speaker-0: If you don't feel confident about it, sometimes you just gotta accept it, that you're not gonna feel confident, and that confidence comes after you being scared but doing the thing anyways, you're not behind. You're just still in part.

speaker-1: Today's guest is Willie Blake. Willie is a high performance coach who helps dyslexic professionals and entrepreneurs move through self-doubt, overthinking, and the fear of getting it wrong. His approach comes from his own experience of learning to take action before he felt ready. He has a really cool story about I'll let him tell it. In our conversation, we talk about how taking action before you feel ready can build confidence and how making the next steps smaller can help you move when doubt and overthinking would normally keep you stuck. If you get value from this conversation, be sure to subscribe and share with a friend. And now please enjoy my conversation with Willie Blake. Willie, thank you so much for being here.

speaker-0: Yeah, thank you for having me.

speaker-1: Absolutely. So, Willie, as I mentioned, with every guest, I do a fair bit of stalking on everyone, listening to other conversations that you've had, looking into your work. And one thing that I heard and kept coming up in the other conversations that you've had on other podcasts is this idea that you didn't start confident, right? You didn't seem to become confident and then start doing things, right? You didn't wait for confidence to come before you jumped in and started taking action. And you started doing things while you still maybe doubted your ability, doubted yourself. And then the confidence seemed to come later. And that's something that I recognize in myself. it's something that I face every day. So why do you think there's a tendency to wait until you're confident? And then how does that tendency keep us stuck?

speaker-0: Well why not? Why not wait till we're confident? Because if we wait till we're confident, well then we're not gonna make mistakes. And if we don't make mistakes, goodness gracious, man, we're gonna look perfect. We're gonna look pretty good. We're gonna look like Steve Harvey as he's up on Family Feud, cracking all the jokes and everything. But there's no such thing as perfect. Like the courage comes from the reps that you put into it. Like Steve Harvey, if you've ever like seen the shorts, they have like the show that they do. But then there's a bunch of like background stuff that goes on and they cut most of it. So why not why not wait till you're confident? Well, at least in my experience, you're gonna be waiting a pretty long time and probably until you're in the grave. Cause if you d wait until everything's good and you feel good about it, nothing's gonna be moving on. Cause just like any beginner and any master would say. There's a reason why the master is the master, and it's because the master has failed more than the novice has tried. And so to be able to do, you try and you fail fast and you fail forward and you make mistakes and you do things. So to build that confidence is going out there and doing it. There's no such thing as just sitting there and all of a sudden you'll be confident enough to do it. There's always going to be that unknown factor, because that's just how life is. So embrace it. Jump into that unknown factor because it's not as dangerous as most people think.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like we wait, we have this tendency to wait until we feel confident, till we feel certain, whatever word you want to put on it. Because if we do that, then it's less likely that we're going to make a mistake and we are going to fail. And then doing that, right, letting that tendency kind of take over and drive our behavior and that hesitation, that inability to go and take action even when the the path isn't completely clear and we aren't a hundred percent certain. is just gonna keep us the same, right? And if we are gonna wait until that situation, as you put it, right, that we're if we're gonna wait until we're fully confident to do anything, we're not gonna do anything, right? And we're gonna end up in the grave with a you know, a lot of what ifs, which sounds like the worst thing ever. But it seems like in your answer, you described this idea of failure, right? Like, okay, we wait until we confident in order to avoid failure. And the master has failed more than the amateur has even tried, which I think is a is a great line. So it sounds like Getting past this idea that we have to be fully confident or fully certain before we move forward and take an action and go do the thing, whatever that thing is for each and every one of us, comes down to a rewiring, a reframing of our relationship with failure.

