Welcome to The Get Real Podcast, your high-octane boost and in the trenches tell-it-like-it-is reality therapy for personal, business and real estate investing success with your hosts, power-preneurs Angela and Ron. It’s time to get real!

Angela: Hey everybody, welcome to The Get real Podcast. I’m Angela Thomas and I’m here with Ron Phillips. Hey Ron.

Ron: Hey.

Angela: And today we have a really special guest. We’re excited about. We’ve been, we’ve actually been prepping everyone for this, you know, we keep saying we’re going to do this show. So Ron, take it away.

Ron: We keep teasing about this yes. And you know, he’s actually here. I convinced him to come on the show.

Angela: Finally, yes.

Ron: Yes, us today is my good Buddy Shaun McCloskey who is not only my good buddy, but he is also my personal and business coach. And in addition to that, he runs leadership boardroom of which I am also a member and probably the finest speaker training. If you want to learn how to speak and make money from the front of the room, nobody better in the country than Shaun McClosky puts on a speaker training workshop, which I have also attended. It is phenomenal. Welcome Shaun McClosky.

Angela: Yeah. Hey, Shaun.

Shaun: Hey, what’s happening? Thanks for having me.

Angela: Oh, we’re so glad you’re here. So we’re going to I know this is probably going to be two episodes. We’re going to get really, you know, into the details of what you do. But can you, I mean, I know you professionally, but I would love to know a little bit more about you personally, if you don’t mind, like taking us back. Where did you grow up? What’d your parents do? Give us your history here.

Ron: Don’t go to far.

Shaun: I was born on a small farm in 19, no I’m just kidding.

Angela: Really, oh, cool.

Shaun: None of that’s true. No, you know, I mean, I’m just a pretty regular guy. I grew up wanting to take the world on fire and started out in the corporate world. I found out real quick that that’s a tough gig because I worked my way up to top of the corporate ladder only to find out that the top involves working a whole lot more hours ended up even more, you know, and doing it for a company that eventually seven years after I worked my butt off for this company, they downsize all of my departments and then I was the last person to get downsides. So I realized not only is climbing up the corporate ladder kind of at least if not a way that I wanted to go.

Shaun: It also wasn’t the job security that I thought I was looking for in the first place anyway. So it’s then started my own number of businesses over the years. Some of them worked really well, some of them not so much. And so today I help a lot of business owners, entrepreneurs, speakers, national speakers, national coaches, people who are in leadership positions. I help them get their life together so they can have a great life and business instead of just a great business. But most business owners can pull that off. Very few of them pull off a great business and a great life at the same time. And so I show now I get to do what I love to do. I love it. And I get to work with people like Ron, you know, I know we don’t have a whole lot of experience back and forth. I know you and Ronald and yourself hopefully.

Angela: Well Ron likes me, so I must be okay, you know, right. Cool.

Shaun: I hope that you’ve seen some changes in Ron over the last few years because he’s, as a result, what we’ll talk about today, he’s made some pretty significant changes in his life and it shows. Even right now where Ron lives is a result of some of this process that I’ll try to take you through and as fast as we can today.

Angela: Okay, cool. Yeah, I have seen a lot of changes in him, but you know, sometimes he’s harder to get ahold of and I have you to blame for that, huh? So, thanks a lot. You know, I’m just kidding. No, that’s great. Yeah, that’s a good thing. So…

Ron: Yeah, so we’ve teased several times, Angela, and talked a little about I’ve talked a little bit about this but, but seriously, this is one of the biggest game changing moments in my life was when I heard the message that, that Shaun’s going to share with us today. And so if I everybody, man, don’t put this on two times speed today, you’re going to want to listen to this at regular speed and you’re going to want to really absorb this. Especially if you’re one of those business owners out there who can’t get out of your own way and can’t figure out why the hell you, you still have no life, right? If that’s you, because that was me. If that’s you then start to listen up as Shaun shares a little bit, a little bit more about this.

