Coaching Beyond Heroic Effort

Building a Coaching Culture - #112: Coaching Beyond Heroic Effort === J.R. Flatter [00:00:42]: Hey. Welcome back, everybody. JR Flatter here with Lucas. Lucas Flatter [00:00:47]: Hello. J.R. Flatter [00:00:48]: So today I want to focus, if you don't mind, on corporate coaching beyond heroic effort. Anyone who's been an entrepreneur knows or is thinking about becoming an entrepreneur. And I think a lot of our audience is they know they're gonna have to be driven. You know, they're gonna have to work, work, work, and, hopefully, they balance their work family self and had conversations with significant others about that journey, which any entrepreneur I talk to, I tell them the same thing. Make sure you're talking to your significant others about this journey that you're thinking about starting. But in this session, let's just assume you are an entrepreneur. You've been in business for a while or you're just starting out and you're surviving on heroic effort. And, you know, it's a pretty broad definition, but I'll scope it down a little bit. J.R. Flatter [00:01:41]: Heroic effort is 60 hour weeks sustained or work. You have this gigantic w in your life called work, and you can't see beyond when it'll ever be anything less than gigantic, and you can have some balance back in your life. And I recognize that being an entrepreneur, you've subscribed to the ideal that you're gonna have to work hard to break through, but you can't do that forever. And so I've been in business 22 years. Certainly couldn't have survived on a heroic effort for 22 years. So just wanna share some of the lessons learned based on that journey and mentoring and coaching other entrepreneurs and lessons I've learned from them and their experiences. So I'll pause there and let you jump in. You're an entrepreneur in your comic business. Lucas Flatter [00:02:39]: Yeah. I mean, the intro that you gave kinda reminds me of, you know, the topic or concept of working smarter instead of harder. So trying to find ways to have the same amount of effort but multiplied impact. And you I see that in in code a lot of times. Like, it's not about how much you write. It's about, do you have the right solution to the problem you're trying to solve? J.R. Flatter [00:03:08]: Yeah. Goes back to Einstein's theorem of if I had an hour to solve a problem, he would spend 55 minutes defining the problem. And, also, I know we're seeking our CMMI accreditation. That's a big part of CMMI is how much rework are you doing, And are you pushing rework out of your life? Because a lot of code goes unused, thrown away, like editing the film. A lot of it ends up on the floor. So, first thing I wanted to touch on is and this sounds academic, but it's a big word for a simple concept, and that's chronocentrism, which is the idea that nearly every human being in the world thinks they're at the center of time, and the challenges they're experiencing are the most challenges in the history of mankind. It's true in some ways, but it's not true in so many other ways. It is the most challenging time because it's the only time that's here. J.R. Flatter [00:04:05]: This minute that you and I are sharing is the only minute we have. And in a minute, it'll be gone, and we'll remember it. It'll be on video and and recorded. And in the future, we're just thinking about it's not here yet. We're projecting time that you're in. The center of time is now. And so in many ways, it is here, and it's legitimate for human beings to think about, you know, they need to breathe. They need to eat. J.R. Flatter [00:04:35]: They need to drink water. They need to sleep. And, you know, how can you find time to do everything you need to do with all of those requirements? And when you go into business, it only increases that struggle for time because now you've added another living, breathing thing into your life that requires constant attention and your energy. And you might sacrifice sleep, you might sacrifice family time quite legitimately to get it off the ground. It's not true in regard that the challenges you're confronting as an entrepreneur are universal. And so thinking about yourself differently because of the market you've chosen or the skill that you've chosen or the product you have to deliver. People delivering that same product and using those same skills are having exactly the same challenges you're having. Getting your voice heard, getting their value recognized. J.R. Flatter [00:05:40]: Robert Gates, the former secretary of defense, who's director of the CIA, is also president of Texas A&M University, wrote a book, and he dedicated an entire chapter to the idea that we think about ourselves differently to our own detriment. And there's a lot of validity in that. So telling yourself you're in the center of time and it's the most challenging time ever is a self limiting perception. If you want to break through to the other side of heroic effort, you need to set it aside and start thinking about yourself in the same challenges as all the other entrepreneurs? What are your thoughts? Lucas Flatter [00:06:23]: You look at, you know, how do you build an organization where other people are you know, I guess that makes me think that, you know, you're saying you're the center of time, but also that maybe you you believe that you're the only one that's capable of of solving a problem. Maybe you need to build a team or an organization of people that can support, you know, spread the effort out a little bit. J.R. Flatter [00:06:54]: Yeah. Exactly. Having the courage to invite people into your world that are better at something than you are. You're computer scientists. I don't even try to touch you in computer skills. You're an