Episode 080 Part 1 – Tommy Breedlove

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Tommy Breedlove  0:00  

It was a challenge for me. Now, I love delegation because there’s an element of trust in it. But truly, you have your zone of brilliance — systems and processes. I have my zone of brilliance — getting the best out of people in an empathetic, listen in a compassionate way. Then trusting others who are better than us in their zone of brilliance — to just let them be and let them shine. It is the most hard to let it go. Because this is our baby, right? This is our business. Our baby. That’s our movement. Our passion is where we make our impact. But letting go and watch, empowering other people, and just letting them shine and teach us how great they are. And vice versa. It’s just this beautiful thing.

 

Richard Matthews  0:44  

… 

 

Hello and welcome back to The HERO Show. My name is Richard Matthews and I’m live on the line today with Tommy Breedlove. Tommy, are you there?

 

Tommy Breedlove  1:54  

I’m here, brother. So excited to be here, Richard, let’s do this.

 

Richard Matthews  1:59  

Awesome. Glad to have you here. Let me do a quick introduction for our listeners who may not know who you are. Tommy Breedlove is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author and Atlanta-based business relationship and mindset coach who is a regularly featured keynote speaker at global events. We were actually just talking before he got on here that your second home is Delta Airline…

 

Tommy Breedlove  2:22  

They treat me well.

 

Richard Matthews  2:24  

Before we get too far into this, what I want to talk about first is what it is that you’re known for. Why do people why do people reach out to you? What is it that you’re known for now?

 

Tommy Breedlove  2:35  

So, I am known for being a corporate executive who almost lost everything; who completely transformed his life. And now, I guide others to live with purpose, passion, a life of significance and fulfillment, but without compromising their ambition or drive for success. I learned my craft and my trade through pain, brother. And now, I’m in the purpose and pain business. This has been over the last few months, it’s really cool. What I’m truly known for now is helping myself and others build and live legendary lives. I’m so proud of that.

 

Richard Matthews  3:20  

That’s really cool. So tell me a little bit how you do that? How do you help people today? Is it like one on one coaching or just speaking? What are the ways that you actually do the helping?

 

Tommy Breedlove  3:32  

Yeah, so I do it in three ways — actually four ways. I’m regularly a speaker on podcast and on stages, so it can be at corporate events or private business events or at large trade organizations or other things. So a lot of public speaking, but I also run a one-on-one coaching and through masterminds. Through one-on-one coaching, I help people with their business, their mindset, their money, their relationships, and so it’s just a beautiful journey that fell on my lap. If you had told me seven years ago that I was going to be a business mindset relationship coach and run masterminds and be on stages speaking, I would have laughed you out of the room. And so, this found me. It’s a calling in life and I’m so fulfilled by it, brother.

 

Richard Matthews  4:18  

Awesome, that’s really cool to hear. I love it. Especially at this point in your life. You’re like, everything was building up to something, and then it’s a massive shift and change. Whereas like, you know, my life was like at 13, I was like, I’m going to be an entrepreneur. That’s like what I’ve been doing for 20 something years now.

 

Tommy Breedlove  4:36  

And you’re a hero! 

 

Richard Matthews  4:37  

That’s funny. So tell me a little bit about your origin story, right? Here on this show, we talk about how every hero has their origin stories. Where did you start to realize that you were different, that maybe you had superpowers, and maybe you could use them to help other people? How did that go down for you?

 

Tommy Breedlove  4:59  

So my story starts in South Atlanta in a good solid blue-collar part of the world I grew up in. I certainly didn’t grow up poor. But I grew up in humble beginnings. No one in my family had ever gone to college or graduated college. I’m actually the first. So, that’s a really big accomplishment for my family. But here’s the sad, honest truth. I grew up in and around violence, mostly inside the home, but also outside of the home of every kind. And so, the worst thing that happens to you as a young human or a young boy is when you experience certain types of violence, over time you become that violence. My origin story begins at 18 years old, looking to be the first person to go to college and committed a violent crime. So, I thought my life was over. I thought I was facing seven years in prison.

