife to level up and be a better husband to her and show up as a better dad to our children.” And also, to process like conflict from that week.
Guess what? We still have conflicts on a weekly basis but now we have tools to get out of that, tools to talk through it. And it is just an absolute game changer. And why would I ever stop that? Why would I stop coaching? Why would I stop growing? Why would I stop leveling up as a human? No, thanks. And so, that’s why I think therapy needs a rebrand. It’s really been incredible for Sarah and me. We have a better marriage today. I wish we would have started at year one of marriage as opposed to a decade plus later. And it’s just really a beautiful thing when you embrace it and you get rid of the stigma that keeps many people from actually showing up in the first place. And so, that’s lesson number three.
And so, as we wrap here because I don’t want to make this a marathon episode, but I hope this has served you all. I wanted to get real today. I told you we’re going to go deep. I think I probably followed through on that but I want to offer some help. And so, if you’re listening in right now and you’re struggling and I promise somebody listening in to this is because guess what? You’re normal. You’re a human. You have emotions. You have the stress of business. You have the stress of life. If you need somebody to talk to, confidentially, I don’t know how many people out there might take me up on this. So, I guess here’s my one disclaimer. If 100 people opt in, I will not have the bandwidth for that. But I’m going to make the offer if you need somebody to talk to.
They’ll put something in the intro here. I don’t know what it’ll be, and we’ll make that easy to hop on a 15-minute call and just have a real heart-to-heart because, trust me, some of the most successful advisors in the country that you would never think we’ve had some of those intimate conversations before or two and we all struggle during certain seasons of business and life. So, if that’s you, you need a 15-minute chat. I’m going to consider this my good deed and I’m going to dedicate some time to it. Secondarily, if you need to talk to a professional, in fact, I just asked Megan this week, who is Sarah and I’s therapist. I said, “Hey, what bandwidth do you have?” So, she focuses primarily on couples therapy, which is two of you, husband and wife or, I’m sure, significant others because I know there’s different relationship dynamics out there.
But I asked her and she said she does have bandwidth. I don’t know how much, but if any of you out there listening in are thinking, “Well, I think I’m at a spot where I really need some couples therapy,” I’m happy to make an introduction to Megan. Obviously, that will be confidential as well. But the goal here if we’re going to get real about doing business and doing life that’s in the ups and the downs, and I’ve found the best people in my life show up during the tough times, not during the good times. And so, if this show or if I can be that to you all, I want to open up that offer and, yeah, make that available to you if it can help somebody out there.
So, with that, thanks for listening. If you’re still listening at this point, thanks for going deep and getting real with me. And if this serves you, let me know because there’s plenty of other topics like this we can get into. This might be a little deeper one than normal, but I plan to do some more of these solo episodes just based on some of the things I’ve seen that advisors need help with. And this is definitely one of them out there. I do know I feel very confident about that. So, with that, thanks for listening in and I will catch you on the next one. Take care!