Angela: Okay. Any more of the story that you want to share about, like was there pain behind this, why you got into this in the first place? I mean you shared your corporate story, but…

Shaun: Yeah, I mean that’s why I got into corporate. But when I started getting into real estate flipping houses in 2003 and then within a few years I flipped about 300 houses. I was learning from guys and girls who knew how to build a business and who knew how to make money. But unfortunately, one of the guys I was learning from, his name’s Chris Kirchner. He no longer speaks today, but he was one of the biggest gurus back in the day. And he was one of my mentors. And when I learned from him, I learned how to run a business boss years later I found out Chris had made about $950,000 in a day, which would seem like a great day, right?

Angela: Yeah, that’s a great day.

Shaun: It was also, he explained to me as the worst day of his life because that was the day a number of things happen. He made $940,000 or $950,000 grand in a day. Same day that his wife called and said, I don’t want to be with you anymore, I haven’t seen you in weeks, you don’t hang out with me anymore. His son said, dad, I don’t even know who you are I don’t want you to do my father. He realized that day that he hadn’t had a day off in seven months and he realized that he had basically traded all of those things he said were important to him for this business that he thought he was building to help his family, right. And so in the process of building this thing, he lost his family. And so now I hadn’t, I learned this after I was starting to experience the same thing. I started the real estate in 2003 and in 2007 I started coaching in 2007 I brought on just a handful of my very first students.

Shaun: I was going to show them that the business ropes here and my number one student went out first year in business, made $500,000 his first year in business, which is more than I made in my first year of business, right. So I was really excited about this, but the second year of business he also got a divorce. I was like dang it man. I’m starting to see this pattern where, and by the way I was teaching him how to run a business that I knew how to run, which involved working 80 hours a week. That’s what I learned from Chris Kirchner. And so here we are passing this down through all these different people. My desire is to teach an impact and make a difference and I’m making a difference in a positive way financially and in a negative way everywhere else.

Shaun: I realized I’m like, I can’t teach this crap anymore. It’s just going to ruin people’s lives. I’m teaching people how to do what I was taught, which is to how to have a great business and no life and you know, where can I find people that have both? And so it’s been a journey ever since then to figure out what does it mean to have a great life and business at the same time? If you have one without the other, it’s still failure in my opinion.

Ron: So this is so prevalent right now, Shaun and Angela and I have talked about this on the show and offline. You and I both know I get pissed about. Because so much that’s online right now about hustle, grind, hustle, you know, 365 if you’re not answering. I saw freaking posts the other day, Shaun, oh my gosh. Some dude with like, Hey, I have the best wife because you know how I know?

Ron: Because she let me take one of the seller calls while we were at dinner and I thought you were about ready to getting explicit, about to get a little e right next to my gosh, she may let you, but you think she wants you to? If you think she wants you to you are high, you’ve lost your mind.

Shaun: There’s a difference between tolerance and something being your actual vision of what you want in life and so my wife tolerated me too. I used to do the same thing. We’d be at dinner and I would, since I didn’t have my own life vision figured out I didn’t know what I wanted out of my life. I thought, well the more I provide in my business tomorrow, that’ll help my life. And then you know, the more my business makes, some day I will have a great life.

Shaun: So I would do the same thing, I would take calls, I would take all my calls to my cell phone from my live seller calls, and I’d be out to dinner with my wife and I would have two choices. Either I would answer the phone, in which case my average live seller called took me 18 minutes to get through 18 minutes. I’m these over the years, 18 minutes, while my wife is now sitting there at dinner with me for 18 minutes straight, you know, doing nothing while I’m taking the business call and she was tolerant of it. So I thought, oh great wife, same thing. But option number two was don’t take the call and then have it go to voicemail and then have me sit there and think about the money that I’m wasting on this marketing. You may now leave a voicemail by tomorrow. Is the deal going to still be there or did somebody else answer the call? So I’m sitting here screwed either way, right? I’ve got and by the way, I’m screwed either way because my business was designed this way. It was designed to make money not to have a life. And so…

Angela: I know, I know. Real quick Shaun, mine’s not even from my own business mines back in the corporate world because I started in the corporate world like you with Abercrombie and Fitch. I was a district manager and I just want to say really fast, I missed my grandpa’s funeral and my best friend’s wedding where I was supposed to be a bridesmaid and sing actually, because emergencies came up at the last second and you’re expected to commit your entire life, right?

