The FractionX Podcast
Are you paralyzed deciding your next best step? Don't play it safe. That safety costs you more than you think.
This one scene from Christoper Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises inspired this topic. On this episode Matt and Drew talk about making the jump without the rope. The big idea is if you're playing it safe, you are limiting your future. The safety you seek is holding you back.
This one scene from Christoper Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises inspired this topic. On this episode Matt and Drew talk about making the jump without the rope. The big idea is if you're playing it safe, you are limiting your future. The safety you seek is holding you back.
Drew, we're back at it. We're here, we're doing it. Your tan jacket is made in appearance again.
Speaker 2:Well, you have to call out. I've only got like two jackets that I want You're. You've got a great blazer game. I think that's part of my next step in leadership. We're gonna do a whole episode on the importance of blazers and leadership for blazers. You're not wearing your blazer today.
Speaker 1:They retired for the season of Fraction X podcast.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, we'll bring it back next season. Why are you gonna mark my tan jacket? No, I'm so into it, that's all you like it.
Speaker 1:It's fantastic, you look. You look amazing. Speaking of amazing.
Speaker 2:Nice segue. What a pro that's right.
Speaker 1:I get so much inspiration from movies. And I think like the uncanny ability for art, you know, to imitate life and vice versa, and so we were talking about a movie that we both love and this one specific scene. So, yeah, I'm just gonna pitch it to you. Talk about Christopher Nolan's the Dark Knight.
Speaker 2:I love Christopher Nolan, first of all, my favorite director. Like anything he does, I'm gonna watch. I love the way he tells stories and you know I and I love that. I love storytelling, good storytelling, good cinematography, all that kind of stuff. And you mentioned this movie this morning and we never talked about it before. But I'm like dude, that's my problem. My favorite movie.
Speaker 1:I didn't know you liked that movie.
Speaker 2:The whole Batman trilogy, the Dark Knight, that whole thing, and you actually were able to extract some great truth out of probably one of my favorite scenes in any of those movies and it always moved me and I didn't really have like the why behind it. But I do love all like you know how. You know in those movies you know Batman is the idea that he's being what Gotham needs at the time. Whatever that is, he's willing to be that, even if he's willing to be the bad guy. And I just love although I didn't love how they just swapped out I forget the actress.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, she was better in the first movie. I didn't like the second one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they just swapped her out like we weren't going to notice.
Speaker 1:But we saw her. It's a different human.
Speaker 2:That's not the same person. Anyways, we'll let that one slide. But there's this one scene in the movie that is so profound. Yeah, and do you want me to tell?
Speaker 1:it, or do you want to tell it?
Speaker 2:No, well, it's the scene where he's trying to get out of the cave. He's trying to get out of the whole lot of the prison yeah, right, and he's jumping with the rope. Yeah, and he's jumping. He's basically breaking his back every time he does it and he's having to, like, train for it all over again. Yeah, no one only, but one person had ever made it out of again, and it wasn't until he jumped without the rope that he actually made it. And I love the fact that they don't talk, they don't like go into the philosophical stuff, they just show that. But everyone knows like, hey, there's something too, when you have everything to lose, when the safety net is gone. That is a time that it's spoiler alert if you haven't seen the movie. He makes it without the rope, but when you watch that scene, something kind of came up for you and you're like, hey, this, this is a great metaphor for leadership.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's just so much fear and a lot of decisions we make. It's unfortunate because we've talked about this in the past. Like you know, when it comes to leaders that we have they have, you know, influence over our careers. They have influence of our salary and our job and stuff, but we also have a lot of autonomy as leaders, especially if you own your own company or if you're, you know, leading hide in an organization. There are consequences to the decisions we make, yeah, and sometimes it just gets real easy to play it safe, and so really, that scene for me is about fear and safety. Yep, and that guy you know Batman, that guy, he could make that jump a lot because the rope would always save him if he missed it. Yep, yeah, and the consequence of taking the rope off, making the jump and missing it. He's done the movies over right, so there to see things where we can make a decision, and if we miss it, if we get the decision wrong, it could be devastating.
