The High Value Man Conversation
The High Value Man gets what he wants from WOMEN, WORK AND THE WORLD OF MEN. He's confident, charismatic, creative and collaborative and it all begins with High Value Conversations. Have a listen to this weeks High Value Conversation.
Hosted By:
Erin Alejandrino & Josh Lashua
The High Value Man Conversation
How Strategic Collaboration Will Transform Your Business Vision
Can you imagine scaling the heights of your business like conquering Mount Massive? Get ready to uncover the secrets of turning lofty dreams into tangible success as we explore the intrinsic need for men to compete and how setting realistic, short-term goals is key to long-term achievement. With vivid analogies and practical advice, we break down the essential steps to creating a vision for yourself and translating big goals into manageable, daily tasks. Discover the difference between merely running your business and truly owning it with a clear blueprint for success.
Ever wondered why trying to "figure it out on your own" often leads to burnout and frustration? Learn the critical importance of planning, preparation, and teamwork in building a thriving business. We draw a compelling parallel between flying IFR (Instrument Flight Rules) and navigating complex business landscapes, emphasizing the dangers of solo flights and the burnout that often follows. Gain insights into how a strong, diverse team can cover different domains, ensuring your business not only survives but thrives and generates profit rather than becoming an expensive hobby.
Ready to elevate your business to new heights? Drop the ego and embrace collaboration. We illustrate how proper planning, metrics, and external counsel can transform solo efforts from crop-dusting operations to high-altitude commercial flights. Discover why engaging with mentors, coaches, and supportive groups can help uncover blind spots and make informed decisions across all aspects of life—business, family, finances, and health. By expanding your thinking and embracing strategic relationships, you'll achieve your long-term goals while bringing others along on your journey. Don't miss this episode filled with actionable insights and transformative strategies.
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And this comes down to something even deeper is men have a need to compete. Most men write that off, which is why sports is so attractive. Someone else is putting in the work, someone else is actually winning, pursuing their dream. You can't have a 10-year vision, or a 5-year vision or a 1-year vision. Why don't you have like a 3-month vision? So often men discount what they can accomplish in a day. Right, because we go oh, a year from now, 30 pounds lighter. That sounds really hard to me. Okay, we'll break that down into three months or even a day. What can you do today? So have a vision for yourself. You've got to have benchmarks that you can check off as you get there. Plus, it feels good, it creates wins.
Speaker 3:And I think probably the third piece of this is stop trying to do it alone. If you are stuck on the binky and the pacifier and you recognize you're there, surround yourself with a type of men that will be intrusively accountable in your life, that you give permission to, that you're intimate with, that you're close with, that will challenge and confront you and support you through healthy community.
Speaker 2:This is the High Value man Conversation Podcast, a show dedicated to the mission of building high value men. One great man means a great family, a great neighborhood, a better city, community state and the world. The question is, if not you?
Speaker 3:then who? All right, welcome back to the High Value man Conversation. This is episode 23 in the house, and this is an episode where we're talking about specifically tactical and practical. But we want to start out with a quote. You're only seeing the forest and you're not seeing the trees, is that right?
Speaker 1:No, that's a quote. Now that you said it, it is a quote.
Speaker 3:Misquoted. You can't see the forest through the trees. You can't see the forest through the trees, and so we've all been here before. You're in a funk, you're in a problem, we're going to talk about business today, but maybe you're in your business. You lose some market share, a key employee quits, you're struggling to domain, a loan doesn't go through like any problem that you can focus on your business and that problem becomes amplified, bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger. And so you're stuck not being able to see the big picture because you're focused on the small picture. Yeah, and the frustration that builds behind that and the vicious cycle that so many men get into, yes, just keep focusing on that same problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. It takes me back to our mount massive hike last year that we went on. It was my first time doing a a significant type type hike like that. And so we go into Mount massive and it's, you start at 10,000 feet, so you, you can't really breathe anyway with that because of your base campus pretty low.