Angela: And it’s the same thing with your own business. You have that mentality that this is all that matters and I’ll worry about that stuff later. But I mean, I didn’t, you know, lose all my family. They still love me supposedly. But, but like man, it’s really bad. So I know how important this is to, even though, you know, it’s not exactly the same experience, but yeah, that’s no way to live, man. I wish now that I’m not working there anymore, I’m like, why the hell did I do that? Like that wasn’t more important. Who cares if I lost that job, I ended up quitting anyway, you know? So I mean, it applies to everyone. It’s really huge for business owners. But anyone in a, you know, regular job or corporate world needs to get this figured out too, you know?

Shaun: Absolutely. I mean this stuff applies to everybody. Yeah, I can hear you sharing that story and you have a smile on your face now, but I can set still,

Angela: No, it hurts. It does. I’m smiling because I’m uncomfortable with the emotion okay, right.

Shaun: I get it. I get it. I know, and I sense the pain behind the smile. And I say that because those little moments of pain are triggers for us to say something’s got to change. You can either get my same thing. My heart goes out to my brother because he’s, man, he’s just Ron you know my brother. Such an awesome, actually Angela you know him to, such an awesome guy. But when my father passed away. She wasn’t able to be there. He was in the jewelry business back then. And my father passed away on Christmas Eve when you’re in retail jewelry business.

Angela: Yeah. You Miss Christmas.

Shaun: You don’t do anything else for Christmas. And what finally got him to quit was having enough pain associated with that where he’s like, look, I am no longer going to give up my family for Christmas every single year. Like I’ve done it the last 10 years so that I can do well in business.

Shaun: I’m going to get some different priorities. And now his priority is different. His life looks totally different. But it starts with you creating this thing called vision and figuring out what are your priorities going to be. Because if you don’t do this, here’s what will happen. You don’t have a vision for what you want your life to look like. Somebody else will give you theirs, right. It will be your customers, it’ll be your boss, it’ll be maybe your parents. You know, here. I’ve coached so many people over the years that are doing a business or earning a living in a field that they never wanted to do, but their parents said they should do it.

Angela: That sucks.

Shaun: Expectations of other people around you are really, really big, and I don’t think people put enough weight on this. So if I work for a guy or a girl who thinks that the way to get into ahead in life is to work 80 hours a week and I spend the majority of my time around this person, it’s just a matter of time before their vision is going to infiltrate mine if mine isn’t strong enough. We have to we have to, especially Ron you just said with all the content out there today, if I look at some of these national gurus out there who are preaching that you know, you’re worthless unless you’re grinding every single day and putting everything else second place your business. If that message is in front of me enough and I view that as what it takes to be successful, pretty soon my own view of what it takes to be successful is going to be trumped by theirs. You know, have to do this process.

Angela: Wow.

Ron: Absolutely.

Ron: That’s powerful, yep. Amen.

Ron: If for nothing else, if for nothing else to save families and save your sanity. How many people, how many people do we know Shaun in the business world who hate their business? Not because their business is bad now because it doesn’t make money, but because they literally are a slave to it. Where if they could free themselves from being a slave and keep the business, they probably would love it. Because they love people, they love what they do. They just don’t love doing it all the time. And then there’s another set of people out there, Shaun who have, either they do love it or they’ve convinced themselves that they love it so much. I was just talking to a guy today and he’s like, well, you’re asking what I like to do, but I like to do business. That’s what I like to do.

Ron: I’m like, yeah but like other than business, like what does your wife like to do? You know, we both like to do business. I’m like, we really like business and people are laughing right now. But Shaun, how many people do we know that are like that?

Shaun: Well, I mean, I coach them. That’s typically who I’ll end up working with them. I mean here I’ll give you two examples. One, Ron, you’re one of them.

