216. 3 Critical Thinking Skills to Help Entrepreneurs Work Less & Make More with ST Rappaport

Welcome everybody. Today, I'm super excited to have ST Rappaport with us. She is a very unique individual, a brilliant individual, and she's going to talk to us about three unspoken skills every entrepreneur needs. Thank you so much for joining us today, ST.

Oh, I'm so excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

My pleasure. So when you and I spoke on the pre interview, There were so many things you, and you might not realize, I don't know if I told you this, there's just so many different things you brought up about, uh, the different thinking skills and how things connected. It kind of blew my mind and I, it sounds arrogant to say I don't usually have that happen, but I have a Master's Degree in Psych.

I'm 51 years old. I've been around a little bit. So usually, usually I've heard something about something. There's quite a few things you said that really intrigued me. Um, so I'm really grateful to have you here and excited to have you share a little bit about, uh, what you do and how you can help people with that.

So maybe first if you just start a little bit, share a little bit about your background and what got you into helping people to, you know, focus on things like growth mindset and just, you know, their brain skills and all those different things. Yeah, so I'll go back to when I was in fifth grade. Um, I still struggled with reading.

I was able to read, but I spent a lot of time out of the classroom, um, in tutors and just trying to get better at it. And my parents were spending nice good money, like 2, 000 a month, just like for top tutors, um, and wasn't like really getting any real results. Um, and so it was like, okay, there's time to do something else.

And. The boy in what's called Feuerstein mediators, um, these are people who don't teach you anything about reading. We didn't do like nothing, nothing to do with reading, but rather they worked on my thinking skills, like how my brain was currently thinking because thinking is not one big thing. Thinking is actually made up of 28 parts, 28 thinking skills that affect everything you do, because it's.

How you're actually thinking so it's behind everything else So I started improving on those skills and that not obviously helped me improve my reading But not just my reading because it was behind everything else so many other areas in my life improved So yes in school But also like socially and my confidence and everything just became so much better because the skills behind all those skills were super strong Um, yeah, that's interesting.

So I keep, keep, keep going. Yeah. Like I don't know how much to think. So, um, so then I, when I knew that I was going to learn this and I would work with people with this. And so when I was 17, I started getting training in it. Um, and I liked it. I started working with it. At that point I was working more with kids.

Um, and I started also getting trained in other, like a couple of other methods. But the more I learned about. Other methods, the more I realized how this one is literally the thing that has the highest ROI because It's behind everything else. So it's not like, oh, I'm learning one specific skill. I'm learning how to do copywriting.

I'm learning or even like on the emotional level, I'm learning to process emotions. It's the skills behind everything else. Every skill you learn after becomes so much easier. And then I was like, okay, forget everything else. I'm just gonna, not forget, but like the focus isn't on everything else and I'm gonna just like, focus on this.

And I started working more with entrepreneurs. I love entrepreneurs because first of all, they're older. So like you have more of that conversation versus like working with kids. Um, but entrepreneurs are really like, they're usually, they're really willing to grow. They want to grow. They want to, um, like take themselves to the next level because they're ready to face challenges.

They're not owning a business if you're not going to face challenges and ready to do the hard work. So it's really, really fun being able to work with entrepreneurs. Yeah, I remember when I first started working in one job and I was working with a general public, uh, doing insurance claims for a very reputable company, but I was working with a general public and I had done that for two years and then after two years I got to go into a job where I was working with entrepreneurs and their team members.

And it was, gosh, it was, it was a whole different world. So Share a little bit of, I want to, we'll probably go down some rabbit holes further in the conversation, but Cheryl, but what are, what's the first one of those unspoken skills? Cause you and I were talking about, you said, you know, there's 28 skills, a lot of stuff, and you and I were brainstorming some of the specific things that specifically entrepreneurs, uh, work with or have trouble with, or maybe have challenges with that they don't see.

What's one of those first ones that really seems to perhaps maybe anything from make things uncomfortable or wreak havoc in their lives without them realizing it? Yeah, so the first one I would say is obviously like you said, it's one of the 28, um, but this is one that. causes a lot of additional anguish and just like money and time spent on things that doesn't need to be spent.

And that is defining the problem. A lot of times entrepreneurs, like they're action takers. They want to get things done. Oh, there's an issue. Let's try this. Let's do that. Let's take action. And they get in right away and they do it. And it's amazing. Like go and take action. If you just take five minutes, sometimes it's a little bit more complicating.

It needs two hours, like with a meeting or whatever, but if you just take the time to identify what the actual problem is, not the symptoms, not the side effects, not anything else, what is causing all those issues, you're going to save so much time because you're solving the actual problem and then everything else will just take care of itself.

