Steps to Building a High-Performance Business

Starting the conversation:

The intersection of what makes you unique, the impact you want to make, and what drives you are the key elements to the customized definition of what high performance is for your business. Once defined, this powerful tool provides you with a way to navigate failure; what is out of your control; and even success. Julie Perkins, Founder at Wyseminds, Erik Holmberg, President at Nauvatis Coaching, and Chris Michel, Founder and Author of The Red Chair Experience discuss how to create and build a thriving high-performance business.

High performance begins with you. Putting a priority on taking time to get to know yourself and to reflect (on failures and successes) allows you to consciously choose what learning you want to take forward. Everything we do changes, and that includes how to define success and a purpose-filled life. It is necessary to shift and adapt since everything around you will change.

In this program, you will learn about how to use your unique strengths, understand why to selectively choose what opportunities to act upon, and the impact of your choices. You will also learn the importance of being clear when communicating to your team — and communication overall — to give them the confidence to act, adapt, and act again. This and more will provide you with a basis to remain collected under pressure with minimal setbacks and pivots. Jess Dewell facilitates a discussion about a thriving, high-performance business with Julie Perkins, Founder at Wyseminds, Erik Holmberg, President at Nauvatis Coaching, and Chris Michel, Founder and Author of The Red Chair Experience.

Host: Jess Dewell

Guest: Julie Perkins, Erik Holmberg, Chris Michel

What You Will Hear:

Measure strong connections with a purpose-driven team by how well high-stress situations are navigated.

Failure is an answer to an unasked question.

Determine how you look at, and show up in, the world.

Two truths and a lie: slow down to speed up, confidence is arrogance in business, and shorten the cycles to get more done.

How to define success in a measurable way.

The intersection of your uniqueness, desired impact, and drive.

Additionally, for the Fast Track Your Business Today Uncut conversation:

Don’t mistake striving for perfection as progress.

Use your sincere voice, and ask for others to do the same to look differently at problems.

High-performance mindset defined.

How we know where we are so we can decide where and how we want to go next.

Set up your own measurements to show progress, change, and how unified the teams are.

Identifying your uniqueness will help you combat imposter syndrome.

It is BOLD to bring a high-performance mindset to your work.

Find out more about how to Fast Track Your Business.

Resources

• Through the kaleidoscope: the twists and turns of growing a business
• Put the solution in front of the problem
• Take in the opportunities life has to offer me today

Transcript

Julie Perkins 00:01
It’s okay to fail. Step on, step off, step on, step off.

Chris Michel 00:02
It comes down to, are you learning from the failure? Are you learning from the no’s? Because if you’re not learning from the no’s, then all you’re doing is beating yourself up.

Erik Holmberg 00:03
The faster we fail the faster we learn, so long as we’re actually paying attention.

ANNOUNCER 00:05
Welcome. This is the Bold Business Podcast. Your business has many directions it can travel. The one true direction of your company creates the journey for you to move toward a new, exciting level. We call this the Red Direction. In today’s program, we delve into one idea. The idea will support you as you work on ever-present situations, including how to stay competitive in a changing market, how to break through the business plateau, and how to anticipate the changing expectations of your stakeholders. Jess Dewell is your guide. Jess brings you a 20-year track record of business excellence, where strategy and operations overlap. Your Path comes from consistently working from the special place. Your unique True North. Now, here’s Jess.