artist. I'm not. We built a really amazing team here, and every one of them is better than me in almost every regard. J.R. Flatter [00:07:18]: I'm the conductor of this band of amazing people at best. I can't play their instruments, but they're part of the team. Another thought that comes to mind when I think about surviving beyond heroic effort is sprinting. And I know this is very common in your IT world, sprints. And I don't know how long when you sprint, you think about but I think the maximum a human being can sprint is for a 100 days. Even then is the outer limits of capacity. David Dobbin, in in his book, tells us that the average human being considers themselves exhausted at 40% of their capacity. And so finding that other 60%, you don't want the whole 60% because that'll kill you. J.R. Flatter [00:08:13]: But purposely building in light at the end of your tunnel and then purposely giving yourself a rest, I I think it's very important to sustain success over time. Do you find yourself doing that in your entrepreneurial efforts sprinting? Lucas Flatter [00:08:31]: Yeah. I think that you need to, you know, check-in with yourself and and realize, like, when you're, you know, pushing the particular thing too hard and maybe maybe, yeah, maybe you've been having the Circulain effort that maybe just a break would help a little bit or just switching to another task. I mean, with coding and development, computer stuff, you can definitely get too far into the weeds where, you know, just taking a step away. They call I saw this, thing a couple of years ago called hammock based development, where you come up with a problem, you think about the problem intensely for a temporary amount of time, then you go to the hammock, take a nap, let your brain stew on it in the background, and then go back to it. I think that kinda adds to this efficiency where if you're able to switch from a different task or do something else, maybe you'll come up with a better solution than that doesn't require as much brute force, you know, that has some multiplicative effect where this amount of effort has a bigger impact? J.R. Flatter [00:09:46]: Yeah. And I find I'm I'm focused on writing a new book, and I set aside blocks of time. And I find myself even in those blocks of time purposely closing the document and going to do something else for a few minutes and then coming back fresh and ready. A lot of it has to do with the human brain attention span. How long can a human being focus on the same thing? It's not very long. So, yeah, you do need to build in those breaks. But from the bigger picture, finding and seeing light at the end of your tunnel, I remember being in certain jobs and certain phases of my life where there was no light. I couldn't see where I was gonna be able to slow down even in the smallest sense. J.R. Flatter [00:10:37]: So we don't wanna do that when we're on this lifelong journey because when you start a business, at least for the 1st several years, it can be all consuming. And you have to build in opportunities to get away. And you have to be able to look forward to something. And that's what I mean by the light at the end tunnel. There was some objective that it says on this date, we're gonna have some downtime. I don't know if you remember, but when we first started the business, we continued to go on vacations. And it was purposely that break. Even though we're young and and starving for revenue, it was still essential to our long term success to take those breaks. J.R. Flatter [00:11:24]: In rowing, anybody who's rowed crew, you could be at race pace and your coxswain can ask you to do a power 10. You know, you and I talk about this a lot. And the human being can do that, but for 10 strokes. And if you find yourself in your entrepreneurial efforts constantly growing power tens, you need to find some way to break that. And even when you're doing a power ten, you and I do, calisthenics as part of our retreat and reset the timer. And even when you look at the timer, you know, hey. This hurts, but it's gonna stop soon. And it's very rewarding to be able to look forward to that as short as it is. Lucas Flatter [00:12:05]: Yeah. I think, like, in the context of exercise or just even, like, improving a skill, there's times where you're specifically doing a high effort so that you get better, you get stronger, you expand your skill set. So then the same amount of effort seems easier later. But if you're only ever doing that high amount of effort, you're not growing as fast. You could get injured in a physical sense, but in a mental skill sense, you're just hitting your head against the wall and not allowing yourself to have that growth. J.R. Flatter [00:12:46]: Yeah. Absolutely. I was just on the bike yesterday and hammered it for an hour and just utterly exhausted when it was over. And there's no way I could do that every day. You have to purposely build in rest. You have to purposely build in variability. I'm gonna go to the gym later today and do arms, and it'll be the only day this week that I do that because I need, at my age, at least the next 7 days to recuperate and do them again. So, yeah, that's a big part of what we're talking about today is balancing the gigantic w in your life. J.R. Flatter [00:13:25]: And you mentioned this already, peer to peer collaboration. I just saw something on the Internet today about get so much more done as a team, not competing with each other. It's a big market in a big world. Find ways to collaborate and share share the risks, share the rewards. That's not to say I recommend partnering. That's an entirely different topic. We're we're a sole proprietor and have been for our entire history. And it makes decision making a