The Emotional Connection You Have With Your Goals is When You’ll Win: Interview with James Burgess [Ep #194]

In this episode, we’re going to break down why a business plan will keep you stuck and it’s actually the emotional journey that will set you free. Stay tuned. 

Hey guys! Andrea Maxim here thank you so much again for listening to another episode of the profitable practice podcast. I had to bring on this guest, I had him on way back in the day when we are first starting this podcast. He was within my first 30 episodes and I will reference those later on in the show and in the show notes. But I am still riding this high from my previous episode 191, where I talked about how I found out how I was secretly sabotaging my business and my marriage. And the biggest thing that comes from that realization, from leaning into what I discovered about the imprint that my 8 year old self had with regards to money and immediately choosing to let go. I can even begin to tell you how different the dynamic is between my husband and me, how different I feel. I just let go of this baggage that I didn’t even know that I was carrying around because I didn’t have any emotional attachment to it, meaning it wasn’t a negative, it wasn’t a traumatic experience. But since having that discussion with my husband about my fear; that if I start making more money than him, if I start making a lot more money, if I start contributing more to our household that he was going to then just throw up his pants and just become a deadbeat husband, a deadbeat dad. Just like sit on the couch all day, watching shows, just raking in all the hard work that I was doing. 

And when I had that conversation with him, and I said I’m letting this go forever. This has nothing to do with you, I know that you won’t be this person. This is something I had to let go of, and I made that decision instantly. I said it’s done. The things that he had been showing me, the things that he’s been doing, the way that he’s actually started to act has been the way that I’ve always wanted him to show up as a husband. Which also I reflected on how much I was putting this negative energy on him, this pressure on him without even realizing it. And I will tell you guys from a financial perspective, I had an excel spreadsheet listing how much he contributed, how much I contributed; if he owed anything, if I owed anything. I was counting everything to the penny because we needed to be equals. That was what my belief was and now that I’ve let it go, he’s getting things done around the house without me even asking. 

He is showing up as a father in such a more productive way, he is making our house a better place. He is actively doing more landscaping around our home, he is actively doing more cleaning and jobs, and taking care of me so much more differently. And I will also say on an emotional side for the past couple of weeks, I’ve been feeling very exhausted almost like I was just clawing my way to figure out what was stopping me from being able to grow. And now that I’ve started to release it, I’ve noticed that I’ve just leaned into relaxing more and not working so hard and not being so focused on the drive and letting my body emotionally recover. And that’s exactly why I wanted to bring James Burgess on today. He has been my accountability coach since May of 2015, I’m pretty sure that’s the right date, it was May, it was 2015 or 2016. And when I started working with him, I was coming from a very similar place as to where you may be coming from now. It’s just about tactical; what can I do? How can I do it? You know doing all of the physical work trying to learn all of the things, trying to do all of the execution. When in reality, and it just takes time, this is my journey; it took me 30 years to figure this out. When in reality it’s the emotional component, it’s the unlocking of things, it’s the traversing through the fearful journey. Traversing through the hard times and being very aware of your environment, about what you are creating, about where your obstacles are and about taking undeniable full responsibility for every action, every decision, and every reaction, everything that you have. And it just was as apparent to me as I went through my journey again, go back and listen to episode 191 to hear the entire transformational story there. 

But it was just so true. I created the marriage that I was starting to become resentful towards. I created the dynamic between my husband and I that was making him not want to do things; not feel lighter, not feel that he could execute on his own time. I did that, and that was something that I had to take responsibility for and make the changes for. So I wanted to bring on James so that he can bring you a little bit more enlightenment, help you on that journey as well. And I can’t wait to hear about what unfolds for you as you continue to fight through the fear and go through the hard things and stop searching for the right answer. And you’re probably already on the path and you just don’t want to be on it because again, learning and personal development is hard and painful. And it requires you to drop your ego a lot and humble yourself but that is what’s going to make you a better person. That’s what’s going to make you a better business owner and the more you can start to release this pressure, the more abundance you will be able to attract. So without further ado, let’s jump into the interview with James. 

