On this episode of Investing for Freedom, Mike discusses what stops us from achieving our goals in life. Mike speaks about limiting beliefs and gives us three questions to ask ourselves to help eliminate overwhelm. Mike emphasizes the effectiveness of just taking the next right step towards what you want to accomplish.
“What separates the Bill Gates of the world, or the Jeff Bezos of the world or the Elon Musks of the world, from those of us that are sitting on our couch and paralyzed with fear and overwhelm is just doing the next right move.”
HIGHLIGHTS:
0:00 – Intro
0:27 – Being overwhelmed is what stops us from doing the things we were truly meant to do
2:06 – It doesn’t matter how big or small your vision is, just making the next right move is what will keep you from being overwhelmed
2:37 – “I just don’t have enough time” is just a lie that comes from a place of overwhelm
3:09 – Mike mentions Gary Keller’s quote “Most of us tend to overestimate what we can do in 12 months and underestimate what we can do in 5 years”
3:38 – Mike’s first tip on how to avoid overwhelm is to ask yourself what is keeping me from doing it, what is the resistance in my life?
3:47 – Mike’s second question is who do I need in my life that I don’t currently have to get me where I need to go?
3:55 – The third question is what am I missing in my life that I don’t currently have, that I need in order to get me where I need to go?
8:33 – Mike states that sometimes you have to give up the good in order to go after the great
11:30 – Once you figure out what the resistance is and you eliminate that, you need to figure out what’s the next step
13:54 – Mike states that after you figure out who you need, you need to move on to what do I need?
14:34 – Mike ties these questions back together by stating that when you’re thinking about all these questions, all you need to do is make the next right step
FULL TRANSCRIPTION:
Thank you for joining me on the Investing for Freedom podcast. Today, I’m going to talk to you about something that stops most of us from really achieving our vision that we have in life, or maybe it’s not even the vision. Maybe it’s like the things that you were truly meant to do.
And the number one thing that stops us, I believe is overwhelm. You know, I don’t care who you are, everybody in the world wants to do amazing things. Now we may have stopped dreaming. We may have you know, buried our head in the sand, or we may have given up on the thought or the desire or the feeling that we could do amazing things in life. And hopefully, that’s not you, but if it is snap out of it, and even if it isn’t, we all fall into the same trap that I’m about to go through.
So I believe that the number one thing that keeps us from achieving our full potential and success and victory in a certain vision or business, or even just getting our business off the ground or where we want it to be as overwhelmed. And so Kara and I, my wife and I have been talking a lot lately about just doing the next right step, just make the next right move.
And I think what happens is we get overwhelmed because we start thinking, you know, whatever it is like, for instance, I know I’ve mentioned this, but we’re getting ready to start working on a vision that I’ve had in my life since 2011 and really started mapping it out three years ago. And the last year I’ve been, you know, really working through it and it’s buying HVAC companies. I want to buy HVAC companies across the country, and it can be overwhelming because literally, I have a vision to go buy 60, $3 million HVAC companies across the nation. And obviously, I could let that overwhelm me, or I could break this down into just doing the next right move.
And it doesn’t matter how big your vision is. It doesn’t matter how small your vision is. It doesn’t matter how large your company is. It doesn’t matter what, it doesn’t matter, just doing the next right move is how to keep you out of overwhelm. And this works, you know, for launching a personal brand that, you know, your goal is to make $50,000 the first year or $10,000 in your personal brand. It works for people that want to make a million dollars in their personal brand. It works for companies that are doing $10 million in revenue. It works for companies that are doing a hundred million dollars in revenue. There’s the old saying that I just don’t have enough time and it’s such a lie. It comes from a place of overwhelm.
And I’ve said this so many times before, but the reality is, everybody has the same amount of time in the day. And so, you know, what separates the Bill Gates of the world, or, you know, the Jeff Bezos of the world or the Elon Musks of the world, from those of us that are sitting on our couch and paralyzed with fear and overwhelm, what separates us is just doing the next right move. And yes, we have to vision and yes, we have to do, you know, business planning and all of that stuff. But I love what, you know, Gary Keller said most of us tend to overestimate what we can do in 12 months and underestimate what we can do in five years.
