Overcoming Fear and Pursuing Your Dreams with Tiffany Sauder

(2) Overcoming Fear and Pursuing Your Dreams with Tiffany Sauder – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rB4lIrtCiAY

Transcript:
(00:00) the things in your minds that you are sidestepping walking around making decisions around what whatever they are not real and fear you have a choice to make of whether or not fear or your dreams are going to determine the outcome in your life and I like you know getting mad it activates me I was like pissed off and I’m not I’m not gonna let fear Drive the outcomes in my life I wouldn’t parent my kids that way towards that I wouldn’t coach my leaders towards that I wouldn’t follow somebody who was making decisions
(00:36) like that like what the world Tiffany what the world hello everyone and welcome to the flow over fear podcast where it is our mission to help you to rise above fear and realize your ultimate potential in leadership and life I’m your host Adam Hill and it is my goal to share with you the human side of high performance my guests share their experience with fear anxiety struggle Challenge and most importantly despite all of it how they Rose above it to achieve incredible results so if you’re ready to rise up
(01:15) let’s get started hey everyone thanks for being here welcome to flow over fear I’m really excited for our guest today I had a chance to see my guest Tiffany souder uh speak at the recent EOS conference in front of thousands of entrepreneurs and after our after her keynote I had to immediately reach out and ask her to be on the show because I tell you her message hit and uh thankfully she said yes and she’s joining me today and I’m really thrilled to dig in and learn from her today uh Tiffany souder is a wife a
(01:48) mom an entrepreneur a CEO a board member investor and Mentor 17 years ago she founded element 3 and ever since she and her husband have been building their companies and their family on the exact same timeline and that means four kids three businesses and two careers all building toward one Abundant Life and while element three uh now is a growing stack of accolades and Awards this isn’t the whole story an amazing team and a hefty dose of hard work wrong decisions and scary nights and we’ve all been
(02:21) through those our all the big picture of how she got here Tiffany has learned that it isn’t our trophies that are transferable but it’s our scars and our stories I love that thank you for being here Tiffany yeah thanks for having me Adam I’m looking forward to the conversation as am I and uh and I I mean when I first saw you on on the EOS stage uh it was really powerful because it really connected with me as somebody who’s you know trying to achieve more and I think one of the things that I want to dig into is this life of and
(02:50) that you talk about because a lot of us you know struggle with this idea a lot of us feel like we have this fear that you talk about that we have to live a life of ore where we’re you know choosing between things um and for those of us who try to live the life of the end it may feel overwhelming and so I was hoping you could just jump into your story and how how you got to that philosophy maybe maybe give us a little back story on on where you came from yeah um yeah I I think that um we’ll kind of do a speed round here
(03:23) to orient people to my background I’m a small town kid I’m the oldest of four and I’m the kid of an entrepreneur and all that is relevant because I just grew up around a lot of risk I grew up a lot around a lot of hard work I grew up around a lot of like I mean if you can think it you can do it um and I’m a girl and I have two brothers but my dad like I was in a Bobcat so are my brothers I grew up on a farm you know you drive at 14.
(03:52) so were my like I was just sort of like we were treated the same um and my dad had high expectations of us he had um work ethic was really important to him and that’s like what I grew up around and then you like turn into this adult you know-ish version of yourself and I started in the corporate world realized that I just I’m an entrepreneur I like seeing the outcome of my decisions very quickly I’m pretty comfortable being wrong actually I just like the iterating process gives me a lot of energy I don’t
(04:25) actually care if I don’t get it right like I just can’t my it my brain really moves quickly to like well what’s the next thing we could try um and then I about I don’t know you know I told the story in my EOS talk in 2018 My Life Hit this big inflection point and um I play life a little like the like a game of bumper cars and I think I’m getting better at that in my old age and I’m grateful for that but I speed really fast until I hit something and I don’t always pick up the cues that maybe this isn’t
(05:02) the right direction maybe you should you know gear down maybe this is too much maybe you’re putting too much pressure maybe you’re running too hard maybe you’re not sleeping enough maybe you’re not investing in relationships and I think the like you know my background of like being a farm kid raised by an early like I was there on the early stage entrepreneur part where resources were lean and work was rich and uh you know we joke that my youngest brother live the reverse of that but you know I
(05:33) was the I was the Roman years that’s what I lived what’s what I grew up in and so I think some of those habits didn’t serve me as I got to be older and my belief that I could brute force my way through a lot of really hard things my belief that if my intentions were good then the outcomes would be right um I I got to a place where I was in so much chaos and I was physically so tired that I had to start looking at life differently so I guess that gets us to the drama part of the story but I can I can keep going or I can pause there yeah
(06:11) no I I appreciate that backstory so and and I’d love to kind of learn more maybe expand on on how that chaos come came to be uh because I know a lot of us can get into that chaos we just we want a lot and so how how did how did that chaos show up and and what type of fear were you experiencing that yeah well I think everything started to break so you know Mike and I think you know you probably have this too like people will call me and they’ll be like I don’t know how to fix this and they’re