ANDREA: Hi James! Oh my goodness, I’m so excited to have you back. You are one of my original hosts or original interviewees, whatever the word is on the podcast. And I’ve been working with you ever since and it has been such an amazing ride and I have to attribute the podcast I did a few weeks ago on my big epiphany, on my big reasoning for literally sabotaging my own growth to working with you and where you have also learned and personally grown in the development that you’ve had. So I needed to bring you back on to thank you again so much for that awakening. I cannot begin to tell you how amazing my marriage has been, my outlook at my business has been since and that was literally a few weeks ago. But for those that don’t remember who you are and I am going to reference you’re 3 other podcasts in just a second. James, introduce yourself once again to our audience. 

JAMES: Well before I do that Andrea, it’s always my pleasure to interact with you at any level, at any time because I always told you to go out to our clients as an example of what is possible. When the synergy is created between the business and the business owner and the business client, we have the pleasure of providing the umbrella around that synergy and the results that you’re creating speaks for themselves. 

So yes, for your listeners my name is James Burgess. I’m a best-selling author of the book ‘Chaos’ . Business leaders can master the power, focus all the—I apologize for that all the clock behind me, I didn’t sit in the right spot for this podcast. And I’m the founder of Focus 31, we are an international management consulting practice dedicated to small business. And intentionally provided our programs and the pricing of those programs so that it is accessible by any business at any level of success. Our mandate is to get business owners focused and accountable for their intentions. We do that initially from a business plan and well that sent shivers up every business owner back, we do it in a very unique approach. It is one on one, it is open, it is honest, it is creative and it’s fast and it’s easy and then we hold our business owners accountable. Because a business plan whether it is fast and easy or long and arduous is still a useless business plan if it’s actually never implemented. And so we support the business in the day to day implementation indefinitely as long as Focus 31 is bringing value to the client. 

And we had a marketing team in the Philippines so that now we can also offer a full speed of marketing and services and we’re actually for new coaches, who may be listening, our new business coaches, we just licensed our entire program and rather than in the franchise mall, we don’t pay too much. License agreements give you more flexibility and lower cost to get access to everything we created here at Focus 31. And now that I’ve used up the entire time, I’ll just say goodbye and we’ll move on. 

ANDREA: Now I distinctly remember our very first interaction, I think it was May 2015-ish. And what I loved about how you set up our relationship, I consider you my accountability coach, my mentor. We have monthly calls and I don’t think I could ever let you go. It’s been how many years now that we’ve worked together. Anyways, when my favorite exercises that you did wasn’t ‘fill-out this pdf form’ it wasn’t like ‘write down what your goals are’. You actually walked me through a visualization of putting myself into the future, 3 years into the future.  And I have not let go of that visualization exercise since we started working together. I would love for you to discuss a little bit more about why—and this is my personal opinion—I hate coaches that have people fill-out ‘custom avatar worksheets’ or ‘goal-setting worksheets’ or whatever. Because just like you said, you can do all of the pdf’s worksheets that you want, but if you are not actually executing your plan, then you’re just kind of making your busy work for yourself. Describe why your approach to business coaching and mentorship and accountability is so different. 

JAMES: Well, that’s a great question and thank you for that lead in and again, wow, when I hear you say you’re still holding on to that moment, it sent shivers up my back. So your listeners should understand that I am designated as a master practitioner in NLP timeline therapy and NLP coaching as well as being a trainer in an institute for in performance hypnosis. As designated by the American Board of Hypnotherapy and NLP. And what we do that is so different is we actually have you live your future for a moment. We have you time-warp, if you will, out into your three year vision and we set you down and have you experience. So we do this, it’s a soft piece of timeline so we have you go out to your timeline and actually have the experience of sitting in your future business. And just allowing your active imagination, that’s the key, your active imagination to take in everything that you’re gaining in that experience and bring it back into the room with me and talk it through. And from there, we create a vision statement and at the end, the vision statement is just how much, by when, doing what, for whom and what geographical location. The emotion and the flush in the cheeks that every business owner gets when we do this process speaks volumes in terms of understanding that in 3 years which is by when. The how much is just overwhelming, a positive overwhelming with the possibilities. And so I access where necessary my NLP training to just bring the best out in the thinking for every business owner. 