Ron: Wait, wait, wait. Everyone doesn’t know I have this problem Shaun.

Shaun: Here there’s a guy that I started coaching years ago. His name’s Jason Roberts. He’s speaking around the country now today. But when Jason first came to me, he was just out of a failed mortgage business and the mortgage business. I mean, he was making, I don’t know how many millions and millions of dollars of loans in a month he was doing, but let’s just say he was doing really, really, really well. He had about 80 employees on staff.

Shaun: But then, you know, the crash of 2007, 2008 happened overnight you couldn’t do mortgages the same. And over the next three years, all of his cash reserves were bled dry by him wanting to, you know, continue to provide for his staff and all this stuff. And finally, his business completely imploded from the inside out and he’s literally left with nothing. No home, no car. I mean this was the guy who was making millions of dollars a month and he now has no home. The home was repossessed, the car was repossessed. He’s got no place to live. He’s going through a divorce, like awful stuff. Every worst picture you can paint. And then I meet the guy, right? And we start going through this, this vision correction process together. And I said, tell me what you like to do. And he goes, well, I love to run my business.

Shaun: I said, okay, well let’s pretend you can’t do business for a second. What else do you like to do? And he didn’t have an answer. And I said like, what did you used to do before you build your business? And he goes, I don’t know. I’ve been doing this for so long, like this is what I do. He goes, you don’t understand. I really, really love it. And here’s what he didn’t understand. He loved it, which is great. You should love your business. But he had been doing it at that capacity for so long that he knew no different.

Shaun: So when I asked him, I said I had to really get back. I said, what did you use to like to do when you’re a kid? Which sound so stupid to ask a grown freaking man what he likes doing as a kid. But I had to go back that far with him to get him to identify anything. I said, is there anything that you’ve ever wanted to do that maybe sounded cool, but it was just pie in the sky or it seemed like a waste of time? And he threw out a couple of things. He said, man, I’d love to learn how to fly a helicopter. I said, okay, now we’re getting somewhere.

Angela: That’s cool.

Shaun: I said anything else? And he goes man, I’ve always wanted to take singing lessons.

Angela: That’s awesome. I do that, I got one after this.

Shaun: If you ever met this man in your life, you’re like really singer because he’s not fat. But he’s like, look, I sing in the shower about myself. That’s all I do, but I’d love to just take some lessons.

Angela: But it’s amazing Shaun, you should hear me. No I’m just kidding.

Shaun: With the echo from the bathtub.

Angela: I know it’s gorgeous.

Shaun: But the crazy thing is so now it took me going through this process with him for a year and finally about a year, year and a half later, he finally approached me one day and he goes, you know what? I was so busy working the business for so long that I genuine, what I told you I just love the business I meant it. But I meant it because I forgot about anything else that I used to enjoy because I was so focused on the business and when the business went away, he goes, to be honest with you, I didn’t know who I was anymore. Like when you said, because he said, you asked me a question, what would I do if my business was gone tomorrow, which at the time it was, his answer was I would go start a business and I said, you’re not getting this dude.

Shaun: Like you can’t do a business. Let’s just pretend like all your financial needs are met. You’ve got everything figured out. Then what would you do? He’s like, I don’t know. And so you know, we did this with Ron and I went through this process also and I said the same thing to Ron. I said, Ron, and by the way, when Ron came to me the first time, his problem was similar but different in the sense that he goes, look, my business is finally to a point. I’ve worked my whole life to get my business to a point where I don’t have to be there every day and now I don’t have to be there everyday and now I have no clue what I want to do with my time. Like I have the time. And yet, so much of Ron’s identity was built up into the business. It’s like when that goes away for a second, who the heck is Ron Phillips?

Ron: There was a big identity crisis, and I think people don’t realize this, but business owners, business owners, they do go through this at some point. And I don’t know if you remember this Shaun. It was funny because I was at your, I was at your three day event where you were teaching this for three days, right? Or maybe it was two, but I don’t remember.

Shaun: Three.

