210. How to Unlock the Entrepreneur Within You

You are listening to the Life Coaching Secrets Podcast, episode 210. Did you know that life coaches are needed now more than ever? I'm Frank Macri, founder of Thriving Coach Academy. I've trained over a thousand coaches and helped them launch their own successful coaching businesses. If you want to make an incredible income and impact as a coach, and have a lot of fun doing it i'll show you exactly how to get it done this is life coaching secrets

What's up, coaches? So I took a trip down memory lane and I revisited some of this show's earlier episodes. And this one in particular stood out, and I knew that I had to share it with you all again. It's one of our most talked about episodes that we've done, and the message is just as powerful today. I hope you love it. In this episode, I am going to share with you why I believe we're all entrepreneurs. Yes, you listening to this right now, even if you do not have a business.

You are an entrepreneur. We're all entrepreneurs. I'm going to share how you can cultivate the entrepreneur in you and use that power to get any kind of success you want in your life. Now, before I dive into this... I want to give a shout out to one of our most recent graduates. She just graduated actually this week. Her name's Allison and she's been crushing it this past year.

And I don't think I shared the success when it happened, but it was just so cool. Allison jumped into coaching and she enrolled in the academy. And by her second month, I believe, into training, she enrolled. Not one, not two, but three paying clients in one day and made about $7,500 in a day. Isn't that cool? Wouldn't you love a $7,500 day? So amazing. But what I love most about Allison's journey and her success, and I share this to inspire you all, is that she said that...

For the first time in a very long time in her life, she... is excited to wake up in the morning she can't wait to wake up and to jump out of bed and to get to work on her coaching business and to connect with people and to share value with them and i think that is so amazing and that is such a testament to how rewarding a career as a coach is. So congratulations to you, Allison, on your success and on your very recent certification. All right. So let's talk about...

Entrepreneurship. I'm going to say the word entrepreneur and entrepreneurial probably a million times in this episode. So it is essential to see yourself as an entrepreneur in life, okay? This is one of the most useful... and productive ways for you to approach all your goals, all your relationships, because it allows you to show up at your best and it allows you to achieve goals.

that you may have not thought it was possible for you to achieve. So when you show up to life as the entrepreneur that you are, you expand possibilities.

And it is my goal that you leave this episode recognizing the entrepreneur that is already in you. Does that sound fair? Okay. Now, when I got started as a coach... I had no business experience. I didn't have an MBA. I didn't have a large following. I didn't know what income and profit and revenue and... you know, all these business terms, ROI. I just, I didn't have any business acumen, but I heard this idea, we are all entrepreneurs.

And I questioned whether or not I was really cut out to be an entrepreneur. And here's one quote that really struck for me. Here's the quote. All human beings are entrepreneurs. When we were in the caves, we were self-employed. Finding our food, feeding ourselves. That's where human history began. As civilization came, we suppressed it. We became labor because they stamped us, you are labor. We forgot that we are entrepreneurs.

That's a quote by Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner. So when you see yourself as an entrepreneur, you... will discover just how resourceful and creative you are in all areas of life, your career, your business, your relationships, and your health. And when you see yourself as an entrepreneur, you learn how to adapt. You learn how to evolve.

and thrive. You learn how to seize opportunities. No matter how fast our world changes you know how to adjust and keep yourself moving forward. This is what happens when you think and act like an entrepreneur. Now, anyone can develop this approach to life, whether you're a teacher, whether you are a doctor or a lawyer, a therapist, an engineer.

You can think as an entrepreneur and it's important for you to do so. So my invitation for you is to try on right now that you're an entrepreneur and you've always been. So let's talk about what... detracts someone from showing up as an entrepreneur and having success. The first is blame. The moment you blame, you limit your capacity to grow. So blaming external circumstances, blaming other people for how you think, what you're experiencing. That's the first way.

to take away from your entrepreneurial power. The second is focusing on problems, focusing on all the ways that you're stuck, all the ways that you're wasting time, focusing all on problems and setback.

The third way you'll detract yourself from seeing yourself as an entrepreneur is thinking that you already know it all, assuming that you have all the answers. The fourth... is being greedy in relationships or only getting what you want in relationships. And the final way to limit your entrepreneurial success is to... is to, oh my gosh, just lost my train. Oh, right, is to not take any risks. My brain just froze for a moment. Is not taking any risks, okay? So...