speaker-0: Yeah, not only just the rewiring of the relationship. But like is failure even a thing? Like die hard honesty. Is failure actually a thing? Because the only time I tend to use failure or fail and such is when I'm in a teaching moment. So let's take a second to do a little teaching moment since I've used it twice and if I don't do it, I'll go against what I just said. It's We'll have success of the result with whatever it is that you're looking at. Everything else that isn't that success, you're just learning. You're just along the process. Cause as long as you stand back up, and we usually hear this in the racing analogy, it's like if you fall down, stand back up, finish your race. There's so much truth to that. You stand up and keep going. 'Cause if you keep going the doesn't It's not you're not a failure. You're just on the path. You're just in chapter twenty-one of a hundred and fiftieth chapter book. You're just you're just along the pages right in your own story. But I think that where a lot of people get the word fail and failure from is that they're correlation w the correlation with where it actually is and what it actually is. Because failure is when you quit. And I'm not talking about like dropping your job or selling a business or anything like that, because that could be a win. It's in the perspective of the beholder. But like failure is when you yourself is like, I'm gonna give up, never gonna do it again, and I'm just gonna settle for what I have. Well then that's can be classified as failure. But then even more into that. It's like failure and failing. It's a single point in time. It's like in this point in time, you can classify this as failing. National Treasure Dude, I don't know why his name's not coming to my my mind. But he has made millions Yes, thank you. Nicolas Cage. Nicolas Cage. The dude has made millions of dollars. We classify him as success. But then the dude also went bankrupt. Now we can classify him as a failure. But then what if he gets his life turned around and actually makes it again? Well then he's a success again. It's just like failure is just a point in time. It's a moment of which happened that is classified of which the person who's looking at it. And so if it's different based off the observer, is it really failure? Or is it just a moment in time that's classified by the expectations and the experiences that other people have had? Based on their senses and what they've gone through.

speaker-1: Wow. Yeah. So it's like if failure isn't a real thing objective in and of itself, if it's failure is only a classification that we put on based on our own perception and our own belief, like it's it's not really a real thing. Like that's I've never even thought about that. And then it's up to us to like we make that decision of what a failure is. And then it also sounds like, you know, the natural tendency, and I can see this in myself, is To view success and failure as a very binary thing. Like it's just like one or the other, it happens or it doesn't. And it's, you know, a factor, you know, it's not there, right? But it is there's a lot more nuance to this whole experience of of life or of striving for whatever it is that we're going for. And you know, maybe not getting it right away. It's it's not a failure, but it's like that's just a part of the journey. And yeah, that's really interesting. And it's it's

speaker-0: Yeah, it's it's a moment in time. 'Cause a lot of a lot of entrepreneurs and because I'm in the coaching industry, a lot of coaches, we look and see like their social media presence, maybe they have a website, maybe they have like you type their name into Google and things actually pop up and we're like, wow, they are so successful. But really when it comes to entrepreneurship, ninety five and all like probably could even go higher of on percent of entrepreneurs are living this fake falsehood that they're making more money than they are. Cause let's be real about it. They're not. They're not making the money that they want to. The ones that are, they have the big programs and they're doing great things with it. But like again, 95% of the rest of us who are trying to build a business are in our own little times of doing it. So back when I first started my coaching business, I was working produce at Walmart, throwing freight, putting the meat up on the shelves, putting the labels on. That was me. I was that guy. And I started the side hustle of coaching. First year, first year of coaching. I had a mastermind going. I was a college student too. I had a mastermind going, reserved a room at the library. Every Wednesday at between six to seven is when you could come in, and that was the time for us to mastermind. I had my own little education. my own little things to go with it. So I had that. Also had one on one calls set up. I also had a really cool system because I didn't have AI at that time, or at least as strongly as we do now. AI I had a big Excel sheet with prospects and people and I would manually go in and change everything. Had everything set up. That first year. Zero people went to that mastermind. And zero people became my client. You know how many times I told myself I was a failure? Dozens. If not multiples of dozens of times. And your audience will probably relate to this. Have you ever started an event? Or just done something out of your comfort zone to where you're just like, I think this can work. I have this big Vision to impact the world. I have this Tony Robbins type energy to be able to create something that has not been created before, or at least done in the version that I'm gonna do it, with me in it. And you do it, you set the event or you get the product set up and you are just ready to launch it. Day of the event or launch comes. And you press that button or you sit there, you've prepped the room, you prepped the whiteboard if there is one. You got everything set up. Hits the top of the clock. No one's there. That's okay. That's okay, no one's there. People are gonna come. Five minutes go by. Ten minutes go by. No one shows. Product page. Zero sales. What's okay? I'll I'll look I'll s I'll send quick test mech text messages that will feel automatic so it's not like I'm texting it during the event. Hey, hope to see you at the event today. Product, send messages, hey, just launched my product, come check it out. Twenty minutes, thirty minutes go by and still zero. Then you're at the end of the event and you're just like What the heck? What the heck happened? I thought I did everything right. I followed all the goo the gurus, I followed the speakers and listened to them, I set up the plan and maybe even used AI to be able to create it. This is foolproof. Why didn't people come? Well, in my experience, there could be a thousand reasons why people don't come. But the real question is, what are you gonna do about it? Yeah.