Jess Dewell 00:51
Welcome to the Bold Business Podcast, you have no idea what goes on behind the scenes to make this show possible. And sometimes we show up as prepared as we can, and things go awry. And other times things seem easy. And they turn out to be so difficult. And unexpectedly, we’re taking hit to our heart into her mind into our confidence. And the thing is that happens to all of us happens to all of us at different times at different stages. And that’s what this conversation is about. Whenever you find yourself in this conversation, refer back to what we talked about today. You know, somebody who’s going through a difficult time, or wants to continue to enhance and develop and move their mindset to be able to face anything quickly, and be responsive and adaptable and bounce higher, faster. This is a car this is a conversation to share with that person or those people. I am your host to just duel. And today with me, we have three amazing panelists that I’m going to introduce you to and then you’re gonna get to hear from them. First, we have Julie Perkins. She grew up in an entrepreneurial family. She was always going to cut her commercial teeth at an early age because of that. So she studied business and she worked in the US. She put her knowledge to the test by joining the company Specsavers and then she went to work her way up through the ranks to country director. She set up an established BIM being a market leader in the Netherlands. So now after more than 20 years, building on that extensive experience of industry and her wide-ranging expertise as a leader, she founded Wiseman to mentor fellow female entrepreneurs and set them out on their own journey to find purpose and passion wherever they go. Also with us today is Erik Holmberg. He is an incurable entrepreneur and resides presently in Longmont, Colorado, with his wife and two teenage children. And he has a Wheaton terrier two very big important part of the family and does join in sometimes so we might get to hear him in the background or even see him on the video if you happen to be watching. A lover of adventure he spends his summers, paddleboarding and sailing in the local lakes and biking on the trails. In winter, he is snowboarding and snowshoeing, you will very rarely find him in the office more than one day at a time in either scenario of weather because he loves being outside. As they felt employed business coach, he is passionate about training team leaders to face the challenges that arise by using and developing necessary soft skills for the rapidly changing world of business. Chris Michel, he helps heal the self-inflicted sales harm that people do to themselves and accidentally to others. He focuses on the age gap plumbing, electrical trade, because not only has he done it for 19 years, he understands the challenges and the hardships and the cycles that happen that really makes sense in terms of how do we communicate with our customers. What do we do and how can we show up to be not only are proficient for ourselves, but also make sure we’re setting the right expectation to deliver excellent service? He also has written a book daily inspirations to help you, to help you integrate the emotional side, because ultimately, we’re all people, we all have emotion. And that is incredibly important to the way that we show up to our work to our communities to make a difference in the world. I am so pleased to have you all here today. So here we go. Everybody who’s listening, you know the drill, when we have a panel, each person will answer a question, and then we open it up to our dialogue. And don’t forget, you get to be part of the dialogue too, because you’re listening to the podcast, join the comments out in social media, send an email and reach out to each one of these panelists directly because we want to keep this conversation going. It is in our conversation that will grow that we learn that we can support each other and lift each other up as we go along so that we can have more success and more positive impact in our world each day. Okay, Julie, are you ready?

Julie Perkins 05:12
I am more than ready.

Jess Dewell 05:14
Yes. Julie, how do you bring a high-performance mindset to work to ensure that the work that you’re doing stay simple and sultry?

Julie Perkins 05:24
I love that question. Thank you very, very much. And I think in terms of answering yet, for my little two minutes worth, I’m going to begin when the story of when I opened up Specsavers in the Netherlands, which was one of our most competitive marketplaces. And I think then, that’s when high-performing teams really matter. When you don’t have necessarily control over everything, obviously, a little bit like COVID. And I think, trying to develop a culture of high-performing mindset in a way that ensures that people feel safe when times are really challenging, is absolutely key. I must admit, I failed a little bit at the beginning. But as we learn best from failures and surrounding ourselves by people who know better, it was probably one of my greatest learnings about how to create a more consistent environment when the pressure is huge. Of course, in businesses, we tend to what we celebrate was all the sight and point is it sales is it turnover, what exactly as it we celebrate, and we were new brands, so we were very much focusing on how volumes, etc, how much we were establishing ground. And actually, the pressure of that on an ongoing basis as much as is exciting. And there’s a whole record week. And it’s a lot of that. Actually, the underlying problem is that is eventually it doesn’t become that soulful. And over that period of the year, we started to establish that people were only feeling good or connected when it was going well. So we reestablished very simply, what were we celebrating, we have a strong mission and a vision at the time. But we weren’t leading with it. We actually came together as a company. And by then there were about 1,200 people, we were opening stores across the Netherlands, and actually said, what exactly is purpose? How we are all contributing towards it? What exactly are we going to celebrate in the future that enabled 1,200 people to be part of that journey? And that high performance. It wasn’t just about the communication team, or it wasn’t just about this team, it actually was thinking that we all shared. And I think that was the, the year that the whole environment and the culture changed. So always learn from failure, always listen to others. And I think that sort of readjustment of really celebrating purpose, what do we celebrate and coming together alone only on that, and our purpose measure was the likelihood to return in two years time. That was the measure we put on it. And that’s something we could all in spectacle world. That’s something we could all celebrate. So I think that would be my starter for 10 of creating a unified environment. If that’s the story that conveys that initial bids.

