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AMY PORTERFIELD: Well hey there. Welcome back to another episode of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I’m your host, Amy Porterfield, and I am so very glad that you tuned in today.
Today’s episode is an important one, for sure. Today we are getting to the bottom of something that if you’re an entrepreneur you most definitely have experienced. This thing can be one of the biggest roadblocks you will ever encounter as an entrepreneur. That is not taking action.
It seems like a little fix, right? Just do something. But you and I both know it’s not as easy as it sounds.
I can remember times back when I was first starting out when I was hustling my butt off all over the place. I was connecting with different people and working with all kinds of clients. I was seemingly very successful.
The problem was I wasn’t taking action for the things that could actually take me to a place where I could grow and scale my business. I was a hustler. I was worn out. I was burned out. I was so tired and I was really just chasing my tail.
Looking back, it’s very obvious. But in the moment it was not obvious at all. Maybe when you listen to this episode you might realize, “Holy cow, I thought I was taking action but not so much as I could be.”
I actually had that realization. You all know at times I record the intro after I record my guest or sometimes I totally redo the intro if I record it in advance.
In this case that’s what I’ve done because now that I’ve had this interview with Brooke Castillo, our guest today, I was so blown away with what I personally learned that I just wanted to talk about it in a little bit of a different way in the intro.
I just want to let you know I think you are going to learn things you didn’t even know were a problem until now. But that’s a good thing. Now you can up level. Now you can look at things differently.
I really hope you don’t multitask through this episode. Treat it as a mini training. It could literally change your business overnight. I know that sounds dramatic but I actually really mean it so I had to say it.
Maybe you can relate to everything I’m saying here or maybe you’re experiencing something entirely different in your business. Hear me out. If what you’re doing right now in your business is not leading you to the results you desire then this episode is 100% for you today.
Today you’re going to get some clarity on some entrepreneurial roadblocks, things that are keeping you from taking massive action. My guest, as I mentioned Brooke Castillo, has worked with thousands of people who have been stuck or are not reaching the goals they’ve envisioned for themselves.
Ultimately they just needed a coach to shine some light on a path that can lead them to what I call the promised land, getting a lot done and getting big results.
I’m excited to introduce you to life coach extraordinaire (that’s the title I’ve given her), Brook Castillo, who has come today to share three simple truths that, with a little mindset shift and follow through on your part, will have you reaching levels of success that you’ve dreamt possible but not yet achieved.
I have to share one thing with you before I bring Brooke on. I am typically never an affiliate for something that is not directly related to online marketing. However, I’ve seen such big shifts working through Brooke’s content on my own for my personal life and for my business that I thought it was something I needed to get behind.
Here’s the deal. You all know I am on a mission to up level my life including my health and weight, which I’ve talked about on my podcast; my business, always, I’m always looking for ways to create new opportunities of learning for all of you; and, of course, I’m on a mission to up level my mind.
I know that focusing on what I think can quickly improve my health and my business. So the mindset piece, I think we all know as entrepreneurs, is so incredibly important. I’ve talked about that for a while now but haven’t actually been doing anything to up level how I think.
I’ve recently changed that. One of my secret weapons is learning from Brooke. I have been a huge fan of her podcast for years now, The Life Coach School. In fact, recently I took that one step further and enrolled in her Self-Coaching Scholars program which is so very cool.
In the Self-Coaching Scholars program she focuses on how you can make your life better and encourages you to take massive action to create those big results that you really, truly want.
I was kind of struggling with trying to figure out what kind of big results I really wanted. I know the results I want in my health and business but beyond that I know there are some other things I haven’t tapped into. It was kind of nagging at me.
I wanted to get some clarity in there as well. So when I’m learning anything new I go for total immersion. Since Brooke offers live coaching every single week inside of her Scholars program I thought it was what I needed.
I want total immersion. I want to make changes quickly. It’s funny. She calls this Self-Coaching Scholars program the Netflix of life coaching. I thought that was kind of brilliant.