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: What are you gonna do about it? Cause that first mastermind that I had, no one showed. But I still set my phone up and hit record and gave my education, anyways. When I had zero clients, I still hit record on my laptop and did a coaching session with myself. I also did a coaching clo qu Coaching session with what I would consider an ideal client. Did some role playing. But I still hit record. And I think that's the reality that a lot of people and entrepreneurs are in these days. Is that especially when you're just starting, one, you don't have a team behind you, so it can get lonely, especially when bad things happen. But two, you ain't a failure. You ain't a failure. You just gotta keep going. Cause there can be thousands upon millions of reasons why something didn't happen. But saying in our head that one reason, it's because they don't like us, it's because my product or event isn't good enough doesn't serve you. So you gotta still hit record. You still got to give that keynote speech that you were gonna give. You still gotta do it. Because eventually it's gonna happen. Cause that zero clients that were back then. Have now turned into dozens of clients and hundreds of stages spoken on, and over a hundred podcast recordings this year for me, all starting from a Walmart produce meat thrower dude putting up salads and putting stickers on meat. That's where it starts. But you just can't give up.

speaker-1: Hell yeah. Hell yeah. Yeah, you you don't you're not a failure because you didn't get the result that you want, right? The only way to fail, this is something you brought up earlier. Like you only fail if you give up, right? If you give up on that dream, if you give up pursuing that thing that you you want. If you give up on the trying to find the thing that you want and then going and bringing it to the world and making it a reality, making it happen. Right? You only fail if you give up on that dream, if you give up on that path. And On that journey, on that path, again, I can think back and recognize so many and you know, there's gonna be more tomorrow, there's gonna be more the next week, but those decisive moments, right? Those moments where you, you know, you do your best, you it comes to that decisive moment where it's like the moment where you're gonna be measured, the result will happen, right? An outcome is gonna be created, and it's those decisive moments where the outcome isn't what you wanted, or the result isn't what you expected, and it's those decisive moments where you have to make a decision on how are you gonna respond. Right. How are you going to respond? Are you going to quit? Are you going to, you know, maybe we don't have to be that like harsh or grandiose about it, but it's those decisive moments where you make a decision on I am the one that is in charge of how th this event, this action, this outcome, this result is going to be perceived and whether I'm going to use it as something that serves me and continue down the path and learn from it, or if I'm going to let this just like weigh me down and, you know, give me a thousand more reasons to like excuses for why I should quit and why I should give up and fall into that and give up and, you know, stop. So for you. In that moment, when you reached the top of the hour and you know, you started sending off those texts, nobody showed up in that decisive moment for you. Why did you decide to still press record, still go for it? Like why in that moment, in that decisive moment, did you not give up?

speaker-0: Hmm. That's a good question. Why did I? Why did I hit record? 'Cause I I wanted something bigger than myself. It wasn't just for the money, even though money's pretty cool. It helps me be able to serve a lot more people when I don't have to worry about how my wife and kids are going to be able to have food put on the table. Having a business, having labels and social recognition, that's pretty cool too. But even bigger, it all started from me wanting to help people and serve them in the way in which they needed to be served. And I knew I did not have the capability at all to be able to help millions or even thousands of people. But I did at least have the ability to help one. And so hitting that record button was me saying to myself I'm gonna hit record for me because I still need to believe what I believe in if I'm gonna get other people to believe. And if I walk out of this devastated, I don't know if I'm gonna hold another one of these events or one of these mastermind meetings. But if I hit record and record anyway, at least I can classify this as a learning experience. And sometimes that's enough to be able to carry you to the next one, which then carries you to the next one. But then eventually you get people and it's a lot more exciting, right? Yeah. But I think that moment was hit and record for myself and the bigger vision that I had.