That's awesome. I think I look back at my career and having been in, uh, a large corporation in different parts of eventually the corporate side and whatnot, and I would coach sometimes and work with the entrepreneurial people that were related with the company or affiliated with the company. And there was such this frustration with entrepreneurs to be in meetings because Just like you said, this, this propensity for action being better than non action.

And if you've been a parent or if you've been on the planet long enough, you come to realize that sometimes, whether it's, you know, not sending that letter that you're ticked off about, that you want to tell somebody, you can't say that to me. Uh, or whatever it is that sometimes non action is preferred and sometimes slowing things down is preferred.

But as entrepreneurs, we have this bias a lot of the times that says, number one, And it's based off of, look, I got here by hustling. I got here by doing, not just by thinking. There's a bias against, and I'll just call it this, and I don't know if this, if anybody's ever taught about this way, but abstract academics.

Like, okay, you know, the person just says, well, I'm smarter than you. And I think, think, think, think, think. We're like, okay, yeah, don't really care. Do you do? Now, if you think and then do, great. But then a lot of the people, and I'm one of those person that actually is, Sort of right between thinking and doing and sometimes thinking too much overthinking slows me down.

Whereas there's other people that and usually they They'll usually make a doer thinker if that's even such a concept in my experience Usually makes five to ten times more than a thinker doer in general Like it's usually they're just they're doing they're doing and they'll make mistakes and I think of it this way like I have a friend where I've done investment deals with him before when we were younger and we, we, we just lost our shirts on a couple of things, but he's done like 30 of those, so then he's made a killing on others and I was just like, man, I get my butt handed to me.

I was like, I don't want to do that again because my, my thinking almost paralyzed me. And yet to your point, there is a certain point which, okay, yeah, just pure action and you're, you're, you're just going at it 80 miles an hour. And you're like, Oh, that wasn't even the problem. It's like somebody walks in and, you know, in the office like, yes, that's the copy machine guy.

We're not selling anything today. You've just given me a 20 minute sales presentation. It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. So to go into a little bit more, a little bit more about that. You talked about the, the, you know, diagnosing the symptoms versus the problem. What might that look like? So let's say like, what's a common problem you find and what does the entrepreneur perhaps usually think it is and what might they need to be perhaps looking at instead?

Yeah. So I'm just going to go on your point about like overthinking and doing, I am like such a big believer, like you said, like taking action 100%. I think the difference here is just to clarify for listeners is that it's not So much about overthinking, should I do this or should or not? Once you make your decision of what to do, go and do it.

Don't think about it. But when you're trying to figure out what to do, then it's Or what the problem is or what actions you need to take, then you need to get clear in making sure you're doing the right thing. Because if, let's say you are running a campaign and you're like, it's failing and you need to change things, instead of like just trying all these different things, okay, we're gonna like put more money into Facebook ads, or we're gonna change the headlines, or we're gonna like take a few moments to see what's happening.

Are your customers like coming into your landing pages and they're not converting? Are they come like. Converting, but then they're giving, they're asking for refund, right? Like, what's the actual problem of why they're doing it? So, if, remember, defining the problem, it's not overthinking action, it's overthinking, not overthinking, it's taking the time to think about the problem.

Right? Um, so if you want to actually solve it, what I always like to say is like, whenever you have a challenge, whenever you have a problem, whenever you're not sure what to do, always ask yourself, what is causing this? Okay? And then you're going to get an answer and you're going to ask yourself again, what is causing that?

Or why did that happen? Now, why did that happen is not an amazing question because sometimes it leads to blaming, like, Oh, this person did something, did something, nah, but if you could do it without blaming, like, why did this happen? Even if someone did make a mistake, it was like, okay, someone sent the wrong email, but Instead of blaming, Oh, because, um, Joe, like sent the email, you're either you say, because the email title, the email subject line was wrong, right?

Like, make sure it's just not with blaming, but understand why it happened and keep on asking that to yourself until you feel like you got to the source. Now, sometimes you actually did. Sometimes you might have to ask yourself one more time, but remember there's no, like, we're not magicians. We're not like.

We don't, we're not like God. We don't know everything that's happening. We don't know anything, right? Like we don't know every every single sort of thing But if as the deep as you could go in your situation with your skill set with what you have Then it will be easier for you than you did without thinking about what's the problem as you do this more you'll get better I'm better at it Okay, so let me give you an example then maybe help me make a distinction.

You mentioned a great concept like so ad campaign so On one hand, there is micro testing. So you're doing, let's say Facebook ads, Google ads, something like that. And you say, okay, I'm investing five to 10 bucks to 20 bucks. Some very, for this person, absorbable amount, and I'm micro testing things. I'm going to do five to 10 iterations.

Okay. You know, there's, there's a bit less of a, less of a concern of, okay, if I have a knee jerk reaction, if I just try something that fails versus, Oh, no, no, wait. We shouldn't be doing Facebook campaigns at all. Our audience is on TikTok or something like that. So when you, when you talk about defining the problem, what, what is it about a symptom that is perhaps different?