(06:40) looking for a Band-Aid and it’s like well it’s actually breaking like you have to acknowledge that to yourself it’s breaking your relationships are breaking my business was breaking my friendships were breaking like it was all breaking and we like look it’s takes a lot of Courage which is why I talk a lot about vulnerability of like saying that to yourself like no it’s breaking because if it’s breaking then either it’s gonna go away or you have to try something you haven’t tried before
(07:06) which I think is where the fear starts to set in of like well what do I do instead and you have all this self-justification that the things that you’re doing are noble and right if you didn’t think that you wouldn’t do them so you have all this I think like ill-placed conviction and because we’re grown-ups and we’re like as kids believed when we were grown-ups we would know what we were doing I think we like sit on those for way longer instead of like this is not serving me and I just I got to the place
(07:36) where I was just pissed off I was like this cannot be what being a grown-up is all about it can’t be and if it is I don’t want this version of it I don’t want to be tired all the time I don’t want to be saying to my husband all the time I’m overwhelmed and exhausted I don’t want to be physically present in places and be mentally on to the next thing I don’t want to be at work planning my kids birthday party I don’t want to be at my kids birthday party thinking about the work that I’m not getting I don’t want
(08:02) like I don’t want this this is madness this is stupid and if this is what it’s all about I don’t want to any part of it and I don’t mean that in the sense of like I was suicidal I was just like objectively this sucks yeah and so if the game everybody’s playing gets you to this outcome like I’m good I want a different game like how do I change the game for myself and so getting mad and admitting to myself I actually hate this I I hate it all how do I change it and that really became the moment where I was like well
(08:38) mentally I had to let go of everything and decide as in my like in recollecting the parts of the life that I wanted to go with me into the future whatever that looked like I kind of picked through them one by one so yeah so that that’s and that’s that’s helpful because uh I think a lot of us feel that that point and and we get and I know that I’ve I can relate to the idea of of trying to put a Band-Aid over a gaping wound like that whole you’re breaking um and uh and and distinguishing between
(09:11) the differences I think you know one thing we should learn how to and maybe expand on how we do that but I’d love to kind of go back and and talk about so you started you know element three which is your company about 17 years ago so it’s your baby you know you’ve created it and uh and you have this you have a family and you’re doing a lot of these things so you’re deeply immersed in all of those things how how do you uh and once you get to that breaking point where you’re saying to yourself that
(09:37) you’re hating this how do you come to a point where you are you know where you’re able to let some of that stuff go but still operate in it does that make sense yeah totally people when I tell my story they think about it very binary like that I like quit being a mom I quit you know maintaining my house I quit like no I had to like you’re right you still have to show up tomorrow in the chaos that is your existence yeah it’s totally right Adam it’s a really insightful question and observation
(10:08) um but I became instead of being only in it because it had to I still had to do my calendar I still had to get up in the morning I still I still need to do it I would I was also sitting above it mentally like what about the day could have been different what about the things I said yes to could I have said no to what about the things that were two hours could have been one hour what about the things I said to my husband were true and what were excuses because I had planned poorly like I started to look to try to look at it more objectively
(10:46) um and I will say like I mean I you know I tell the story like you know my marriage is kind of a mess I mean it was a mess we were really mad at each other there was a lot of hurt and he was more than happy to tell me where I was failing I some of it I needed to listen to and I didn’t want to because I also had my own bucket of things I was like very angry at him about and so you start having to actually be a customer of like a mat what if it’s true what does that mean what if I actually am like I’m actually
(11:20) putting him last every single day and I would you know I had a very well rehearsed speech about how that wasn’t true it was true actually I didn’t want to say that I didn’t want to own that I didn’t know what to do if that was true I didn’t know how to behave differently and so then you start saying okay well if is that what I want to be do I want to be a wife whose entire marriage or at least as many days as you can put together before they decide to leave because they’re put last all the time is
(11:49) that the marriage I want is that the wife I want to be is that what I want to be true of my commitment that he’s last and if it if I were to change it what would I do instead and then you start thinking taking yourself through that thought profile like what would I do instead if he was first or let’s just put him third let’s imagine you know sure what would it look like and you start I would start taking myself through the mental exercise of what would it look like if he was first and like some of it is like I would
(12:18) didn’t even know actually I didn’t know what it would look like if he was first I couldn’t even picture it so then I have the choice to make of do I tell him I don’t know what it looks like to put you first which probably hurts even more than me not putting him for you know like I’m just like you have to pull the thread of like how honest with yourself are you willing to be how vulnerable are you willing to be in this situation and you got to get to brass tacks about why is that true and do I want that to be true
(12:52) one of the I’m creating some content right now and one of my recent you can tell me if this connects or not one of my recent observations is that in our lives there is always a list of things that are starving our job as Discerning adults is to place things on that list that we actually want removed from our lives otherwise it becomes this accidental game of what’s starving and what’s being fed and we feed all kinds of things that we don’t think are true about who we are but they are actually very much