Speaker 1:But we go into this hike and there's there's gargantuan trees, and so you have to literally hike by by a trail map, and so we had to enter it in on data. So we had our, our smartwatches were telling us where to go, even though there was trails. There were so many trails you would get lost. And so you had to follow a pre-plan to get up this mountain. And I didn't even know at that time, aaron, that trees only grow to a certain height on a mountain. It just never clicked to me why that was a deal. Like you have tree lines, so like 12,500 feet or so up the side of a mountain, you'll go from thick, dense forest to literally no trees at all and then you can start to see the summit afterwards.
Speaker 1:And so as we're, as we're going through this, it's like 12 and a half hours into this hike and we're just we're beat by that point. And but our map says we're a long way from getting to our, our, our final destination, that it wasn't until we crossed over you know all crossed over that, that height where we went from dense forest to no trees left at all, that we finally got to see our destination which was the summit.
Speaker 1:And so we still had another three and a half to four hours after that. But going through the forest, we couldn't see the mountain, couldn't see the direction we were going in. We had to fully rely on our data, just going, okay, I'm going to trust this thing, and then, lo and behold, once the trees went away, then we could see our destination, clarity and really go. Okay, now I can see us finishing this hike. It's a monumental trip and lots of lessons learned on the trip. Yeah, and that's powerful.
Speaker 3:It's always darkest before the dawn, kind of thing, and so if you're in facing a problem same idea behind what Josh just described is like you're just in the thick of it, like all you think about is the next step, and sometimes you don't even know if you're moving in the right direction if you don't have a good blueprint for it. I love that, cause we were also talking about how airline pilots traveled their destinations, and there's two types of airline pilots.
Speaker 1:Well, there's. There's multiple types of ways to fly, but there's two that are very well known in the general space of just thinking. And you have VFR, which are your visual flight rules, and you have IFR, which are your instrument flight rules. So really, that's just two philosophies of thought that we use in our business, and why Aaron and I are bringing this up is simply because most business owners are business owners. They think they are. I'll say that again. Most business owners are actually business operators. There's two types of ways you can be in your business you can be a business operator or you can be a business owner, and that's a completely different seat to be in?
Speaker 3:What is an employee that's prison bound, that can't quit, like if you are a business owner?
Speaker 1:you know this already you can't quit, yeah, because you have clients, or take a vacation Right, or step away for a couple of days Right.
Speaker 3:So you become a prison to your business, which is almost worse than being an employee or someone else paying, and you get to actually leave work at work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, that's very true. So, as we took that concept, that philosophy of what most people in business go through is, we end up flying by sight. So a few things that VFR pilots have to deal with is one all pilots start here. So this is the starting place for people in business, this is the starting place for pilots is flying by sight. All new pilots begin here.
Speaker 1:So in visual flight you can pretty much fly anywhere you like, but you have to avoid controlled airspaces, so there's areas of the marketplace that are off limits to you. You have to stay out of the clouds, which means if there's circumstance, if there's difficulty, you're not allowed even to be close to it and you have to abide by a certain cloud clearance requirement when flying VFR, depending on the airspace you're in. So you have to maintain continuous ability to fly visually. You cannot operate in the clouds or in low visibility. So if weather comes or a certain circumstance comes up, you automatically have to change your flight plan and fly around it and stay at least 2000 feet outside of the circumstance, which means if you want to go from point a to point B, you've now started doing really long route.
Speaker 1:You've now started doing this and you're likely going to run out of fuel before you actually get there. It's a pretty wild way to think that a VFR pilots have such limitations on them.
Speaker 3:Um an example of VFR pilot, and it brings me back to my time when I was working with Bedros um crop duster versus a fighter jet. So a crop duster, right Is. He has a a very small, specific plot that he has to be able to fly in to be able to dust his crops, and what Josh is describing by this visual flight rules. Visual flight rules he's got to be able to stay lower than the clouds, right, he's got to have constant visibility and he has to stay in a little box and so growth outside of that and taking a long destination is completely off limits because he doesn't have the accreditation, doesn't have the support and he doesn't have the tools to be able to see the forest through the trees.