Or how can you, you know, you mentioned this concept of going deeper, deeper, the question behind the question. And of course, most of us, we do the best we can to drill down. But let's say something like an ad campaign. What are some of the things you see that people do where they're taking action, and they think, oh, I've already fixed the problem, and they're just, they're just making it worse, versus what might it look like when they're actually starting to get at least closer to, if, if not even finding the problem, at least eliminating the problem.

The other in order to at least making progress towards narrowing it down. What's, how does that look differently in, in, in sort of a, in a real situation? Like let's say ads. Yeah, that was actually what you said about like being on Facebook versus Tik TOK is a super common problem. Um, so I really liked that you brought that up.

And I think what happens is that, like you said, like we think we already fixed everything. What happens is we're coming in, we're bringing in. All our previous work, all our emotions, all our effort that we put in already, that we're not asking the question objectively. We have to come out with a fresh face, better if you have like someone else like who works with you and I don't know like how like if you have an employee, if you don't have a partner or someone like else that could help you, that you could bounce the questions off and just ask them like what What's the problem here, right?

You wanna have a discussion about it. You could develop this yourself to do it as a skill, as completely objective, but if you start off with someone else, it's easier. That way it's not like, ok I already fixed this, and I already tried this, and forget everything you tried, let's start fresh. Ok? What's the problem here?

Why's this not converting? What is actually happening here? Um, it's, um,

It is a challenge. I'm not gonna lie. The thinking skills are something that, that take time. It's not like a skill like that you could just like, do, like, I'll say, watch a YouTube, listen to a podcast and you'll just learn that. Because we need outside triggers to help our brain recognize that we're doing something wrong.

Because we've been doing these thinking skills our whole lives, we think we've been doing them the best way. So it's like extra challenging to realize that you have a thinking skill that's not improved. And if you want to do it by yourself, you really have to be able to have the guts to really make sure that you're doing it objectively.

Awesome. Thank you. So one of the things also we talked about, I'm gonna kind of go back and forth between the three main ones. So we'd also talked a little bit about a growth mindset and how it can help if you have that growth mindset and. You know, it can create more time for relationships, fun activities.

How does that happen? And then how does that relate to some of the thinking skills? Because I know when I talk to our kids and I just, you know, gosh, this thing keeps sticking in my head, this idea that what the prefrontal cortex and the decision making skills don't evolve until age 24 or something. You know, we have a 13 year old and a 16 year old, and so they're tired of already hearing that from us.

But you see, at least it's impaired to me, how there's certain thinking skills they have that are so like, yes, they got them down pat. They're easy. They're easy. And there's other things, whether it's anticipating, maybe some of it's, uh, experience based because they're younger and we're older. Um, but what are some of those thinking skills that help develop a growth mindset?

And again, how can that perhaps lead to more time for relationships, for fun, for activities, that sort of stuff? Yeah, actually even making decisions, um, requires other thinking skills, right? So. The thinking skills, the main one of the cognitive functions we're a lot required to make decisions is comparing.

Now, the reason why that is is because usually when we compare, we don't compare correctly. We say like, we walk into a Best Buy, we want to buy a new laptop. Okay, so this one has a bigger screen, but this one is cheaper. But you're not comparing on the same parameter. You have to say, this one is 2, 000. This one's 3, 000.

This one is a 12 inch screen. This is the 18 inch screen, right? And based on your priorities of parameters, you have a much easier time comparing. So every skill that you use without realizing it, you're using other cognitive functions in order to do that skill. So for a decision, it would be comparing. Um, but back to your thing about growth mindset, growth mindset is usually, uh, It's not actually a cognitive function, but it is very, very highly related to the cognitive function of perseverance.

Um, right. When you have a growth mindset, then you persevere. And the opposite of perseverance, just for you to understand is like when it's weak, it's called blocking. It's literally when you feel like you have a wall in your brain and you just can't work at go any further. I know every single entrepreneur, even though they're, they know how to persevere and they've overcome challenges.

There has been times when you've just feel. stuck. I just can't do this anymore. Um, and that comes back to perseverance, right? And to having a growth mindset. Now you can develop your growth mindset to overcome this. So one great way to improve this growth mindset is first of all, to ask yourself questions, right?

So instead of saying like, Oh, I'm stuck. It's like, okay, what do I need to do to get out of this or what could help me to get out of this to hire? Quality questions you ask, the higher quality answers you're going to get. So first of all, ask your questions and also watch the language that you use, right?

The favorite little word, yet, just adding the word yet to everything. So I can't do this yet, um, will help you also most like 100 percent develop that growth mindset. Awesome. So, One of the things that you also mentioned is that you help entrepreneurs in a way that helps them become more efficient and more effective in a way And also helps them just get more calm, more inner peace about what they do.