Ron: And in a group maybe there’s 50 people or a hundred people there. I can’t remember. There’s a big group, right? And I’m sitting there and we’ve got our workbooks. I’m going through this thing, you know, Shaun’s, all these stories. And then he’d stop and he’d give us an assignment, right? One of the assignments was to just start writing all the things that you want and everybody likes start feverishly writing, you know, everybody super excited. I’m sitting there going, what they hell do I want? Like I don’t know. I remember getting out of my chair, I don’t remember if you remember this Shaun or not, but I got out of my chair and I went to…

Ron: I don’t know what to put on my paper. I felt like such a failure as a student. I’m like, I literally don’t know what to put on my paper here. Have you ever seen that before? And Shaun’s like, yeah, I’ve seen that before.

Shaun: I do remember that actually. The reason I remember it so much just because you walked up to me and you go, hey man, like I had just given the assignment out like two minutes earlier, right? And everybody in the room is doing, they’re doing their assignment. And Ron walked up and he goes, hey man, I don’t know how to tell you I’m done. And I go you’re done it’s been like two minutes. You wrote down everything you want in life. And he goes, well, not exactly that, but I’m telling, he showed me the workbook and there was like one word he wrote down, and it was nothing, the whole thing was blank . And I was like, okay, we got some work to do.

Ron: I actually bow out and spend a day with Shaun for him to yank all of this out of me. Because it was so difficult for me and it had been so long, you know, that I forgot that. I just genuinely like going on a walk in the morning with my wife. Like simple, ridiculous things like that because some of the people out listening out there Shaun, they don’t own businesses, they don’t make millions of dollars. They’re not like Jason Roberts. They don’t have all of that. So that, I know like 80% of the room is writing down all of the cool toys and the things that they want. There’s a place you get in business though. Some of the people who are listening to this podcast right now, they’re going, I can buy any toy I want within reason, right. I mean, I’m not getting, you know, I’m not…

Angela: A yacht, come on.

Ron: But within reason I can buy pretty much whatever I want. But it isn’t about that now. So what is it about, because that’s what it used to be about. It’s not about that anymore, right? It’s a crazy thing to watch the dynamic in a room and it’s got to be even more fun for you to watch a room do that, right. I mean, it was crazy.

Shaun: Well, and what’s really cool too, is to have the room that hasn’t arrived at that point where you are at that point hear that you’re struggling with the exact opposite of what they’re struggling even though it’s the same family and things. It’s like they’re sitting here going, oh man, I want all these things, but I just, I don’t have the money for it. And you’re going, well, I do finally have the money to do some of these things I want to do and I don’t know what I want to do now. I’ve been focused so long on building the business so that one day I can have the money to do all these things and now I’m there. But I never identified what all these things are, which by the way, makes your business have a never and like there’s no cap on what you need in your business.

Shaun: This is why some of the people who are out there and they’re making millions of dollars a month are still miserable and you go, wait a second. How in the world could you be making millions of dollars a month and you’re still miserable? It’s because you have no clue what the millions of dollars a month is even for. Making money to just be making money.

Angela: Just acquire money, you know.

Shaun: And there’s nothing wrong with at some point. For many entrepreneurs, it becomes a game. That’s when it really gets really fun, but it becomes a game to not only live your vision, but also to expand so that you can help other people live their vision too, which is why I love what you guys are doing now. You’re trying to share this information so other people can have a great life too, and not just hoarding it off for yourself. Very few people do this, man. It’s not easy to do by the way. We’ll talk, I think we’re going to do a second video here where I’ll show you guys exactly what to do to pull some of this stuff out of you and it’s not easy. A lot of times it requires having help from somebody else or at least going through some of the processes that I’ll go over here a little bit.

Angela: Yeah Shaun, do you mind giving us a quick overview of what we are going to do in the next episode?

Ron: Guys this is really cool. We convinced Shaun to come and do two episodes with us and the second whole episode is going to be like…

Angela: Getting down to the meat.

Ron: Get the paper out and turn the phone off and let’s get busy with this deal. So, yeah Shaun give us an…

Angela: Overview.