lot easier. J.R. Flatter [00:13:59]: Think long and hard before you share equity with someone that you don't know really, really well. And then, you know, it's gonna be a long term contributor to your unified vision. Money makes people do silly things, and the smallest amounts of money make people do the silliest things. But collaborating outside of equity is, entirely different story. I just heard the number yesterday. About 50 teaming partners that we're currently working with, and every one of them in some form or fashion is absolutely essential to our success. And so we, we spend a lot of time finding peers to collaborate with, share the risk risk and share the rewards. Lucas Flatter [00:14:44]: On the topic of communication or even, like, sales, when you're trying to get your messaging across, I think it can feel like, you know, pushing a boulder uphill when you're getting one client or one sale at a time. And so maybe for a messaging perspective, if you can figure out a way to message the same amount, but it's resonating with a particular audience more where, you know, a little goes a long way and you're targeting a group rather than individual at a time. And then also trying to build instead of if you're trying to, you know, get a contract or get a client, instead of working on that one opportunity, you could build a capability where, oh, this will allow me to go after multiple, you know, instead of one sale at a time, and then you're worried about revenue tomorrow. J.R. Flatter [00:15:42]: Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up. Part of the reason that we've chosen B2B, B2G, business to business, business to government, corporate coaching is for that very reason. We can get one client and have dozens of engagements over time. When you do b to c to a single individual, you get one win and one customer and one engagement. Neither was right or wrong. You'll determine through your own house of leadership what's best for you and what's the best niche for you. But, yeah, you're spot on when you do b to b, b to g. J.R. Flatter [00:16:28]: One win can be several engagements. Another thing I love to talk about surviving beyond heroic effort. I read a book a few years ago, and I I talk about it a good bit. It's actually one of the decks in our education programs, fanatical prospecting and getting business through old school methods. I'm not an expert in marketing, but there's basically 2 kinds of marketing. 1 is outbound and one is inbound. Inbound is social media, search engine optimization, and some of those tools where you're putting up a billboard and advertising Coca Cola and hope somebody buys your can of Coke just by seeing that billboard. That's, inbound sales. J.R. Flatter [00:17:19]: In a crowded marketplace, which coaching certainly is. All marketplaces are crowded. It's rule 1 of econ 101. You're gonna have to compete regardless of how valuable your product is or how good you are. And so breaking through that noise, waiting for inbound is really, really difficult. And so we've chosen to focus, I think appropriately, and I would recommend to any of our listeners or viewers focus on old school outbound, which is talking to human beings. And one of the lessons in that book fanatical prospecting is avoid the 3 p's. And the 3 p's are procrastination, perfectionism, and paralysis through analysis. J.R. Flatter [00:18:07]: And I'll talk about each one a little bit. Procrastination is a very human thing. There's a lot of sources of procrastination a little differently for each of us. It's one of the reasons you need to set key results because key results are very short daily, monthly, quarterly. You know every day when you go to sleep if you've gotten any closer to your key results. You might not see movement towards your objectives, which are intermediate, 1 year and 5 year. What do I wanna achieve in my lifetime? So one of the methods of avoiding procrastination is acting rather than planning to act. So building a website, focusing too much on your initial product and, you know, planning, planning, planning, but take action to achieve your key results rather than planning to achieve your key results. J.R. Flatter [00:19:05]: I think it's one of the major ways that you can get around procrastination. I don't know if you struggle with this at all. Lucas Flatter [00:19:14]: I'm just thinking because, yeah, I definitely have that procrastination itch, and I'm trying to think of what helps me personally. I think almost just yeah. Like, taking that action without necessarily knowing how it's going to fit into the larger plan. I think that in in my experience, those actions add up to something meaningful that does contribute to the plan. But maybe it takes a week or 2 weeks or a month of those actions before you you think, oh, okay. This directly applies to what I was going for. And maybe it would have taken twice as long for you to come to that conclusion if you hadn't been taking those little iterative steps. So, yeah, I guess the trick that I've heard that works for me is just say, if it is going to be something that's a lot of effort, your brain might shut off. Lucas Flatter [00:20:12]: So just tell yourself, you know, it's gonna be 20 minutes. It's gonna be 15 minutes once per day. Sometimes you end up working for 2 hours when you planned on working for 20 minutes, and that's worthwhile. You know? J.R. Flatter [00:20:26]: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, I talked about blocking time to write. Blocking time's a great strategy to avoid procrastination, but also can be a means of procrastination. If you say, yeah, this month's almost over. I'll start next month, or this day's almost over. I'll start tomorrow. You know, the