I'm going to break down each of those for a second. So, and thank you. Cause the, the understand, I never even thought about the idea that perseverance, persistence, that sort of a flavor of a skill is how connected it is to growth, because that's something, you know, that saying fall down seven times, get up eight.

And I think that's probably. Maybe the closest saying I could think of, if someone were to say to me, okay, Wade, you've got, you know, you got one sentence, explain to me what growth is. Well, I mean, cause it's, it's, it's not linear. It's, it's definitely not linear. There's, or, you know, it, it, it feels, sometimes it feels linear or, you know, you go to a growth workshop and you're like, Oh, I just went to a growth weekend.

Everything's about like the entire universe is mine. And then, you know, Monday morning hits, you're like, Oh, wait, these, these, these things that I left before, they're still here. They didn't resolve themselves. I thought, you know, there was something in the magic Kool Aid or something that was going to make this all stop.

And it unfortunately did not do that. What are some of the skills or, or, or specific, how can a person start first understanding the difference between being efficient and effective, and then what are some of the skills that are tied to that, that help entrepreneurs? Yeah, so let's first break down the difference.

What's the difference between efficient and effective? Um, so efficient is being able to do something quickly in an easy manner. And it also, it's like high quality, right? So if you're doing something quickly, but it's not high quality and it's taking you like too long, then it's, if you're doing something quickly, so it's not taking you too long, but it's not coming at high quality, it's not efficient.

Because You're not getting what you want. So you need to make sure you have all those components in order for it to be efficient. Now effective is that it works in the ultimate way that it works, right? So either you're effective with your product is effective and it's working or you're effective to other people, your services, to your employees, um, things like that are being effective.

Now, how come a person isn't being efficient or effective? What is making something efficient? What is making a task take you very long to do? Like, why does it take you so long to do it? Because of a cognitive function if you have a weak thinking skill You're not going to be able to be either efficient or effective both of them.

So let's start with With efficient right for example if let's say you struggle with the cognitive function of labeling Labeling means being able to give things the correct names being able to use names being able to talk with names So that way both your brain can understand it better and can organize information and also the people who you're talking to and communicating with can understand it.

So if you're not using labels, then what's happening, you're telling your employees to go and like do certain tasks, or you're telling your clients, like you're going to give them certain results, but they want something else, or your employees aren't understanding what you're talking about, then you're going to be wasting a lot of time trying to figure out, Oh, I meant this.

You meant this, you know, like you ever got into an argument with someone and like halfway through, you realize you're talking about two different things. That's labeling, right? So if there's a weak cognitive function, you're not going to be very efficient. You know, effective is the same way, right? Really popular cognitive function related to effectiveness is considering another person's perspective, right?

If you can't consider another person's perspective, which is super common, by the way, even people who think that they are efficient, don't always in many situations, um, then you're going to have a hard time being effective. You're not going to understand how to communicate them, how, how to communicate to them in a way that they understand that they can do what they need to do.

Wow. Yeah, that's, it's so interesting that, you know, the whole being able to understand something from another person's perspective, that's basically everything from sales to empathy, to, you know, understanding customers to keeping customers kind of. Wrapped all up into one. Um, what is that? So going back now, I feel like we're having it like two programs.

We're going back to a regular scheduled program. What is one of the others you mentioned? There's three. What are the, what's the second most critical thinking skill that can help an entrepreneur work less and make more? Yes. So I think another super one, this has like helped so much with working less. Um, and obviously to make more is.

To Be Precise. Be Precise is actually the only cognitive function that comes up twice because there's three thinking phases. One, how we take in information, two, how we process it, and three, how we tell the world we know what we know. Being Precise comes in once when we're taking in the information, we're getting the right information.

Someone's telling us a phone number, we're making sure we're taking the right phone number. And, and, being precise in the alpha phase, in the third phase, is when we're Typing an email. We're making sure we're writing the right thing when we're sending the email to the right person We're dialing a phone number right in the output when we're telling the world what we know we're making sure we're precise So like how many times have you give a client a price and either it was too much or it was too little Compared to what you it was actually meant to be right that is being precise What about a client calling you and telling you about like information that they need you to help them and you know?

You just didn't take down all the information correctly. Now it's true that there are two ways and it could be that the person didn't tell it to you, but it is, as an entrepreneur, it is your responsibility to make sure that you are getting the information correctly and that you re asking them and you're, you're like checking for errors to make sure that, that it is, that it is correct.

Yeah, I remember one of the first episodes, uh, I remember the first season of, I think most reality TV shows, the first season or two, they're, they're pretty unscripted and then they become scripted. I, I, I don't know for sure, but I've heard people say that. It certainly seems that way. But I remember the first season of, I think it was the first season of The Apprentice, Uh, there was a group that they did this project and it was to advertise some sort of event and they did some sort of project in a brochure.