Speaker 1:So he's literally focused on this little box, yep, and whether you're thinking this is not at all. On crop dusters, it's very important for the viability of our nation. They are very important people, but the difference between, let's say, like a crop duster and, let's say, folks that go and do sightseeing, is not only very limited on your space, but you're also very limited on the amount of people you can take with you. Yeah, so it's really just you and maybe, if you're lucky, another individual or two on this very short flight. That's really not going to go anywhere except come back and land where it took off. That's good.
Speaker 1:So most businesses are. That way, we can look at the data. When businesses start, they last about a year give or take, and most of them end up failing because there is no plan in place. There is nothing outside the one individual that had this great idea and attempted to white knuckle it. I can do this and, um, that's certainly required in building building a business but there's so much more that's required of us.
Speaker 3:The evolution and the maturity that happens in business development is you have to be able to look beyond your blind spots, which typically you can't do by yourself, and be able to hire, put in the right leadership and, more so importantly which Sasha is going to touch on next is have a set of data points and instruments that allow you to work through whatever obstacle that you're facing.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So for anyone out there that's a business owner and you have something in mind that you're putting a lot, of, lots of effort to, although you feel handicapped, you feel like you're tied to it, you feel like you get no breaks, maybe you're feeling worn out and possibly you feel like you're not really going where you thought you'd end up going. Then you have to realize that you are flying by sight, which means you're doing it alone or you're doing it a very, very small circle. So this is the other way. That's well known. The type of flying is IFR instrument flight rules. So this is a completely different way of flying and it's a way more mature way of flying. You're not just flying by what you see and you think you can feel, but you're actually flying by metrics. And so what I love about IFR flying is it's completely opposite to flying visually. So everything you do as an IFR pilot is planned in advance, that's good.
Speaker 1:You have an actual business strategy, you have goals in place, you have metrics that are measurable, because we all know you can't manage what you can't see, and this is approved by an air traffic controller, which means, on some level, there is counsel, there's an overarching authoritative rule on the plan that you have in place.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's key people inside of your flight plan that allow you to not get stuck in a storm, to be able to run through it and also keep you focused on what your primary task should be as a business owner, and so you have strategic members of your team that are allowing you to operate through the challenges.
Speaker 1:Yes, for sure, and people that fly IFR by instrument are people that have a plan to go from point A to point B.
Speaker 3:And bring people with them.
Speaker 1:And take people with them, yeah, which means where they're taking off from is not where they intend to land. That's good, big, big difference there. And the second one Aaron already touched on is you're able to take a mass amount of people with you. And so here's some other differences in IFR flights, is that one? Yes, you have to have a plan. You also have to have permission, which is called clearance in flying. So clearance means you've basically got a clear pathway to go from point A to point B. As you're flying along, you don't have to call and check in with every municipal that you're flying over. You don't have to worry about other planes being your vicinity, even if there's weather. You're prepared for that and you have a plan for that, and you also have the clearance to go through those things.
Speaker 1:It does require more equipment than flying visually, sure, which means preparation and tools and metrics, and, again, other individuals that have a specific seat to give you the feedback in those different areas of your business that you need to have, versus you just guessing. Um, ifr flight flying is actually the removal of restrictions versus the feeling of being more restricted, so it can feel like, oh, I've got all these extra voices that are now a part of this equation in my business, when, in actuality, it's counsel right, it's clearance to go, move forward with your, with the vision that you said that you had, and then also, um, you're already following the direction of an air traffic controller, which means you have someone in your life hopefully multiple someones, but at least someone in your life that says yes, not only is this a good plan, but it will work. So I'll be here along with you while you go from point A to point B.
Speaker 3:So good, such a good metaphor, because the what behind this problem and this is what Josh and I were kind of wrapping on is that the problem shows up in your business. Then, typically the pilot, the entrepreneur that has only flexed the muscle, figuring out what he can see, tries to figure it out Because he's figured out previous problems that led him to his current level of success, and so he goes into FIO mode. Fio, I'm going to figure it out on my own. I'm a lone wolf and I'm going to white knuckle. I'm going to work harder, I'm just going to grit my way through it. Charter, I'm just going to grit my way through it.