I’ve mentioned Brooke on the show before but I’ve never talked about the Scholars program. I love it. I’m doing it. I want to share it with all of you. I have become an affiliate just recently. So, if you’re interested go check it out. If not, no big deal.
I do think if you want to get your thoughts straight so that your thoughts create the feelings that create the actions that you really want in your business this is definitely something to look into.
Go to thelifecoachschool.com/join. It’s as simple as that. If you do join and it asks, “How did you hear about us?” Just say, “Amy”. I would really appreciate that. I want Brooke to know I am singing her praises and I really believe in what she’s doing. She didn’t ask me to, I just love it that much.
I won’t make you wait any longer. Let’s go ahead and bring on Brooke.
AMY: Brooke, welcome to the show. I am so happy you are here today. I have already introduced you as a life coach extraordinaire in my intro. But tell my listeners a bit about what you do, how you got started, and how you make your living today.
BROOKE: I’m happy to do that but first I just have to geek out and tell you how honored I am to be on your show. I have to do that because you’re amazing. All of your listeners know you’re amazing but it’s kind of a bigger picture thing I’ve been thinking about lately that makes me super emotional.
This is how I’m imagining it. I’m imagining me and you getting together with our great grandmas. Let’s say we all went to Starbucks together. We sat down and told them what we’re up to.
This is what it would sound like to them. I’m imagining them listening, “We have our businesses and we work online.”
They would be like, “Oh, that’s nice dear.”
We would be like, “No, it’s a lot better than nice and we run multi-million dollar corporations from our laptops, from our houses, we affect millions of people, and we are best friends but we never talk to each other on the phone. We only listen to each other’s’ podcasts.”
AMY: Yes! Amen to that.
BROOKE: I just think it’s such an amazing time to be alive. It’s such an amazing opportunity we have to be entrepreneurs. I’m just so honored to be on this podcast with you because you’ve been such an influence in my business life with me.
Before we get started I just want to say “thank you” for that. I know today we’re going to talk about why you aren’t taking action. One of the things that really helps me is this exact concept, knowing our great grandmas didn’t have this opportunity.
This wasn’t even a possibility for them. So even though I think it’s hard and sometimes it’s a big struggle for us, just remembering it is at least possible is really helpful to me when I’m taking action.
AMY: I love that.
BROOKE: I run a life coach school. I started 14 years ago before anyone even knew what a life coach was.
AMY: That must have been so weird explaining to people what you did.
BROOKE: Everyone would say, “What sport is that?” And I always tell my students there was no Amy Porterfield. You couldn’t just go online and figure out how to do a webinar. There was nothing. Nothing!
I have just always loved psychology. I have a psychology degree. I’ve always studied self help. I’ve always been obsessed with trying to make my life better.
I started off as a weight-loss coach and did weight-loss coaching for several years before I got really started in training other coaches. Then other coaches started coming to me asking how I had such a successful business.
They asked how I was helping people lose so much weight. That’s when I started training coaches. Here we are 14 years later and I run the Life Coach School. We train coaches and also work with clients through our Scholars program.
That’s kind of how I arrived here.
AMY: Scholars is the program I’m in and I’ve also been listening to Brooke’s podcast forever. If you don’t do anything else you’ve got to listen to her podcast. It is fantastic. I’m going to link to it in the show notes but I’ve learned so much from that and now Scholars is the next step that I can’t even wait to jump into.
Here’s the thing. One thing I know about you is that you are the queen of breaking things down and declaring some serious action items to help your students move the needle forward in their lives.
You work with clients and students day in and day out and you hear the same things that I likely hear from mine. I’m trying really hard. I’m doing all of the things I’m supposed to be doing. I’m so incredibly busy but I just can’t seem to get results. What am I doing wrong?
They may say they know what their dream is. They know it’s possible. They want nothing more than to make it happen but between the negative voice in their head and the thoughts that they can’t do it and questioning what to do and not even having clarity around what they are supposed to do so nothing seems to be happening for them.
Brooke, based on your experience, can you tell us what’s really going on here
BROOKE: First of all, I think a lot of our students think they are the only ones that have that voice in their head. It’s like we don’t have that voice. I just want to clarify that everything you just said is exactly how I feel most days.