(13:27) true about who we are because we are feeding it so much and to me a very easy thing is like when I get an alert at the end of the week on how many hours per day I was on my phone some of it is like it counts when I’m Google Maps and there’s a lot of construction in the city right now and so like I’m I’m not like a terrorist about this but I asked myself what was I feeding this week in what I was on my phone about and is it things that I want to be resourced and fed and healthy or was it things on my starve list that I actually
(14:04) want to go away and it’s not about balance to me it’s not about yes there’s like work-life integration all this kind of stuff but it is at different seasons of your life deciding what you’re feeding what are you starving because otherwise that is an accidental list that’s being formed um I love I love that idea of avoiding because I we talk a lot about that balance idea the work life balance and and you know from a lot of the people that I’ve talked to on this podcast and a lot of people learn from it I’ve
(14:34) learned that the idea of balance is this this unachievable you know idea that takes a lot of energy to try to pursue but instead like I love that idea that that you know there are seasons for this and you’re defeating different things in different seasons and what I’m hearing throughout this conversation and you know correct me if I’m wrong because I might be misinterpreting but that the idea that that we we come into situations or circumstances with these preconceived like ideas or paradigms or
(15:03) or or beliefs about something that needs to happen and when our expectations aren’t met we get angry and we fight it and we just deplete our energy trying to battle it instead of maybe flowing with it and trying to uh adjust our our Rhythm a bit or re or or internal or look inside and figure out where we’re where we need to change am I off the mark on that or is that I think that’s true um no I don’t think you’re off the Mark um this came to my mind it’s like adjacent it’s like a first cousin of
(15:36) what we’re talking about here and we’ll see if it’s helpful or not um one of my also observations and you know I’m in a marriage that’s now almost 20 years and so it’s not only that I’m figuring out how to do life by myself I’m trying to do life well with this human being that I’ve chosen um and so one of the tension points that come and I think this like you know we already OS together so obviously you have this in your DNA as well but one of the tension points that come is when I
(16:04) am when I’ve chosen something to be on this My Starving list and he’s chosen it to be on his fed list and when that is misaligned it creates all this confusion and chaos and when we’re aligned on this is the part of like we’re we’re very new to this season of um kids and travel Sports holy cow different space in life and place and financial applications and time and all the things it’s crazy town I had no idea I was not an athlete this is nuts and she loves it and so we’ve committed to this so that is on our fed
(16:41) list one of the things that or probably will need to move to our starving list is fewer family vacations I hate that I love the idea of it but there’s commitments that come with being on a team that we need to honor and all this kind of stuff and I’m like learning this all because I’m like I want to feed family vacations and he’s saying no we need to feed the commitment that our kid has made and we have made as a family to sign her up for this thing and I’m like no we gotta go family vacations he’s
(17:12) like no this so until we both understood what are we feeding and what are we starving we have misaligned priorities and it’s in that in so many areas I think in our relationships but um I just think that speaks to just like alignment and I think a little bit of what you were kind of recapping of what I said yeah it does it helps I mean the idea of like what we’re starving and what we’re what we’re uh you know what we’re feeding is it seems like you’re moving it from like unintentional to
(17:39) intentional you’re making the list and you’re okay yeah yeah that makes a difference okay and and I love um you know I was I listened to a recent episode of your podcast uh scared confident which I love that name and I love the podcast I’m not I’m a big fan now and um you had your husband on there and I was really intrigued by that because you you were having this really honest conversation for everybody to hear about what’s working what’s not working was that an element of how you started to repair the damage in your
(18:08) marriage or how how did you get to that point where you can be that honest oh yeah I mean I get so much energy out of talking about the most real things with him um and I think my friends would say this in my friendships too it’s like I don’t know the byproduct of choosing to live life on the other side of fear which is you know what you’re helping guide listeners through too is the things in your minds that you are sidestepping walking around making decisions around what whatever they are not real
(18:40) and fear you have a choice to make of whether or not fear or your dreams are going to determine the outcome in your life and I like you know getting mad it activates me I was like pissed off and I’m not I’m not gonna let fear Drive the outcomes in my life I wouldn’t parent my kids that way towards that I wouldn’t go to my leaders towards that I wouldn’t follow somebody who was making decisions like that like what the world Tiffany what the world and my like again my brain can be very binary all of a sudden I was like I am
(19:17) done with fearful thoughts so when am I going to replace it with that’s my question of like well what do I do instead I can’t think nothing like what am I gonna hum like I I have to replace it with something you know what I do instead um uh so there’s I’m I’m a Christian so there’s a Biblical piece to this as well there’s a verse that says for God does not give us a spirit of fear but of love and of power and of self-control and so I was like okay if I’m not gonna be afraid what am I gonna do instead and so