Speaker 3:That FIO mindset leads to frustration, because there's always going to be problems in the evolution of a business that you are not yet skilled to be able to handle, and that's just the truth of it. If you are an operator rather than a true entrepreneur or a business owner, you're probably not great at something. And so, if we know the domains of the business, there's the visionary, there's sales, there's marketing, there's operations, there's finance. You can't be great at everything, you just can't, and so that's why you need a team, and so the FIO mode goes into frustration. You're doing your bookkeeping, payroll spreadsheets, trying to understand sales marketing, all the other stuff. Now you're completely stretched, you're overwhelmed and that one problem that showed up in the business as a fire then becomes multiple problems.
Speaker 3:That frustration typically this is my experience and probably your experience too leads to some form of sedation. It's I can't handle this, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy. Now the self-doubt creeps in and that sedation drinking drugs, vices, distraction, whatever it is then goes into loss of progress. And this is the vicious cycle and this is why businesses shut down within the first year, two years, three years, because they've reached a glass ceiling in their ability to really evolve and they lose progress Now, not only losing progress from a financial standpoint, they're losing progress with their family, with their faith and typically their fitness too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, for sure. I've got multiple failed businesses under my belt, which I'm both grateful for and was frustrated when those circumstances were happening. But you have to draw great lessons out of them and I love that we're hitting on this, aaron, just because there's so many people out there that I love. This is one of the great things about America is anyone has the ability to go out and create a business. At the same time, you have to know what you're getting into when you're doing it, and you cannot choose to do it alone. You, at the same time, you have to know what you're getting into when you're doing it Right, and you cannot choose to do it alone. You can think of any of the greatest corporations in the world and, yes, there might be a figurehead that we may know their name. At the same time, they've got a mass amount of community around them. That's helped them achieve that goal.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I don't think anybody gets into business for hobby. So if you're, if you have a business and it's not making money, if you have a business and it's eating up all your time, all that you honestly have is a hobby. Unless you're bringing in, unless you're making money and able to live the life that you say that you want to live, then you've just got a very expensive hobby. Yeah, and business wasn't created for that.
Speaker 3:True, true. There was a guy on our, on our call this morning, or men's call, this morning, nate, he's been working with me for a few years and he just came back from a 10 day vacation in Santa Barbara and he's a triathlete. He's training for a triathlon coming up here in a few weeks. So he got his biking and his running in in the Hills of Santa Barbara and he he shared on the call, which was a really powerful pivot from where he was before, cause he was very much the operator in his business, he says. By day two I reached out to my team. I told him that I would not be working, not taking any calls, and he truly did it. So for eight days it was a vacation.
Speaker 3:How many entrepreneurs, by the way, if they do take a vacation, are actually not working on it? But he's got a team in place, he's got a set of instruments, he's got data points, kpis and the right leadership team that can fly the plane completely without sight, and that's like. That's the. That's the point that I think every entrepreneur should be striving towards. It's not about the money that you create if you have no margin in your life, right, and so if you make all the money in the world, but you're working 140 hours per week like that's a prison that you can't exit from.
Speaker 1:That's true, it's very true, and I love the analogy you gave of Nate because I think this is what most every business owner gets into business for is to have the ability for autopilot. So if you've ever taken a trip and flown commercially, it's not a rare deal to be up in the air at 30,000 feet and you see the captain Flying how fast.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you see the captain walk through the fuselage.
Speaker 1:You may even shake his hand, and so that's the ability to have everything in place for your business to continue doing, at altitude and at speed, that it needs to do to get to where it needs to go, but it doesn't need you to have your hands on the controller. Now, the beauty behind autopilot is it does give some freedom while, at the same time, if you same time, if you're on autopilot for too long in your business, then things can go awry. But you do have the capability to step away, take breaks, to take breaks to get a breather, to refuel, to go to the bathroom, whatever it is for you, and then go back to your spot and maintain what you were doing leading the vessel. And so that's something that we all need to understand if we're involved in leadership in business is, if you don't have these metrics in place, if you don't have the counsel in place, then not only will circumstance arise, you'd be lucky to have one issue.