I think that’s so interesting. This requires work, especially as your goals get bigger. As soon as you figure it out then you set a bigger goal.
The thing to remember is that so much of starting a business and building a business is about managing your mind. There’s no way around it. You can understand how to do everything. You can study all of the material.
Until you understand that what you think about is going to create the emotion that either drives the action or the inaction you are never going to take the action. You guys know this because we sit around and procrastinate and then we beat ourselves up for procrastinating.
We really think we want this then why aren’t we taking action? It just becomes a negative spiral.
What I want to offer here, this is really important to think about when you are taking action, you pay attention to the emotion that is fueling your action. If you’re being fueled by stress and fear and (shall we say) panic, you’re not going to be able to produce results at the level you want to produce.
This is how you’ll know you’re in that state of what we call the busy hustle. You aren’t actually producing results. I can see this in my own life and I’m sure you can too, Amy. You will spend a whole day working and there will be nothing to show for it.
It’s kind of like you worked really hard and there’s nothing at the end of it as a result. I like to differentiate between the tiring hustle that’s fueled by negative emotion and a productive hustle that’s fueled by your desire to accomplish something bigger than you.
The way that you know if you’re being productive is you will produce a result at the end. You will know that you have produced that result because it’s very hard to produce from negative emotion.
Most of the time we are like, “That’s enough stress. Now I’m going to get some work done.” That’s when we actually start producing.
Notice that business is actually just chatter in your head. When you say, “I’m busy,” what you’re really saying is that you are just chattering a lot of stuff in your head. I tell my clients never to say they are busy. You are either producing or you’re not.
AMY: That’s so good. So this number one reason most people don’t take action is they are doing too much tiring hustle and not enough productivity?
BROOKE: Exactly. They’re working hard but they’re not producing something at the end of it.
AMY: Give me an example, probably when you were just starting out. I’m sure you’ve experienced this. What did that look like for you?
BROOKE: I’ll just give you an example of us with this podcast. Let’s say you would have called me and said, “Hey, let’s get on the phone and work on the podcast.”
You and I could have gotten on the phone and worked on the podcast for an hour. We’d have nothing at the end of that.
That sounds silly but that’s what we do. We say we are going to go work on our business and we do work. We could work for eight hours on our business but we don’t actually produce anything.
Instead, we say, “Let’s get on for an hour and produce the podcast.” Let’s actually have a podcast at the end of it. That’s an example of us using it.
I’ll say brand new people building businesses set up working hours. They go and work on their businesses and they do things like passive action things such as taking courses and learning things.
That is very important. You need to learn how to do something. But if at the end of the day all you have done is that passive action and if all you’ve done is hustle around and learn new things and you’re not producing anything you’re not going to get any traction.
You will tell yourself you spent all of this time and then ask, “Why isn’t my business successful yet? Why am I not making money yet?”
It’s because you’re not producing something that can give you a result that will help you build upon that to actually build your business.
AMY: I love this. I talk to my students about really identifying what action looks like for them. At the end of the day, what do they want to produce? Sometimes they aren’t even sure what they want to produce.
There are so many things you could just rattle off in an online business that is proof you are producing. I don’t think they are making that connection.
BROOKE: I totally agree. I miss it sometimes too. I’ll sit down to work on something. That’s the worst thing to do.
AMY: I never thought about it that way.
BROOKE: Don’t sit down to work on something. Sit down to produce something. At the end of your time working (we’ll talk about that in a minute) you will have a result.
When you build up many, many, many results you will have a very different looking business than if you were just really busy working on it.
AMY: Okay guys, even if we just changed our language and take baby, baby, baby steps around this. I am no longer working on such and such, I’m producing such and such, whatever it is.
BROOKE: Yes.
AMY: That’s big. I’m going to use that. That’s fantastic.
BROOKE: Do it.
AMY: That’s reason #1. Give me reason #2.
BROOKE: Reason #2 that I see with almost every single new person that’s building a business is that they give themselves too much time to produce that result, too much time to get something done.