 

And by the grace of God and some good lawyers and divine help, it was dropped to misdemeanors but I was sentenced to two years with one year suspended and ended up spending my 19th birthday in jail. So not college or business in my future, it was jail. I picked myself up and dusted myself off and went from jail to a nuclear waste container factory as a machine operator. To school at night to the University of Georgia to Deloitte and Touche, which is a large public accounting and financial consulting firm in three years. And so, I went to jail to Deloitte — it is like, from the cage to the corner office. So I just put my head down and worked. I thought at the time that the more money, success, power, prestige, and shiny things that I acquired, the happier I would be. So I went down and I just shot up through the ranks. I just worked really hard at these big M&A, mergers and acquisitions, financial consulting firms, and made it all the way to the top and when I realized that — and here’s part of the hero’s journey. I never dealt with some of those wounds from my past. I just thought if I was successful and made money, yada yada yada… I would be happy and fulfilled and that this is the dream that I’m on. The entrepreneur and corporate dream. And when that didn’t fulfill me at 36 years old, I turned. When the power didn’t fulfill me the next big check didn’t fulfill me. I was a principal at this new firm. So I made it almost to the top and started turning to all the bad things in life. So if there were 100 things not to do as a young executive, I checked off 90 of them and I found myself after three days of just complete debauchery laying in a ditch somewhere in Atlanta looking up at the sky. I was probably doing some multimillion dollar deal two weeks before and in some CEO’s office, I found myself looking at the sky and said, “I don’t know what this is, but I’m not going to do this anymore. I am going to figure out what’s wrong.” And so, I went on this mental emotional, physical and spiritual journey just to find me. I didn’t quit or leave the firm. I just decided to make “me” my full time job. And when I went on this massive transformation of “me” and started developing unconditional love for myself and self respect and start to master my mindset, you know, there are squirrels in our head that tells us we’re not good enough and actually start dealing you know, healing some of those wounds and we all have wounds from our origin story. When I started healing those, the most amazing thing happened to me, brother. That’s when my money, my success, my network, my friendships, my relationship with my wife, it just went 100 X up. And I went from junior partner in the firm to senior partner to actually owning part of the practice and elected to the board of directors at 39 years old. So I was at the very top of my game, just by doing hard work and investing in myself every day. But here’s the cool part. When I knew I was going to help others, all of these other alpha men and women who were driven and want to succeed and want to build businesses, and you know, lawyers and entrepreneurs and corporate executives and managers, people in my network started reaching out to me for help. They’re like, “Hey, man, I don’t know what you did. But you seem to have peace of mind. You seem to be fulfilled and living with purpose. But you didn’t give up your ambition, your success or your drive for money or, or just to make an impact in this world? How do you do it?” And about the 15th person that reached out to me I’m like, “This is a business and a good one and a very fulfilling business.” And so, I sold my equity in the firm and resigned. It took me a little while to do that, because you just don’t walk away from a big gig at the top of the game and started doing business. Money, Mindset and Relationship Coaching and it has exploded, and it’s been the most fulfilling thing. So my superpower is to help get the absolute best out of other people with no judgment and walking the journey with them. I’m not a guru on the stage or a psychologist behind them. I’ve walked the journey. I walk it every day. And that’s where this book. This playbook came out, Legendary. And it’s a guide to help people build and live a legendary life. And the reason I picked Legendary in a world of constant self promotion, that’s the one word that society — our peers and our family give us. And we can be a really great legend like an MLK or a great entrepreneur, we can be a horrible one. And so to me, it’s a playbook about how do we build toward financial freedom? How do we conquer our time and our mindset? But also, how do we do that without losing the relationships of our families and others? And it’s what worked in my life and I’ve seen it work and countless, countless others’ lives and that’s why we put it in a book form. And that’s what this movement — my superpower— is all about my brother.