(19:47) for me I was like well I’m gonna love I’m gonna love instead I’m gonna love the person involved and I just like practice loving loving the Earth loving like what just being like I’m gonna move my energy from Fear To Love From Fear To Love From Fear To Love and it was very strange and inanimate sometimes but I was just like pushing my thoughts power to me was about awareness that I’m in this moment and I’m taking my agency back that’s like I’m moving the locus of control from Fear to me and taking the
(20:19) ball back was like well where do I go instead and so then I would go to love and self-control that was about discipline I’m not if I said I was gonna do a podcast episode every single week even if it’s terrible even if I hate it even if I don’t want to push play because fear would get all up in my head and you know or I’m gonna do the thing even if fear makes it where I do it like 73 as good as like my confidence self could have done I’m still gonna do it the discipline of doing is part of the
(20:48) way that I’m gonna make fear go away you didn’t stop me today you didn’t stop me today you didn’t stop me today and I that that like train like God speed you know and so right that was that was kind of that side of it um and the other piece I went through a fear journey I did a fear interview which if you go to secure confident there’s a self-guided version of that that you can do and got to underlying understanding of where is my fear coming from and what is it trying to quiet and the true motivation of my heart is
(21:22) that I am desperately for others my growth and my compulsion to continue to put myself into hard situations to do things I’ve never done before is because I know the deeper my well is the further the people who’ve chosen to follow me can run I know that’s connected I know it is and so I have this compulsion to get better so that I can make other people better so whenever fear was like you’re making this about you who do you think you are like little Miss big deal like I always have something to say Your Friends Are
(21:52) Gonna Roll their eyes like like this is what fear says to me I would be like I am desperately for others I put myself in discomfort because I am desperately for others and it began to replace the narrative and it’s not perfect every day but I hid a lot harder like I have a higher batting average than I used to for sure and just these two things of taking agency over it replacing it with love and discipline and retracting the narrative in my mind with my fear statement which is I am desperately for others oh I think you
(22:25) and I both rented the same uh fear recording from Blockbuster video or whatever yeah what’s your Enneagram do you know your Enneagram yeah I’m a one I’m a one a one yeah I have a lot of friends that are ones I have a lot of them I’m a three but I love ones fascinate me because I dream of being that disciplined I dream of being like of Life coming together in such an elegant way that’s the way I perceive it yeah here’s the problem with it though is it is that whenever I’m recording a podcast or solo episodes
(22:57) like that and I don’t know if you go through this too but I’m going to stop the recording about 15 times like a minute in and then start re-recording so that’s like the perfectionist side oh yeah it’s a thing like yeah you guys cycle hard and I’m at threes I think are good because I’m like oh we’ll just do it again no problem we’ll start over we’ll we’ll ship it we can like you know I’ve always got another one so right I have a lot of friends that are ones yeah so how does how does that come out with
(23:22) with you as far as being a three how how does knowing that by the way because that’s a that’s an interesting topic with the Enneagram and I don’t I know I know a bit about it but not a whole lot so do you uh uh do you find that knowing that information about yourself helps you to respond better with other or interact better with others or how how is the underground helped you well um I’m I would say I’m in like the third inning of my uh I don’t know why so many sports analogies today but apparently
(23:50) that’s what I rolled out of bed with um it’s because the Nuggets won the won the championship last night yeah I did see that um my husband knows a sneaky amount about the NBA um so um so threes know what others are feeling very quickly they are less comfortable with knowing what they feel and I think that is a you know as I kind of talked about my like crash I would I’m able to overpower what I feel to perform and there’s a real usefulness in that but it becomes a real crippling part of who I am if I don’t listen well to my I
(24:28) know my bot like my body is my tell I will like never feel I’m like but it starts to hold tension I can feel my face get really tight yeah my dog gets clenched like I know now the physical signs that I’ve got to figure out how to create some space to let myself feel whatever needs to come out because I get I can just over perform and I can become way too reliant on what other people think of me as my primary driver for self-confidence and clarity about myself and that’s a really dangerous thing to give away to others
(25:04) and so I’ve learned um I’ve just learned tools of like even after the EOS talk it went really well it’s like my question was not like thank you so much it was like what connected with you like how do I how do I be intentional about not having this be about my ego getting bigger and be really thoughtful about how did this impact you because that’s the truth of who I am how did my story inspire you to be better who will you call what will your commitments be and that just keeps me in a healthier place
(25:37) um so I’ve learned things like that yeah oh that’s that’s yeah and I mean I think well obviously the us talk it it really connected with me because I related a lot to it and um and I like that idea that you’ve become that that you said power is you’re aware is awareness there’s there’s a word or something like there’s power in Awareness right that um how do you have any tools or anything like that that you’ve used or that you can recommend to others that can help them become more self-aware