We do that when we’re new because we have more time than clients. We have so much time. We say to ourselves that we have eight hours to get our work done today.
That’s way too much time. The example I’d like to use is that you don’t want anyone to come to you and be like, “Hey, I spent eight hours getting my workout in today.”
If it took you eight hours to workout you’re doing it wrong. You can get a great workout in half an hour and get the results you want for your health and life in half an hour.
Why is it that we do that with business? We say, “I worked for eight hours today.” Who cares? I don’t want my students ever talking to me like that. I want them to say, “I have a project to get done and I’m going to get it done in an hour.”
Immediately everyone listening is like, “Well how do you know it’s going to take an hour? Maybe it will take more than an hour.”
As soon as you start thinking like that, activity takes as long as it takes and I’ll just note how long it took. That’s when you stop producing. When you decide how long something will take and you stick to that, that’s when your production gets huge momentum.
You basically say, “I have four podcasts that I need to produce today and I’m going to give myself four hours.” That’s it.
You don’t say, “What if it takes longer?” It can’t take longer. I don’t have any more time than that.
People say they don’t know how to do that because they are brand new and don’t know how long things take. I want you to question that belief. You can decide how much time you’re going to give yourself to do something.
You know what this prevents? This might be something you struggle with just a little bit, Amy, because we’ve talked about it before. It requires you to not be perfect.
AMY: Okay, yeah. Let’s talk about this one because I know you have some serious opinions that involve the B- and I didn’t get Bs in high school so this is a tough one for me but I’m willing to embrace it so talk to me about it.
BROOKE: You want to produce at the level of B-. Here’s why that is. B- work can change people’s lives. Work that you don’t produce at all does nothing in the world. Nothing in the world.
I remember when I wrote my first book I wrote a book called If I’m So Smart Why Can’t I Lose Weight? I always did really well in content and really terribly in grammar and proofreading.
I didn’t have this perfectionist thing. I would just turn it in without even proofreading it. So when I put that book out into the world there were typos in there. There were issues with it.
It was, for sure, at a B- and I had so much shame about that. People would be like, “Hey, there’s a typo on page 17.” You know those people, the grammar police?
AMY: Yes, they are amazing.
BROOKE: They let us know all of our typos. I had so much shame and then I got a letter that I will never forget. It was from a woman named Randi. She told in this three-page letter that nothing had ever worked in her life.
She had watched her mother get open-heart surgery because she was obese. That didn’t work. No diet had ever worked. But my book changed her life and she had lost 75 pounds just from reading the book.
I remember thinking at the time, “Brooke, really? You’re going to have all of this shame over not producing an A-level book but it only took a B- to change someone’s life forever.”
I’ll tell you what, that one thing in my life made me decide that I would keep producing at a B- level. That’s made all of the difference in the world because the amount of work I can get done and the amount of things I can teach is so much more when I’m producing at a B- than at an A.
I’ll tell you this, nobody really cares that it’s not A+ perfect with no typos. Nobody really cares. The people that care are the grammar police.
AMY: They’re not my best friends, for the record.
BROOKE: You know what’s so funny? Even the grammar police are like, “You have typos but I’m staying in your program.”
AMY: That is so true. You know I definitely care about all of those typos and I care about the A+ and all of that. However, I am so willing to embrace this B- because I’ve had a few people come into my life over the past year.
They are experts at what they do, they have skill set way beyond what I have in a different niche, and they teach me things and they have typos throughout all of their stuff.
This is weird to say but I actually find it refreshing. They don’t even care that much but they are brilliant and are getting me results. I couldn’t give a crap if there’s a typo in there.
BROOKE: It’s not even just typos. I don’t want anyone…
AMY: Yeah, it’s beyond the typo.
BROOKE: Typos are not good things. We’re not encouraging the typo. But, here’s what I want to say. If you are working under the pressure that it has to be perfect you are going to have all of that negative emotion I talked about earlier.
