Billy Keels  0:00  

A warning the powerful loop that's silently stealing your future. Today's episode is sponsored by Billy Keels advisory services. If you want to learn more about how to make your 99 optional, just go to make it optional.com. Once again, that's make it optional.com.

Speaker 1  0:19  

Helping you build freedom without losing your edge. This is the going long podcast with Billy Keels

Billy Keels  0:32  

warning the powerful loop that's silently stealing your future is going to be the very brief episode for you, if you ever felt like or have continuing to put off something that you know that you should start. I'm going to show you the formula that you need. It's very, very simple. It's very simple, and it's going to get you to the result that you want to get to very quickly. Now this is coming from, this comes from a strategy session called it's a person that came through the direct messages through LinkedIn, and eventually we ended up on a strategy call. And this is just, it's this is something that happens very, very frequently. I see it with the people that I'm speaking with. I had clients that will before they were clients help to walk them through the process. And I don't know if you've ever been stuck in this loop, but if you, if you have been, it's going to be worth the very brief time investment. You're going to get a massive return on the other side. So this is a senior AE, Senior Account Executive from a very large multinational enterprise software company. And in this when I talked to this guy, I mean, it was such an amazing conversation, because he is someone who's at that point in life, he's, he's, think, he said he was in his in his late 30s, and he has three kids. But the thing that was really amazing is that he architected where he is, right? He actually knew where he wanted to work. He knew the industry that he wanted to work in, and he named all the big players. He talked to me. He talked me through kind of how he got to where he was he and he knew he was either going to work at Google, at Oracle, at AWS, at Salesforce, SAP. He knew where he was going to end up. And he, like he was very meticulously talking about how he organized a strategy to get into the industry and into one of the top tier companies. It wasn't like he just wanted to be an enterprise software he was extremely methodical about where he wanted to be. He had the right he knew his targets. He knew exactly where he needed to be. He had all the right mentors set up to get him into the businesses he was building the right skill set like this is early on in his career, he didn't know that, but eventually he knew that that's where he wanted to go, and he had this clear plan that he was executing against. And you know, now he's in one of these big companies, and he's enjoying it, and he's got some things that I'll tell you about here in a second. But, but the thing that was really interesting, this partly why I want to share the story, is that he, as we were talking when we're on this call, he's he's telling me, and he's sharing with me that he's always known that there's this entrepreneurial bug, that you know it happened he had this entrepreneurial bug before he got into corporate, and then he continues to live with this entrepreneurial bug, and that he knows that he will build something, which I guess is why we eventually had the had the phone call. But there was also something that I noticed that is really, really interesting, and that's why I'm talking about in sharing this warning about the powerful loop that's silently stealing your future. And I'm also talking because for a period of five years, I over thought things, yes, I want, I knew that there was something that was calling me. It was about being able to build something. Although initially I thought it was just about investing towards something, but I got there, you know, and part of what's happening is there's this feeling of being responsible and and this is why you're you're continuing to, what I would say is kick the can down the road. And I was doing these things me and before, and I hear this a lot, because I wanted to be able to, number one, be able to make more money, and I wanted to have more control over the one of the things that I think is extremely important, or I know is extremely important, is having more control over my time, and I didn't want to have that point where I was like, constantly feeling like, hey, if somebody a couple 1000 kilometers or miles away makes a decision on a spreadsheet that me, my family, the life we've designed that that's all going to be at risk. And so all the combination of those things was like, Okay, well, let's go ahead and get started. I didn't know it was called optionality at the time. Now I recognize it clearly was that because I just wanted to have more, more control, I wasn't trying to escape anything. And so, so let me, let me not digress. I'm going go kind. Going off track. But so we're in this strategy call, and about halfway through the strategy call, we're halfway through this conversation, I realized like he's he's clearly stated something that I hear a lot, and every day I'm hearing even more. And because of probably things like AI that are happening, we start to recognize that either outside or he was specifically talking about inside the company. He started recognizing that there was more and more bureaucracy, more and more red tape. He happened to be in the sales organization as well, and so salespeople, we generally don't like a lot of bureaucracy. But