I want to flip all of those problems around and what I've done is I've created, here are the five characteristics of entrepreneurs. So I'm going to break down each of these in detail. Here are the five elements of... entrepreneurs. The first is you accept full responsibility. That's the first. The second is you seek opportunity. Third, you create win-win relationships. Fourth, you be a lifelong learner.

And five is you take intelligent risks. When you're able to embody all of these five elements, you express with fullest power the entrepreneur that's in you. So let's start with the first element, which is assuming full responsibility. I like to say that you cannot blame and grow at the same time. So the moment that you blame what you're experiencing and feeling on a situation,

a circumstance, another person. You take away your ability to grow. So an entrepreneur approaches life with the question, what's the experience I want to create right now and how can I create it? You are the creator of your experience in life. No one else creates it for you. You are the creator. You're not living at the effect of your life. You are at the cause of your life.

So don't rely on any kind of circumstance to determine your success or also feel entitled to something without putting in the effort. So for example... Let's say that you go to a social gathering or a networking event or a party and you come home and say, wow, that was super lame. That crowd was so boring. I didn't have a fun time.

You might think that if the crowd was better and if the energy in the room was higher, that it would have allowed you to have a better experience. But the reality is the crowd doesn't determine your experience. You do. So you are the only person who can create boredom in your life. And therefore, you're responsible to make your life come alive.

And I made an entire episode on how to coach boredom or coaching boredom, something like that. It was, I think, in the first 10 episodes on this podcast where I talk more about that. So first element is you assume full responsibility. If you're ever feeling a certain way, You realize that you created that feeling. No one else created it for you. And you get to have the power in recreating what it is that you want. Okay?

This is so empowering to live this way, especially in a world where we might expect the government to hand out things to us or provide things to us, right? When you can take full responsibility, it allows you to really create your future. in the way that you want to create it. The second element of entrepreneurship is seeking opportunity. So this is approaching life asking the question, what's my opportunity here?

What's the opportunity presenting itself to me right now? So entrepreneurs don't see life as a problem to solve or a challenge to overcome. They see it as an opportunity to experience. Nothing can ever go wrong if you are someone who seeks out opportunities. So if one door closes, the entrepreneur opens five more. No problems at all. It's like challenge accepted. Let's do this.

How is this going to work for me? That's one of my favorite questions. How can this work for me? Okay, so no time is ever wasted when you have this entrepreneurial approach to life because every moment works for you. You're able to create opportunities right away. It's also about seeing the opportunities within opportunities. So stretching your success even further. How can I leverage?

How can you magnify the success you're currently having to create more of it? So for example, one of the tips I tell our coaches when they are... looking to get speaking gigs and grow their business through public speaking is I encourage them to hand out. a form to all of their attendees at their speaking gigs. And we call it a stay connected form. So it's a one page document that asks their attendees, hey, if you like this presentation, do you know of any other groups that can benefit?

from having a speaker like me? If so, please list that group here and the best person I can get in touch with. So this is how you can leverage one opportunity, the speaking gig, to become 10 more. You can turn one speaking gig into 10. This is something that I've done when I would go out and do public speaking. And always there were more speaking gigs that would open up just from one.

That's one of the many resources we give our students in the academy. We have an entire bonus for our students called the Speak More, Make More training, which teaches our coaches how to also become captivating. public speakers and learn how to get paid well to speak. So we have a lot more in the academy that shares different types of tips like the Stay Connected form to help leverage a speaking career.

Another thing I like to share, especially with coaches, is that as a coach, as someone that is marketing your business and sharing stories, you get to know all the challenges that you have in life. become opportunities for you to share value with your audience, with your following. Any type of bad thing that happens to you is an opportunity for content. Everything becomes a story.

When you're really wearing the hat of the entrepreneur, you realize that there can't be anything in your life that will go wrong because you get to create an opportunity from it. There's a story that's going to come from it that you're going to share. There's a lesson that you're going to learn from it that you can now. inspire others with. And another part of seeing life as a series of opportunities is by realizing that life is just one big adventure. It's just one big adventure.

You may know if you've listened to the podcast that a few months ago, I moved across the country from Seattle, Washington to Raleigh, North Carolina. And I originally hired a moving company. And my plan was to have this moving company transport all my furniture and drive it across.

And unfortunately, that moving company canceled last minute. And then I hired another and they canceled again. So I asked, okay, what's the adventure here? What's the opportunity that's presenting itself to me right now? And then I just shifted from wanting to complain and be miserable about it to, you know what? Game on. This is going to be an adventure.