 

Richard Matthews  10:58  

That’s a really really powerful story. I relate to the “waking up in the street & looking at the sky” thing. Not personally but because it’s something my dad told me when he was serving in the military in Germany. You might call it an evening of debauchery like you’re talking about. And he doesn’t remember much of what happened on the evening after the first couple of drinks started, but he remembers he woke up and it was three days later and he was under a car on the side of the road in the ice and snow and he was like, “That is just the worst ever — to wake up and not know where you are, where you’ve been or how you got there.” And knowing that you were in a place where you could have been killed.

 

Tommy Breedlove  11:44  

And it’s humiliating as well because you know better and we want better and we desire better and we are better. You have this moment of what…. This moment of pure accountability too. No one put you here but you. Now it’s time to get up, dust yourself off and move forward. And that’s what we did. Sounds like your dad.

 

Richard Matthews  12:06  

My dad was excellent. And you know, I tell people all the time that he’s one of the primary reasons I have the success in my life that I do because of the way he raised me so.

 

Tommy Breedlove  12:20  

It sounds like he’s legendary.

 

Richard Matthews  12:21  

Yeah, he totally is. And yeah, I understand that you can lead people and to realize that you can pick yourself up and move past that and still succeed in spite of it. 

 

Tommy Breedlove  12:40  

I’ve done it twice. I’m not gonna do it a third time.

 

Richard Matthews  12:46  

Third time’s the charm they say. If you go from you know, from jail to the top of your game in one spot to walk away another game again, So, I want to dive in a little bit on your superpower, right? So the superpower is what you do or build or offer this world that helps solve problems for people? And the way that I’ve been framing this recently for my guests on the show has been like, if you look at your set of skills that you have — the superpower is the one thing that sort of is the common thread between all of your skills. The thing you notice is really the driving force behind any of the skills that you have. And, like for me, I’ve discovered that it was systems and processes. The reason I’m good at a lot of things is I’m really good at understanding the system behind something and I can pick it up really fast because of that. But just because I’ve picked up you know — I can pick up piano and like I can piss my wife off in like three weeks but I’ll never be like fantastic at it because you know, piano is not my superpower…it is just learning systems and processes is where that is for me. And you know, I can pick up new skills really quickly because of it. Just curious for you, have you ever thought about it in that light? Like what is the one thing that sort of energizes the rest of my skills?

 

Tommy Breedlove  14:07  

I think the one thing that energizes most of my skills — and it’s a soft skill, I think it’s empathy and compassion. And it comes from non-judgment. Similar to you, I am a superstar when it comes to all things money, wealth building, and teaching people how to make their business profitable, more efficient in both personally and professionally. I was taught by some of the best in the world and I practiced that craft for over 20 years. By using this craft that I was taught and that I studied, but because of my background, because of my story, people trust me because I don’t judge them and I give them the gift of going second. I’m very raw, vulnerable and honest about what I’ve been through from the tragedies to the triumphs, the mistakes, I do it with humility, and that helps very ambitious driven people. Not only do we help them be as successful as possible or be the best leader as possible — make the most money as you can and make the most impact that you can. But how do you do this while also cultivating your mindset, your unconditional love for yourself and having the best relationship you can with the people that are important to you. And so, my superpower is taking all of these crafts that I’ve learned in helping get the best out of others in a non-judgmental, loving, caring, empathetic way. And I think that’s where it starts for me. I just truly truly love people. I don’t have a problem with envy and jealousy. I want them to be as successful and happy as possible. And I think my honesty that I walk this journey with them. I think that’s what separates me from others. I get to like I work with coaches. I’m in a mastermind. I have a psychologist I’m walking this journey every single day. Everything I asked them to do or the homework or the stepping in and leaning up to get their best life possible is the same stuff I do each and every day of my life. And I think it all begins when we serve ourselves first and you’re on this journey because you’re doing a lot of body biohacking to be the best possible version that we can be. So that we can serve our communities, our businesses, our families and our friends as best as we can. And so, I think that’s my superpower. And that’s a pretty long-winded answer, but I hope that made sense. 