Shaun: Well, so it’s, you know, everybody here when I would go speak in front of a room and I would say, okay, it’s a bunch of entrepreneurs or business owners or business owner want to be in the room. And I’d say, how many of you all have ever done a business plan before? And like every hand in the room would go up for the most part. I said, okay, how many of you have ever sat down and written down every aspect of what you want your life to be about? And you have it in writing and out of a room of let’s say a hundred people, maybe five people would raise their hand. And I would say, how many of you have looked at it the last five years? Like three of those hands would go down instantly. And I would say, how many of you have it in writing and it’s on your person right now? All hands would go away.

Shaun: And so what you got to do is you’ve got to get some of this stuff out of your head and you got to get it in writing. And the reason why is because I’ve seen too many people’s visions change with their mood. You know, it’s like one day they’re in a great mood and they’re like, oh, I conquered the world I want to do this and this, and the next day they don’t view any of that as possible. So they start, you know, mentally scratching things off out of their head or you know, they want all of these things, but they get an environment where those things aren’t as easily accessible and so they don’t view them as possible or as important. And give an example what I mean by that. I was trying to play guitar and I have played in bands for years, right?

Shaun: Just for fun. I know I’m not going to be a rock star, no crazy desire. I don’t even want to be a rock star to be honest with you, but I love to get together with my band guys and we get together, we sing and we play music and we have a blast. We do a show every now and then and it’s a lot fun.

Angela: It’s awesome.

Shaun: When I hang out with my band friends because I hang out with them, all of a sudden I want to become a better musician, right? I want to play more often. That becomes part of my environment and because it’s part of my environment, I want to exceed more in that environment, okay. When I’m around my business owner friends, guess what I want to do? I want to focus more on my business, right? When I’m around my church friends, I want to have a better relationship with Christ, right?

Shaun: And that comes naturally. But I am a product of my environment and so since my environment isn’t the same thing every minute of every single day. I need to make sure that I’m not overly influenced by my environment, which means I got to have this stuff in writing. So when we say you start going through this vision process, whether it’s personal or business, you’ve got to get it out of your head and you got to get it in writing. So the next video, I’ll show you very specifically how to do this.

Shaun: There’s a little process that I’ll take you through that. It actually is also how Disney runs their organization. Yeah, it’s super cool. It’s one of the neatest things I’ve ever found a few years ago when I started teaching it this way it makes it a whole lot easier to get it out of your head and getting it in writing.

Ron: Shaun, I think the other thing too is that at least something that’s really helped me is talk, going back to that environment thing, right? It’s, it’s being, because we’re all in these different environments, we all have them, right? We got our family environment, we got a church environment, we’ve got, you know, we got all of these different places that we go. We do focus when we’re at each one of those.

Ron: But I think it’s really, really critical that you share this vision with someone or a group of someone’s that you trust so that they can call you on your complete and utter BS when it comes out of your mouth. And, you know, that’s one of the main reasons that I’m in leadership ordering with you is because I’ve got a group of people there who go, you know, I come with my awesome ideas that whatever…

Angela: Awesome ideas.

Ron: Whatever that does not mean, then I get these hard questions. And so does everybody else in the room, you know, we all get these hard questions about, well how does that fit within your vision, within your life vision, does it fit? And you know, what are you willing to give up because you know, everything’s going the way you want it to go right now and if you’ve had something, you’ve got to have something because there’s no other way to do that, right.

Shaun: Everyone does, by the way they just keep adding.

Ron: They keep adding, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you find that the people that you that you see are far more successful when they have someone or someone’s that they can count on to, to kind of keep them on track?

Shaun: Without a doubt. So when I first started learning this process there’s bits and pieces of it that I learned from everywhere, but I did learn a lot from a partner, but I had kind of Steve Cook, taught me through some of this stuff. And I came home after learning some of this process and I created my very first own little mastermind group right here in St Louis where I lived and basically it was six people that got together every single week. And what we did is we shared some of this vision product. First of all, they didn’t know anything about it, so I shared with them what I had learned, even though I didn’t know how to explain it very well yet. I figured the more I explained it to them, maybe the more it will solidify in my own head. So I explained it to them.