Speaker 1:Most people that run businesses always have dozens of issues, right. So you've gotta have this in place, because it's not if, but when this weather comes or the circumstance arises that you have things in place to help you get through them, versus flying by sight, which means you can't even get up to the circumstance. You've got to fly around the mountain. If you're lucky, you have enough fuel to get to where you want to go.
Speaker 3:Or you just stay in the same domain and you're flying and then landing in the exact same spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never met a pilot that wanted to be a regional pilot their whole life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:People, people want to fly the distance. If you create a business, you design it wanting it to go the distance, wanting it to go beyond even your life and become something that's a legacy type business. But again, most businesses that started die with the owner.
Speaker 3:So good, Powerful. Okay, so let's get into the house. So let's say that you are an entrepreneur, you're a business owner and you can't see the forest through the trees. You're in whatever problem you're in, you're in firefighter mode and you're just constantly moving from one challenge to another challenge and you can't elevate or delegate above your problem to actually create an autopilot type business. What are some of the hows? What's step one in this?
Speaker 1:So I'll take this right from your lips, aaron. First one was you've got to drop the ego right. One of the greatest things that men can have in their masculinity is the drive and motivation to go do something, to go do something great, to go beyond themselves in creating, while, at the same time, if all of our significance or too much of our significance is wrapped up in that doing, then our ego can become a part of the equation, which means, if I'm not a part of it, if it's up to me, if it's going to be, it's up to me. That only gets you so far down the road. You may be able to operate inside the trees as you're climbing, you may be able to see some new sites while you're hiking along, but the chances of you truly doing something significant, based upon your definition of significant, or getting to that summit, will likely bring people with you or bringing people with you, will likely never happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you'll. You'll see some things. You might have some decent experiences. You'll have the up seasons. Then you'll often battle the down seasons. Um, you'll never really get to experience the feeling of the summit, and so the ego has to go. The ego to me, aaron is, is flying alone, going back to the crop duster. He's flying alone, no one's going with him. He's flying low and his flights are typically very, very short. He's also flying slow, so those planes go a lot slower than a commercial airline pilot or a fighter pilot might.
Speaker 1:And then also you're flying in circles, which means you never actually get to go, you never actually get to take full dominion in the marketplace that your business is in. You're going to take off where you took off and you're likely going to land back where you took off or somewhere really close. You're doing regional type work, and so these are just. These are just philosophies and thought processes that we have to be able to chew on as business owners. If we want something, if we want our business to become significant is you can't do it alone and you need more than more than your, your cousin and your brother and your sister's sister to help you run your manage, run and manage your business so good.
Speaker 3:Drop the ego and ego check should be very, very simple for you. If you are listening to this podcast and you are a business owner and you're struggling, suffering, you don't have the freedom. You feel more like it is a prison rather than a purposeful business that you get to step away from. That is your ego check. So the step one is drop the ego.
Speaker 1:For sure I like that, and the biggest, biggest piece we can give you is something we harp on weekend and week out is counsel and the value behind having intelligent individuals in strategic seats and that's the biggest piece is whether it's counsel or whether it's coaching, and these are principles and philosophies, aaron, that work in every domain of our life that we've hit on.
Speaker 1:So it's not just your business although we're talking about business but you have to have coaching, you have to have people in strategic seats, counsel, and so, with that, your counsel or your coaches would tell you that one you need a plan. Right, you might have a great idea, you might have a decent vision, but if you don't have a plan, you'll fail. You'll never get to where you think you want to go. And you've got to understand how to fly by instruments, which means you have to have data and metrics.