(26:07) so that they can start to acknowledge those points where they’re living in that fear and maybe have to lean into love yeah I think um well for me I have like physical reminders like this piece of artwork behind me I had an artist that worked for us for a long time I had her listen to my fear interview and had her paint that for me so it’s you know elegant circles to everyone else but for me it’s a visual reminder of my journey and my commitment um I have decided to be very public about what I’ve gone through because
(26:43) it’s a huge part of accountability to me yeah but other people are in on the joke when other people are in on your journey not only does it free them to go on their Journey but it holds you accountable to things that you’ve decided to become and move to and you know there’s lots of things like joining Facebook communities people do this in all kinds of formats um I’m hard to pin down because I have a lot of kids and stuff and so I just like crowdsource accountability in that way of people I respect my my leadership
(27:12) team my company knows you know I did on the podcast and it holds me accountable who I’m becoming yeah um and I don’t keep it a secret that that’s that’s helpful I mean and I found I found a lot of the same things too is that there there’s a lot of accountability in in doing a podcast like this and being very open um you know uh coming from a background where you know I had I I was an alcoholic and everything like that certainly finding that in there but it wasn’t able to really find out who I was until I started being
(27:46) open and vulnerable about it and you know about who I am and what what I’ve gone through so there’s a lot of power in that and what was what was the trigger point or or was was there a single incidence or was it a combination of instances where you were basically just kind of fed up and you said no more of this I’m gonna I’m gonna make a change and what what was that process of how did how did you turn that corner I think that my moment of realization I I think I had like um I’d been dancing towards it and I kind
(28:17) of said this in the Eos talk too of like I’d fixed everything outside of me between like 2018 and 2021 my business my marriage um I felt like I was like I wasn’t living inside a tornado anymore yeah um and so there was peacefulness around me but I still felt a sense of unsettledness about my own role in going forward and and there’s maybe a clue there I don’t know I haven’t really done a lot of reflecting on that of I I had to call I had to get the waters calm yeah uh out at least that’s how I
(28:53) had to do it maybe that’s unique to my makeup before I could be like now where do I go next um and what does that mean and what do I I need because I had a lot of responsibility I I couldn’t like exit stage left and be like I’m gonna go get healed for three weeks and come back it just wasn’t in the cards yeah you had to stay in it and keep yeah keep working it yeah okay and I I think I I think in that process I learned about where I was part of the dysfunction I mean if everything you’re touching is
(29:23) dysfunctional you probably have a role you’re playing in that um and and so I had to like be honest with myself about that and um and I had even been through like you know Jared and I went to therapy I had gone through a year and a half or so of like working with a therapist just getting you know working through forgiveness and all the things that come with getting Peaceful Waters around you yeah um and in 2020 uh I in an unplanned uh my we had we got pregnant with our fourth daughter I it was unplanned we didn’t
(29:59) know what we didn’t when we went to have her I didn’t know what the gender was we already had three girls I was 40 you know of course the ending of the story is going to be it’s a boy my husband is the only son the name will live on forever you know that’s exactly how the story is gonna end I just know it is and then she was a girl right um which we’re very grateful for but I did say to my husband I’m sorry uh when they ended her to us but there was something about this just definitive realization
(30:29) that I am a mom of girls and I will be a mom of women and you know parents imprint hard on their kids but there was this it kind of makes me emotional thinking about there was just this moment where I was like okay I’m a mama girls and I will be a mom of women and so who I become will be the most impressionable woman in their life and I have a responsibility with that and maybe if it would have been a sign I would have felt the same way but that was the moment where I was like oh this feels big I didn’t picture this and
(31:11) um I think I took responsibility for myself in a new way um and in a way that was very unashamed and I think and you’ve probably been through that in your own Journey too of being like I don’t have any Shame about where I was and that’s part of my story and it’s as much a part of me as the things that people see that are good and I hold them with equal ownership yeah yeah it’s almost like you know feeling at least feeling the shame and this might be just me but you know feeling the shame in in other instances in my
(31:48) life led me to have a better relationship with not having to experience it later because that it makes sense yeah I feel that for sure yeah having having gone through those kinds of of things that the tons of things that you’ve gone through of being overwhelmed and you know and and and and that leads to you know you just being able to be a better example for your kids and hopefully they don’t have to go through that and I know you you’d mentioned you know you were you’re the daughter of an entrepreneur and that was
(32:17) your dad was the entrepreneur right in your family yeah he had a lot of influence on you as far as as as the entrepreneurial Spirit you started your first business when I think you were 14 is that right yeah and then kept going without it and so did do you look back on that experience as like the impact that he had and he said he said he was he had high expectations of you you look back on that as something that was positive for you is it something you’re trying to pass on to your kids or how how do you use that now to feel you
(32:47) yeah I have um I mean I have a a ton of gratitude for the intentionality that my parents had in raising us and my dad specifically with being financially illiterate you know knowing how to read an income statement a balance sheet filing a 10 40 Easy when before I could drive like just I think it breaks it broke down the scariness of a lot of these things that become like hard walls to have courage to jump over when you’re an adult you’re supposed to know stuff but you don’t know it um so I’m so grateful for all of that I think