Jess Dewell 08:19
Thank you, Julie. That is a great story. Okay, Erik, how do you bring a high-performance mindset to work to ensure that the work stays soulful and soul filling?

Erik Holmberg 08:30
Well, just thanks for the question. Appreciate the opportunity to be here. For me, when we talk about soul-filling, I think about depth we were talking before the intro, the soft skills, I feel are what’s really vitally important here to move forward and our new, you know, in our new world here, you know, we don’t need the hard-driving bosses that are only focused on results, to me results is an effect. For me, the really important aspects that a leader truly needs to have a high-performance mindset is empathy, and connection. And then being able to trust and verify because the thing is, our team members, they really want the opportunity to step into their own gifts and their own skills. And oftentimes, they just need a leader who can allow them the space in order to do that allow them to fumble and even fail and make mistakes. You know, what Julie was saying about making mistakes, you know, this is how we’ve learned, right? And for so much. There’s so much value now put on failure being such a big deal. Failures a result? The answer to a question. I really feel like today’s workforce needs leaders that allow for that and still understand that they can have a job that x day and you can learn from it. To me, there’s this, a lot of people who are very triggered out there and of course, they see that because they see it in me through my journey of personal development. I’ve come a long way in that regards to so for me, the sole filling means depth, and connection, empathy, and trust with verification. A lot of the people that I work with, they say, Trust, but verify. Trust, but verify, right? That’s all part of it. So that’s how I would answer to be soul filled as a leader needs empathy, connection and trust.

Jess Dewell 10:23
Thanks, Erik. All right, Chris, how do you bring high-performance mindset to work and ensure that the work stays fulfilled? And so billing?

Chris Michel 10:34
Well, just thank you for having me, first of all, and it’s great to be here with Erik and with Julie, you know, when you ask this question, it really got me to thinking about how I start my day, and how can I purposefully go throughout my day, and just you and I’ve talked about this, my, my words for this year are intentional surrender, to intentionally surrender to something and people say, well, that’s kind of duplicitous, or it’s or it’s against each other, right? And it’s like, no, it’s not because I intentionally look for ways in which I can surrender. And so when we do that, like Erik was just talking about right, we get into the softer skills, and we think about what can we bring to the table? Well, first of all, we got to know our why if we understand why we do the things we do and why we go at work, or why we do the things that you know, bring us joy and fulfill our souls, as you’re asking, is, we have to know our why. Like, my why is to inspire those to do what inspires them so that they may be fulfilled as a business coach as a sales coach, right? That’s what we want to do. We want to help infuse that with people. So how do I bring this every day? Personally, I have to have my quiet time, my special time I meditation, I read books, I read inspirational books, and this is not a plug for mine. But this is. But this is why I wrote the book that I did was because I was inspired by these books that I got to read every single day. So when we do what fulfills us, we can then help others.

ANNOUNCER 12:03
You’re listening to the Bold Business Podcast. We will return to the show soon. But first, I want to take a moment and give you a peek into what additional services and solutions you could access to Fast Track Your Business. This program was created to develop your capacity on demand by sharing insights, tips, as well as lessons learned by business leaders, unedited and uncut. And we don’t just stop there. There are three additional benefits to help you reach your growth goals. You will also have unlimited access to one, hearing tips and insights to develop yourself as a leader to get better results more often. Two, experiencing viewpoints from many different business leaders. Three, receiving frameworks to build core competencies and to more effectively focus on business growth and leadership. Altogether, The Fast Track Your Business program will allow you to face uncertainty, anytime, anywhere. You can access what will become your most versatile tool in your toolkit by going to FastTrackYou BusinessToday.com. Now back to Jess.