Speaker 1:And so I was actually coaching a client and when this movie came up, and so we've done some strategic planning with this client and we've identified Parts of his business that he's using the past to grow. He has to retire that type of business. That's smaller clients, smaller projects. Where his you know future really lives is with bigger projects, bigger clients. And so I was asking him how things were going, yeah, what his bid process was like and he's, like management, really tied up in the bid process because I'm bidding these jobs For, you know, smaller clients and I pulled up our strategic like planning PDF and I showed him the map.
Speaker 1:I was like, bro, yeah, we sat in the room and said this type of project is not the future of your company. Yeah, we've got to go after this type of client and this type of business. And he was like, yeah, yeah, you're right. I was like but you, you want the, you need the revenue. Sure, you got to keep the light, sure, on. You've got payroll, you've got expenses, and so these small jobs are keeping the lights turned on absolutely and at the same time, they're killing the possibility of a future man I read, I resonate with that so deeply and I feel that even in my own business now.
Speaker 2:And so let's just do, let's do a live coaching session here, let's go coach, coach me on my business, because what I was writing down, actually, as you were talking a minute ago, is you have to get to the place where the fear of staying the same or Going backwards is greater than the fear of taking that, that risk right. Like you get sort of like hey, I'm actually I'm more afraid, like in the movie, I'm more afraid of Actually having to stay here the same or having to do this again. I would rather just die.
Speaker 2:Yeah then it's, it was actually greater than the fear of missing the jump right.
Speaker 2:And so I think in a lot of people's lives, whether it's in their personal health, mental health, emotional health, business, whatever you get their place where it's like I'm actually more afraid of staying the same than I am of what it's gonna take to get me to where I want to be in life, right, yeah, so if you're, if you're coaching, consulting me, because I feel that there's things, there's goals I have in my business I Don't want to get to, but there's things that I have got going on currently that might be the driver of my time, my energy, my revenue, all those kind of things.
Speaker 2:And it's just, it's scary as hell to go from what's kind of keeping you alive to when I want to be, but I can't get to where I want to be because what's kind of keeping me alive is dominant in my time. If you're coaching me on that, help me with next steps, because that is a big leap right. Like this, like even Batman had his, had his sage Mentor that was helping him see, like, yeah, this is, this is gonna be a problem if you miss it, right. So help me with this man, because how do you get from point a to even point B? Forget point Z.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, we've we've used this word before on the show but perspective. So you have to pull away from your business that you're running to see it for what it really is. Yeah, you know. So if you're in the middle of invoicing or doing the work that you're doing, talking to clients you can't stop in that moment, be like, oh, there's a different future that I want.
Speaker 1:You have to take serious time, like, and I think people should build a work on it calendar for their year. So I would propose, hey, once a year you need a three-day off-site when you and your senior leaders, or you and your mentor, get away and you look at the business that you have, you get on top of the mountain and try to see the whole picture and then, quarterly, you're reviewing Okay, we're gonna take eight hours a quarter, a whole day, and say, okay, are we doing what we said we're gonna do from a strategy, execution and vision standpoint for the company, and then, once a month, you've got to be reviewing those as well. So, first of all, the first step is perspective. Where am I really and where do I want to go?
Speaker 2:Yeah, dude, that's so good. Yeah, I want to dive more into that work on it calendar, because that is that's really smart. Yeah, I wonder how many organizations or leaders Actually actually do this on this three-day off-site. Right, talk a little bit about and this is a little off topic, so I don't spend too much time here but what are the kind of things you're doing on a three-day off-site like that step?
Speaker 1:ones disconnect. Yeah, I'm not gonna check my team emails. I'm not gonna put out any fires. I'm not gonna manage crisis. I'm not gonna look at the problems of my organization yeah, so I'm turning my face away from the immediate and I'm turning my face towards A little breathing room. Right, it's right, you're gonna get a cabin. You're gonna air B&B yeah, somewhere where there's nature, a lake, yeah, pond, ocean, something where you can just be totally focused on the future and not the present. So that's the first step is get away. Yeah, that's really good.