let me once again not digress. So he's talking about this increase around the bureaucracy. It's kind of bothering him, I can tell. So we dig into that a little bit. And he also starts to tell me that the size of the teams are starting to get smaller. So we dig into that a little bit more. I dig into that a little bit more. And what started realizing is at a certain point, he's like, Yeah, I see the writing on the wall, but so he sees the writing on the wall. We talked about what that meant, and he recognized that he has this voice that's getting louder and louder and and we got to a certain point where it was a matter of saying, Well, do I actually build this thing now or to do it later? And I mean, I've been I've been there. I talked about it a lot. I've talked about it a couple times. I even did an episode, actually, very recently, in Episode 621, where I go into the event that changed my life. If you've listened for any amount of time, you've heard me talk about the famous birthday party at my my son's third birthday party, and but if you want to hear a little bit more or more in detail, what I was going through, how I was feeling, go check out episode six, 621 and I will tell you that no one actually made me get on that plane. I was never forced to get on the plane. And I recognize that in retrospect, because that also has a lot to do with this story, and it has a lot to do with the powerful loop that's silently stealing your future, if this is happening to you. Because as we came back and we started thinking about Yes, he sees the writing on the wall, and then he recognizes that he wants to do something. Right this conversation with this young senior account executive who's got kids and who is in his late 30s, he's going through this point, well, there's one thing that he says to me, and the reason that I'm sharing this is because it's something that I hear frequently, and I want to share with you, because if you've ever said it, if you've ever felt it, there is a way to break the cycle, a way to stop having your future stolen from you because you can't ever get the time back. That's the important part. And so as he tells me, you know, he starts talking to me about once he's, once he's, you know, once he's 100% ready, then he'll actually go out and and make the next step right. And so it wasn't just that that I've heard. I'll just share others like I've heard when I finish whatever, when I finish my master's degree, when I finish this next quarter, then I'll get started on the next thing, or, like, when I get the promotion, that one comes up a lot when I get the promotion, then I'm going to have more time so I'll be able to start to do and work on this business, or scale this business, or fix this business that I have going on the side, or when I save X amount of money, then I'll be able to get started, and I'll be able to focus on myself, and be able to focus on all these types of things. And I get it, I've been there, and it's there's this whole feeling that you think that that's discipline, because you're saying, once I get to this point, then I'll start the next thing. You're even saying it's responsible, because it's not just you. It's more than likely, if you're one of the senior leaders in big companies, it's not just about you, you're also being responsible. I get it because you get close. But here's the thing like that, it's really important to recognize because the closer you get to when something happens, then the goal posts usually start to move. So for instance, when you save $250,000 or $300,000 then you'll be able to start and be in a financial position to invest in yourself. Well, when you get to close to 200,000 then you realize, like, hey, maybe that's not enough. It's taken me a lot longer than I thought, and so now it needs to be 300,000 right? But before it was 200,000 before you start worrying about or thinking about this next thing, or, you know what, when you get to a point where you finish this next project, then you'll have time to go and look and invest in yourself and be able to get to the next thing or to fix this business problem that I have. Well, once you finish that, then you recognize that there's three or four other priorities that you think need to happen, and you begin to invest in and so that whole win thing never shows up, because the goal post keeps moving away, and what it does. It moves away in such a way that you're moving out, and then eventually it comes back and you moving out, and then eventually comes back. The thing is number one. And let me just also to say this, you're never, ever, ever going to be 100% ready when I hear the one. Well, I need to be 100% ready, then I can do that. You were never 100% ready when you got married. You were never 100% ready when you took the promotion. You were never 100% ready when anything more than likely. And guess what, because you are a high achiever, high performer, you figured it out along the way. Let me not digress. Let me come back to where I was, because as you're going around and around, because it's being pushed out, and then eventually it comes back to your mind. So you're starting to use that energy over and over and over. But now you're running around in the exact same loop that you're trying to escape from in the rat race. You want to have more control, but you keep pushing out the date. Because you say, when I get to this point, then I'll start that. When I get to this point, then I'll start that. But you keep pushing it out, because the goal posts keep moving. So here's