ANDREA: And I would absolutely have to agree that it was that emotion, it was the sensations, it was the visual, it was the hearing, it was all of those intangible senses that you walked me through. And I know that’s not something we’re going to go over today because it can be positive for the right people and it can also have a negative outcome for the right people so we certainly don’t want to be shifting anybody in a negative experience. But that’s one of the reasons why I love your approach and why I really believe you set me up to unlock this blocker that I didn’t even realize that I had. It took us however many years to get there, took me 5 years to get there and that’s just my journey. And I don’t believe that necessarily everyone has a one year breakthrough success, that 2 year breakthrough success. It took me 5, 6 years to get where I am, but I got to that 3 year journey that we mapped out back in the day. But you’ve always brought in this intangible part of coaching. And I know you work with other practitioners, I know you work with other business owners. I would love for you to describe the difference you see between where your students or clients come from when they’re just doing the tactical. And when they start working with you and start working in that intangible level of success. Where do you see those big jumps in progress? 

JAMES: It can be at the very beginning, it can be far away through, and it can be towards the end. You know, what I know for certain is when a business owner steps into the responsibility of leading their business I get it to the success that we define in the 3 year vision. I’ll just step back for the 3 year vision for a second, one of the greatest quotes that I live by is from Michael Angelo and actually he has it wrong. His quote goes; the greatest danger we all see is not that we aim too high and miss. But that we aim too low and achieve. And I think I have spoken to a lot more current day business owners than Michael Angelo has or ever can. And he got it slightly wrong. I believe the greatest danger we face is not that we aim too high and miss but that we aim too low and still miss. So with the vision statement of going out and visiting our future 3 year self, will a client who sees 3 million, 253 thousand dollars being their 3 year perspective of what their unconscious mind is telling them about the future holds for them, maybe not. But I know for certain that for $3,253,000.00 rather than $425,000.00 the business owner will make decisions between now and that 3 year period that will move them closer, make their business greater, faster, stronger, better. Then they would if they were just reaching the add a couple of thousand dollars on to their revenues. Alright? 

And so aim high and just keep aiming high. And there are no mistakes in that, will you achieve it? Perhaps not, and yey if you do, I know you’ll still achieve a whole lot more in aiming for that great amazing for the first 3 year period. So that’s one perspective, and there’s another piece. I have a sense, I’ll speak to the coaches, and this is where it happens the most. And that I think a whole change will appear for your clients as holistic health practitioners, I’ll just use that bucket. Which is to say, I’m dropping you into a bucket ladies and gentlemen I’m just defining your industry that way for a common understanding. My sense is, I actually see this happening with my clients; we define the journey, 3 year vision and we reverse engineer, how are we going to get there? And they make progress, some progress week over week. Because we’re monitoring their progress in giving feedback on it and then, smack, they’ll hit a barrier. And I can actually steal them, stand still and reverberate with the impact. Okay? And what they typically do is shift, they’ll try to redefine their business somehow and they’ll kind of move, If you will in a physical term, shift to the left. And now go forward a bit more but then, they hit the same barrier again but they don’t recognize it as the same barrier. And what do they do? Rather than stepping into it, they shift again. And they shift again, and if you think of a triangle, the straightest distance the shortest between 2 points is a straight line. And the more you pivot out, the more you’ll face that Hypotenuse, which is a much longer journey. 