So first I thought, how could I make this fun? I reached out to some friends and one of them decided that he wanted to join me on this 3000 mile trip across the country. And then when we got the U-Haul, you know, U-Hauls are the fanciest vehicles. But we turned it into Club U-Haul. Like we were blasting fun music. It was upbeat. It was energizing. We were singing. We were talking. And we had such a fun time. We also got to explore parts of the country that we've never seen before.

And we got to know each other on a deeper level as well. So, so many opportunities presented themselves, but only because I opened myself up to seeing that. So when you see that life... is an opportunity, right? You get to become your own safety net. You don't need to wait for a safety net to be given to you. You realize that you are your own safety net and life, you don't even need to create.

opportunities because life itself is one opportunity. So what if you saw life that way as one opportunity that's just unfolding as it's going? And another way to understand seeing opportunities is by really developing a way of making an immediate pivot. The moment that that moving company canceled, it was almost immediate that I shifted to, okay, what's the opportunity? How can I adapt?

Here are some examples of how you can have this immediate pivot in your own coaching business. Let's say that you have a potential client who books a consultation with you and you're really excited and it's time for the consult, but they don't show up. They don't answer their phone. Well, you have a choice. You can choose to be upset about it and sit around and wait for them and come up with all the reasons why your coaching business is failing or...

You can see that as an hour that you just gained from not having a consult with them as an opportunity to connect with more people, to follow up with the people that you've been looking to follow up with. to create a piece of content or value that you can now create and share with more people. You can use that hour as an opportunity to attract more clients. Let's say that someone's running late.

Do you ever get frustrated because someone's running late and you're like, oh, they're wasting my time and I'm sitting here waiting? Well, what if instead of seeing the five or 10 minutes that someone's running late, you saw that as an opportunity? What's your opportunity there? Maybe you can take that time to read a few pages from a book that you're immersed in right now or call or get in touch with someone that...

you've been wanting to get in touch with. Life is always presenting opportunities as long as you see them. COVID has been an incredible test for our society to really see what people have an entrepreneurial mindset and which people are not connected to it right now. So the smart businesses...

We're thinking, okay, how could we adapt? How could we pivot? What can we offer? So you want to be thinking, what's the opportunity? How can I make this work for me? All right, let's talk about the next element, which is being a lifelong learner. No matter how experienced you are in life, no matter how old you are, there's always more to learn. So this means waking up with that curiosity to learn more, to expand your awareness, to grow.

The moment that you think you know it all is the same moment you shut yourself up from growing. You shut yourself down from it, right? So you might say at times, wow, it feels like I've just tried everything or I've just done everything that's in my control. But it's never true. There's always more to learn. There's always more for you to discover if you allow yourself to be a lifelong learner. So when we're young, we're learning at such a fast pace. And then when we enter adulthood...

that learning slows down because people stop acquiring skills. And I think it's because many adults have this assumption that they should have everything figured out. So they close themselves off to learning new things. But when you close yourself off to learning... right? And you just try to do things all on your own. You just make your life 10 times harder. And a big part of being a lifelong learner means that you're going to need support. You're going to need mentorship.

So be open to receiving mentorship. That's one of the questions you want to ask yourself to elicit this quality in you is, how can I grow from this? What is it that I need to learn? And how can I receive support? And when you receive support, it's important to be open to receive support and learning from people that are not just older than you, but also people younger than you, right? Support and mentorship can come in all forms.

And the more that you open yourself up to learning, the more coachable you become. And the more coachable you become, the more you're going to see and understand your challenges differently. So fall in love with the process of learning. Take off your know-it-all hat. Put on your lifelong learner hat. Keep it there. All right. The next element is creating win-win relationships. So this is about establishing mutually beneficial relationships.

A lot of people pursue relationships. They pursue them only thinking about what the other person can do for them. Personally, professionally, what can this person do for me?

And they're only going to network with people when they need something from them. Like, oh, I need a new job. This person will provide me with a job. Or this person may become my potential client, so I'm going to network with them. But creating win-win relationships is truly about... being genuinely interested in connecting with someone and not keeping score, but thinking about the other person and what their desires are, what their needs are, how you can support them.

And really wanting to have a long-term relationship with that person. Not just something quick and easy that you could get what you need from and then leave. Entrepreneurs that go far in life, people that go far in life, show up with this. desire to create win-win relationships with people. So when you are connecting with people,

Rather than thinking about, well, what do I need from this person? What do I want from them? Think about how you can collaborate with that other person and what it is that you can provide them.