days and months quickly add up. J.R. Flatter [00:20:49]: The quarter's gone. The year is gone. You don't have to have huge chunks of time to accomplish significant things. If you add up 5 minutes 12 times, even I can do that math, that's an hour. One of the things I wrote down preparing for the session was stealing minutes to create hours. When I'm on a long bike ride, I I carefully track my pace. Even on a long run, I carefully track my pace, and I I do the math in my head about, okay. I'm 4 seconds over and 5 miles into the run. J.R. Flatter [00:21:28]: What do I need to go do to get back on pace? And it's easy math. I need to get 4 seconds back across however many miles I've ran to get back to pace. And so can I do that? Am I willing to do that? And the same thing is true in your business. You can steal minutes to collect hours. So one of the ways to get beyond heroic effort is start paying really close attention to what you're doing and make purposeful, informed opportunity cost decisions. I love to sit and read the news, and if I were to sit and read the news as much as I want to, the whole day is gone. You know, I'm informed about world events, but am I headed closer to my objectives? So one of the things about surviving beyond heroic effort is make sure the vast majority of your efforts are contributing to your goals, objectives, and key results. The second p is perfectionism. J.R. Flatter [00:22:29]: Perfectionism is the enemy of greatness. And to use a sandpaper analogy, if you're a woodworker, the lower the number, the rougher, and the higher the number, the smoother. And so 400 grit with water is about as smooth as you can get something. And it's after you've done 60 grit, a 100 grit, 220. It's gotten smoother and smoother and smoother. But what does your product and your market require? It probably doesn't require perfection. In the coaching world, to help someone grow, you only need to be an iota better at what you're doing than what they're doing. And you'll you'll have the opportunity to create value in their life. J.R. Flatter [00:23:18]: And I don't mean you need to know their profession because you don't to create value for them, But you need to be 1% better at facilitating discovery than they are, and you'll help them facilitate discovery. So don't wait until you have the perfect product, the perfect niche because that perfection and desire for perfection is getting the way of you seeking and surviving beyond heroic effort. Lucas Flatter [00:23:49]: Yeah. I see that a lot. You know, I think Britney, our CEO, calls it gold plating, but we have the saying that's like the last 10% takes 90% of the time. And that's totally true because you're you're talking about these marginal like the sandpaper, you're talking about tiny little marginal pieces of wood. And the customer says, that's a table. That's a table. You know, I like both of those. And you might have spent, you know, 200 hours gold plating it and making it the best that it could be, but it was already a table, you know, 200 hours ago. Lucas Flatter [00:24:28]: So J.R. Flatter [00:24:29]: I love that analogy. Let's deal with you. Yeah. The 21st century marketplace is very comfortable with minimally viable products. We're in a time where there are no more versions. We don't have version 1.02.0 because it's being the product, whatever it is, is being perfected over time again and again and again. Even our coaching programs, the decks that we have, we're constantly updating those 200 or so decks because we continue to learn. We continue to get feedback We continue to improve them, but they're still changing lives today. J.R. Flatter [00:25:12]: And a year from now, 5 years from now, they're gonna be vastly vastly different than they are right now. So if you wanna avoid perfectionism, be accepting of a minimally viable product. Don't wait for perfection. Get out there in the marketplace. And the final P is paralysis through analysis. And this is a common decision making obstacle. I rarely speak in absolutes, but I'll speak in an absolute with regard to this paralysis through analysis. You will never have all the data you want. J.R. Flatter [00:25:47]: We always make decisions with less than complete information. So don't get stuck waiting another day, waiting another month to learn a little bit more about your market, to learn a little bit more about being in business. Be bold. Get out there and do. You find yourself getting stuck in paralysis through analysis. Lucas Flatter [00:26:10]: Yeah. Part of it that I think is relatable for a lot of people, even as a consumer, you could say, you know, I'm gonna wait until the next version comes out or I'm gonna wait until next year for this particular car. Or you see with computers, obviously, there's gonna be a faster computer next week and the week after. But in the meantime, you don't have any computer, you don't have any vehicle, or you don't have anything that's going to solve your problem. So a lot of the times, if you're having that thought, like, do I do this or do this? You're not getting any closer to the goal, you know, what I see J.R. Flatter [00:26:52]: a lot. Yeah. And the final thing I wanted to talk about with regard to surviving beyond heroic effort, I got a really lovely message from the wife of 1 of my grade school teachers. And I know this sounds a bit odd. I was in his class in the early seventies. And so that was a long time ago. And so to get a note from his wife that he had passed, it was pretty incredible. And I think it points to finding energy from purpose. J.R. Flatter [00:27:27]: She sent me a note to tell me that he passed because I wrote about him in my first book, and I sent a copy to him about how impactful he