That is going to prevent you from being able to prevent you from being able to produce at your highest level. Instead of focusing on making sure your product’s perfect you really just want to focus on who it is you’re serving and whether this will benefit them.
One of the reasons you want to keep your timeframe short I recommend that you pick a result that you want to produce and you pick a timeframe. Don’t give yourself three days to do something, you give yourself three hours on Monday, three hours on Tuesday, and three hours on Wednesday. It’s very specific.
When you get to work you know you have so much to do in such a short amount of time that you don’t spend a lot of time beating up on yourself and having a lot of negative emotion.
It actually makes it more fun. You don’t have time to feel sorry for yourself that you can’t come up with a topic. You just need to come up with a topic and go.
AMY: I do love that. What’s this whole idea between passive action and massive action?
BROOKE: Passive action is something that feels like we’re being productive but we’re really not producing a result. It’s more what we do when we listen to a podcast and take courses and learn.
Massive action is when you’re actually producing the results.
AMY: We want to spend more time in massive action, right?
BROOKE: I don’t know that we need to spend more time but I will say that most people spend an inordinate amount of time in passive action and the reason is because there is no risk in it. You are never going to fail at it.
Taking a class from Amy Porterfield is so amazing because you’re learning so much. I think it’s important and it’s productive and you can be successful at it. But you and I both know that success is built on a pile of failures.
The only time you’re going to start failing is when you start taking massive action. Most of us veer toward passive action so we can stay out of the failure mode and we’ll talk about that in a minute.
If you want to know why we spend more time in passive that’s why. There’s no risk in it.
AMY: You feel safe. You need to talk about how many hours a week you work. You have a multi-multi-million dollar business so talk to me.
BROOKE: I do my best work when I have short timeframes like we just discussed. I’ll give myself short timeframes within a workday to do it and then I take a bunch of time off.
I have structured my week by starting my day at noon on Mondays and work sometimes until 6 p.m. or sometimes until 7 if I have an evening class to teach but that’s not really normal.
I work Wednesdays and Thursday from 12 to 6 as well. Most people think I don’t work very hard. But if you watched me work from 12 to 6 your mind would explode.
I sit down and it’s back to back and I don’t take breaks. I really focus. I really work hard. I really produce at the highest level and I’m able to keep myself engaged for a long period of time.
I know, like today, I’ll work really hard all day but then I know that tomorrow I have completely off. I can just recharge and relax and refresh. People will say to me all the time, “Oh no, there’s no way I could get my work done in that amount of time.”
I just want to challenge you to try it for one week. Give yourself only three days to get your work done. You will blow your mind at how the level of your productivity goes up.
AMY: This is huge. I have to just really confess that I didn’t know. Obviously I took notes before we came on here and I didn’t think I had an issue with this one. Oh my gosh, I do.
I give myself tons of time to create content. Tons! I am actually working all weekend. It’s Thursday now so as we go into the weekend I have actually have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to record Module 1 of a bonus I’m creating.
BROOKE: No!
AMY: Right? I didn’t realize this was what I was doing. I think I do it, Brooke, because I don’t want to feel overwhelmed or hurried so that’s why I do it. I feel like if you told me I only had three hours on Friday to do this I believe you that I would get it done and I believe it would be more like a B+.
I’m not going for the B- but I will go for a B+. That’s huge progress. But I believe you and at the same time it feels very scary to me.
BROOKE: You know what’s interesting about that though, you’re afraid you will feel hurried. You think the reason you would feel hurried is because you would have a short amount of time.
You would feel hurried because of the perfectionist voice in the back of your head. Right? When you understand that time doesn’t cause you to feel hurried, just your brain does, that’s when everything can change.
I do think when we give ourselves too much time…I just gave one of my friends a hard time about this because he was like ,”I could never get my work done. I need seven days a week.”
I said, “That’s just sloppy planning.” He’s kind of a perfectionist too. He told me I was rude and asked why I would say that. It was kind of rude but I kind of said it to him like, “If you can’t get your work done in a short amount of time it’s because you’re being sloppy with your thinking.”