Speaker 1:We're talking about a very large client of yours that does massive, massive numbers on a global type scale. Yet their problem right now is they have so much influx of clientele that it's hard for them to nail down who is their primary target, right? So you got to be able to gather the data, review the metrics, so you have a specific individual that you're going after. Once you have that in place, then you can begin to spend 80% of your efforts on your top 20% clientele and watch your business not explode overnight. So, flying by instruments you can also fly higher right, so you get to an echelon of business that others could only dream of. You now get to fly over the mountains If the circumstance arises. Then you've got everything it takes to fly through the weather. But even so, most IFR pilots have the capability to fly over the weather, and that's something that requires counsel and coaching.
Speaker 3:Yep. You need those second, third, fourth sets of eyes. You need the specialists sitting in the individual seats. You have to drop the ego, realize you can't do it alone and start recruiting the right people to take your vision to the next step.
Speaker 1:Yep for sure. And another thing that comes with IFR-type flying is you get the opportunity to fly at a much higher altitude. And the gift of flying at a higher altitude is it requires a lot less thrust. So when you're starting your business, when you're trying to get off the ground, when you're attempting to get over a mountain, it takes a lot more thrust with a positive attitude, so lots of effort to get you up to altitude. But once you're at altitude, you have the opportunity to throttle back, so it's a lot less effort.
Speaker 1:That's going out the door. Yet you're flying with less resistance. You have the same amount of people behind you that you're going to take with you. You're on a strategic flight plan. You've received clearance from ground control that this is the right direction to go in. These are the right moves to make, these are the right people to to hire, these are the right people you need to let go of, and so you're able to move further down the road far more efficiently with a lot less effort, and you have the opportunity to not only to fly with less resistance, but you get the opportunity to fly in a straight line.
Speaker 3:So good, so good. And the last piece of this we're going to give you the how kind of practical tactical Ego check so you know if this is hitting you between the eyes. Check that ego. Step two get some counsel, coaching, mentorship. Get a part of a group. Get some strategic relationships. Don't surround yourself with the yes men that are only just complimenting and patting you on the back. You want to have someone that's going to give you that intrusive accountability. Hold you accountable to the third piece of this, which is a greater vision. You started your business because you want to have income impact investments. You want to inspire people. So that vision is important. You have to have the vision of where you're going and the vision should be powerful, compelling, and it should motivate you to work past these initial struggles. So when you get stuck in that forest and trees problem, you can elevate above and start to see the whole landscape of the direction you're moving in.
Speaker 1:For sure Got to have it. It goes right back to my mountain massive climb is. Our vision was very, very short. We probably couldn't see more than 50, maybe 50 meters ahead of us. But we also had a plan that told us how many steps to go in one direction, when to change course and how many steps to go in the next direction. And so, by flying, we were hiking by sight, but we were also hiking by instrument. That's the only reason we had the opportunity to meet Summit. And so the same way in our business, the same way in our business, the same way that works in your family, the same way that works in your finances and the same way that works in your health is you can see, what you can see, but what?
Speaker 1:you can see is always going to be limited, right? You've got to have people that are outside your sphere that'll help you make the decisions that you've been uh uh attempting to avoid, help you to see things that you're otherwise not seeing yourself, and really help you to get from point A to point B, because if you're left up to your own facilities, regardless of how good you think that you are, there's only so much that you can process. There's only so much that your hands can create. You've got to be able to do more with the six inches between your ears than you do with the six inches between your hand spans. There's only so much that this can do, and so relationship is the biggest key of that.
Speaker 3:Love that, love that. All right, guys. If you are a business owner, this podcast served you in any way. Do us a big favor and leave us a five-star review like share, comment. Share this with somebody else along their journey. Quick recap for you If you are flying by sight alone, you will not reach the long-term vision and destinations you want to create and, more so than anything, you're not going to be able to bring the people along that you want to bring with you. This is your friends, your family and your future kids and grandkids and the legacy you want to leave behind. Choose to drop the ego. Get some counsel in your life coaching, mentorship, get a part of a group that will challenge your way of thinking so you can think bigger and bolder and have a clear vision with where you're going.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 3:Much love, many blessings. We'll talk to podcast.
Speaker 2:Get back to the fucking mental lab.