speaker-1: Yeah. And wanting what you wanted bad enough to not let this one little thing, right, which feels huge in the moment, be a thing that gets in the way or stops you from going and even when nobody shows up, right? You still want what you want, right? You still want to have this impact. You still wanna build this business for yourself, you still wanna do this work, you still want that end outcome for yourself. And this is just one little blip in the in the journey. Right now, if you look back, you know, whether that was years ago. It's just like one little roadblock that, you know, with that perspective that you had, I'm sure you learned a lot, right? About, okay, well, how how do I pre-market this event better? Like, obviously, this doesn't seem like this was something that people wanted. So how can I adjust the programming to be more resonant with the people that I'm looking to serve, right? There's so much that you can learn from that situation, but then there's also so much that you could take away from that to be like, you know, give you more excuses as to why you're not good enough, right? And that little inner gremlin voice in there that we all have that I've learned, like, I'm not alone. There's a little inner gremlin that is just gonna tell you like you're not good enough, right? And you you made a point that, you know, if I'm not if I don't believe it in myself, if I don't believe it in my gut, if I don't believe in myself, like if I don't believe in the thing that I'm doing, how is anybody else ever going to? Right? How is anybody else ever going to, you know, buy into this thing, whatever it is for you, if you don't believe it for yourself? And I guess, you know, there's a thread worth pulling on there, but I'm struggling to find the words exactly of like it's not like how do you build that belief in yourself, right? It's but like what does it take for you, like I guess in your experience, like what did it take for you to really believe in yourself before, you know, anybody else did? Like is this something that was innate within you? Like were there things that you had to do? Like would you have to record so many? You had to learn a certain amount? Like, what was it for you that gave you that belief in yourself too? Know that you could serve others before anybody else believed in you.

speaker-0: Yeah. Most everything started out from 2018 to where that's when I got into reading a little bit more and going from one book to fifty books in a year. And then from that fifty to then seventy five books in a year. And then that led to then me finishing within a thirteen day period the entirety of the book that I was writing. Which then that led to me then working on My coaching business and starting that. Which then that led to my weight loss journey, which then that led to the podcasting. So, like what is what's the magical thing that happened? I don't think it was one thing, but then I do think it was one thing, which is to pick one thing and to just do it. Do

speaker-1: Just

speaker-0: it. And not like the 'cause that sounds like woo woo motivation and everything. That's needed in some places, but I'm more into transformation than motivation. So let me go a little bit deeper into that. Because when I say just do it, what I mean is when I s like it's been a decade, almost a decade since all this has happened, and I can look at instances where I could have gone a lot faster, but I chose to go slow, or at least what I perceive as slow. Because when was re like I I didn't have big social media following. I'm still working on that. I don't have like hundreds upon hundreds of coaching clients. But like when I started out, it was literally me opening up an Instagram and starting to post motivational posts. It was like, okay, I can grab one image from Google, put it onto Instagram, and add a little bit of my words and then post it. I can do that once a day. And then once I got in the habit of that, then I jumped to, okay, now that I can do that, well now I can add something else to it, which is now I can r start reading and understanding myself and psychology and learning how to be more like how to get out there and be more courageous and stuff. And then that led to continuing down the line. So again, there wasn't like one magical one thing, but then again it was just Picking one thing to be able to continuously move forward to. And just step

speaker-1: Yeah.

speaker-0: by step, little by little. And I I hated it when I first heard it, when I first learned this. It's just like, it's so simple. Just do the next step. It's like, cool, Coach Willie. That sounds like kind of garbage. And what I hear from everybody else of the woo-hoo's motivation, and then what three days later. I'm sitting on my couch again scrolling through social media feeling probably worse than I was before, because now I know what I need to do, but can't do it. And what I'd say to that person is that it really is that simple. It's just you don't want to do the simple thing, you want to do the comfortable thing. And I think that's where a lot of people get stuck with.