When you’re really focused and are only allowing yourself to focus on producing and not wondering what if it’s not perfect or if you don’t get it done that’s why we feel rushed. What if I don’t get this done in time? What if it’s not good enough?
AMY: Sloppy thinking. I like that. I’ll take that. I definitely think that’s kind of where I’m at. I knew I’d learn something here but not that big. This is good.
Brooke is good but we’re moving on.
BROOKE: That’s okay. This is how we life coach.
AMY: Yes. I like it. I like tough love. Bring it on. Okay, so speaking of brining it on. We’ve got one more reason most people don’t take action so give it to me.
BROOKE: This applies to the two of us and to everyone in the world and it doesn’t matter how many millions of dollars you’re making or you want to make this one will always be there.
It’s because your brain is literally wired to avoid any kind of failure and the only way to produce a successful business is to fail repeatedly.
I feel we kind of got dealt this controversial hand. It’s contradicting. We want to grow and we want to be successful. But why aren’t most people super successful entrepreneurs? Have you really thought about it you guys?
You look around and there are a lot of successful entrepreneurs but not everyone. It’s because the brain is twitching and freaking out at the idea. I always say to my students that the brain just wants you to go back into the cave and go back to sleep.
Why would you put yourself out there on social media? That seems very dangerous.
AMY: Yes.
BROOKE: That’s one of the reasons we don’t want to take action. The kind of action required from us as entrepreneurs…Let’s just talk about a webinar. Let’s talk about a webinar for a minute.
The first time you did a webinar and the first time I did a webinar your body literally thinks something is about to attack you and that you can die. Isn’t that true?
AMY: You are so right. Yes.
BROOKE: Your body and brain is like, this is a horrible idea. I don’t know what we’re doing but it feels like imminent death. I don’t know anybody who didn’t experience that.
What’s funny about that, Amy, is it doesn’t even matter if no one shows up to the webinar. Just being live!
AMY: Oh gosh, amen to that.
BROOKE: We think, “Oh my gosh, somethings wrong with me. I’m totally nervous when I try to do a webinar. Amy Porterfield doesn’t seem nervous at all.” I think when you know that’s normal, practicing these things does make it easier.
Your brain can think that maybe you’re not going to die because you’ve done 100 of them. Okay, alright. But in the beginning, of course, we’re going to be up against our own brain’s wiring. Anything new that your brain doesn’t know whether is safe or not is going to bring up a ton of discomfort.
If you can learn the process of moving into discomfort and moving towards that knowing that nothing’s wrong and there’s nothing wrong with you, especially, and that you will get to the other side of that eventually, I’m not going to say that’s when the discomfort ends because it never ends but that’s when we get used to it and comfortable with it.
We always talk about discomfort being the currency for your dreams and you just get comfortable with the discomfort.
AMY: Discomfort being the currency of your dreams. That is so good. Let me ask you a question. I recently had to have a really hard conversation with someone. I was telling Hobie that I thought I was prepared for the conversation.
I felt confident. I was prepared. I was ready. And then once the conversation started my body wasn’t really physically cooperating. My heart was in my throat. I felt shaky. I felt a little lightheaded.
I was so mad at myself because I thought I had prepared. But my body did not respond that way. What’s that all about?
BROOKE: That’s exactly what we’re talking about. If you’re doing a conversation where you’re confronting someone or you’re saying something where you don’t know how they are going to react and you’re in an unknown situation your brain thinks it is a horrible idea.
It thinks you should be with nice people. It wants to go back and talk to Hobie.
AMY: Yes. My safe place.
BROOKE: Why are we in this situation where we don’t know what this person or the situation entails? That unknown is always going to be uncomfortable.
We like to think if we can plan enough…Let’s talk about the webinar as an example. If we practice it enough and plan enough we won’t be afraid. Of course that doesn’t happen.
You could have planned this conversation for three weeks beforehand but when you’re there you don’t have control over the situation. You don’t know how that person’s going to react so your body will respond in kind.
Really, honestly guys, if you hear nothing else, hear this. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have the conversation and it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you. It simply means you are a human.