 

Richard Matthews  16:28  

I actually really liked that too. Empathy is one of those soft skills that people don’t realize how powerful it is. And my business partner and best friend in a lot of things, has that same skill set. And it is amazing to me how quickly he can get another person to open up and trust him completely. And my wife has that skill as well. And it’s beautiful. It’s a skill because It’s not something you can fake, right? You can’t pretend to care about someone. You can’t just wish that they have good outcomes. You have to like, feel it in your bones that you really want them to succeed. And it’s an amazing gift to be able to give someone else — to really hear them and to really care about them. And then, when you have that as a starting place, when you bring in the skills that you’ve learned in your business over on top of that, it really gives you a powerful way to help those people. 

 

Tommy Breedlove  17:40  

I agree. And it’s either you have it or you don’t too. And it’s something you can continue to cultivate. And you do that through the work and the craft. Also, I always say to all people, “two ears and one mouth.” There’s a reason we have two ears and one mouth. Now, we’re on the show to talk. So that’s a little different. But I think it’s deep listening. I think it’s empathetic listening, I think it’s compassionate listening. And when you really stop and listen to the other person, and you get completely in the “here and now” and we’re not thinking about the next thing we’ve got to say, or what next deal we have or thinking about the past, and you get fully present with people, and you come from a place of service, and you can really hear their wants, their needs, their desires, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. For those of us it sounds like your wife, your business partner, it’s also somewhat of a curse. And so, you have to be careful with boundaries. Because when you take on other people’s needs, desires, wants and or issues, you know, we all have our wounds and our insecurities and our fears. None of us are alone in that world. We have to make sure that we not only work on ourselves, but also set up healthy boundaries so that we don’t absorb some of that empathy and compassion that we have.

 

Richard Matthews  18:54  

Yeah, it’s an interesting thing too, because you have to, you have to protect yourself. But having empathy as your superpower means that you don’t think about yourself first. Right? And so, you have to train yourself to do that.

 

Tommy Breedlove  19:10  

And that’s why I have coaches and mentors all around me to crack that whip.

 

Richard Matthews  19:15  

Yeah. Just as an interesting aside. This is actually something that my business partner I chatted a whole bunch about this last month. I have the skill set of empathy. But it’s not like a foundational level thing for me and it’s something that I have taught myself because of the whole systems and processes thing, I can see like, the reason it works, how it works. And we’ve actually talked about this, like, when he’ll talk to someone, and his first thought is how can I find the best thing for them? Like, it’s the same… That’s someone who’s empathetic naturally is just doing that. It just comes to them, that’s how they think. And my same approach, I might have the same thing or do the same thing with someone. But the way I got there was because I’m looking at all these different inputs and this whole system that goes into like, “Okay, I know this would be good for them..” And like, I end up at the same place. So for me, it’s a learned thing. It’s something that I have to think about and put effort into to get to that place. So it’s cool to work with people who have that innate gift, if that makes sense. 

 

Tommy Breedlove  20:34  

Oh, totally. But isn’t it cool though, that’s what makes the world go around as we all have these superpowers and, and talents and desires? And systems or processes are just as important as the work that we do. I would be completely worthless without an unbelievable team, and systems and processes, and people around me. I would just be a balloon that floats away. Literally a balloon. But you know that we all use … as long as we’re all using our skills to be of service to others in some way through our entrepreneurial craft or whatever… Or work both in and out of the business. I love that thing of humans and we all got our talents together. We all work together.

 

Richard Matthews  21:20  

Favorite, like real world aspect of that is if you ever go to I’m sure Atlanta is like this, you know, I grew up in Southern California. So, like the San Diego, LA traffic to me, blows my mind. Because there are like — traffic is horrible. I don’t like being in it. But I love watching it. Because it’s like all these individual people that are all by themselves. And yet they’re all following the same set of rules. And it’s like, surprising how very little we all crash into each other. 

 

Tommy Breedlove  21:54  

Another example would be the airport and the Washington airport is a very good example of that as well.

 

Richard Matthews  22:01  

Sure you see that a lot with all the traveling you do.