the thing, because you're so so then you begin to create this loop. You're not doing you wanted to be responsible. You wanted to show discipline. I get it. I've been there. I can recognize it, which is why I'm sharing it with you. But the way to break the loop. You want to know how you can break the loop. I know you're like, really wanting to know. It's super simple. It's such a simple thing, you're going to kick yourself that you're like, Why have I been going through all this frustration and energy? And it just keeps coming back to me. And there's one very simple way to break the loop. It's just to decide, and when you decide, it will give you power, and that power will give you the ability to act. So you must decide on taking that action, sharing my own story. It took me five years. I once I decided, and, like, really decided I wasn't just, you know, going through and learning and learning and learning. It was a matter of saying, I have this goal. I wrote it down. It was a five year goal. This was going to happen over and, you know, 10 specific units of property that I was going to own. And guess what happened when I started taking the first action, not just thinking it or overthinking it, I took action. It didn't take 60 months, six zero. It took 18. Because nothing, nothing will get you closer to your goals. And by taking action and so breaking the loop. Let me also say this, once you decide and you start taking action, it does not happen overnight. It breaking the loop doesn't happen overnight. But the thing is, is once you start taking action, as I just mentioned, you will feel so relieved, you will feel so fulfilled. You will feel so confident, because you begin to move closer and closer to your goal. And this happens. I've seen this even with clients that I'm working with, client that it was working with before was building and scaling his business. He had his business was it was it was starting his side business, specifically side business was where it needed to be, and once he started taking very Guided Action, he tripled the revenue that he had in his business in three months from the previous year that he had been doing it by himself, another VP in the entertainment space who's scaling his real estate portfolio, doing being able to do that and do that four to five times what he was. Why? Because he's taken consistent action. Yes, he's continuing to excel in his role, and he's continuing to scale and build his side business out. So why? So he has more control over his time as well. And as you're doing it, as you're as you're as I talk about these specific clients, like they're all being able to do corporate by choice because they want to be there. Like that whole option of being there. They're doing it because they want to, not because they need to. It is very, very simple. It makes me think about the last four years of when I was in corporate. I was going every single day because I wanted to, not because I needed to. But the only reason that that happened is I broke the loop of saying, Well, when I get this amount of money in the bank, then I'll get started. No, I had gone through that enough. It was like now it was time to take action, taking action, recognizing and course correcting along the way. Got to a point where, yeah, I didn't worry anymore about the org chart or somebody who was 1000s of kilometers or miles away. Why? Because I had control. I understood how I could go out and create profitable, crop, a profitable business, a profitable side business, and being able to do that, leverage those skills, use the assets that I had put together over a number of years, right? Not letting them depreciate. And so that's the thing, like, I just want you to think about this when. Loop that, because this is what I'm in. This is this. Is it? This is when this happens. Then that happens, if you break that win, then loop, then you start to move closer to your goals. You get to that profitable side business. You get to having more control over your time. You're breaking it by taking action. That's it. If this is you happy, this is one of my favorite topics to talk about. That's

Speaker 2  15:25  

what I

Billy Keels  15:26  

made the episode. Because not only, not only did I have this one specific call, but I've heard it so many different times. I'm like, You know what? This keeps happening. So let me go ahead and put a podcast episode out here about it, and it's also helping you, because you it's about taking action now, not letting the when this happens that something that's more than likely going to be variable, because it's easy to just say, Okay, then, well, no, no, now, now o'clock is time to take action. Break the wind, then loop. If you need help, I'm here to help you. I even created God. You probably see it, but you can go to make it optional.com. Talk about specifically. About specifically how you can start to take action. Show the proven path that's helping other hundreds of of senior leaders at big companies get the roadmap, the proven roadmap. And if you want to chat, you can find me typically on LinkedIn, leave me a message here. And if it's not, you share today's episode, share it with somebody. Share care. Get on the phone, show them that you can help them, and talk about it. Go from theory to practice. That's what this whole thing is about. And guess what? While you're doing that, you know where I'll be, I'll be right here. Yes, I will be preparing for the next episode. So until then, go out and make it a great day. And thank you very, very much.

‍