AMY: That’s huge, Brooke. I know it seems so simple but true. I think I made it mean that I was inadequate or that I’m the kind of person that can’t do hard things.
BROOKE: But you did it, right? Did you do it?
AMY: I did it. Yeah.
BROOKE: Notice that too. Right what you said right there. Our students do this all the time. We think that if we were uncomfortable doing it that it doesn’t count.
AMY: Yes. Yes!
BROOKE: But did you have the hard conversation?
AMY: I had it.
BROOKE: And then you walked away and said, “I’m inadequate. I can’t handle a hard conversation.”
AMY: Yes. I mean come on. This is so good.
BROOKE: You deserve a high five. That was hard and you did it. You did that and you were uncomfortable. I love that you shared that story, Amy, because I think it’s so easy for people to think we are unicorns. It’s like the really successful online business owners aren’t human.
I know that sounds crazy but I do think some people do that so they feel there is something wrong with them and they’re afraid. I love that you shared that you’re afraid just in having conversations with people. I am too, all the time.
AMY: It’s not my favorite thing, for sure. You also have a whole thing around this specific topic about scheduling comfort. What is that about?
BROOKE: That’s why when you asked about how I do my schedule people always say they don’t want to start a business because they don’t know if they have time to spend with their husband or their kids or to walk their dog.
You schedule all of that first. That goes on the calendar first. Those are the comfort things. For me, walking my dogs, I like to be able to wake up and have a cup of coffee and read. That’s my comfort time. That’s when I don’t have to be in discomfort.
I know that Monday afternoons I will be in discomfort. But I make sure I have enough time and I will promise you this, and Amy I’ll bet you’re not doing this (the fact that you’re working all weekend is an indicator) it’s nonnegotiable.
If I schedule time with my kids, my husband, myself it’s nonnegotiable. I do not change those appointments. I do not. That is the most important time for me.
AMY: That’s something I need to be very mindful of. I do make it negotiable, for sure.
BROOKE: Here’s the thing. If you don’t make either appointment negotiable (the time with Hobie and the time at work) sometimes we will say, “I was going to do that this afternoon but I’m going to watch Netflix instead,” because we know we can do it on Saturday and that’s totally fine.
When you don’t negotiate either way then you build up a trust with yourself. You build a relationship with yourself where you know you have your own back and you know you’re going to take care of yourself. That’s how you prevent burnout.
AMY: I love that. I’m learning that more and more with my health and food planning. That has now become nonnegotiable. That does not move. I have felt I can literally rely on myself in this area.
I would like to see that applied to my work and more to my husband and Cade so I get that. It’s cool.
BROOKE: I’ll tell you this too and it seems like a little thing but it’s a huge thing. The fact that you’re really disciplined with what you’re eating and you high five yourself after that. That’s how you take care of yourself.
I do that every day after a workday. I always high five myself, “You’ve got it. You did it. You worked.”
AMY: I need to do that.
BROOKE: Amy you should wink at yourself in the mirror sometimes.
AMY: That’s something that’s going to be very awkward but I’ll try it. At the end of the day we’re all going to wink at ourselves a bit in the mirror and say, “High five.”
BROOKE: Listen to me. I really want you to try it.
AMY: Oh god. I’m dying even thinking about it. My cheeks are burning.
BROOKE: It’s so cheesy.
AMY: I am totally going to do it. I’m going to do it. Oh my gosh, Brooke, I knew I was going to love this episode. I did not realize I was going to really love it. This is so good.
I need to recap for a second here. The three reasons most people don’t take action: 1) You’re hustling too much and not having enough productivity. Give me a little sound bite.
BROOKE: Remember, productivity means you’re actually producing a result.
AMY: Done. 2) You’re giving yourself too much time to get stuff done.
BROOKE: Yes, plan everything in hour increments and produce B- work.
AMY: 3) You’re avoiding failure and discomfort.
BROOKE: Remember, discomfort is the currency to your dreams.
AMY: That’s so good. I already see that on social media for this episode I love it so much.
BROOKE: Awesome.