What a long story short, their whole presentation was way better than the other groups, but they got the phone number wrong. And this is like 20 something years ago. So, you know, Donald Trump's like, look, and it's funny. I think when he, when he was first starting this before he got really into the air fired and he was just like.

You can almost see he was so sad for them. He's like, you did so good with this. He says, but you got the phone number wrong. So all this money of this client's money that you would have spent on this, or maybe they did spend it. I forget, but like all this, all of it is now useless because you sent them to the wrong phone number.

And it was just one of those things. It's kind of like, I tell the kids when I coach them in basketball, you do all the work and then you miss a layup. Like the easiest part because you lost a little focus or you missed something and I, I never thought about that, but gosh, the being precise, that, that is so huge.

That's one of the things my, my wife and my children get annoyed with me because at times I do my best to speak precisely, kind of like Sheldon from Young Sheldon or from Big Bang Theory, but because I don't know if you, if you don't say it in a certain way. And I really, you know, I realize it can be annoying at times if you're correcting people.

And sometimes I have that, I'm going to help you correcting, correcting the gene, which is not a good thing because it ticks people off. But at the same time, if, if you're really looking to, you know, get one thing done and somebody's just that little bit off, it doesn't jive. And I think that's one of the other things when people look at relationships and you're in a, any sort of relationship, business relationship, friendship, romantic relationship with somebody, and you're with a relationship with them for a long period of time.

And all of a sudden, you guys just go different directions, like, what happened? And the analogy I always think of is if, if, if you're in, from Florida, and you, you start out in Southeast Florida, and somebody says, okay, we're going on a road trip. And let's say, I don't know the name of a city, but you know a lot of cities, that there's the same city in two parts of the country, right?

Okay, if I say, we're going to Washington, you say, great. So we start going up I 95, and all of a sudden, we hit Jacksonville, And one person's like, yeah, we're going North, right? The other person's like, no, we're going, we're going West on I 10. Like, I'm going to Washington, right? Yeah, we're going to Washington.

Come on. And you're this whole argument. And we thought, and of course, one's going to Washington, DC. One's going to Washington state. And in relationships that can be painful, um, emotionally and whatnot. If you didn't realize that, or it can just be like, oh, okay, well, I guess, you know, we enjoyed our time together.

Now you go that way and I go that way. But in business, that can be more than just emotionally painful. What can be. financially at times even, I don't, maybe catastrophic or whatnot. You look at all the different reasons why entrepreneurial businesses don't make it. And I've been blessed to do enough tap dancing iterations or whatever that people stay in business.

And I certainly, if there, if there's, I believe there's a God, if there's also entrepreneurial gods, whatever, I'm grateful because I know I've, I've done some stupid stuff at times and stuff that's, that's kicked my butt. But going back to, you know, the need to be precise with things, I think it's something I find when I talk to younger kids sometimes, they brush that off like, God, this is, this is, this is that.

And I think maybe it's probably an age thing I'm guessing because it's not just, my kids do it sometimes, I see so many kids do it and I'm like, Yeah, someday you're going to, you know, when you, when you're in love and Susie's going to Washington and you want to go to Washington DC and you're going to be like, Oh wow, it would have been nice to know that ahead of time or building a business or whatever it is.

Um, so yeah, I could see that being such a big deal. So what is it that you find, um, when you're working with people that is maybe. something that, and it might be one of the three, but something that they think they have mastered. Cause you mentioned, you know, a lot of people think that they're effective. A lot of people, it's like that joke.

Everybody thinks they've got a sense of humor. And of course, a lot of people don't. Nobody thinks, very few people think they're a jerk. There's a few people who think they are and they take pride in it. Most people, most people, and certainly most people don't think they're insensitive. They think, well, I'm very sensitive.

And then there's, but there's this group of people. It's like, no, you're, you're, You're just, you're a lot of things. You're wonderful. You're, you're not sensitive. What are, what are common blind spots that people have as far as thinking skills? Yeah, I think many of them. I mean, there are some that like, let's say, um, understanding space, like orientation in space, um, Rights and lefts.

So like if you don't know your rights and lefts or you struggle with it, so, you know, like it's obvious It's easy to know but then like when you do sometimes consider another person's perspective So you think a lot of times you do like I'm thinking of their perspective But like you said, you're not thinking about it when you're writing your messaging You're not thinking about it when you're creating your sales pitch.

So that one is for sure one That many people think that they have. I think also, um, comparing, cause like we said before, comparing is one that a lot of people like, they compare so much throughout, like the time, like, so like all the time, right? Every time we buy a new outfit or every time, like just the whole day, we're sales pages, we're like comparing which one.

