The problem is that people get stuck in that hustle mode. It looks like driving around a cul-de-sac at 60 miles an hour going, well, we're moving fast, we're going, we're moving, we're hustling. Right? Cool, but you're not going anywhere. What if you could build a business in the modern world as big or as small as you want without having to compromise the things that were the most important to you in the very beginning?

This is the Wealthy Consultant Talks podcast with Taylor Welch and Mike. Walker as they share with you today, their learning lessons from stories in their experiences over the past 10 to 15 years, and share with you right here, right now. Let's get into it. What is going on? My friends Mike Walker here.

Thanks for joining me on another episode of The Wealthy Consultant Podcast. I've got a topic to share with you today that I hope will resonate, and if it doesn't resonate now. I'm willing to bet it's gonna resonate for you later in the future. So, e, whether you're just starting out in your journey as a founder, a business owner, a leader of any type, um, or you've been in the game like myself for multiple decades, the reality is that what I'm about to share with you today is something that's gonna hit home at some time.

At some level, you're gonna face this monster that, uh, we all face as leaders and. That is the The success beast, the success monster, essentially what happens when you actually start winning and all the psychology that comes with that. It's an interesting dynamic and I wanna share that with you because the interesting thing is that there's this weird moment that happens.

As a leader, when you've got the team in place, the systems are working, the revenue's consistent, and yet you're still waking up uneasy and you feel tense and you feel like what's going on, right? And this is the, the paradox that happens when you make the, the transition from survival to truly scaling it and, and finding success in your business.

Uh, you would think, well, that sounds great, Mike. Like, I can't wait for that to happen. And, and I hope that's true for you. But what is often not talked about is the transition that has to happen psychologically in your operating system, your internal operating system for your brain. You have to understand that the drivers, the things that caused action and that got you to the success that you have now just started to, to experience that operating system begins to become faulty.

It has a diminishing return on results because it's just simply not wired for what is now required. Okay, so let's get into it. I wanna share with you some thoughts I've written down. I was actually journaling this, this journal, uh, entry by the way, is. Three, four years old now, I guess, I guess I could go look, but I just pulled up the, the frame here and I wanna share with you, uh, something that I wrote and, uh, you, you tell me in the comments or wherever you see this video, if you have the opportunity, let me know if this resonates for you, because if it does, it's something that I want you to know you're not alone.

Um, myself, I've definitely experienced this more than once actually. It seems to be kind of a, a stair step approach, um, that you'll, you'll end up facing over time. And also, um, if, if this is something that you're facing, that this is again, normal, but also, uh, a really great signal that you are on this next level of growth, but you've gotta change again, what got you here is not gonna get you there.

What used to work is no longer gonna work as well. You need to be prepared to change. And I wanna share with you some thoughts. So let me just read you this verbatim, exactly what I wrote. Uh, it looks like three or four years ago here. So, um, here we go. For some reason I'm still waking up tense. I still feel like there's this one mistake away or that there's something's, uh, on the verge of just becoming lost.

Uh, this is handwritten by the way. Uh. And you can't, I can't relax, not because things are bad, but because things are good. And that's when I started to realize something really, really uncomfortable, that for years I had built my identity around being the guy who could fight his way out of anything. The late nights, the pressure, the chaos.

That was my comfort zone because when I lived in survival mode. I found that peace didn't feel safe, it felt wrong, and so I started to revert back to whatever would get me back into fight mode. You start thinking, if I'm not grinding, am I falling behind? If I'm not saving the day, am I still valuable? If I'm not stressed, am I even working hard enough?

But what I had come to realize is that I wasn't necessarily addicted to work. I was addicted to the fight. The fight made me feel successful. But if you don't evolve away from this, I think that this will end up destroying you over time because at some point, leadership demands that you take control for clarity and that you move from urgency to trust and you move from survival to scale.

So again, it was, I, I really wanna underscore this key word, identity. Identity, you know, um, I'm sure this happens to you all the time. People come, Hey man, how's it going? And you go, oh, it's great. I'm, I'm so busy. I've got this going on, this going on. Life is crazy. Right? Cool. That, that sounds good, right?

That sounds like, wow. That's great. You're hustling. That must be really good. But isn't it funny if we just stop for a second, why do we associate that as a badge of honor? Oh, it's so crazy. I got so much going on. It's like, oh, I'm just, you know, burning the candle on both ends. I'm literally in my mind reaffirming.

It's so good that it's crazy. It's so good that I'm working so hard. Now. Look, do not read in between the lines and try to find something I'm not saying. Am I saying that it doesn't require hard work to become successful? Absolutely not. You're gonna grind. You are gonna hustle, and anybody who thinks that you can just live in this perpetual balanced land is.

Not. They're just not living in reality. To truly do something great requires you to become unbalanced at some points. To truly do something impactful in the marketplace requires you to step out on the edge of some of what some would even call sanity. But the reason why you feel confident and comfortable when others are questioning your sanity is because you are designed for it.

You are designed for it. A fish thinks a cat is crazy for not being in water. Does that mean that the fish is wrong? Probably right? Because the fish is looking at the cat in a totally different way. They're saying, you are crazy. You need to be in here. This is where the, the auction is. This is where it's safe to be.

And that cat's going, nah, I'm good. Right? I wasn't designed for that environment. So I really get frustrated when people. You know, kind of force this, oh, you gotta be more com more balanced, well, more balanced compared to what right now, here at the Wealthy Consultant in particular, like, we have our entire, uh, eight dials methodology.