 

Tommy Breedlove  22:04  

Oh, I was actually thinking about writing a book on it. About what I experienced when watching an airport. And I don’t want to go too deep down that path, but I’m actually highly considering writing a book on it. And it would be very interesting with these travels. But yeah, it’s fascinating. This whole human-life journey is fascinating to me. 

 

Richard Matthews  22:23  

I completely agree. And, you know, that’s actually why we do shows like this one. Because I think really getting to understand other people’s stories and hearing their stories is what makes the world go around.

 

Tommy Breedlove  22:34  

Totally. And knowing we’re not alone.

 

Richard Matthews  22:36  

Yeah. 

 

Tommy Breedlove  22:36  

On some level, we all want to be seen, heard and loved. All of us. We all want to be validated. We all want to be respected. And the flip side of that is we’re all scared. We’re all insecure. We all have these feelings of “What if they figure out I really don’t know what I’m doing? or what if they know my deepest, darkest desires?” And the key for this and just humanity is to cut the BS that we’re not alone. We’re human. We all have the same human needs. We can put whatever we want out there on social media, on our resumes, and our businesses. But at the same time, we just all want to be seen, heard, loved, and respected. And we want to be safe, period. Cut all the nonsense.

 

Richard Matthews  23:18  

…be free and moving forward and do things that make us feel like we’re coming alive.

 

Tommy Breedlove  23:23  

And how fortunate we are to be here; to have this conversation, right?

 

Richard Matthews  23:28  

Absolutely. It also blows me away that we can’t even do this like 10 years ago. We couldn’t have done this

 

Tommy Breedlove  23:33  

Yeah, we’re at two very separate places too.

 

Richard Matthews  23:37  

So my flip side of that – and you just hinted on this a little bit, right? Those deep dark places — on this show, we talked about the fatal flaw. And your fatal flaw, just like Superman has his kryptonite or Batman is not actually a superhero. He’s just a super dedicated ninja. A fatal flaw in your business is something that you have to contend with yourself that holds you back. You know it has held you back in either your growth or in taking care of clients or whatever… Something that’s held you back. And more importantly than what it is, but how have you dealt with it for people who struggle with the same kind of thing that are listening to the show?

 

Tommy Breedlove  24:14  

I don’t mind telling you what it is either. I know it right off the top of my brain. And again, this is all part of being vulnerable and honest. It’s perfectionism. In needing to be – like whether it’s the book or coaching or speaking – it is needing to be perfect. And that’s just the little boy wanting to be validated at the end of the day. By the way, that’s literally wanting to be affirmed and worried about what others think. And that comes from – perfectionism for me leads to unrealistic expectations of myself, my team members, my family, and then even people I don’t know. And so, I have a set of rules and expectations. And when you write a playbook for “How to Build & Live a Legendary Life”… imagine the pressure of that. And then all of a sudden the book does really well. And now, I’m holding myself to even another higher level that out of you know, perfectionism, doesn’t exist. And we’re not in control of anything except our thoughts, our attitudes, and our actions. And so, letting go of the results, putting your best work out there and not letting it shut down the process and also not letting it — for me, become a tyrant on myself first and then being a perfectionist tyrant on others, and unrealistic expectations… And so, how I deal with that every single day. I’ll start with the easy stuff. I have a coach and a set of mentors. And they know this is one of my biggest if not the biggest kryptonite I have. And they keep me moving and every single day of my life, not only do I have coaches and mentors I check in with, I also spend a significant amount of time, both with a formal and informal gratitude practice. And gratitude for me helps me to be thankful for the things I have. The fortunes. It gets me in the present moment and it gets me in a state of love and abundance as opposed to not being good enough — perfectionism and fear. And so for me, throughout the day, and we practice it as a team it’s almost cute & funny. You would laugh at it. We’re constantly telling each other what we’re grateful for. Even through the processes. For me, gratitude helps with control and perfectionism and then not getting enough. And finally, this is really, really cool. This was not my idea. The person who runs my practice, our Chief Operating Officer, we call her the catalyst of goodness, Miss Lindsey Nicole, she’s a rock star. She came up with this idea and it’s just been life changing for me and the team and herself. She sends — like we’re very open about our lives, so she has access to like, who I’m going to dinner with and what I’m doing. I’m going to yoga tomorrow morning and all of the business stuff that we do during the week. And she sends this amazing gratitude—congratulations email at the end of the week. That’s the greatest thing I’ve ever read and you get to go back and relive everything you did during your week with your family, your friends for fun and your business and in your life and what we accomplished and it is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen because it just overwhelmed you with accomplishment that we’ve moved the ball forward with gratitude and that hey, we are actually making. So we’re not constantly The next thing, the next thing, the next thing… And that perfection is kicking in. So those are the really 