AMY: For those of you listening, which of these three areas struck you the most? I’ve already told you it’s #2. I’m giving myself way too much time to get stuff done. I also learned so much about avoiding discomfort.
I always think I need to avoid discomfort. But as Brooke was talking I realized I always talk about my first two years of business. I lived in discomfort.
What made me think that needs to change as I continue to grow the business? I’ve been there before. I can be there now. It’s not going to kill you. We can do this guys. We can do this.
I want you to identify where you are feeling stuck. It’s so incredibly important. You do not want to just listen to this episode and not take action. The whole episode is about taking action so it’s so important.
Okay Brooke, you’ve got to tell people where they can find you if they want to work with you. What do they do? They need to know.
BROOKE: Before I do that I just want to end by saying any of you, all of you listening to Amy, I just want to take my hat off to you. I think anyone who has the courage to consider starting their own business, doing webinars, building a list, doing all of the work we are all collectively doing and being willing to fail and being unwilling to be uncomfortable, I think that is the most important work on the planet.
I think that is because it requires so much of your own self development. It requires you to become more of a person.
We talk about making money a lot. Amy and I were just talking about this. It’s not even about the money. It’s about who you become to be able to create a business that produces at that level.
My hat is off to each and every one of you. This is no joke. This is hard, hard work and I just honor each and every one of you for doing it. I do want to offer that. A lot of us spend a lot of time and energy on learning how to run a business and learning how to start a business and learning how to grow one.
You need to spend some of that time and investment in yourself and in developing your own brain and in yourself. That’s what we offer at the Life Coach School. I would love to be the one that offers that to you.
We have a program called Self-Coaching Scholars. We have lots of entrepreneurs in there and we just go in and geek out on our own brains and talk about all of the failure, all the discomfort, all of the stuff that all of us are dealing with in order to live big, huge lives of contribution.
AMY: There’s live coaching. I don’t think a lot of people offer that. You get Brooke. It’s so cool.
BROOKE: You get life coaching. If you don’t want to be coached it’s okay. You can watch other people be coached. I promise you learn a lot just from watching.
AMY: That’s me. I just learn a lot from watching. I like it. It’s so good. Brooke, thank you so much for being on the show. What a treat. I’m such a huge fan and I feel people are going to get so much out of this episode so thanks again.
BROOKE: Thanks for having me, Amy. I love you madly. Always.
AMY: Likewise. See you soon.
There you have it. I hope you loved this interview with Brooke as much as I have. I have learned so much from this woman. Way back when, I heard her talk about the fact that when you change your thoughts you can change your feelings.
When you have different feelings you actually do things differently. You have different actions. When you change your actions you get different results.
If you want to get the results that you want it starts with the thoughts in your head.
I heard Brooke talk about this a long time ago because I’ve been listening to her podcast forever. Guys, it takes me a while sometimes, but only recently did I really start practicing it every single day.
One thing I can tell you is that so often I have friends and people in my community that tell me, “Amy, you seem different.” Literally just yesterday two texts came through.
I got a text from my friend Luria and one from a gal I knew way back when I was going through Marie Forleo’s mastermind. She reached out to me out of nowhere.
Tracy Matthews, you know who you are. Both of these friends of mine said, “I see a shift in you. I see something different. You are more real, honest, relaxed, and we love what you’re sharing.”
I think that is really coming from the fact that I’m trying to pay close attention to what I’m thinking and feeling. I just wanted to share that with you because I’ve promised to be more open about things and that really started from learning this process that Brooke talked about a little bit today.
If you want to hear more from Brooke definitely check out her podcast. But if you really want to go for total immersion do what I’m doing and join her Self-Coaching Scholars.
You can find out more if you go to TheLifeCoachSchool.com/join. And when you’re asked where you heard about the Scholar’s program just say, “Amy Porterfield.” It’s as easy as that.
Okay guys, thank you so very much for being here with me today. I am so lucky I get to share all of these insights, tips, and tricks from some amazing experts like Brooke. There are more to come in the following weeks so I will see you next week same time, same place.
Thanks for being here. Bye for now.