It's a very holistic way of looking at the entire entrepreneurial experience from, from the sales and marketing components and, and those elements of business all the way over to lifestyle and mind work and the balance components. So yes, there does need to be balance. You do need some elements to keep you holistically.

You know, solid. Right. But, but I do feel that there is oftentimes, in many circles, too much emphasis on balance and it draws people back like, oh, maybe I shouldn't be. Trying so hard. Maybe I, I'm weird for, for wanting this so bad. That's your programming. But then of course it goes to the other side. You can pendulum swing, right?

So all the way to the other side where your identity is wrapped up in the hustle, the grind, the, the survival mode. And this came up, the, the entire reason I'm sharing this with you today is, and what got me searching for my journal entry was a client was on one of our group calls just earlier this week, and he was basically alluding to the fact of.

You know, that's been really difficult in, in some family dynamics. Uh, he didn't really share the details and I certainly wasn't gonna ask, but he just shared that, you know, personal life has been really, really challenging lately. But it was very interesting that because he had the team, because he had the systems in place, the business side was actually going really smooth and it was very conflicting for him.

And I thought, it made me think later, I was like, wow, isn't that interesting? He genuinely felt kind of conflicted, like, wait, so. Maybe I'm not so needed now. Like, what's going on in business and why is it that my identity doesn't match with the requirements? It doesn't act, uh, isn't, uh, synchronous to the reality of what's actually happening.

That when I go away, things still go on and things actually can even improve in some cases, right? That can be very conflicting for someone's who has built their foundational identity as a founder, as a business owner, as an entrepreneur, as a leader. Around being needed. And as soon as you start to evolve and create a more sophisticated environment that doesn't require your direct input all the time, it can be very conflicting because you start realizing, well, hang on, what do I do with myself when I'm not working 25 hours a day?

Right? Like, what's going on? And that's really what I wanted to share with you today, is that we need to understand that you have to trade that survival scrappy. Work every day of the, of the, uh, every hour of the day. For a more controlled state, but just because you may feel like you are not working as hard, you need to understand that it's not so much about working harder, it's about creating more leverage, and that comes through more clarity.

And so when you can, for example, sit down for 30 minutes or 60 minutes and map out something that is genuinely innovative, that truly is enterprise value creating. That one 30 minute or 60 minute time block is worth the equivalent of you hustling around all day long doing all kinds of random stuff that you were doing a year ago.

But if you don't realize that, and if you don't internalize that reality. The problem is that people get stuck in that hustle mode. So what does that look like? Well, it looks like driving around a cul-de-sac at 60 miles an hour going, well, we're moving fast. We're going, we're moving, we're hustling. Right?

How are you doing today? Oh, I'm doing great. I'm hustling, man. We're moving really, really good. Cool. But you're not going anywhere because as you ascend as a leader, you need to trade that movement for productivity. We need to get you into a more, uh. A higher level of frequency that is creating more movement, more enterprise value, more creativity through thought and through application and working through people.

And this is something that, again. It's very easy when you come up, you know, in the, in the startup bootstrap mode and, and you're just kind of lean and doing your thing and, and a solopreneur mindset, right? If you don't evolve into a CEO mindset, you will be perpetually stuck in hustle mode, and hustle mode will not survive.

It will, it will actually restrain your creativity and therefore it will restrain your results because you're constantly looping on being busy on acting. Like you're busy and acting like you're being productive, but you're actually just trying to find things to do. You're trying to create that artificial frequency that you are addicted to, and the reality is that you have people.

In all walks of life in all different industries, that that one idea that they had that day that they then broadcasted to their team or implemented into their systems or, or created in, in a new environment of their business, has exponential like levels of magnitude, higher output, and therefore return on results through a single thought versus just a day filled with to-dos and, and a bunch of hustle mode.

You know, um, action items on a to-do list, right? So, again, we'll wrap at this. I just really wanna encourage you, and I wrote this down for you. Um, I, I have a question to share with you. Here we go. Take the, so take this week, right? And I want you to audit your decisions and how many of them come from the fear of slowing down versus clarity of direction.

See, when you. When you get used to moving fast, slowing down feels really uncomfortable and it doesn't feel like you are performing at your peak. And yet if you realize that it is just you associating that hustle, grind culture for your identity, that identity needs to shift. You don't have to fight for your life anymore.

You have to like really focus on fighting for that longer term legacy effect of your business. But that's not gonna happen through the day-to-day grind mindset. It's gonna start looking through broader lenses and really thinking in a very different, more holistic way than you used to have to, to just be.

In survival mode and make sure that, you know the bills got paid next month, right? Very different mindset, very different results in the output when you make that switch. I hope this helps. I know it did me, it's something that, again, like I said earlier, you'll probably find stair step approaches towards this.

It, and, and inevitably you'll plateau again and you realize, wait a second. This is no longer starting to work as well either. I've gotta change my methodology, I have to change my psychology, the paradigm in which I look at my role here as a leader. And if you've anchored your identity to being needed, if you've anchored your uh, worth, your self worth to how hard your working.

Then I, I want to encourage you to really question that because what got you here will not get you there, and I don't want you to get stuck. All right? Take care guys. We'll see you in another episode of The Wealthy Consultant Podcast, like share, subscribe, all the things. It helps us out, but more importantly, I hope that it helps you out.

Or somebody in your life that need to hear this message. All right, take care guys.