 

Richard Matthews  24:37  

That’s really cool 

 

Tommy Breedlove  26:42  

…tools that I’ve implemented.

 

Richard Matthews  27:48  

I find that very interesting because that’s actually my kryptonite as well. It is perfectionism. And for me, there were two things that really helped me get over that in terms of actually shipping products and services to market. Because that was the thing that held my business back for the longest time. It was like, you know, and my wife laughed at me, you know, cuz I’ll be working on a website project for someone and I’ll spend 25 hours trying to get a pixel to move over one spot. She was like, that’s just retarded dear you need to stop. But it is true though. I’ve done that in the past I’ll spend a significant amount of time working on something that nobody will ever notice. And keeping it from actually shipping and —

 

Tommy Breedlove  28:34  

I relate, my friend…

 

Richard Matthews  28:36  

You get it. You’ve been there and I’m sure as an author, the same kind of thing. You know, I write something and I’ll go back and write it and rewrite it and rewrite it 100 times and my wife was like, “It was good the first time. Like, what are you doing?”

 

Tommy Breedlove  28:49  

I can totally relate. Three years. It took me to write that book. Three years. That’s insane.

 

Richard Matthews  28:54  

I get it. I get it. So for me, the couple of things — and one of them was a mindset shift that was given to me by — to your point a friend and mentor — who basically told me that perfectionism is the lowest standard you can hold yourself to. You can never achieve it, right? So if you can’t achieve it, it’s the lowest standard you can hold yourself to. She’s like, so what you need to do is you need to hold yourself to a standard you actually can achieve. Which for me, it was shipping the product, right? Ship the service. Like, get it out. Because that’s a much better way to measure yourself by than perfectionism because you can’t hit perfection, right? Like you mentioned earlier. So that was first of all, it was just a mindset shift. 

 

Tommy Breedlove  29:42  

That’s genius, and a gift. So you just gave me a gift. Thank you.

 

Richard Matthews  29:48  

Yeah, but that was a mindset shift for me. And realizing that hey, every time I’m looking at something and trying to make it perfect, I’m devaluing what I’m doing. Which is such a cool way to reframe what you’re doing in your head. So that was the first one and the second one for me was hiring a team and actually getting a 

 

Tommy Breedlove  30:10  

letting go 

 

Richard Matthews  30:11  

letting go. Right. And being like — and for me, realizing that the things I’m good at, you know, going back to superpowers — I can get the systems & process and get those things in place. I can get things working, and then just put it on the train and let someone else hit the button to make it live and get it shipped out. And so, those are the two things that have really helped me get over my desire to have everything be more perfect than it can be.

 

Tommy Breedlove  30:40  

So, I love that it was a challenge for me. Now, I love delegation because there’s an element of trust in it. And all of us — you call it superpowers in the business and entrepreneur world. And in my book Legendary, I call it your zone of brilliance and for us control and perfectionist freaks if we think we can do it all. But truly, you have your zone of brilliance — systems and processes. I have my zone of brilliance getting the best out of people in an empathetic listening compassionate way. And then trusting others who are better than us and their zone of brilliance to just let them be and let them shine. It is the most — it’s hard, you gotta let it go. Because this is our baby, right? This is our business, our baby. That’s our movement, our passion. It is where we make our impact. But letting go and watch and empowering other people and just letting them shine and teach us how great they are and vice versa. It’s just this beautiful thing. Beautiful, beautiful. 