Speaker 1:And the exercises you I mean you can do a hundred different things. You can do a four helpful list and we're gonna look at what's right, what's wrong, what's missing, what's confused. You can do SWAT on the whole business, where our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats. Something I like to do is a turning points, like an events Calendar of the company hey, what happened in the beginning, and then what happened? And then, at this phase, phase of the business, what happened next? And talk about the story of the business and try to learn from hey, when we pivoted or reiterated or we had a crisis, what happened financially, strategically? Yeah, what happened to our product? What happened to our people? And every time you look at a turning point event in your company's history, you get to learn something. So again, you're just trying to do something that distracts from clients calling, yeah, staff calling HR issues. You're like no, let's, let's, let's look at holistically.
Speaker 1:Yeah you're just gonna run through a series of exercises that look at where are we so perspective before planning and then. Then you need dreamers on your team, like you need people that don't always just grind right. You know. You need people that are gonna be around you. They're like man. What if you start asking those big questions? Like man, If there wasn't obstacles, if we knew we couldn't fail, what would we be really doing right now? You ask those big questions and you fill in the fill in the piece of paper like dude. We would do this like if there was no way we'd fail. We'd do this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I love that. Well, it's also a great time to to Work with each other, like to learn each other.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so like relational is a huge part of it, man, because I know, yeah, I sat in on one of your off-sites that you led not too long ago and you did some strength finder stuff you did and you got people talking about like recognizing, hey, what do you bring to the table and what conversation Should I bring you into, and all that kind of stuff, and so, anyways, not to get too distracted on that, but we would encourage people to do this, to have a work on it calendar, bring some intentionality and strategy to it.
Speaker 2:I'm going back to kind of the fear thing, though I want you to speak a little bit to scarcity. Yeah right, because I think this is a mindset that a lot of us have in business, especially when you start to have a little bit of success. Then that scarcity and that control the things that even, like I know, for me my mentality is different now than it was when I first started, like I just you get to where it's like, okay, now I want to hold tightly to what I have, yeah, and I stopped doing the things that I was doing in the beginning to build to where I was at today. Right, so talk to me as a business leader, the other business leaders that are listening, entrepreneurs around this scarcity mindset, how that holds us back and how do we overcome that to actually achieve the goals that we want to get to yeah, I Think questions are one of the best ways to move someone forward, and it's some of those like really eternal questions like when am I?
Speaker 1:Yeah really right, where do I want to go? Really? I'm not talking about scarcity, digging into those like existential not like I've got eight hours today. How do I best divvy that up for my business priorities, like no, we're not talking about that kind of stuff. If you've got a break a habit of Scarcity and it is a habit like you you you discipline yourself towards scarcity, just the way you discipline yourself out of scarcity right.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, so we, we build these neural pathways. Every time we make a decision that leads towards scarcity. Okay, I'm not gonna think about the future of my business. I need to go get one of these little small clients again. That's gonna help me make payroll for the next week. Well, so you start to automate some of those ways of thinking, you start to automate some of those practices and all before you know it, you're just building habits towards scarcity leadership and I think you got to go.
Speaker 1:Okay, no, I'm gonna stop that. I'm gonna be intentional about okay, I've said in one of my off-sides, or I've said to my mentor or my business coach I want to do X, what's a habitual thing? What's a discipline? What's the thing I can do right now? That puts me on the path towards doing that?
Speaker 1:And it's gonna feel scary because Typically with scarcity, you're going there are finite resources, time is a finite resource, my energy is a finite resource, my budget's finite. I can't do everything all at once. I'm just gonna do what I know I can control Mm-hmm, and I know I can get my head in my mind around right, and you go after that. But abundance is saying there are more resources than I have Consciously acknowledged yeah, I'm smarter than I think I am right. I've got more relationships than I think I do. There's more strategy out there than I've tapped into. There's more I can learn. There's more I can be developed. There's more I can stretch and grow. Yeah, and that will lead to more opportunity. More opportunity leads to building a bigger budget and it's just putting yourself on a pathway towards those things and abundance.