Jess Dewell 13:11
Let’s just put some of these things on the table that we might think are trite. They have been around since before we were born. That may actually be true. And the first one and this is now as we open it up into our conversation, the first one I want to look at as well. What about this concept of slowing down to speed up? Is that real? And is it worthwhile? For us to be considering?

Julie Perkins 13:36
I’d love to jump in on that one. You know, I think purpose and having a greater reason to go to work. And just to pick up on Chris’s point, you know about values, I think COVID and the lockdown gave us time to re-establish who we were and I think people are looking for how they can connect into companies. So therefore the story, the mission and the purpose of a company. You know, that’s what people are looking to connect. And it’s a wider picture. So it brings space to allow you to slow down to reflect to look at a broader way of looking at solving problems. And I didn’t know his values and who we are, are incredibly important if we can connect. I think it allows us the space to, to feel secure and safe in order that we can slow down in order that we can ask and reflect different questions and look upon a broader picture. For sure. You know, I think it’s been revitalized in today’s age rather than an old-school one. I think it’s it’s got a new life.

Chris Michel 14:38
I think a lot of times we get so caught up in the things that we’re doing in the day-to-day and even, even in the moment right? We get excited about something that we’re doing. And we don’t see we don’t hear we don’t slow down enough to if you will take a breath. And if we can’t take a breath we’re not getting the oxygen we’re not getting the intelligence right we’re not getting the things that we need to take care of ourselves and so So, how in the world are we going to be able to pass along anything? Right? So for me, the understanding of slowing down, to speed up, or to really to get where we need to go. I think it really is a true statement and something that if we took the time, like Julie was talking about to really take the time to slow down and grasp what’s going on around you listen to what’s being said, so that you can effectively ask the next question. It doesn’t go anywhere without the proper conversation, you don’t get to where you need to go without the proper conversations.

Erik Holmberg 15:34
Bill Gates came up with this whole multitasking thing years ago, right? Well, that’s great. We can do so many things all at the same time. The problem is, is now we’ve had so many stimuli that we’re just constantly distracted, squirrel, go, there, we are just like a pinball just bouncing off the walls until eventually, we get to the end. And we might be asking ourselves, is this it? Is this all I’ve really been working for it, it’s just numbers, bank accounts, it’s just numbers on a page, just digits on a spreadsheet, you know, there has to be more to that. There really has to be more to that. I would say slowing down to me again, kind of speaks to my whole approach with depth. And just allowing for things to sink in. And if we’re talking about breathing, do you think it’s a pretty good idea? I’m here to say, let’s all do that. Breathing is great.

Chris Michel 16:27
Erik is for breathing. Got it. All right,

Jess Dewell 16:30
You know, you make a really good point. And because there are many times in my day, all of a sudden, I turn around, or I’d stand up or I woke up, and I go. And I didn’t know, I either wasn’t breathing right before that, or I was breathing shallowly. Or I was so distracted, I was actually in a place of fear. And that automatic sense of when we slow down, our bodies will take care of it. So it could be all kinds of things. But when I go, Oh, there was something that was happening that shifted naturally, because the space was there. So I am also in favor of breathing just in general. Let’s just be real quick to Chris’s point. Well, here’s another one. How about this one? Is it true in business confidence is actually arrogance to get results?

Julie Perkins 17:16
I work with women all the time to try and support their confidence in terms of coming across and suits me, the way I look at it is that working with all leaders working with us as individuals, I say if you know who you are, and you know, then you’re talking with your voice, then the confidence that you portray, because you own it comes across as, as much more sincere of humble, authentic, because you’re talking with your voice, not the voice that others think that you should do. So quite often, you know what to say you need to know who you are, and never be okay. Okay. But it’s very important because it actually enables you to be able to talk through your inner voice or however you portray it. And I think that means that you’re coming across clearly. And that’s also a sign of confidence. You know, that’s the sort of soul of where I come from, especially with female entrepreneurs who need that confidence. I said, you’ve got it already. Just make sure it comes from you.