Um, but a lot of times they don't do it correctly. And, um, I think precision also, especially because precision is one, um, that we all do sometimes at things that we care about. If you think about anything that you're good at, then you know that you're precise at that time. You have the motivation for it.

So it's, that's actually really good to hear because that means like you have it in you and you could just develop it more into other areas and you just have to put that motivation and care about it for those other things. Um, and, and, you could do it. I think sometimes just one more thing about per, um, precision is that some people get a little bit confused and think of it as like perfection.

It's about understanding when you need to be precise and whatnot. Like, you don't want a neurosurgeon doing anything on you if they're not like 100 percent precise. Now, I know, Businesses usually not like neurosurgeon type of things, but it can cost you a ton, a ton, a ton of money. So you do have to use your thinking skills, right?

None of these things are like black and white rules. They're all understanding for the situation. What's the best thinking skill that you need and whether it makes sense for right now for it to be precise or not. Awesome. Thank you. Yes, that is my, if my children were here right now and my wife, they'd be giving you a high five or an amen on that.

So that's something that's a little challenge sometimes. One of the things we had also talked about in the pre interview was just how languaging impacts your growth mindset. What do you find, you know, you mentioned a little bit already, like using the word yet. What are some of the other ways that Just even people's languaging sometimes either supports them really well or maybe puts them into a corner where all of a sudden now they've almost painted themselves in the corner where now they they really it's harder to get out of it it's hard to um you know to move forward.

Yeah, so, um, We all know, I mean, at least entrepreneurs who listen to podcasts like these, like our growing ones, they know how much languages affect, like, the words we use affect their actions, they affect their brain, and like, affect everything that we do. Um, I think that the struggle with this is that sometimes we, like, we don't want to lie, right?

Some people don't like the law of attraction because then it makes them feel like, okay, like, I'm pretending something that I'm not, right? So, The point of the growth mindset language is being able to watch the words that you're using and see if it's helping you achieve your goal or it's stopping you from achieving your goal.

If you continue down this path of using the words that you're using and your actions reflect on those words, is that going to help you do what you want to do? I'll give you an example myself. So let's say way back when I started doing email marketing, I. was really bad at it. I didn't want to do it. I was like, I'm not good at it.

When in school, I didn't do any writing. I had all my friends write my ratings for me. I never did any of them. Um, and I was like, I was like one of the things that, one of the foundational things that I pushed off till very late in my business that obviously cost me a lot of money, um, ultimately and lost money of not using it earlier and There was a point when I realized I'm talking about growth mindset and I am saying that I am not a writer so I can't do it.

I was like, you know what? Fine. So I'm going to send bad emails. I am still doing what I need to do, right? I am still starting the email marketing. I am not telling myself that I'm the best writer out there and that I'm making tons of money from this and making all those lies. Instead, I'm changing the words to something that was related for right now to what's going to help me move forward.

So, First I said I'm gonna sit, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. send bad emails and I wasn't going to learn more about email marketing. And I invested quite a bit in it and understanding and learning about it. And today I can't say like you would want to hire me as a writer and I would get paid millions for it, but it does do and bring me a lot of money into my business because of that skill.

So think about something that you think that you can't do and how could you say it even in not like the positive way, you know, but just how could you say it in a way that's still going to help you move a little bit closer to your goal?

I really like that. I, I, I really am not a fan of the fake it till you make it. Because, for a couple reasons, one, because it can lead people to then feel, um, that you lied to them and your intention might not be to lie. Now, some people, their intention is to lie and they say, well, wait, I was trying to lie, so sorry.

Uh, but a lot of times people are not trying to lie. They're trying to project something. They're trying to do something. And, and I just think. That I've, it's probably cost me money over the years in the short run to tell people what my limitations are on certain things, but it's helped my reputation, at least the best that I'm aware of, uh, tremendously.

And I've been blessed to have parents, dads and entrepreneur moms, very much a brilliant woman, a stay at home mom by choice, but thinker. A philosopher, that sort of a person, just like, just, and would help my dad with the business running it in different pieces, just the sort of coaching him through it and whatnot.

And they always just instill that concept of, you know, you just, you just say what's true. And because the right person's going to be okay with that, it was the right person for you, the right match, not that they're a bad person or a good person, but the person who's okay with that is going to be the right person.

The person who's not is the wrong person. And so for example, when I would ever launch a course for the first time. I always had some sort of experience with it. Like maybe I'd, let's say, done some private coaching with it or something. So I'd had some success. And when I would run the course, the first time is let's say a group program.

I would charge a lower amount and And I would tell people, I'd say, look, just so you know, I'm charging a lower amount than I'll be charging in the future. And I didn't use this as a sales closing tactic. Not that I'm against it. I just don't find that works so well to say, I'll be raising it next time. So sign up now.