(33:26) the part that I hope and my parents are way better at this now than when we were kids and I would say this to them too if they heard this they would nod their heads I think the idea of being very present for yourself emotionally was not a thing in my household my parents were both preachers kids um and there is a sense of service when that’s what you grow up around they both you know their grand their dads were both pastors and so their dad was their job was to take care of everybody else which means there’s you have to be okay
(33:58) because there’s not time for your problems or your emotions or your space that you need to take up so that came into my childhood not that it was like shut up and stop crying but it was a household filled with service which is very productive household filled with a lot of work which is very productive household filled with a lot of personal agency which is a lot very productive and I had to learn that it is okay if I have a bad day it is okay if I need to cry for my own reasons it is like okay if I just can’t
(34:33) is okay and I had to learn that as an adult because I naturally perform I naturally you know can push really hard and I had to learn it’s okay it’s okay yeah yeah I mean do you think that in our attempts to because I felt the same way that you know I really love the intentions of my parents I mean we had very sounds like we had a very similar background in that sense and you know but I found that you know that there’s there’s things that I need to repair personally that were ingrained early in childhood which makes me feel
(35:06) like to my kids that I’m going to be I’m just gonna no matter what I do I’m gonna screw them up in some way no matter how hard I try do you ever feel that yeah I I do and I have to say as much to them sometimes as like I mean last night I was so annoyed with them my daughter’s sitting here right beside me and she wanted to go to her friends today it was very inconvenient for me I needed to come to the office and do some stuff I was really annoyed that they didn’t help out more around just like observe the house and what has
(35:37) to happen every single day can you please do it for a second I was like really mad I have like literally guys I don’t know if my job right now as a parent is to like give you a consequence of like no you can’t like take some agency or to be like it’s summer I understand you’re getting out of bed at 6 15 in the morning to go to swim practice and you’re tired and you’re a teenager and I’ll just say like I don’t know what the right I don’t know what the right call is right now but this is my call
(36:00) and I think my like antidote to foolishness maybe is to be like at least I understood the options and you knew I had options and I picked one and maybe you’ll look back and be like you picked the wrong one and I’m still mad it’s like well at least you knew I was thinking about it yeah I don’t know I do think that though I have a brother-in-law that says you want them just screwed up enough that they’re funny and relatable I love that I love that that’s funny it’s like it’s kind of true it’s it’s so true I mean
(36:33) well I mean yeah we want to at least I think that’s maybe the best lesson we can give to our kids is that we’re all human you know I mean you know that we’re all going to make mistakes and and our parents aren’t perfect we’re not perfect we’re not gonna be that and uh so so yeah so I kind of getting into getting back to the life of Anne which is what we what we started with um if you can you know talking about what you’ve been through how you are living in that how uh in in the definition of of living a
(37:05) life of Anne how are you living a life of ant now and how is that creating abundance for you yeah I can speak to kind of how the idea came to be and then I’ll talk about outlooks in my own life um I saw it as a very binary thing initially that I can be have peace in my life and it can be sustainable or I can dream big and those felt like really crappy choices yeah and and so I I was like I don’t I don’t like that like I was living this you know chaotic existence of and let’s call it and I felt like the only way to get to
(37:38) like a place where life was sustainable and I wasn’t causing Madness and being a burden for everybody in my life was just to be like okay I’ll just want simpler things and I hated that yeah I’m like I don’t know which one I hate more I hate both of them how can that be and so I started to ask myself well how do I create a life of hand where the um imperative is that it’s sustainable meaning we are not living in this sort of like feast and famine Rush of energy then we go on vacation extreme like you
(38:08) know up till three in the morning then I can’t get out of bed till you know ten like what what if I’m just like no the the imperative is that it becomes sustainable and so I started disconnecting the question of what I want to do from how I’m gonna do it and asking myself like what do I want to do I use this example I want to learn how to play um pickleball it’s so you know it’s so cool everybody’s doing it it’s like all the rage yeah it’s so popular it’s social it’s not that hard actually
(38:43) um you know it’s a country club sport my husband evolves I just feel like I would love it um and so my question is that’s what I want to do instead of just impulsively signing up for lessons um and starting to play I’ve been asking myself how how do I get this in my calendar so that it’s a sustainable part of my life meaning my kids don’t have to sacrifice you know me there in the morning and the evening I don’t have to give up you know compromise a commitment and so the thing that I have come to is
(39:16) I’m on three boards two of those I’m I roll off at the end of this year this calendar year and when those come off my calendar I will start playing pickleball because when I look at the total number of hours that I spend on those boards I want to use that to move towards an and that I want to add to my life and so I get to make that choice what am I starving and what am I growing um and so the what I want to do versus how I want to do it separating those questions were really helpful for me because I don’t want it to be like oh I