And so what I encourage business owners is to be a business warrior and step into the challenge and not just step into it but welcome it. Turn up to the universe and say, thank you for the challenges before me because I know when I break this challenge down I will be celebrating a personal success. The success of personal growth and I know my business is going to grow. And once you do conquer it, turn up and say give me another one. Give me another challenge, I’m ready. Give me 2 more challenges, I’m just so excited about how I got through this one. And the business, as a business owner grows in that fashion celebrating challenges, getting through them, the business grows and we stay as close to that straight line as we possibly can without pivoting away. Trying to find an easy way because who we are was defined when we were between the ages of 6 and 12. And you can’t change that by pivoting. Because it’s you today pivoting, but you’re pivoting with the same mindset that was created in your childhood. When you make decisions as a child about money, about relationships, about so many other strategies based on what you heard from your parents, in their interaction. What you heard between your parents’ interaction and you, what you heard between the parents’ interaction and your siblings and maybe even the interaction of your grandparents or even fellow students around you. And many of those strategies become very positive, but many of them can become negative. And we all have them in our definition of money, in our definition relationships.

I’m a type 1 diabetic, I didn’t know where that came from, and I realized when my wife and I had a bit of a disagreement, it’s more of a disagreement. She’s never read my book and that drove me crazy and I had to get her attention on that. And how did I do it? I lost my left great toe to get her attention. And that woke me up as an NLP train person. I said ‘why am I doing this? What behavior am I creating?’ I’m creating the need to be seen by my wife. And I realized I did the same thing as a child. My 2 brother’s and a sister were 8, 9, and 10 years older than me. They were growing up to special junior college grade 13, back in the days when we had grade 13. They were going to Switzerland and all of the conversation at the dinner table was about them and none of it was about me. And I was watching Star Trek at that time and during the commercials, the Canadian Diabetic Association came on, then talked about diabetes. And my unconscious mind went ‘huh, here’s how we can get some attention. Let’s give James diabetes.’ Lo and behold within a year I had diabetes. My second brother was offering to come back from Switzerland, my mother was laying all my food, and my sister was hovering around the house to make sure everything was ok. I got the attention that I wanted and that got locked in.

And I remember as an early speaker, I wasn’t speaking to help the business owners in my room, I was speaking to get their attention. What a stupid idea that was! And yet I didn’t understand where that strategy was coming from. It was coming from the need for attention, and maybe a bit of a short man syndrome too. I am only 5’6 and a half and I acknowledge that, but it hit home when I gave up the toe to get my wife Glenn’s attention. And I have corrected it and now? 80% of my clients are women. Why? I believe because I’m more open and caring with the intention of truly enabling women business owners to get to their success. I hope that helps people. 

ANDREA: You’ve told me that story before and it still hits me on so many levels when I hear about that. And there’s this so much frustration that also comes up with that, meaning I know that there’s people that are listening right now that are like ‘I don’t know yet, what I don’t know. I don’t know yet where my blockers are coming from, I don’t know yet why I’m not growing in my business. I don’t know yet why I’ve created the environment, the marriage, and the relationships that I’ve created.’ And I can feel them, I can feel you listening being like how do I know? How can I speed up the process of figuring that out? You know I personally am not an NLP coach and our interaction was literally out of nowhere. I just said, you know what, this is the fourth time that I had stalled myself from completing this task from my online business that I know will really help it grow. And I don’t know why I keep finding all these other things to get in the way so I don’t do it, so I put it off. And your very next statement was ‘well what was your money relationship like between your mom and your dad, when you’re 8?’ that was like the very next question. And we’ve been working together for years but it was just this one moment where I think again, everything was in alignment, you connected the universe and said she’s ready and then everything unveiled itself.

JAMES: So this the key, it’s the ability to look at a transaction, there’s an element between that conversation that we won’t go to except that you told me a story that was transactional in its nature that represented money. Right? And that I said recognize that as being the trigger and took you back to explore. And so the power of NLP and performance hypnosis is simply to be open to looking at what you’re doing and considering the possibilities that this is not new whatsoever. And you have been following the strategy all your life. And it’s just being open to the signals, the triggers that are prompting the response and you know, when you got a third party listening in, it’s a heck of a whole lot easier. 