Speaker 2:Yeah, man, that's such good advice. I, for me, I know I have to surround myself and we've talked about this a lot on this podcast but I have to get around other people who help me with that mindset and that, you know, help me get out of that scarcity mindset, help me dream again, help speak truth. You know, I'm the type of leader that I can be very scattered, not focused. I mean people with me. That's also saying hey, that's a great idea, just not yet. Or that's a bad idea or like you know. So, depending on your personality, having people around you that are helping you Understand like, hey, this is a good risk to take, you know.
Speaker 2:And the last thing I wanted to ask you because I think this is also helpful is Around the idea of like in the in the movie with Batman, like if he misses that jump, like he's gonna physically die, right. The good news is, like we're not living in the movie. So, like if you take a leap of faith. I think a lot of people think, hey, if I do this, I'm gonna die, right. It does feel that way. It could feel scary. The truth is, you know, the difference between entrepreneurs or even just leaders that make it are the ones that just get up and keep trying, like they fail forward, right, that whole like thing.
Speaker 2:I was just talking to a leader not too long ago who is wanting to make a big jump, who's wanting to make, and there's just so much anxiety and fear because it's leaving what's known and going to the unknown, right. So I'd love for you just to talk to that leader that's out there. That's like Matt man, you don't understand. I've got a family to provide for. I got, like, what do I do to get from point B to point A? And the reason I'm asking this is because you're a very practical thinker. I'm more the type of like just, you know, jump without a parachute, see what happens. You know, like, but how do you help us kind of to bridge that gap into where we want to be in life?
Speaker 1:Well, I think most of us vastly overestimate the consequences of failure and vastly underestimate what safety is really doing. I just don't think we were meant to live safe lives. I'm not saying to be a wild person, I'm not saying it's the Wild West and just live your dreams and go for everything, but I'm saying like, great stories and so we'll go back to the movies for a second Involve risk, right, they involve the unknown and all that stuff and you may think you're in something that's safe and predictable. What you don't understand is you're giving away pieces of your heart, like you're giving away things that you don't know you're giving to achieve that safety. Safety has a cost. You pay the price every single day. Now it's small, maybe incremental. It doesn't feel like failing does, and failing publicly is like a huge fear for most people. But, man, I would trade a public failure over like a small, quiet death in a place where I'm just like it's safe. I'm staying here because it's safe Totally.
Speaker 2:One and, like you said, most people, when you take that leap, even if you do fail, the key of getting back up and trying again and going. Those are the people, like the friends of mine that are the most successful, have failed the most. That's right, but they just don't have that mentality of like well, I'm going to quit. It's like well, I just keep going, I'm going to chalk it up, and they end up figuring it out. So, matt, this was great. This is actually an episode that I need because, like fear, anxiety that can really take over in my life is really helpful. I just want to give you kind of just the final word, even if you just want to encapsulate kind of the big idea behind this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think I'd wrap specifically, trying to put it all on a bow. I would say, look, none of this stuff is easy. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it, and they're not. And so my thing is look for inspiration. Right, there are books, there's podcasts, there's relationships, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:But you need someone in your corner Like it is very difficult to do or talking about, unless you've got the right kind of systems in place that support you. And I'm more talking like emotionally, like hey, have somebody who's rooting for you. Yes, we need to take that risk. We've got to go try this. We can't stay safe anymore. And if you're surrounded by people who make safe decisions, like you're probably going to continue to make safe decisions. And if you get around people who are comfortable with failure and say, look, it was never final when I screwed that up, it didn't hold me back forever. When I hit the concrete face first, I got back up and people supported me and I was able to do something different. So I think it's all about finding someone who's going to encourage you on that journey. Yeah, so give me. Thanks, matt Yep.