(39:48) played pickleball for six months and then I can’t anymore because something got added I want it to be a sustainable part of my life and I don’t want it to be a thing that takes me away from the relationships that I’m trying to feed so how do I do it so that’s an example okay so and when you when you do that when you’re when you’re looking at how you do it and you recognize that you might have to sacrifice something else like maybe you know when you’re dropping off a board not re reassigning to it or
(40:13) something like that do you find that that that kind of reinforces your conviction to do it totally okay because if they ask me do you want to do another board term and I don’t know what I’m going to do at that time it’s like I mean yeah okay but that’s not moving like I um I am feeling very hard right now I need some play in my life there’s just a lot of it uses a lot of responsibility and I just need some play yeah and had I not thought through that um not that the joining read you know re-upping would be a bad thing I’m just
(40:45) like really clear about this is where I need to move my energy towards and I’m I’m excited about that um and there’s lots of examples of that but I have learned being able to say yes to everything doesn’t mean you can say yes to everything today but when you feel like you have you’re working towards a plan and you’re working towards assembling you know different kinds of help partnership with the friend maybe one and you want to add is like a monthly date night with your husband and you
(41:12) only have fifty dollars a month to do it okay that’s an and I want to add how do I do that I can think of like 15 different ways that we could maybe try to do that yeah then you start to solve towards the things that you want to be growing and it’s a very different kind of behavior I was very reactionary I was like hi I’m a high quick start and so like boom boom boom let’s get to it and it was Madness and it was unsustainable and um deciding that you’re gonna live a life that’s sustainable is a real
(41:42) is important sounds freeing yeah it is yeah um and so and then you know met you or didn’t beat you but saw you speak at the U.S conference and and I know that at least for Eos is a very freeing concept as well it it helps us to let go of the vine that’s one of their key you know statements there what uh was was that whole transformation that you went through did EOS play into that how did you how did you come into EOS world yeah I um I have learned um yeah I mean I their promise is like helping entrepreneurs get what they want
(42:22) out of their businesses and I was like oh yeah look at this pile of crap and see what you can do with that like that was literally my like oh really good luck with yourself was kind of my like you know okay isn’t that cute um but I told my team we don’t have any other if we knew what to do we would already be doing it we don’t know what to do we’re growing the business but we’re not growing profit that doesn’t work long term I was smart enough to know that um and I was like I’m sure there’s other
(42:50) options but we gotta do something and it’s kind of I look at it as like getting fit I mean there’s like 40 000 different ways to do it just pick one and do it yeah and I kind of had that attitude just pick one and do it um I totally believe we picked the right thing for us but it was not as like Discerning as everybody might imagine yeah um I had met some people that had done well on it we tried implementing a little bit ourselves um part of being a three is you wanna literally demand Excellence of everything and so I was like well we’re
(43:22) gonna do it we’re gonna be the best and so what’s it look like to be the best um so yeah it was life-changing it’s been transforming in the way that I think um I think even the dissection of what versus how probably comes to some IDs thinking you know like what is the issue discuss to solve and I think slowing my brain down has probably been one of the most powerful lessons for me in the US that’s something I still struggle with a lot is is is slowing it down and not wanting to just like fix everything at
(43:54) once and yeah um and there’s so much discernment in giving things time it is so counter-cultural but man I have seen some really I’m using air quotes slow people win real fast yeah that’s a that’s a great observation I love that and you know part of that sound it it sounds like a lot of what plays into that is discipline and you talk a lot about discipline too I think it’s even one of the one of your three behaviors for change that you talk about uh does discipline you know Jocko willink says discipline equals Freedom do you
(44:31) feel that that’s that’s accurate a hundred percent I I think that I had to learn you’ve got to decide what you’re going to be caged by your discipline or your reactive outcomes and I was caged by my reactive outcomes I didn’t have the money I needed I didn’t have the freedom I needed I didn’t have the relationships I wanted and I was caged by that and I think when you’re an undisciplined person you you wrongly look at discipline and say like well look how free I am but you’re just you’re caged by
(45:01) subpar outcomes and then when you have discipline you’re caged by the things you’ve chosen to get the outcomes you want and yeah discipline is so acute to me because I’m so naturally bad at it so it takes a lot of horsepower for me to stay disciplined I set a lot of traps I pay like I’ve said like I pay a trainer it’s just around discipline it’s not that I don’t know what to do it’s just I just I just won’t do it and I it’s like I just I just have had to learn there’s
(45:30) some of that I have to pay for and I’m not mad about that I used to I used to kind of be ashamed of that yeah so and you said said a lot of traps can you expand on that a little bit like what do you mean by I said a lot of traps yeah I mean I um like I will publish my goals to my leadership team I use my assistant and be like this is what I’m planning to do I need you to hold me accountable to this in our weekly L10 I need you to make sure the scorecard like I just like it’s a trap for myself I am the podcast