Now, I’m not telling you not to do vision planning or long-term planning or any of that kind of stuff. We have to do that, but the way to eliminate overwhelm. And I’m just going to narrow it down to three steps and go ahead and write this down. And I would encourage you to carve out some time over the next couple of weeks and just, you know, spend 10 minutes every single morning and thinking time. Write down these three things, and this will help you eliminate overwhelm. The first question is what is the resistance in my life? What is keeping me from Doing it? And the second thing is who do I need in my life that I don’t currently have in my life to get me where I need to go and the third thing is, what am I missing in my life that I don’t currently have in my life that I need in order to get me to where I need to go. Those are three simple questions, and I’m going to kind of break it down here.
And this is literally a framework you can use for anything. Anytime you’re feeling overwhelmed, just lean back into it. See, what’s got you overwhelmed and ask these questions. So, number one, what is the resistance in my life? And I’ll use a real-world scenario with me. With the HVC company, I’ve really, really, really been hesitant over the last couple of years to launch it. And I’ve come up with all these, you know, at the surface, we want to say excuses for why I wasn’t going to do it, or couldn’t do it or whatever. And they really are just excuses, but they’re legitimate things that are concerns for us. They’re legitimate resistance. It wasn’t that I’m being an excuse maker or that I don’t want to be successful or that I’m lazy or whatever. It’s none of that. It’s literally the fact that I have barriers, or I had barriers in my life. I had limiting beliefs. I had these things that were keeping me and one of them, I literally had a good friend of mine, Aaron West, who I’m going to have on the podcast pretty soon. Guys Just been, he’s Been such a great friend in my life, such a good voice. He’s one of those guys who will just call you out on your shit. Love it.
Anyway, He asked me a while back. We were actually in Austin at the GoBundance champions retreat. He’s like, Mike, so, you know, you’re going to do this HVAC thing or what? Like, you’ve been talking about it forever. What’s going on? I’m like, I don’t know, man. I just don’t know. And he’s like, what do you mean you don’t know? Like you got such a passion for this. Like every time you talk about it and present your vision and this disruption idea that you’ve got going, and the fact that you want to help, you know, your avatar Jim, who’s 67 years old and he’s tired and doesn’t have a succession plan and has built a great business and you want to help him retire and you want to continue on the legacy for the employees. Every time you talk about that, like everybody just gets so excited and he’s like, Mike, you got like investors that are ready to just invest. Like, what do you mean you might not do this?
And he’s like, what’s really got you, you know, held back, like, what is the concern? And you guys will appreciate this as you’re listening to this because my podcast is called investing for freedom. And I’ve worked really hard to earn my time freedom. I have worked really hard you know, to live the way that I live and to be able to travel and to drop everything if one of my kids need me and I’m a present father and I’m a present husband and I’ve worked really hard to do all of this. And, you know, in talking through this with Aaron, he said, well, what makes you think that you’re going to lose that? Like, what are you scared of? And I said, man, I just don’t want to go back to work. And, you know, 90 hours a week, like I was, you know, when I was 23 and I was missing, you know, Kara’s pregnancy with our third child, I don’t want to go back to work at 90 hours a week and lose what I’ve worked so hard for. And Aaron in all of his wisdom says to me, Mike, when was the last time you worked 90 hours and he was being half facetious, but being serious at the same time. And he’s like, you’re not going to work 90 hours. Like we couldn’t convince you to work 90 hours, even if like you wanted to. And I’m like, man, that’s so true.