As you meet new people, instead of asking, what's in it for me? Ask, what's in it for we? What's in it for us? And let everything follow from that place. If you're someone that doesn't like... connecting with people or networking or building relationships, maybe you see it as a chore, then you're more likely to just go through the motions and be very transactional, like checking the boxes off the list and acquiring just some phony relationships.

make you more cynical, which is also going to make you more phony and just becomes this vicious loop. But it doesn't have to be this way. Building relationships can absolutely be fun and you don't need to be super extroverted or the life of the party in order to establish win-win relationships. I'm an introvert and when I would go out and network, I would just look for that one person that my energy was drawn towards. I'd be in a room full of people and I would just focus on the one person.

And I would just have a great connection and build a relationship with that person. And that to me was so much more valuable than just trying to meet as many people as possible, check off all the boxes and keep track. of like who it is that I could most benefit from. So how is it that you can benefit, not just you benefit, but also the other person? How could both parties benefit and create a win-win? All right, and the final element...

of really showing up as an entrepreneur is taking intelligent risk. This is a big one. Now, the word risk tends to get a pretty bad rap. We often associate risk with things like losing money or something dangerous happening to us. But risk is not an enemy to avoid because it is a permanent part of life. We cannot avoid risk, okay? So most of the things that we assume to be risky, they're not even nearly as risky as we think. Most people overrate, they overrate their risk.

At our core as humans, we're often wired to just avoid risk and this could really limit our growth. So what I like to present to anyone considering a decision or an opportunity. is since your fearful brain is already going to come up with the worst case scenario that's very unlikely to happen, you owe it to yourself to also consider the best case scenario, right? What would the best case scenario look like?

And it's only fair to do that just to balance out your awareness. So when some people think about becoming a coach and they think, well, I'm afraid of X, Y, and Z happening, I say, okay, well, that's your brain's biggest fear, which is very unlikely to manifest.

What is the best case scenario? Have you even considered that? Have you held some space for that? Put some focus on what would the best case scenario look like for you as a coach? What would your best year ever as a coach look like, right? So most of the risk that people perceive, it is not rooted in any kind of reality. I love asking the question, when you think of your worst case scenario, what's the chance and likelihood that's...

actually going to happen with one out of 10. And a 10 is like totally going to happen. One is not at all. Most people realize it's a very low score. It's very unlikely. Now, every single decision that up-levels our life has a level of risk. Let me share that again. Every decision that you make that uplevels your life has a level of risk. So if you don't do anything risky, life just becomes stagnant and boring. It loses its meaning.

If you are currently in a place where you are feeling that you're going through the motions, you might be successful on the outside but a bit unfulfilled on the inside, you feel like you have more to offer to the world, consider that maybe what you need to do... is create an environment for you to take a risky opportunity or make a decision that has risk in it. Risk is what spices up life and it allows you to discover just how powerful you are. And humans are so capable of...

of everything when they are taking opportunities that really invite them to rise to the occasion. Humans are capable of so much. I like to think that the greatest, when we really think about, well, what is the biggest risk in life? I think the greatest risk in life is letting your fears win. and not betting on yourself and living with that regret.

So if you don't pursue the risk, you end up with the regret. And I would rather take the risk and fail because I know if I fail, I'm going to grow, I'm going to learn. It's going to be fulfilling because I'm growing and learning. I'd rather take that path than regret all the things I didn't do.

This is your one shot in life. It's not a dress rehearsal. There's no second chances here. So you owe it to yourself to experience all that life has to offer and not live with a single regret. The first time that I really embodied this was... when I graduated college. And up until that point in my life, I had really done what was safe. I followed the rules. I did what my teachers told me to do. I went through the motions. And then I was presented with the opportunity to...

you know, go through a traditional nine to five corporate job or leave it all behind and go across the world to teach English in China. And it was tremendous risk. I decided to do that. I booked the ticket. I moved across the world all by myself and lived there for two years. I lived in China.