 

Richard Matthews  31:41  

And my favorite is this podcast. I started this podcast by myself like four or five years ago. I got like, eight episodes recorded. And it was just so much work to get all the stuff done that goes into like launching the actual shows and getting them all out. And of course I was still struggling with being a perfectionist then. So, it was a real pain in the ass. It was like eight hours of work for every one hour podcast recorded so it languished for years. Horrible ROI. I finally brought someone on who you probably interacted with. My assistant, Mark, who handles a lot of the stuff with this podcast and just did all of it better than me. Like all of it. And it’s like, I don’t know why I was holding on to that for so long, right? So much better to delegate it. And, like now, this my whole podcast, like everything on here, I don’t do anything for this show. Like, literally nothing. I show up and do the interviews, because that’s the thing that I’m good at, and the thing I want to do and then everything else gets delegated. So, I have wholeheartedly grabbed onto the delegation thing because it changed my life for the better in a lot of ways.

 

Tommy Breedlove  33:01  

And then you know, I just talked about our Lindsey who runs — she literally runs our business so that I can do what I’m good at. She’s gotten so good at “No, Tommy, you’re not going to do that because you’re horrible at it. You’re just not going to do it. Neither am I going to do it, this person is going to do it.” And so it’s good to have those people who hold us honest, because then we’ll try to circle it all back in and control it right.

 

Richard Matthews  33:26  

Yeah, yeah. And it’s an interesting thing. Because like, you want to do the things. You want to do everything. And you know, for someone like me who’s really good at picking up skills, if my superpower essentially is I can pick up skills, which is not good for an entrepreneur who is trying to struggle with not doing all the things… I can get pretty good at design and get pretty good at copywriting. You get pretty good at, you know, at writing the books and putting things together and you realize that I shouldn’t be doing all of those things.

 

Tommy Breedlove  33:58  

I got a really cool story about it. So I’ve got a client, he’s about a 1500 an hour guy. A big advertising executive. And he calls me just raging one day. He’s a great client, just a beautiful human and his craft is so special. But he had spent four hours repairing a printer in his house for hours. And it was simply him fighting this printer that way he could have gone out, probably paid 100 bucks in a store and just bought a new one. And I was like, you realize you just spent $6,000 of your time fighting a $100 printer, and he goes, “I hate you.” And he hung up on me. And then he calls me back and he’s like, he goes, “You are so right.” And it just becomes this battle of ego and perfectionism and control and I got this and I can do this and this printer is not going to best me it’s just a cute story to magnify your point, right.

 

Richard Matthews  34:57  

Yeah, but it’s a thing that I deal with regularly. I mentioned earlier we travel full time, right? So I’ve got a house on wheels, and a car that’s got wheels on a trailer that we tow the car on. It’s got wheels, and you know, if you move your house around every couple of weeks, things break a lot. Yeah. And the whole being good at picking up skills means that I can do all the things – I know how to do plumbing and electrical and air conditioners and like literally all of it. I know how to do all those things. And on our last coach I actually did the renovations from bottom to top. Everything on top of running my business and traveling. So we did all that stuff. And I certainly can. But it was like this last year was a realization that I’m like, spending so much of my own time doing things that I really shouldn’t be unless I have a particular reason that I want to learn that because I do actually enjoy learning skills and doing some of those things. So like, sometimes I’m going to do this because I just want to know how to do that. But I have to know where my line is where it’s like okay, I’m doing this because I am actually going to enjoy it or I’m doing this because it’s a good use of my time. So I’ve been getting — we just spent the last three weeks in a repair shop I paid someone else to fix the radiator, our coach, one and a half thousand dollars later but still

 

Tommy Breedlove  36:18  

Yeah,

 

Richard Matthews  36:19  

I know I just… I didn’t need to do it myself. I had other things I needed to do in my business that were more important for my time and my skills.