Like we have these fears, we have resistance in our life. And I was literally, I had a limiting belief that was telling me that something that I overcame years ago, literally 21, 22 years, I left that life. And this limiting belief is still creeping back in and it’s telling me, Mike, you’re going to have to you know, you’re going to lose your time freedom. You’re going to lose everything you’ve worked for. And I don’t know, you are not going to be able to put as much time and passion into the podcast and helping people and you know, what about your existing business? And, you know, my partner at park place communities, Andrew Lanoie, and Tyler, you know, they both been on the podcast, but you know, they’ve got it. But I’m sitting here, I’m coming up with all these and here’s another one there’s literally guilt around you know, moving into a new business venture. And I feel like I’m, you know, potentially abandoning Tyler and Andrew, there’s all these limiting beliefs and resistance that keep us from moving forward and it’s called overwhelm. So, here’s how to eliminate the overwhelm. We got to figure out what’s really got us held back.
So what is the resistance that’s keeping you from moving forward into this vision? That’s question number one. And hopefully, the way that I phrase that and put it into context in a real-life scenario for me, we’ll help you. But usually, when you’re not moving forward in something, it’s because you have a fear, you’re not feeling adequate. We think we can’t accomplish it. We think we have to give up something else in order to progress into this. And the reality is we might have to give up something else. Sometimes you got to give up the good in order to go after the great, but there’s some kind of resistance that’s keeping you from your vision and I’ll encourage you. One other thing that’s really doesn’t have to do specifically with any of the three, but I’m thinking about it. So I’m going to share it.
I’m learning to try to be a conduit when something pops in my head you know, just share it if it’s valuable. So we need something in our life to anchor us. This is why doing, you know, vision boards and writing out our vivid vision as Cameron Harold would say or, you know, just even having, you know, a picture on your wall or something to trigger, you know, why you want to go out and buy 60 HVAC companies or why you’re doing what you’re doing. Because no matter what, there’s something that has that vision. There’s something that got you excited about that. And you got to anchor back to those feelings. Because no matter what, no matter how excited you are about your vision, you’re going to have days where you’re getting your ass handed to you. You’re going to have days that you’re tired. You’re going to have days that you don’t want to do it. And so you got to have some kind of anchoring to bring you back to that, because that resistance will come.
And so like again, in the case of I’ll wrap up the HVAC story, but you know, Aaron’s like dude, you’re not going to lose your freedom. You’re not going to work 90 hours a week. And what really put the icing on the cake for this, for me, I was at dinner With Chris Harder and Chris Winfield and Elliot Schwartz and Dan Valentine, just amazing guys. And it was such a moment because Chris was talking about like, I think he called it the slight edge. Like, what do you really need to do this year in order to you know, really set yourself apart. And the one thing that I really came up with and this kind of put the, like I said, put the icing on the cake for me. I said, you know what? I’ve got to make sure that I surround myself with the right vendors, the right contractors, the right team members, the right investors like I was saying all this so that I don’t lose my time freedom. I got to make sure that I protect that. And that’s Actually what will set apart this year for me. And so that kind of leads us into case number two.
So number one is like, what’s the resistance, what’s got you, really dig into that, spend some time like what’s hesitating. And you might find that you really, you know, actually this vision is not something you want to do. You might actually find that, you know, somebody else’s projected this on you, or it’s something you’ve been told that you need to do, or you went to college for eight years. And so you got to just, you know, you’re expected to go do this next right thing, and it’s not actually the right thing. So, you know, be careful of that too. Cause you might actually as you’re going through this process, figure out that that’s not actually what you want, and it wasn’t actually your vision. It’s, you know, it needs to be tabled and you need to move on to something else. But in this case for me, I know this is what I need to do. And so I just had to put these things in order. And so bringing it back with Aaron, he was like, bro, you just need to move forward with this. So I sat on it for a while and yeah, I need to move forward.
So then once we eliminate that resistance and we figure out what it is, what’s the next thing. Well, it really comes down to the next two questions and I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this because I think they kind of answer themselves. What does that mean? Just even in the case of the HVHC thing, like who do I need in my life? And so the way for me to, you know, not get overwhelmed. I went back to a vendor, a coaching company that I worked with years ago that really helped me turn my company around. Not even turn it around because it wasn’t in a bad spot. We were always profitable, but really helped me like escalate my profitability, so I went to them and we’ve been negotiating for the last three or four months, working a deal out where they’re kind of consulting for me on the front end. They’re helping me build out the whole process. They’re helping me identify companies. And what type of companies are we looking for. But what’s even better. The minute that we close on a company, they bring their coaches in and their resources and this is where they really shine. And so I don’t basically, my number one job is to find the company, find the capital, and get the general manager in place. Make sure I have a pipeline of good general managers.