had been in my life that many years ago. And in her note from yesterday, she said, we so he and she showed it to everybody they came in contact with, his page in my book. I thought, wow. What a magnificent thing to be able to provide someone is something where when you think about teachers and changing the pathway of your life, which he did, but then that small gesture through writing and coaching, I was able to buy that for him to the point where she felt compelled to write me and tell me all those years later that he had passed a few days ago. So energy from purpose. It's one of the things I rail against of the 8,000,000,000 people in the world. We can't all find our purpose. And so it's a gift. J.R. Flatter [00:28:27]: When you do have the opportunity to go find your purpose and then serve that purpose. But for those of us who are entrepreneurs, we get to choose. So we've purposely taken that leap of faith. We've shown the courage and boldness, Become an entrepreneur. And if you find that purpose, it's gonna help sustain you through this valley of death until you get to the other side of heroic effort. One of the things I rail against regularly is this idea that the whole world can find their purpose. And, you know, it's it's something I rail against a lot. But when you're an entrepreneur, you've made that choice to go out and and create your own business, develop your niche, find a time for work family self, and to fulfill your vision. J.R. Flatter [00:29:16]: And you do have the opportunity to find your purpose in your work. And it's energizing. It strengthens your resiliency, regardless of where you focus your spirituality. Human beings are naturally spiritual, whether it's a religious spirit or some other kind of spirit, finding your purpose, feeds your spirituality. Having a growth mindset that who you are today is very different than who you'll be tomorrow and a week from now and a month from now and a year from now. Purpose allows authenticity. I was just telling you about my teacher's wife sending me the note. And one of the things she said in the note was, I hope you're retired and taking, you know, getting joy from life. J.R. Flatter [00:30:08]: And I wrote back to her that, no, I'm still working, but my work is my joy. I get to help people discover, I get to help people start their businesses, become coaches, I get to help coach people. That fills my cup into the foreseeable future. So if you allow yourself to continue refining your product, we talked about a minimally viable product, driving your boat into shore and seeing what the market tells you. If you have the courage to keep refining that and keep searching for what energizes you, what feeds your spirit, you're going to be able to survive beyond heroic effort. I know in all your endeavors, there has to be some sense of purpose in your artistry, in your music, in your coding. It's not all the bottom line for the dollar, even though that is a noble pursuit, taking care of your family and paying your bills. Lucas Flatter [00:31:11]: Yeah. I think, a lot of the times you can find purpose in something that maybe you look at and you say, oh, you know, that's not for me or I don't enjoy doing this or and I guess my example would be that when you're or when I was a kid, like, if you asked me to read a 300 page book and you pointed at the book, I would say, no, I don't wanna read that. But if it was a fantasy or a sci fi that I was interested in, I'll read 5 of those, you know. So just coming in with your particular flavor and even now when I read, the goal isn't to, you know, find out what's happening in this fictional planet, but it's to, you know, feed your mind, learn new words, keep that health going. It just makes me feel better. So if you can, oh, I need to go to this business meeting and I need to be, you know, wearing a suit. Pick out that suit, like, to your preference, add some flavor or your own personality to the things that you're doing. I think that helps add a little bit of purpose to things that maybe you don't think are in your wheelhouse or not for you necessarily? J.R. Flatter [00:32:31]: Yeah. That's probably part of my maturation as a parent and as a leader is finding those few existential things that are actually important and giving away everything else. And so as a family, you know, looking back, there were 3 things that were important to us. Everything else you get to choose. As a business owner and a leader, we have a short list of what our core values are. Everything else, how you dress, how you wear your hair, how you talk, is entirely yours. So yeah, thanks for that. That's a great point to, finding purpose in your life and your work. J.R. Flatter [00:33:13]: You know, even being a parent, it's like being in the arena, Everybody's commenting on how you're doing it. And it's the grandest experiment in life because you don't know ever, even now 40 years later, did it work? In business, at least you get the, the, metrics of revenue and sustained business to tell you that you're doing something right. Yeah. So that's, for what it's worth to borrow an acronym from my air force friends, surviving beyond heroic effort. It's a slog. It's gonna be hard, but there are ways to balance and measure and and sustain keeping your health, keeping your sanity while serving. So thanks for being here. Talk to you later. J.R. Flatter [00:34:04]: Well, that concludes this episode of building a coaching culture. I truly hope that this episode was helpful to you. If it was, be sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. Maybe stop and give us a rating or a review and share this podcast with someone who might find it helpful as well. Thanks again, and we'll see you next time.