I don't, I find that's a, it's a pressure that does not attract, at least for me, good clients. It can get cash, but it doesn't get me the right client anyway. But saying to somebody, just so you know. Um, you know, I've done this in a individual situation with two or three clients. Here's the results we've had.

I'm doing a group setting. So what I'm learning now that I've not yet mastered is not what I'm going to teach you, but the best way to teach it in the next number of weeks or in a group. So just so you know, I'm going to charge you a lesser rate, or even if it was hourly work, I'd say, I'm going to charge you a lesser rate than I'm going to be charging in six months from now, because I know what the result is worth.

And, but I also acknowledge that right now I don't have it mastered. And so rather than me, you know, having that be something that hurts you, where you say, Oh gosh, now Wade's learning the craft. I want you to be able to be patient with it. Or I might just say, I'm just going to charge you for the result and just say, I'm going to help you with the result.

And, and I can't promise the deadline, but just things like that, again, for some people, for people who maybe haven't been around business a lot, it was like, Oh, I wanted it quicker and this and that. And it's like. Oh, so you want the guy who'll tell you or the gal that'll tell you that you'll make six figures in 12 weeks from scratch, out of thin air.

Great. Take that course. You're, you know, that pretty much is non existent. It doesn't really happen. And you can always, of course, point backwards and say, well, yeah, well, if you would have bought Bitcoin, and I know this one guy who bought it here and it went up and before it crashed or this one gal or whatever.

Great. Yes, of course. You can always look backward and say if you knew the lotto numbers. But realistically, from a percentage standpoint. The number of people that consistently do that sort of stuff, even the best people in the world, like Warren Buffett, you know, as far as investment, they don't do that.

He's, he's described his investing strategy as, I think he says what, sloth, sloth or laziness bordering on sloth of, of, you know, of, of just how lazy is because they invest in, in really good companies. What do you find is that third thing that entrepreneurs maybe struggle with that Again, if they could see it would make a huge impact in, in what they do.

Yes. This one is called Understanding Reality. Now, ultimately what it is, is about cause and effect or, um, actually making it practical on entrepreneurs have these really big ideas and they're really good and go for every single one of them. I am not telling you, none of your dreams are impossible. I'm not telling you, you can't do any crazy things, but instead of having these Like you said, like, right?

I'm gonna make six figures in twelve weeks. You could still make six twelver six figures in twelve weeks. But you have to understand that it might not be that course that you bought, right? How? Practically, understanding the cause and effect. What specific actions do I need to do to make that happen? If I do this, then what's going to happen?

So we like to have all these really big ideas and try all these new things and get really excited and want to change the whole entire world. And yes, 100 percent you could, but maybe your actions to get there are slightly different than the ones that you think you're going to need. Awesome. Yeah, I know that's, that's definitely a huge one.

So how, how would you say for somebody who, who then says, okay, I've got this really big plan. It sounds exciting, but I do have that voice and it's not, you know, there's all these different voices. People talk about the, you know, the imposter, um, the doubter, the skeptic, the, you know, whatever it might be.

Assuming we don't have a lot of, you know, the, Oh, you're not good enough. Are you just stank or just like, we're, we're, we're past those. We're just more to the, okay, this might or might not work, or this isn't, let's say the greatest idea. How can a person do that cause and effect that reality check in a way that still preserves that entrepreneurial, what is like the vision, the positive, the, I'll call it, you know, Being a Possibilitist, if that's a word, to say, yeah, this is possible.

And, and, you know, keeping that, but not so much false hope. Cause you know, we, we certainly know marketing here, but people say you just, it was hope marketing. I just threw a bunch of stuff in it and I hoped it worked. We don't want that. How can a person improve their sort of cause and effect muscle, their understanding reality muscle without perhaps squashing.

that visionary dreamer that is often the reason why things do go so well. Yeah. So I would actually bring in another one of the cognitive functions to answer your question, which is called hypothetical thinking there. We specifically do like if, and then, so, um, Don't squawk to make don't don't squash your big vision right instead ask yourself if I do this Then what's gonna happen and you could bring that into understanding reality Understanding how is that going to work?

So just fill in this is what I like Literally, like if you're trying to figure something out and you're like, how should I do this? Make like a whole bunch of if and then statements. Don't like think if it makes sense Don't think like like get your creative juices flowing, right? And then don't say like no, this is a bad idea I only need one thing get a whole bunch of them and then eventually you'll find the ones that are actually going to help you and are going to um make it practical understand the actual understanding reality of how it could actually work Awesome.

So you're almost more first tapping into the creative side and then you're going back and almost reality checking, like saying, okay, this, this sounds good. This doesn't look good. This probably won't hold up. Yeah. I think that's something being able to maintain vision and have a reality check. I know when it comes to coaching people or leading people, um, I'm involved in a few different businesses usually.