Jess Dewell 18:22
I’m going to jump in here because as a female entrepreneur, and always being typically the youngest. And now I’m in a place where I’m, thankfully, no longer the youngest female, and I love it, there’s something to be said for some other societal pressures that we just have to ignore. So if we’re not being arrogant, and we’re acting with clarity, and by the way to score every gender, then regardless of what somebody else thinks about us, that becomes then it doesn’t become and we have to know what to listen to. So I’m going to add a little bit to Julie, we have to know what to listen to and not take certain things that aren’t true. Or try and improve in a wrong direction. Because they actually go against who we are. So I really like that who we are, Pete’s Julie,

Julie Perkins 19:04
It really is a great power. If you just take for that moment, who you speaking with, it’s a very important one.

Jess Dewell 19:12
There against me is equal to blindness. Right and so we can have confidence without blindness so those who know me know that I’m a transatlantic sailor as well and tragically stuck in Colorado Mind you I know it’s comical, but there it is. So I’ve actually been working on kind of a model involving channel markers you know, we’ve got the red and we’ve got the green and chess you being in Seattle I’m sure you’re looking at boats bobbing around all the time, which I’m thoroughly jealous of but well played. So as we depart our channel and we’re going to head out into the open water. We’ve got the red on one side which is to me in my, in my model, like this kind of hypertension and panic kind of mode. Oh, look for that. Look out for that green. Sorry. So look out for that. Look out for The Red, there’s a danger over here. And the green is on the other side, which could be lethargy and could be complete. In my model, just someone who’s just completely unaware. And both of which could be blindness. The point is, is to navigate between the two to carry us out to be. So for me, arrogance is tantamount to blindness, but it’s just really entering into something winning your own power and then deciding to go anyway, even though there are dangers.

Erik Holmberg 20:29
This is such an interesting topic to me, because in my youth, I struggled with the fine line that there is between arrogance, incompetence, and I danced all over the arrogant side because I didn’t know any better. For me, the arrogance is when you’re trying to show off. I’ve never lacked confidence, except in very few situations. But I but for most of my life, I can’t think of very many situations where I was like, Oh, I just don’t have any confidence on this. And I love what Julie said, it’s, you know, when you’re looking at the internal part of who you are, if you know what you know, and you believe what you believe. That’s confidence. And you walk through life with those beliefs now doesn’t mean they can’t be wrong. It doesn’t mean that you could be off, off the mark, right? I mean, let’s go back to the boat example, right? If you’re a little bit off, that can be a real problem, right? You can end up in a sandbar you know, worse yet, you can end up in a horrible storm. But if you’re confident in what you’re doing, and where you’re going in the direction that you are being led, and leading yourself and those around you. That’s confidence. That’s not arrogance. Arrogance is when you cross over that line. And for lack of a better term, you’re being a real jerk.

Julie Perkins 21:40
Especially the boat thing with the sand thing because our job in life isn’t the final destination. It’s not the measure. It’s how we’re sort of fulfilling the journey and taking other people on it. So if you hit a sandbank, it’s fine to be pushing off and picking another direction. So, you know, that’s that’s that beautiful thing about doing it without arrogance with confidence that you’re okay to hit the occasional sandbank? You know, in terms of that, because the journey is fulfilling. It’s, it’s a great picture, you put my mind there press support to obviously start off by Erik, for sure. Thank ya, sorry, I did I quickly.

Jess Dewell 22:19
Wow. Here’s the third one. Is it true that the shorter we make our cycles to fail, the more we actually get done in the future?

Erik Holmberg 22:29
I would agree that I would agree with that statement that absolutely. The faster we fail, the faster we learn, so long as we’re actually paying attention. And we’re taking in the messaging. And we’re not just doing the same stupid thing all over again, right? So long as we understand that, we’ve hit the sandbar and what the waves look like before we hit the sandbar and what the color of the water was before we hit that sandbar. And we can say, hey, all right, well, now we know what to avoid. You know, let’s check that box. Again. Failure is a result. It’s not a death sentence. I would agree.

