Thanks for tuning into the Scale Your Small Business Podcast with your host, Jillian Flodstrom! Today’s an exciting day, as we’re welcoming our first guest to the show. Joining us this week is James Gardiner, he’s a high-performance athlete who helps entrepreneurs face their challenges, uncover their secret sauce, and help their lives and businesses thrive. This week, he’s breaking down his success and how he uses Conscious Leadership to help people find theirs.
James first found his interest in helping entrepreneurs achieve because he saw the similarities between his own, competitive, high-performance mentality and theirs. Entrepreneurs are creative, driven minds, and there’s no secret why many high performance athletes end up being coaches and business advisors.
With that, some of the same challenges are presented for both high-performance athletes and high-achieving entrepreneurs. Everyone comes to the table with his or her own unique skillset, strengths, and of course, challenges. It’s about wearing multiple hats and learning how to juggle the different balls of what it means to be in business for ourselves, to be of service, and also to run a business. Following through on each of those can be difficult. On the other side of the spectrum are those who only do follow-through, and lose sight of the bigger picture.
So, how do we combat those challenges? James points to a constant process of assessing, reassessing, course correcting, and moving forward. This helps to mitigate some of those challenges, and within those challenges, understanding or labeling the severity of them. Which are my bleeding artery challenges? Which are my just kind of nicks that are like a paper cut? Have a group of team members that you consult throughout to stay on track. Hand in hand with that is personal growth alongside professional growth. Misalignment will always show itself, always.
It’s about understanding what gets you out of bed in the morning. We were all a young Beethoven once, and we had the ability to create our Ode to Joy, our masterpiece. James feels like we owe it to ourselves to take that journey.
If anyone knows the shared mentality between athletes and entrepreneurs, it’s James. For him, it’s an unwavering discipline towards a commitment, towards a contract with your soul. a true athlete understands all that encompasses how they show up in that sports arena. Why do I do the training I do? What effect does certain training have on my physiology? In the same way, taking into account everything that makes up being a successful entrepreneur is paying attention to how you’re developing alongside the work you do. Everything that needs to go into having a vision, to creating a tangible concept of that vision, bringing people in possibly to champion the final product needs to be considered.
It’s about showing up every day, but it’s about balance. James reminds us of the importance of not needing external validation to equate your internal (and actual) value. You can’t take anything with you when you die, so it’s vital that you pay attention to areas that need it. Build in the ability to pause.
If you find yourself on the struggle bus and aren’t sure where to make that bus go, James says to get crystal clear. Ask yourself, what do I want? What does it look like? How does it make me feel? Anchor those questions in emotion. Don’t get caught up in the big step–take as small of a step as you need to to move forward.
There are folks out there that just don’t want to do what it takes to get the result that they want. The same way there are very few people who put in the work to become a professional athlete, it’s the same with entrepreneurs. As Jill calls it, “Destination Procrastination.”
Reach out to James Gardiner on Instagram and Facebook, and visit his website at theherowithin.ca to schedule a complimentary 45-minute hero discovery call.
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