I'm so grateful that I did that because it allowed me to realize how necessary risk is in our life. And I show up to my business with that same attitude of just, okay, what is the risk, the intelligent risk I can take? right now because I can't avoid it. If you avoid risk, you just stay safe. You stay small. You stay in your comfort zone. You don't have to go to China to understand risk. You can just think for yourself, how is it that you can

Allow yourself to lean into risk a little bit more than you are right now. Okay? And I know by far the best risk that I've ever taken in my life was the risk of becoming a coach. far the best risk ever because it just opened up everything so If you often let other people's opinions weigh you down, then check out my episode called Other People's Opinions where I talk about that because maybe you are looking to take a leap of faith, but you have other people that are...

projecting their fear onto you and telling you how risky it is if you take the leap. And you don't want that to hold you back. So certainly make sure you have some... awareness there on what it is that you want and allowing other people to have their opinion on it without letting it affect you. Another thing to consider when it comes to taking an intelligent risk is thinking, what's the long-term benefit of taking the risk?

What's the long-term benefit? So it's understanding how having short-term risk leads to increased long-term. benefit and stability. So while something might be risky short-term, oftentimes those decisions lead to long-term stability. Okay, so... That is like a huge piece of the puzzle here. It might just seem like the risk itself is very scary, but if you don't take the risk, then you deal with long-term instability. right? Long-term regret versus just taking the risk, having short-term risk.

And then ultimately creating a life where there's long-term stability and long-term opportunity and success, all right? And I also like just knowing at the end of the day, one of the questions I'll often ask myself is, Did I let my fear win? Am I letting my fear win right now? So if you weren't afraid, what would you do? If you weren't afraid, what would you do?

Do not wait until you feel ready in life, right? The entrepreneur doesn't wait until they feel fully certain or prepared. Uncertainty is an ingredient of risk. So if you're waiting to feel certain and prepared and ready, then you're going to be waiting a very long time. The most successful people are the people that approach life as entrepreneurs. They understand that.

It's about having some degree of risk and some degree of uncertainty, okay? So what you don't want to do is wait until you have a 100% information until you make a change in your life. Sometimes people are like incessant about, well, I just need to like do some more research and do more thinking and do more processing and wait till I get 100% information. That is a way to wait forever.

So you don't want to wait until you have 100% information in order to make some changes, okay? I love the idea too that the biggest and the best opportunity is... are frequently the ones that have the most question marks attached to them, right? Like when I was deciding to go to China, there were so many question marks around it. It's like, I don't understand, you know, Chinese language, Chinese culture, Chinese people. It was like...

Everything was a big question mark, but that's what I leaned into. I embraced the unknown. So don't let uncertainty just lull you into overestimating the risk because the best opportunities are often the ones with the most question marks. And I felt the same exact way when I decided to... Start my own coaching business. There were so many question marks around it, but that was more reason to lean in. So one experiment that you can do to increase your capacity for risk is to...

Do an experiment where you just say yes more. Like maybe just you give yourself a week. And what would happen if you just defaulted to saying yes for an entire week? Or if that's so much of a stretch for you, an entire day, that was your default. If an opportunity presented itself to you, you said yes to it. So if you say yes to that event you get invited to that normally you might want to skip, or you just overhear a comment that gives you...

some idea for a new business or a new project. And normally you'd say, and I'm not going to do it, but you say yes to that idea or that opportunity that presents itself to you. Right now. Yes, it might lead to some, like just a, setbacks and challenge and you might have some resistance and, you know, difficulties there, of course.

But what you do is you cultivate a capacity to take risks and move your life forward and see ways that you're going to benefit from those opportunities and become more resilient rather than just doing nothing, okay? Those are the five elements of being an entrepreneur. These are all.

qualities that are in you and that you can cultivate. And the way to start that is just by approaching life, seeing what ways you can incorporate these five elements. So sometimes you're really strong with some. Sometimes you might be... seeing ways that you can improve in others. So how well are you currently assuming full responsibility in your life? What ways can you be doing that more? How much are you seeking opportunities?

Not seeing life as a series of challenges or problems, but just immediately pivoting and seeing the opportunity in front of you. How well are you creating win-win relationships in your life where you're really looking for how not just you can get what you want, but the other person can get something that they want?

How well are you showing up to life as a lifelong learner? Really being curious, opening yourself up to receiving mentorship and support. And finally, how well are you increasing your capacity to take risks? especially when you don't feel certain and prepared and ready. How willing are you to take risks even when you have some fear? The final words I want to leave you with is this.

You are an entrepreneur. I want you to really embody that. You've always been one and you will always be an entrepreneur. You got that? All right, good. That's what I got on this episode on You Are an Entrepreneur. Thanks for tuning in and I will see you in the next episode. You'll learn our coach's secrets. I'll see you on the next one. inside.