ANDREA: So I mean obviously, people are going to reach out to you after this podcast. I’m going to put your information in the show notes. But for those that are still on their own personal journey, what would be some tactics, some strategies, some ways that people can start to listen. My other mentor’s a huge proponent of just sitting in silence and allowing the silence to start to provide you with some of those answers. What are some ways that people can start to get into that place that they’re being more open, more receptive, letting go of some of perhaps the victimhood that we tend to carry with us in certain aspects of our lives. How do you get people warmed up to this? 

JAMES: Well my approach is, let’s go. All the stretching kids do before they start doing sports . When I was 8 year old, I used to stand up at the gate at the arena they’ll open the door and let me go. Right? Let me lose, I’m the third up at the gate. I also have the fastest skaters in the league. I just love Benjamin Franklin when he says that the world is made up of 3 kinds of people; those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move. We can’t find the triggers in our life that are holding us back if we don’t move forward towards something. A good friend of mine Jerry Robert, the publisher of my book, used to say ‘if we stand at one of the deserts and we want to cross to the other side, we can’t conceivably do it if we stand still we may lose direction part way across. But then we’ll see an oil drum along the way that represents the straight line to the other side of the desert and we can course track.’ You don’t have all the answers that will get you to your vision, you have today’s answers. Today’s answers will move you in the direction and tomorrow, when you move into some action, you will get feedback on that action and there may be a due course time for a course direction when we see the next barrel on the desert. And so I’m a big proponent if you want to find all the triggers that hold you back, you have to step into that business warrior attitude and just keep moving forward. But do it with the plan of intention. 

Take the time to create your vision and then reverse engineer. And do it with us because again we’re price small business owners or get our free home study program, focus yourself and do it on your own. Get that intention, get the next steps and keep making them. And then when you suddenly go oops! Put up your hand and say something just happened and talk it over with a family member, a coach, a close friend who might be able to just walk you through by what might be happening with you. Obviously the more trained they are in personal relationships clearly the better but keep moving. 

ANDREA: And the biggest piece, the biggest—not that I didn’t know it already but what I loved when I went through my journey again, it’s totally transparent out there on the podcast a couple of episodes back. And even my husband said it and you said it, you’re like ‘this is a you problem, you have to figure it out, you have to make the adjustments and that has always held true to me when my core values is personal responsibility and taking responsibility for everything which I think allows me to be a lot more introspective. But what you’re saying is also true. If you are not going through those barriers, if you are constantly pivoting, if you are afraid to take those steps, and that is a ‘you’ issue. It’s not a circumstance issue, it is not a relationship issue that is a ‘you’ issue and that is where you need to explore. 

And so to start to close this up, because I always like to give people some sort of actionable strategy to start taking, let’s go all the way back to basics and the podcast that I want everyone to listen to are the one we have with James. But hopefully we can summarize it very quickly before ending today is episodes 18, 22, and 28; which is one of the big reasons why I started working with you in the beginning. Before I knew what was going to unravel and unwrap itself, was that you created a business plan strategy without a business plan. Because I hate planning, I hate feeling confined although I’ve opened myself up to that since in my own way. But describe that tactical piece of not only creating a plan but staying convicted to it and where you see those breakthroughs happening. 

JAMES: Yeah, and the breakthroughs truly do happen in, like I said, a business plan done easily and fastest are some that allow you to do it or are long and arduous where you got cash flows and etc. if they’re never actually implemented they’re all useless. And so unlike any other business planning service that I’m familiar with, the Focus Accountability System Protocol and we got to use those words means something. Focus, because the business planning gets you focused on your intentions. Our System makes you accountable to fulfil them and it is a protocol. I think of someone suffering from cancer and I would hate to think that anybody is and yet obviously there are. The protocol calls for a doctor’s doing, for the doctors know how to do and the patients also fulfil their responsibilities. Like ‘hey stop smoking if it’s lung cancer you’re suffering from.’ right? 