speaker-1: Yeah. And it's you wanna do the comfortable thing. And it also I've can resonate with this like big thing for me is doing the small thing is very glamorous, right? Like I wanna do the big, whoa, big move mountains, big action kind of things, right? But you know, when you set yourself up, put yourself in a situation where it's either I'm gonna, you know, move a mountain or I'm not gonna do anything, it's rare that you're ever gonna do anything, right? And then in those moments where you're wallowing and you're, you know, stagnant and you're not doing s the thing, right? That's where that little inner gremlin voice gets pretty strong. So it's the belief in yourself is built up through, you know, baby steps, little actions of, you know, Ed Milette has a great quote that stuck with me for years. It's the idea that confidence comes from keeping the promises that you make with yourself. Right. And when you start and I remember thinking back into my journey, it was a similar thing for me, just started reading books, right? Like first you need to like expand your thinking, like expand what's what you believe to be possible by reading in a book or seeing it in another individual, just like changing the people around you, like whatever that is, but you just like expand your thinking and then you start building, like you start walking on that path, for yourself one like just small steps at a time. Like you find like one thing that maybe you want to take make change, what but just bringing it down into small things and there's thousands of quotes related to that idea. But yeah. Well said. so like that belief in yourself and then it continues to build and build and build and then you can start thinking bigger and bigger for yourself. But you know, along the way, it's not a straight path, right? It's not a, you know, just smooth journey. It's not like, I have this awareness. I know okay, I know I gotta do baby steps. Right. Yeah. So like when you do get off course, right, and you do and again I've had many of these moments in my life and I don't have a perfect solution. Like when you do have you know, like a bad stretch of a coop couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months where, you know, the gap between what you know you should do and what you end up doing just keeps growing and growing and stacking and stacking. Like, how do you work with your clients to help them to reverse course and get back on track?

speaker-0: And to that question, like be it's it's as vast as the amount of choices that we make each day. Because it depends on the personality, depends on the person. But there are some commonalities. And one of the commonalities is overthinking it. Like if something that you have to do is going to take you less time than how much you've thought about it, you're probably overthinking at that point. But the question I love to go to is Well I guess it's not a question, it's more of a statement. If it's too big, like if what you have to do next is too big, you haven't broken it down small enough. So you break it down a little smaller. Now what does that mean? For people who are just starting out on their journeys and have been or have been doing this for several years and are getting on that hopefully highward trajectory forward, then it's I want to get a new client. It's like, cool, there are a hundred ways in which you can get a new client. So many different paths you can take. So let's break it down. What is that? And something I like to do with my clients, which is reverse engineering. Whatever it is that goal that you're working toward, reverse engineer it backwards. That way you have milestones that you can hit. So when you start going forward, you have a better direction what you're going. So let's say you want a client. Cool. How do you get a client? Well, usually a client comes from let's say a discovery call. You get on a call with them to be able to sell them. Cool. Call d client discovery call. Okay. After that, how do we get a discovery call? Well, you got to schedule a time with them. And you gotta be able to know them and have a conversation. It's like cool. So a conversation. So the conversation leads to a call, leads to a client. How do you start that conversation? Well, let's say you found this person on LinkedIn. Cool. So now you're on LinkedIn. It's like now it's just having a bunch of conversations. But you also got to be like, what do I say in that conversation? So it's like, how do I have a conversation that leads to that? Well, that breaks off into two. The first one is you yourself having a present on LinkedIn for this example. That's the first one. Second part is Being able to actually communicate, the skill of communication, being able to ask questions and talk and carry a conversation rather than trying to marry the person in the very first message that you send to them. Doesn't work for anybody. You want to build the relationship before you do it. So then you have those two things. And now instead of just saying, I want one more client, well now you have two actionable things to where you can either look at your LinkedIn and say, I'm gonna spend thirty minutes or fifteen or ten minutes. On updating my LinkedIn to make it look good. Or I'm gonna find three people in a 10 minute span who someone who would be an ideal client, I'm gonna go on to theirs, their LinkedIn, gonna look at the posts that they do, comment on the post, and then send them a message. Hey, Ian, saw that you had this really cool podcast. I love the way in which your mind thinks, love to connect. Hit that button and send it. And then you that's it. So now you it's not just I want one client, which then you got a thousand decisions. Now it's every day, let's just send three messages. That's all. That's all you gotta do. Everything else can be a bonus. But every day send three messages. And those three messages then lead to a conversation. Which then lead to, man, I wanna and I wanna get to know you better. You seem like you have such a great vision and let's be honest, ain't nobody wanna have a novel. of a message to read on LinkedIn. So what's a time work best for you that we can jump on a quick call to talk about your vision and everything. I got Wednesday. And right the conversation then opens. Then you get on the call. And then you're able to as you get on more calls, get practice s and serve them. That's something that's huge for me. I don't get on the call to sell people. I get on the call to be able to figure out what serves them. And if coaching helps serves them, cool. Then that's something we can do to work together. But if not, I'm gonna give connections and resources and knowledge that I have so that they can leave the call saying, Wow, I now know my next step that I need to take. I now know what it is I need to do. And then that leads to that one client. So if it's too big, that's the practical application side. If it's too big, make it smaller. Reverse engineer it down till it's now, okay, I don't have to do just one client today, but I can send three messages. That's gonna be easier for me to do.

speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. And there's so much to that, right? It's the it's the flip of, okay, do I set my intention, set my focus on the, you know, the lagging indicator of my leading actions, right? The lagging indicator is the getting of a client where the leading actions to getting the client is the sending of the messages, is the having of the conversations, is the having of the discovery calls, right? So it's that reorientation of shifting your focus on the things that you can control, right? Because in the end of the day, getting a client is going to depend on That client making a decision and agreeing to work with you. Right. And there's a lot of different things that you can do along the way to kind of, you know, encourage that decision to be made. But yeah, so there's that one part of it of shifting your focus from the lagging indicators to the leading actions that you can control on a day to day basis. And then it's also going through that reverse engineering process that you walked us through of breaking down that lagging outcome, that outcome that you want to achieve, reverse engineering it down into the day to day small bite-sized kind of like equation of actions that you need to take in order to achieve that end outcome. And then the other thing that struck me again as we went through this is, okay, when you go through that process of reverse engineering, but I guess before we get to that, you're a hundred percent right that in the moments in my ex in the past, in my experience, you know, not too far away, like, you know, a couple months ago, right? I was just hitting a it was just a tough patch of a couple weeks where it was just like the the gap between knowing what I needed to do and what I was actually doing was just massive. And I was just couldn't get myself to follow through. And it was just me. not having that clarity and also just like making what what I felt like I needed to do, just making it too big, that there was just so much resistance that it was hard to even just sit down and just get started, which is what is required, is that consistent sitting down and just getting started. But then if you go through that process with someone and you break it down for them and you say, okay, you just need to send three messages a day, then going back to the beginning of our conversation, that I don't feel confident. I don't know how to send com how to send the right opening message. I don't know how to be perfect in the message that I send out there. So now I'm gonna go watch 80,000 hours of YouTube videos to figure out what the perfect message is so I don't, you know, mess this up. So like then there's that confidence, you know, lack of confidence, believing that you need to be fully confident before you move forward and get started shows up and it shows up at every stage of that process, right? It's the sending of the messages, it's the having of the conversations, it's the hosting of the discovery calls, it's trying to make it close. Or where that idea is gonna continue to show up of like I need to feel confident before I get started and do this thing. But it's just, you know, is it just like getting comfortable and being okay with knowing that you're not gonna be great right away? Like and it's again that reorientation of failure that we talked about earlier, but I think another side of it is just getting comfortable with the messy beginnings and you know, not being okay with sucking, but is there something else there?