Angela: That’s how you learn, teaching. Yep.

Shaun: So I explained to them. We went through some of the process together as best that we could. We didn’t know what we were doing yet, but we met every single week. Every Tuesday morning we had breakfast for three years at 7:00 AM and every single Tuesday morning we pulled out our visions and we added to it and we took away from it and they got more and more clear. Mine actually to give you an idea, took me about five or six months before it became really clear to me what that was supposed to look like.

Shaun: And so when that happened, now what’s really cool about having other people around there on the same journey is they can hold that up to you when you’re about to do something that’s going to take you in a different direction than what you’ve said you want it. So for one of the reasons, you know, Ron mentioned leadership order. I have a three high level mastermind groups that I run now, they’re limited to 15 people each and I put really high caliber people in there that are all going after the same thing.

Shaun: First of all, they’re all leaders in some capacity. So they want to have a great life, not just for themselves, but they want to impact others to have a great life also in business. But also they constantly hold the mirror up to each other. When Ron comes to one of our retreats, for example, and he says, Hey, here’s the new direction I’m thinking of going. The very first thing all of us do is we match up, does that new direction match up in alignment with what he said he wanted over here. And I’ll tell you, for entrepreneurs that the shiny object Squirrel Syndrome, you know, more often than not, the answer is no, it doesn’t fit more often than not. Believe it or not.

Angela: Yeah, I believe it.

Shaun: This is where you have people who start 15 businesses and none of them are doing really well, but they’re all just doing okay, right? This is where a person has a great idea and they pursue a new business idea because it’s got a really big potential to make money, but it doesn’t fit into any of their strengths or what they love to do or what they’re really passionate about. But God knows it’s going to make money so I better pursue it, right. But yes, so having other people to hold that up to you, it’s almost impossible to see all of your own blind spots.

Shaun: And so the more you can follow people that you go point this out to you, then they, the people that pointed out to you, they go, hey man, you said you wanted this. Is this congruent with what you said you wanted the last time I saw you? And you know, I mean, Ron, you’ve seen this where even you and I have a similar spirit or we sit down with it, no. And you feel stupid because it’s so obvious that this wasn’t what I wanted and I was getting ready to pursue it.

Ron: The thing is, Shaun, it’s not that the business idea was flawed. It’s not business idea wouldn’t make money. It’s not that the person who’s bringing it couldn’t make it successful. All of those things could be accurate. It’s just that it doesn’t fit in what their, what they said their vision was. And I mean, that’s a big deal, but if you don’t have that anchor, that’s where your life goes completely chaotic. Because as entrepreneurs, we see opportunity everywhere. Angela, do we not see opportunity all the time?

Angela: Oh my gosh. Yeah. You even, I mean you don’t even, we probably don’t even know the extent of each other’s ideas. I mean I have this notes in my phone with like 35 business ideas just in case you know, one of them. I feel like pursuing. I just write them down as they come up with them, you know.

Ron: Ron’s idea parking lot is really big.

Angela: I’m sure. I used to keep track of it but not anymore. So I don’t know how out of control it is now.

Ron: Billion dollar ideas in there.

Angela: I’m sure.

Shaun: Yeah. Everyone of them.

Angela: We all got them. Yeah, they’re all good.

Shaun: Here’s a problem. Ron, you just said something that’s really important that most people skip over, especially entrepreneurs do this, right? They have, especially if you’re a visionary, right? You have all these great ideas and what most people do is they keep adding more and more ideas to their ideas. And the next thing you know you have like a well you know this. So there’s one of my guys a in our groups, it’s a guy named Larry Goins. He’s an actual speaker, known guy, very well received. Guy’s just a brilliant dude, but he’s got the same problem that a lot of entrepreneurs have. He has great ideas and he’s also an action taker, which is great, but combine that without having a crystal clear vision and you now have 15 businesses that are not doing as well as you’d like.