 

Tommy Breedlove  36:27  

So and it’s baby steps, right Richard? It’s baby steps. But here’s what we don’t want to do as entrepreneurs. I mean, I also have a real estate portfolio – we have a real estate business that my wife manages. We have to be careful of this – all humans, all of us as humans struggle with this. We don’t want to step over like dollars to get two dimes and our time is our most valuable asset, right? And of all human beings, because it’s the only thing that’s depreciating every second of every day. We don’t know how much we have. And sometimes we’re penny wise and pound foolish and we’ll step over $1. again to get to a dime. And we have to be very careful of that. Because time is just as valuable as money, if not more valuable. And so if you’re doing it in service and in your business as an entrepreneur and to make an impact in people’s lives, that’s where we need to be. And let the others who are really good at radiators and fixing houses and roofs and plumbing, let them do their craft because that’s what they’re good at. Right?

 

Richard Matthews  37:29  

Yeah, and like to that point, one of the things in my own head that I’ve had to frame-shift for me, has been that, right? It’s like, you know, I can do that work, but it’s not going to be the best use of my time. And I’m depriving the other person who is good at that, of the opportunity to use their skill, right? to enrich my life, which is a weird thing, right? Because you have to sort of humble yourself to be like, “I’m gonna let this person be a benefit to me.” And that’s a hard thing to let yourself do.

 

Tommy Breedlove  38:06  

It’s so interesting and I see it all the time in very ambitious driven entrepreneurs and people in business. It is super easy for us to give impact and gratitude and service and speak into people’s lives. It is ridiculously difficult for some of us to receive whether it’s gratitude, love, help… it’s just like, we’ll give it but you know, we’re denying the other person the gift of giving that to us. Whether it’s a kind word, love, help, skill, you know, it’s just as much important for them to feel that when they give it up. So I think it’s something that we as a society need to become better at is receiving. I really do

 

Richard Matthews  38:59  

Yeah, I completely agree. And it’s one of the things I’ve been… the thing I’ve been working on for getting myself out of doing things. I know I shouldn’t be trying to just engender that skill of realizing like, I need to be good at receiving and I haven’t always been. Right. And it’s like I think it’s just my own thinking. And I’m not sure how true this is because I really thought it through – it’s a selfish thing that I want to feel like I’m self-sufficient. And if I receive from someone else, I’m no longer self-sufficient, which is a lie. Right? But it’s a lie we tell ourselves and anyways, I think it’s a good practice to say yes, and to accept things even when they’re given. Like, in American culture, buying dinner for someone else is like a big thing. And, you know, getting to a point where you can – in my business where I can take my family out to dinner and stuff like that is a cool place to be in your life. But at the same time when you go with someone else and someone’s like, “Hey, can I pick up dinner for you?” And you’re like … just say yes and accept it is a hard thing.

 

Tommy Breedlove  40:11  

Indeed. 

 

Richard Matthews  40:13  

And it shouldn’t be. But anyways, that’s just a thing I’ve been thinking about in my head.

 

Tommy Breedlove  40:18  

And you’re not alone. Richard, we’re all – a lot of us. Not all of us. A lot of us struggle with that. Like, on some level. It’s not just self-sufficiency, but for some of us and it sounds like for you. It’s also for some of us, it’s letting go of our egos and letting them validate us, instead of us having to validate ourselves like, no, I got this, let me pick it up.

 

Richard Matthews  40:40  

Let me do this thing.

 

And I just had a friend of mine – and the old client, you know, we were in Vegas and he was like, “Hey, let me take you out to dinner.” And he took us out to dinner and bought us like Wagyu Beef, and nice things like that. And I was like, it’s so cool. But at the same time, it’s like, you know, just being able to say “Thank you.” instead of being like, “No, let me pick up the check.” Yeah, is like… that’s a hard thing. And it’s… I don’t know, it’s weird that it’s hard, but it is.

 

Tommy Breedlove  41:06  

It’s a muscle too. You gotta work it, you know, you’ve got to constantly work at it right? It’s just a muscle. so