speaker-0: I would say two to that, 'cause there is that side of everything that we talked about of reverse engineering, take small steps, like break it down. If you don't feel confident about it, sometimes you just gotta accept it that you're not gonna feel confident and that confidence comes after you being scared but doing the thing anyways. Just like if you were to be on a fifty foot cliff to jump into water, you're gonna be scared, but be scared after, right? Like just just do it and then the confidence is after you do it the first time. Cause after you do it the first time, it's just like your nervous system goes down. It's like, I'm not dead. I'm alive. And I don't hurt as much as I thought I was gonna, which is good. So maybe I'll go back up with my friends and do it again. And then like an hour later you jumped off the thing thirty times, right? There's that side of it. But then I think there also is another side, which we haven't talked about yet, which is the psychological side. Now I I I t talk about the psychological side not as a diagnosis or an excuse because I think many people take it that way. I used to as well. I grew up as a dyslexic and I used to say dyslexic, anything that has to do with reading, writing, and speaking, out the window. Don't need to worry about it. I will just throw produce at Walmart. That was like my thing. Not saying anything bad about throwing produce at Walmart for the people that do, right? Because I was that person too. But I saw and labeled dyslexia as bad hindrance and an excuse. But on this on the emotional side, if someone still like they just can't get past whatever it is that we've broken it down. We've gotten clarity, the vision's there, and they just can't move forward. Then what I want to do, and this usually happens within the first call, because I can get a glimpse of it, is we jump into in a blunt way, what in the world happened to you? I don't usually use those words on the call of just what in the world happened to you. But it's every single person has their own experience. They have their own what they consider traumas. What their senses has felt and their feelings and emotions with whether it's things with family or friends, school, whatever it is. And usually there's a moment or two in their past that was the starting point for that. So I've done this with many entrepreneurs and know you're not weak because you have emotions. Let's get that straight. And you're not weak if you cry and that you have hard days. It's not a weakness. That's called life. It's just most people keep that private and don't share it public, which is a whole nother topic we can go down. But that back as a usually as a kid, it's like we I take the cl I take people back into their childhood. And for me, this was in the first grade. In the first grade, I was running around the playground, adventurous, curious kid. We were playing tag, there was this girl named Hannah. I thought she was kinda cute, but I was a first grader, so I didn't really know what cute was. So I ran and I tried to tag her. She jumped up on the playground and as she did, I reached my hand out and I tripped. And I swipe my hand down and accidentally pulled down her pants. And she was like big eyed as you can imagine. She pulled him up and her and her friend booked it inside to get a teacher. And I sat on the ground thinking, I didn't do anything wrong. Like it was an accident. I tripped. The teachers came out, the teacher pointed at me like the certain teacher did and said, Did you pull down her pants? And I looked up and said, Yeah, I did. And before I could explain anything, the teacher said, Kay, you lose recess for the rest of the week. Come inside with us. And so that was like a first little seed planted for me of if I do something wrong, that's bad, even if I did it on purpose or not. Fast forward to the fourth grade, a similar thing happened where we were all standing on the the podium around us as we were rehearsing for when the fourth graders all sing for their parents. And as we were practicing, we finished the song. The teacher then said, Okay. Who in here wants to sing one last time before we go back to the classroom? I look up at the clock, and there's about a minute before the bell rings. And in my head, I think in it takes longer than a minute to get to the classroom, and we gotta put all the stuff back that we got out, and I gotta put stuff in my backpack so that I can get on the bus, which if I'm not at the bus four to five minutes after the bell rings, well then I'm not getting on the bus and I gotta call my parents. I don't want to call my parents, there's a bus right there. So when she asked that question, I said no. Everyone else around me said yes. And there was this freaking spotlight on me. And the teacher pointed at me and said, What did you say? And I said, No. And everyone else said, Yes, and I'm like, No. And the teacher said, Okay, come sit down next to me until we're finished. So I came down and sat and I felt like I had one of those old dunt stupid caps hats on. And that was another point, another seed planted of, well, I don't know if the clock was off or if I didn't hear the question right or anything, but people just don't want to listen to me, so I'm not going to raise my hand. And throughout elementary school, middle, and high school, I was the shy kid who observed, who didn't want to do anything of raising his voice or being the center of attention. Now, there's been a lot of work this last decade of trying to go through that. But what I do with my clients is I go back to that moment of me in the first grade of that teacher pointing at me saying, Okay, you've lost your recess. And I ask, who is it that you admire? For me, it was my grandma. And so I took my grandma and put her in that situation. So right after the teacher said, Come in inside, my grandma would come up and say, Actually, you wanna what? Let let's hear what Willie has to say. And I was able to explain it. and come up with the best version of how that story goes. To where it ended with me giving a hug to my grandma and her saying, Your voice matters. Even if people s tell you you gotta do something, you have an opinion. And that healed a part of myself, in which this isn't something a lot of entrepreneurs talk about. We talk about systems and automations and stuff. But we also are human and have feelings. So there are times that is very needed that sometimes the ability to do and the ability to have the courage to do comes from something that hasn't been healed in the past. So we gotta have the sympathy and empathy as well as the wisdom in order to see is this something that we've got to really heal from? Or is this where you've just been in the habit the last two years of not taking any action? You just gotta send that message being imperfect or not.

speaker-1: Yeah. Well.

speaker-0: I know that was very long winded and a lot of a lot of different of the story with that.