Julie Perkins 23:01
I think I love the water, but analogy. So you know, if you look at growth, it’s like this series of waves for ourselves for companies. I mean, obviously, I work with entrepreneurs at any stage. So it’s quite choppy. But I just say that aren’t get off, get on, get off and keep evolving yourself. Keep moving forward. Don’t get stuck in founder’s trap on-off. And I think that’s a beautiful way to see this whole thing of, it’s okay to fail, step-on-step-off, step-on-step-off. So just to continue the water thing, it’s a good one to keep in mind, for sure.

Chris Michel 23:34
It comes down to are you learning from the failure, are you learning from the nose, because if you’re not learning from the nose, then all you’re doing is beating yourself up. You’re running into the wall again and again and again, with no understanding of what you’re doing. And so you won’t see the pitfalls, you won’t see the sandbars. You won’t see the, you won’t see the iceberg. But you won’t see the things that are in front of you and pitfalls. And it’s not that you need to avoid them. But growing up, I played collegiate football, you can go into the same mistake with a different approach. If I lower my shoulder, I know that I’m using my shoulder to do the brunt of the work. If I don’t if I leave myself exposed as a wide receiver or tight end like I was, if I leave myself exposed, guess what? I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get hit, I’m gonna get knocked down. And I may get hurt. If you learn from the mistake right? The first time you get hit the second time you lower your shoulder in if you learn from it, then yes, I’d say yes, fail as fast as you can if you’re learning from those things. But if you’re failing just to fail, then no. But yes, failing means that you’re learning and growing. That’s how we learn.

Julie Perkins 24:37
Definitely in terms of sort of progress versus perfection. And I think that was a life lesson for me. I held on to wave too long. And now this on and off and to fail quicker is the greatest learning that we can pass on to young entrepreneurs, founders, et cetera, for sure that I totally agree.

ANNOUNCER 24:58
It’s time to take a brief break from our show. Fast Track Your Business will improve your business results. This high-value program is an unbeatable value, to make it easy for you to act now. With your subscription, you have access to “Ask Jess Your Business Questions” and exclusive resources on key leadership topics. Subscribe now; visit FastTrackYourBusinessToday.com. And know that you are moving forward in the right direction. Let’s return to the Bold Business Podcast.

Jess Dewell 25:31
I’m a believer in ending, if it doesn’t have an end, but one somewhere, because gotta make sure you keep going. And the on-off is the same kind of thing, whether it’s the embargo, whether it’s the book that and I know there’s a lot of comparison that goes on, which goes into some of the other things that we were just talking about. What we see others doing is what success is supposed to look like, may not be what we look like because we all have bones and we all have muscles. And humans in general have eyeballs. And without those things, we can still exist because pretty awesome creatures. So knowing that we’re all different. Everything that we’re talking about is a variety. And we can never look at what’s on the surface and go, Well, they’ve got it. No, I don’t because we don’t know, we don’t know what they went through. And that leads me into my next question, which is what the next kind of area that we could play a little and that is, well, what does then high performance mean?

Chris Michel 26:27
I think it depends on who you are. High performance for Julie could mean something completely different than from myself or even Erik or even just right. Because high performance for me, you know, there are people out there that want to make millions. And that’s their goal that they say I’m gonna make millions, I’m gonna do this. And there’s nothing wrong with that goal. I have no problem with that goal. But is that necessarily a goal of mine? Right? And does that mean if I don’t make a million dollars or 2 million or 10 million? Does that mean that I’m not a high performer? I can be a high performer and do the things that I do at a very high level for me, again, it comes back to do we understand who we are and what we’re doing and why we do the things that we do. Because if we do, then my high performance is awesome. No offense, Jess, I don’t have to be like you.

Jess Dewell 27:13
Good. I don’t want you to be because I want to like you for you. Right?

Chris Michel 27:18
But that, right? We get so caught up sometimes I think and I want to be right, I want to be like so and so and I want to be like so and so and why can I have that journey? Why can I be like Bill Gates or, you know, Tesla? Why can I do these things? You’re not them? And that’s okay, you’re, you be you. Dr. Seuss, right? No one’s you-er than you.