And so the who, who do I need in my life? It was BDR. It was this coaching company and they’ve got a whole talent pool. I’m literally coaching with one of the most amazing people. The CEO of the company, I’ve been on calls with the owner and they’re literally coaching me through this process so that I don’t make mistakes. And one of my mentors, Rust Gray used to always say, you know, we need to collapse timeframes.
And so I’m literally standing on the shoulders of giants here. I’m avoiding making mistakes. I’m avoiding buying bad companies because I’m partnered with a person up front, not even a person, an entire team of people that are going to help me make sure that I buy the right companies. And what’s even better is these guys are vested in the process because the day that we closed, they take over coaching. And so they’re vested in making sure that we get the right companies. And so that’s a great example of who do I need in my life. I could give you a million of those.
But who do you need in your life? So you’ve determined that you want to do a certain thing, whatever it is. And you’ve determined what the resistance is. Maybe it’s 10 things. Actually, you might have to go through a bunch of different things that are keeping you from doing it. So you’ve determined what you want. What’s the vision. You’ve determined what the resistance is and, you know, you’re working through that and you’re overcoming it. So now you’ve figured out, okay, who do I need, which will solve some of the resistance issues probably. And then the next question is, what do I need? So, you know, do you need capital? Do you need certain resources? Do you need marketing? Do you need and some of this ties back to the who too. Cause if you need marketing, you might need a certain who to accomplish that. But what do you need in order to get that bit? Maybe all you need is a license. Maybe you got to go get the contractor’s license first, or maybe you got to go get a haircutting license, or maybe you got to find a building first, which again come back to a who cause you need a, you know, a real estate agent or whatever, but what do you need?
And so all of these are always going to come back to either resistance, who do I need and what do I need? And if you can start working through that process, and here’s where it gets really important because everything I just said to you could actually put you even into more overwhelm because you’re sitting here, you know, stuck and you don’t know what to do, but then Mike says, well, eliminate the resistance, which could be, oh my God, more overwhelmed. And then who do I need to know? That could even be more overwhelming than what do I need? Oh my God. Now I’m really overwhelmed. This is where it gets light and easy. Just do the next right thing. So once you identify, yes, I want to do this is the next right thing to figure out how to eliminate some of this resistance. Is that just literally changing your mindset and if that’s all done, then the next right thing is probably to find a who or your what? And just take it bit by bit and chunk by chunk.
Certain personality types out there are probably saying to me right now, Mike, what the hell are you talking about? Like, this is easy project managers, people that think certain ways like they probably already have this down into like a 42 step to succeed. These are all the next things I need to do, but there’s a lot of us that are visionaries and different personality types that can’t think that way. I’m one of them. I’m such a visionary that I go to like 30,000 foot and I know where I’m at today, but I don’t know how to get to 30,000 feet. And I’m a pilot. A lot of you may not know that, but I completely understand that. But from the time I show up at the airport and I swipe my key card at the security gate and get to my airplane and then get fuel and do the checkout and then, you know, contact the ground, and then taxi and then contact tower and then get the clearance to take off and then get clearance to fly. There’s a lot of stuff that happens from the time you swipe your key card, which is where you’re at today, and getting to 30,000 feet. I’m a 30,000-foot guy. And so I have to break this stuff down.
So hopefully this is valuable. The thing I’m going to leave you with is just figure out what the next right move is. Even if you haven’t worked through, you know, the resistance and who do I need and what do I need and all that, what’s the next right move. And just take one thing every single day. That is the most important thing, get that done. If you’ve got more time, get the next right thing done. So that’ll help you eliminate overwhelm and it’ll keep you frozen, and you know, keep you from getting stuck because the reality is most of us don’t do anything because we get so overwhelmed. So just do the next right move.