Shaun: So you know Angela, you have all these lists of ideas. I love that you have those out of your head. You put them on your phone in your notes, right? Ron brought this up a second ago when I’m now looking at all those opportunities, I’m now filtering them not through how much money can they make that is a good filter, but that’s like number five or six down on the list. My first filter is does this fit my vision and when, most of the time when I look at that, the answer is no right off the bat so I can just eliminate it, right. I can get out of my head. I can say, okay, it’s a great idea, but I’m not going to pursue it. It doesn’t fit my vision might fit somebody, but it’s not mine. So I’m not going to pursue it just for that.

Shaun: But if it does, oftentimes I say yes to many things. Yes, this does fit my vision and so does this, and so does this. So does these 19 other things. Then I can start to prioritize. I can say, which one of these fits my vision the most? And here’s what you said, Ron, that’s really important. If I add anything new into my life, now I have to take something else away. This is what everyone one does. So if I say, okay, I’m going to add in this new thing and nothing else has gone away. Now pretty soon if I keep adding more and more and more things, next thing you know, you’re the guy who can only sleep three hours a night because you’ve added too much and you unintentionally and unknowingly did take some things out of your vision, but you didn’t mean to. And that thing was sleep.

Ron: And you listened to some moron on the internet tell you that you should brag about the fact that you only got three hours of sleep because that makes you a way more bad individual, right? You are the baddest of the bads. You can survive on three hours of sleep, not see your family ever and still have a magnificent life. It is such honor BS all of it is just, just a pile of crap.

Shaun: You go tot be careful man, because it doesn’t, that message is not as crystal clear as you just said it. It comes disguised, as, you know, the guy standing in front of his Lamborghini with a beautiful home.

Angela: Yeah.

Ron: And if he is, it may not even be his lambo.

Shaun: Well, listen, I don’t, that’s not a bad thing. If you want to have a Lamborghini get a Lamborghini, I’ve had a lot of fun sports cars over the years. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with any of that at all. What I am suggesting to you is, when I’m getting ready to learn from someone today versus 15 years ago today I’m going to learn what does their life look like if I’m going to emulate all of their business strategies, do I want their life? And if I can’t say it and not their Facebook life, not what looks like on social media, I’m talking about do I want that person’s life? If not, I might learn a few things about their business techniques, but I’m not going to model their entire business and unless they have the life vision that I want also.

Shaun: And this is where your surroundings are really, really important. Again, where is most people’s surroundings today? Well, most people’s either with their immediate family. Second, close to that for many people is social media. And on social media, you’re seeing the tip of the iceberg. There’s so much underneath that water that you don’t see. And so if you’re going to learn from people, you need to look underneath the water and say, what does it really look like? If I would’ve known what Chris Kirschner’s life really looked like underneath everything he was teaching me, I probably would listen to about 5% of what he said. And that 5% would’ve still been really good, but I wouldn’t listen to all the other crap. It was nonsense.

Angela: So true. Yep. All right, cool. Yeah. So that was great. Thanks Shaun. I think this is a good place to end this and everyone needs to come back and listen to the next episode where you give us all the details on how to actually do this, right? Yeah, we’re excited. So, yeah, hey, make sure you guys check out the next episode. Thanks so much, Shaun. You can, you know, if you guys want to go check out more about him, I know there’s SpeakerTrainingWorkshop.com. Is there another?

Ron: Where else can they find you?

Angela: Yeah. Well where else can they find you?

Shaun: I mean, find me on Facebook just under Sean McCloskey or my leadership boardroom side is just LeadershipBoardroom.com. That’s not a pitch for that actually. I only have three groups of 15 people and they’re all full right now, so I don’t really have anything to…

Angela: So if you want to get on the waiting list. No, I’m just kidding. So, all right, cool.

Ron: Do it now and then maybe…

Angela: Yeah, no, just check out the next episode, that’s where we’re going to learn a lot. And once again, if you want to subscribe to our podcast or give us feedback, visit GetRealEstateSuccess.com. Check us out there or on iTunes, get real show. Um, and we will see you guys next time. Thanks John. Thanks Ron.

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