(46:02) is a trap where I’ll say like Hey we’re gonna do I’m gonna do this for three weeks and it’s a trap of like I gotta do it because somebody’s expecting it yeah because I’m a performer and I’m an achiever somebody else knows about it I’m like so much more likely to do it because I want them to be like oh you did good silly yeah um but a trap was like yeah the trainer’s waiting for me he got out of bed for me I need to be there or I’m gonna look bad and he’s gonna be mad at me so
(46:31) that’s that’s a great I love that way of putting it like that yeah setting it setting a trap um and what uh what are you what are you most challenged by now so you’re right now you know you’re you’re living the life of band you’ve got a lot of these Frameworks in place to try to help you to do that to implement that what are your biggest challenges that you’re trying to work through if you don’t mind me asking yeah no not at all um I am I am working right now on how to um I’ve spent you know I don’t know the
(47:01) first 10 to 15 years of my career I spent building up giant ball of Chaos in the last five years I got I think a really good toolbox of how to get the waters calm and now I get to move into like Innovation and creation and creativity and taking some swings and you know placing some more dollars on a bet and and I have a lot of confidence in my solving mind but I have less confidence in my Innovation and creative mind and so I’m I’m paying a lot of attention to that um I’m right now taking myself through
(47:41) the artist’s way I don’t know if you’ve heard of that before oh yeah um I had not but like four people told me about it in a span of four weeks and I was like I guess I’m supposed to do this um and it’s exercising my mind it’s putting some new disciplines in my time that are very uncomfortable for me and so I’m observing that I’m in an innovation and creation and risk-taking in a different way in my career and um it’s uncomfortable and that’s exciting yeah well a lot of yeah
(48:10) most of our excitement comes from discomfort and I’m so it’s I’m glad to hear that it’s exciting to exciting to see where your journey is going to take you because I’m excited to see it and um and you know with element three what what are can you tell us a little bit about that what your company does how where you know how you help people yeah we work with mid-market companies um help them professionalize their marketing so what that means is a lot of times mid Market companies that are at
(48:37) inflection point of growth they’ve got new leadership you know new generation of family taking over acquisition maybe private Equity came in and the strategy is flexing further than their marketing competency knows how to follow and so we will come in and help them build an organization build the disciplines build the processes build the team put the infrastructure in place the technology and we’ll run that for them for a series of 18 months to three years but our goal what we observed about the marketplace is that Brands who
(49:09) create long-term value they ultimately own marketing as a function as part of their culture as part of what they think as the part of the way they think about their Enterprise um and so when we would get called for projects we would know instantly whether or not that was going to be helpful or just you know an invoice that we got to take a cash a check on behind it and um our goal with our with element three is to build long-term Enterprise Value and we felt like if we want to do that really for others we have to build it in
(49:40) the way we would if we were owners of it and not just trying to perpetuate our own business model as an agency so um it’s exciting work we’re usually coming in where there’s a lot of change there’s a lot of change management needed and it’s fun because it’s both people work and marketing work what what size or what type of companies are you looking to to partner with on that kind of stuff um so they’re we say mid-market so anywhere between probably like 50 million and 500 million something
(50:11) like that nice okay um so pretty I mean they’re pretty sophisticated Enterprises usually they’re like for for years have been product LED you know they’re like their product had a certain niche in the marketplace um could be um um yeah so that kind of thing like midnight so mid-market companies that are going through some sort of transition succession or something like that longer term nice that’s uh yeah no I know yeah the company that that I’m in we we fit right into that demographic and so I know the transitions the
(50:44) succession planning very well and how much of a challenge it can be and especially when you want to want to create that kind of change so amazing and um and you’ve got a podcast called scared confident which is amazing it’s one of my uh one of my new favorites I I love it I think we have a lot of uh a lot of commonalities there so if you’re listening to this show you will love that show as well and uh and fun and you can find Tiffany on tiffanysauter.
(51:10) com and Tiffany where else can people find you and what else would you like people to know yeah that’s the best place um on the Pod if you um I also have a week a newsletter that goes out every other week if you want to get a little closer to some of the hacks that I have in my life events and our busy household and uh then I share those there as well but if you listen to the podcast in show notes you will find a way to to connect to the newsletter so thanks for having me Adam I appreciate the conversation a
(51:36) lot oh no thank you and I’m really glad I got to see you speak and that you were willing to come on the show this was an amazing interview I’m I’m very grateful for it so thank you for joining me and to everybody else out there thank you for joining us and we’ll see you next time hey everyone Thanks for tuning in to the flow over fear podcast if you’d like to learn more about getting into flow and learn the foundations of flow I have a free video series on my website at www.adamcliffordill.com called the
(52:05) foundations of flow feel free to go there and download it and start your journey to Rising above fear and achieving greater glow in your life if you like this episode and I’m guessing you did if you stuck around for this long then please do me a favor and hit the Subscribe button and you will receive notifications when I have new interviews new Recaps and new training things that pop up on YouTube thanks again for joining us