And I, I like that. And in one of the businesses I help coach and train and develop people. And I think that's one of the. areas I find people struggle with most is when, you know, their expectations of the team members they supervise. And a lot of the times they just literally the, the team members ability is not what that supervisor or coaches ability thinks it is.

And there's a, there's a disconnect or the coach or supervisor doesn't understand what's going on in the marketplace right now. Hey, there's these other forces. that are, you know, just something as simple as I work a lot in the insurance industry. Well, anytime you have price increases, well, you kind of have to go on defense, even though you're trying to sell.

So even though you're trying to make more sales, now you have a bunch of calls that are coming in. And there, you know, people say, well, what just happened? I guess it's kind of like if you're a broker and, you know, an investment broker, and all of a sudden the stock market's down and some people get that, Hey, this is just kind of what happens.

And then other people are freaking out. So all of a sudden you have a couple of downturns in a month. And you're two weeks of sales calls or whatever it is that you were going to make stuff happen. You're like, no, no, I was just trying to maintain what I had. And that was the best decision. That was the smart thing to do.

And yet on a, from a very subtle level or an oversimplified level, the person might say, you know, I'm, I'm not seeing that. So it should be, you know, you should just be, you should be selling more. And then again, there's almost like no sense of reality. Awesome. Wow. There's. There's so much to this and, um, but I liked the way you, you break it down.

How do you help people? What does that look like when somebody comes to you? What are they usually, what are some of the things that entrepreneurs usually coming to you for? And what does that look like as far as you helping them think through that? Yeah. So a lot of our entrepreneurs who come to me want to either like just be able to stay more focused, meaning like they know they're putting in a lot of hours, but they're not always.

Prioritizing in their best way, which focusing, prioritizing all that comes back to cognitive functions, right? sometimes it's because they are ready to scale but the Brain needs to comprehend the systems of like what they're gonna need to do So we don't talk about systems, but we talk about the skills that are gonna be required to create the systems, right?

So Either someone who's struggling or someone who's ready to make a change They all come to me and then we do special brain exercises. We work in small groups, so it's super fun. We get to work with like other entrepreneurs. Um, really small because it's not like courses or stuff. Rather, um, we do what's called mediation where I ask questions for your brain to be able to figure out the answers by yourself.

And that's where you think about, think about the thinking skills. So one last question I have for you is this. Concept of process versus outcome. I know a lot of the times people will talk a lot about, well, everything is process and process leads to outcome. And some people say, well, outcomes, everything.

And if you don't get the outcome process didn't matter, obviously both are connected. How do you find that entrepreneurs perhaps struggle with this and how can they balance that? Yeah. So most entrepreneurs from my experience are very focused on the outcome and the outcome is super important. All process you want, but if you're not making money and you're not getting to spend time with the people that you love or do your hobbies, process don't mean anything.

Um, but also. It's not just outcome, right? It's both. Uh, growth mindset, personally, people who are like hardcore growth mindset, like Carol Dweck, the one who, um, found, or I guess like termed the coin growth mindset based on her research, um, are really into growth mindset and are really into process and not outcome.

Um, I don't, I'm not as like hardcore on that and I do think that, I do think that we need both. Um, I think that, As we focus on our process, and we enjoy our process, and we, um, improve our process, we get a better outcome. So, it's not one or the other. As we work on one, the other one gets better, um, and vice versa.

So, um, Like go back to everything not black and white you use your thinking skills and your Judgment for that situation to understand understand what you need to work on most and obviously and honestly you take self awareness I'm a huge huge huge believer in self awareness and that you need like, you know yourself I don't I don't know if you know yourself best But you have the ability to know yourself best like sometimes an outside force helps you But you you do know yourself best like from all your previous things and you can take what you learn on the outside to listen to yourself and to understand what is most important for this current moment.

Awesome. Thank you so much. There's so many things that, uh, I've picked up from today. I can tell there's, there's so much more to this. We'll put the links in the sec, but where can people find you and where can they find out about your podcast? Yes, so everything is under the LifePix University. So my podcast is LifePix University, all socials, website, everything is LifePix, P I X, University.

Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us today, ST. I really appreciate it. Like I said, there's so much I'm going to be taking forward. I'm going to be looking and digging deeper into your work. For those of you all listening, I really encourage you. You know, action is important as we talked about earlier, but as somebody who's done many things without thinking, uh, there are definitely times when getting a little clearer on thinking processes can help.

And certainly when we keep seeing the same mistake, that that's probably a sign that we need to, to talk to Esty or somebody like that. So thank you again, Esty for joining us. And for those of you all listening, as always, I look forward to helping you impact more people and make more money in less time, doing what you do best so you can fully enjoy your family.

Your friends and your life. Thanks for listening.