Jess Dewell 27:38
I like that. It seems like something that goes with gifts of achievement for things I received a lot of those books, graduated from college, everybody sent me All the Places You Will Go. So I have a whole collection of that one book that I have then passed on to other people who need them. So I love that.

Julie Perkins 27:38
The challenge of you know, what is success to us. We are so influenced by, you know, the definition of startup or from the stories my own personal success by what we read and what we hear. But question is, what’s it all for? That? What’s it going to bring? What’s the word going to bring to be in? Is it so that you can visit countries, wherever you want, go to visit family be free to do this? What is it? What does it actually what’s the outcome of it? Why do it, why bother? And that’s especially important for entrepreneurs. So it’s a really important questions about, you know, not to get caught up in the headlines of life, Billy, and to actually understand, what why do it? Because there’s a very important one.

Erik Holmberg 28:44
I totally agree to jump in, we need to have our why to kind of hold us to our own measuring stick. You know, if we’re out there, young, what Chris is saying, we’re out there to make millions. Well, that’s great. But why? What are we going to do? Right? For me, it’s all about being better than I used to be. Because at the end of the day, I’m not competing against anyone else. I’m just competing against myself and those that I coach are the same I try and bring forth their gifts and their focus. And really that is the Start With Why start with the beginning there. Just a quick lesson that I’ve learned just recently, I just recently went down to push myself to some other limits speaking of depth, to go freediving breath hold diving down in Mexico. And I had been teaching scuba diving for many years in the previous life, of course. So I understood the physiology, but the essence of it is one needs to calm oneself there I am on the surface and I’m all excited, right? I’m like, Oh, this is going to be great. I’m gonna go and dive down there. You know, I’m gonna go for it. Well, what happens then? Well, the heart rate goes up. Right? And I start consuming more oxygen. In essence, we have to calm the self get in the body and then allow to go to depth for me. My goal was to be down to 55 feet to be a 50 feet, I made it to 55 I’m hanging there in this line listening to whales can see them always blue. I’m gonna keep going, of course, because it’s a competition for me against myself. I’ve chased the dollar signs, I chased the materialistic things I’ve chased, you know, the fancy clothes, et cetera, go out to be seen. But when that all falls away, none of it really matters, because we’re just here competing against ourselves. And so I would encourage anyone listening to really find and define what does success mean to you? Because really, that’s all that matters, screw all the rest, let the rest just fall away. Because in the end, it does.

Chris Michel 30:38
What Erik just said, I think we hear a lot. I’m not out here to compete against somebody else. I’m competing against myself, I’m trying to be a better version of myself than I was yesterday. Can I do a little sidebar? Yeah. How do we do that? How do we encourage people to do that?

Jess Dewell 30:52
We’re gonna put a pin in it because that’s my next question. And I have to take a quick thing. So everybody gets to think about it, you’re all reading my mind. Now, too. We are thinking oh, like, which is great. Because we know what we want to be conveying. We understand the importance of what a high mindset is, and how unique it is to us. We recognize that not only whether we’re thinking about recognizing and owning, we don’t have control over everything, maybe we need a little bit more love for ourselves and our soft skills and how we’re using those to interact with others. Maybe it’s knowing what our word is, and figuring out how to practice that as we go along. All in all, that’s why Bold Business Podcast exists. And I’m your host, Jess Dewell, and don’t forget, share that you’ve heard something you can take action on now. This, we’re going into the second half of this, which means gonna be more. So invite your friend, tag along, have a conversation out of it, and reach out to us because it’s through our combined learning, and our combined experiences that we get to understand how do we want to define our success. What impact do we want to make? What does that mean for a value exchange and the world as we know it today, and that would allow us to adapt and to the world that we don’t know that’s coming tomorrow?

ANNOUNCER 32:17
The Bold Business Podcast is brought to you by Red Direction. Jess Dewell dug into one idea in this program. Her goal is to ignite your creativity and spark different thinking with the presented material. How you apply this to your current priorities is up to you. Jess Dewell can bring the missing voice back into your company. With you, Jess will solidify your company’s TrueNorth. Your unique Red Direction. Provided you are ready to work with Jess, email her at [email protected]. Special thanks to The SCOTT Treatment for technical production.