speaker-1: Yeah. No, thank you so much for sharing that. Cause I think, you know, it's weird how life works sometimes. It's like that was the a part of myself that I closed off for a very long time. Like just like why did why should I even like care about my emotions and like, you know, the my experiences of my past? Like that's just so irrational. Like that shouldn't matter. Don't need to worry about and think about that. Like just put my head down, work harder. But those things really do show up as you know, blocks that there's just no way around them. You have to kind of face it. And and I have not really gone through like a very formal process of doing so. Like I've had a lot of conversations and, you know, the what's weird about this is like I'm opening myself up more to this, both in, you know, sharing this with others and talking through it with other people. And then also, you know, inviting like a greater power into my life to help me kind of navigate those things. Like and I've never done that before in my life. but it's been pretty Miraculous, like the things that have started to happen. And then, you know, this just being brought up in today's conversation is another signal to me. But yeah, there it's very real. And you know, those seeds are planted in us at a very young age when we're, you know, just a sponge and we pick these things up and we subconsciously carry them with us for throughout our whole life. And they they shape, you know, our patterns and then our patterns become our life. And it's, you know, if we want to be the best version of ourselves, right? That's the authentic version of ourselves. And these subconscious things, these seeds that we pick up over time, like pull us away from who from that curious, you know, full of love version of us that we all have within us. And those things can they just pull us away from that. And they you know, they develop that fear based thought system that then propagates throughout our whole life. And it's the it's the whole it's the looking at them closely and and investigating them and the process of working through them and digesting them and That will help us to return to that authentic version of us, which will unlock our ability to make our unique contribution to the world. So yeah, thank you for bringing that up. I'm sure we could have a whole other conversation about how to really facilitate that kind of introspective process. And I would I would love to do so another time. So I'd love to have you back. But obviously, I guess we can get to it now. But I have one final question for you, Willie. That's a recurring question that I ask every guest. But before we get to that, how can people find you?

speaker-0: I'm a simple guy and I keep things very simple. So everything can be found on my website, coachwillyblake dot com. There you'll be able to connect with me on all my social medias, as well as if you are want to work with me or just do a I call it a game plan session call. It's for free for people who listen to awesome podcasts like this, as well as an ebook that I have on there, Twelve Limitations and How to Break Them. All those very simple on my website.

speaker-1: Amazing. Yeah, coach Willie Blake dot com. I think if anything we've talked about has resonated with you and you wanna have, you know, your own awesome opportunity to talk to Willie, one on one, ask him any questions that you have, I encourage you to check out his website. He's got a lot of amazing content on there. Personally would be very excited to kind of go with you through like that introspective kind of like let's hey, let's look back and find those things, those moments, those seeds that have been planted and are unknowingly growing and kind of helped like shaping the the things that you're struggling with today, I would love to do that. But yeah, coach Willie Blake.com will have the link in the description. Go check out all of Willie's wonderful work. And yeah, you've been on a lot of other podcasts too, so go listen to the other amazing conversations that you've had. But Willie, thank you for the time. My last question for you is a recurring question that I ask every guest, and it's this if you had a giant billboard that everyone in the world could see for ten seconds with like one message to the world, what would it say and why? man.

speaker-0: Because there's two different aspects I can take it. There's the belief part, which we've talked a lot about today, but then there's also the other part of like the action portion. So I'm gonna be that guy and I'm gonna say maybe there's a back to the backboard too. The front of the billboard is gonna say believe, inspire, empower. That's what it's gonna say. The back of the backboard is gonna say you're not behind. You're just still in part.

speaker-1: Believe, inspire, empower. And on the other side of it in the rear view mirror, it's you're not you're not behind, you're just still in park. Call to get moving, get going. Put it in reverse Terry for a couple seconds, then get back on the path. I love it. Willie, thank you so much for the time.

speaker-0: Thank you for having me.

speaker-1: Thank you for listening. My main takeaway from my conversation with Willie is that when something feels too hard for me to start, and I can think about a few things on my to-do list right now, I probably need to just make the next step smaller, right? Find a way to break this big thing down into smaller, more digestible, more bite sized steps. In doing this, it will just help me to get started, which I've found in my own anecdotal experience is the key, right? Literally just get started. Find a way to. You know, creating silence is one part of this for me. Like I find that I just work better in silence. So find a way to create silence and just get started on whatever it is that I'm working on. And once I'm two, three, four, five minutes into working on the thing, I start to kind of create some momentum and the anxiety tends to to go down a little bit because I'm started, engaged on doing the task and I'm getting things done. So thank you for that, Willie. If you want to get connected with Willie Blake, you can find his links in the description of this episode. And if you run a coaching program course or mastermind and you want more of your clients to actually follow through on what you teach, I've put a free resource in the description that will help you build more execution support into your program. Thank you for listening, and I'll see you in the next one.