And so our focus accountability system, if you focus, the system holds you accountable and the protocol being we will get you to your success. When you as part of the protocol do what you need to do in order to fulfil the business plan. And it’s the weekly accountability where we take a 3 year vision in the plan. And you bring it down to the plan to do annual objectives, the targets, the measurable definition of success for the business in the next 12 month period. Then we bring it down to quarterly action plans, the project work that allows the new revenues to be created or builds up the infrastructure of the company and we bring up right down to weekly intentions of what work is going to be progressed this week, and what sales and marketing activities are going to generate the revenues in the same week. And because I’m watching and giving feedback, it takes the responsibility, the accountability to actually to an extra high-end level. There’s just that sense that if I’m a nice guy, I truly am a nice guy and at the same time, my clients tell me that because they know I’m watching and waiting. And oftentimes calling for it, they have a higher level of accountability to create the report that allows them to plan up their week brilliantly. And when I get feedback on, I have resources I could joule, I kick, I prod, I celebrate most importantly the prior week successes. Provide resources and ideas to think about, that keeps them motivated to keep going, I’m looking for the triggers that may be causing problems. And then we have Friday open office calls for 30 min. focused only in business improvement calls to talk over the issues.

And the accountability continues by bringing the business owner back every 90 days to revisit the planning. It’s the whole system that just works so well that I’ve got clients in the case of Andrea coming her fourth year with us I believe. And another client of mine has been with us for 10 years, and it’s because they’re getting their success and respecting the intention of the system protocol and the power of the universe. 

ANDREA: The system and the process will set you free as they say.

JAMES: That’s somewhere, yeah. 

ANDREA: So if people do want to reach out to you again, we’re going to put all the links in the show notes as well as the previous episodes that we did with you. What are some of the best ways? 

JAMES: First of all, if you want a free copy of my book, so go to chaosthepoweroffocus.com and for those of you who are a little disconnected around your personal intentions and your business intentions. Pay very close attention to chapter 1, it’s about defining your life’s primary objectives. Because if your life’s primary objective isn’t aligned with what you’re creating in your business, you can’t be successful. There’s always going to be that struggle between you and your business. So I truly want you to dig into that and understand that yes, what you want to create in your life is aligned with your naturopathic practice or your other holistic practice. And then you can move in to creating your vision statement in chapter 8 where we walked through the entire business planning. So there’s one resource for you. You’re also welcomed to go to focus-yourself.com and register to get our study program. Where you will actually get me getting feedback as you build your business plan. If you can listen to the video and do exactly what the video said, you can build your business plan on our platform. We have a portal, its password protected, we’ll give you access to it and we will walk you through exactly what to do and how to do it to create your brilliant business plan. If you’re not that great with DIY projects, I know I’m not. I hire everybody, anybody to work around this house because I’m not a DIY kind of person, I’ll just mess it up. I take that back, I do dig a really damn good lawn. 

ANDREA: Life skills #lifeskills.

JAMES: Obviously email me at james@focus31.com. I’ll be happy to have a 90 min chat, to do a deep dive on your business and find if there’s a fit between us, if we don’t I’ll give you 3, 5, ways to move your business forward and you’ll al’ of that for free and the home study program if you want it as well. I’m a giver, I want you to see it. It is my intention to be a giver all the time and through Andrea and her wonderful audience I wish you all the very best. 

ANDREA: Thank you so much James. Oh my gosh guys, that was a lot and I love how generous James is and I do hope that you take him up on at least one of those resources that he commented on. And if he is the right person for you for accountability, please sign up with him. I will happily have a conversation with you about what it’s been like for me to work with him. And if you are still having difficulty not only with the accountability side but actually the execution. Getting things done, that’s where elite level membership comes in, where we don’t give you the to-do list, you give us your to-do list and we will actually execute it as quickly as we can and try to get everything on that to-do list done to the best of our abilities. So if you want to learn more about that, go to maximizedbusiness.ca/elitelevel and there’s even a behind the scenes video there that I recorded that you can watch and learn a little bit more about what it is that we offer. If you have any questions for me, do not hesitate to reach out @andreamaximnd, I would love to hear your stories, I would love to hear what your journey has been like. I would love your aha moments, don’t be a stranger, please reach out. I will talk to you soon. I’m Andrea Maxim and I’m out.