Calm Under Pressure: Performance Strategies for Entrepreneurs with Khai McBride

Performance isn’t just for athletes, it’s the missing piece in your business playbook.

In this episode, we sit down with Khai McBride, business performance coach and former competitive gymnast who’s coached everyone from Olympic athletes to top-producing entrepreneurs. 

Khai shares how 80% of success is mindset, why most people fail at implementation, and how his Shift, Grow, Scale framework can help you break through plateaus, reinvent your identity, and finally follow through on the strategies you already know you should be doing. 

Whether you’re a real estate agent, a mortgage pro, or just tired of feeling stuck, this conversation will light a fire under you to stop overthinking and start performing at your highest level.

Work With Khai: https://www.khaimcbride.com/

Connect With Khai On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/khaimcbride

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Transcript

 What you define as an entrepreneur is a myth because it's not true. People believe that an entrepreneur is somebody who's self-employed, somebody who's a solopreneur. I, I hear this all the time. I'm an entrepreneur, so you're gonna see me working 24 7. Ooh, that's a solopreneur. If you're a solopreneur, your job is worse than having a job because you're a slave to your own business.

Performance coaching. What is it exactly, and how did you find yourself in that space? I don't think anybody. Actually picks what they're currently doing. I fell into everything by accident. Performance and mindset, uh, is in our everyday lives with all of us, with every single person. And whether you reach your potential or not is is gonna be how you handle your own personal performance.

I always look at people and I say, what is your why? What is your driving force? You look at a Michael Jordan, it was all to get back at his high school coach for, for cutting him. You look at Kobe Bryant, his, his entire driving force was, was just to be the best. And so sometimes I have to get into those conversations.

So one of the things that you say is that you help people reinvent themselves. What does someone have to accept to be okay with reinventing themselves? Reinventing yourself is partially internal. It's. What you currently believe and what you've been told. But so much of reinvention is external. You need to hang out with different people because you need that external influence and that shift is harder than anything.

A team, USA for TaeKwonDo went to Barcelona and I did a 30 minute session and I've been getting messages from them. These athletes that have one goal, that have won silver, that have won bronze, and they said, I'm a world champion now because of you. They put years and years and years into something that they were passionate about.

If the pressure breaks you, when you finally get there, I, I played a small part in such a big thing. But that small part could have been the difference between falling and not falling. It's letting them realize their dreams. Hi, thank you so much for joining us. We're thrilled to have forward fam, west Coast fam on the pod here at Not Nice, clever.

Um, and let's just. Get into it because I love your industry, but it might seem niche to a lot of people who aren't familiar with it. So performance coaching, what is it exactly and how did you find yourself in that space? That's a really good question. I don't think anybody actually picks what they're currently doing, except maybe my daughter who just graduated and now is the global social media coordinator for ugg, which sounds so amazing.

Um, I fell into everything by accident. The only thing that I didn't fall into by accident was I graduated business with an emphasis in it, and then I worked at a title company that got me into mortgage. Then I started coaching the business side of mortgage. But what I found was. People have so many limiting beliefs and so many obstacles when it comes to implementing.

And so I, so I was really fascinated by Tony Robbins and his ability to be basically a performance coach, a mindset coach. I mean, everybody looks at him as a motivational speaker, but it's so much more than that. And so I want to say in, in like the late two thousands, like 2009, 2010, I started really.

Diving into the psychology of performance and mindset and what holds people back, because that's 80% of the journey. I can take a business coaching client, so I'm a business performance coach, but 80% of it is them holding themselves back and getting in the way. And um, and then I, and you didn't mention the LFG fam as well too with Arjun Ding, but Arjun, who is one of my business clients.

In 2014, he hired me to mindset and performance coach him to prepare for the TaeKwonDo World Championships. And I believe it was in Rio. It was either in Rio or in Rome. And my job was just to discipline him, get his mind straight, calm, his nerves, prepare for a a world stage, and he was the one that really coined.

The phrase performance coach with me, uh, I thought of myself as a mindset coach first, but because with him it's about physical performance, dealing with nerves, anxiety, and then I started, and one of the things that Tony Robbins talks about is he talks about how physiology actually controls psychology and how your body moves, like he would say.

If you want to be happy, just smile more and you will somehow be happier. You know? And, and if you, if you get on, if, if you break up with somebody and you start listening to sad Taylor Swift songs, the physicality of that will change your mindset, right? There's a time and a place for the sad songs. But don't dwell.

Right. Don't dwell. Right, right. So there's certain dark music, like don't get into your emo phase. Everybody was in that emo phase. Um, but that's how I got into it. I got into it is because. Performance and mindset, uh, is in our everyday lives with all of us, with every single person. And whether you reach your potential or not is is gonna be how you handle your own personal performance.

Yeah. I wanna know if people self-identify that they need a performance coach or if that's something that you've had to kind of finesse your way into. Because in my experience, I feel like people. Say they want one thing and really need something else. How does that conversation sound? Or is that a conversation in your experience?

I live in the world of you don't know what you don't know. Right. And so if I put myself into a room and, and I think because I'm a business coach, that's. It's kind of where it starts. But once I start, once you start to uncover the real root of what's holding you back, um, it's in your mind, it's in your self-identification, and then we can get into deeper topics of your childhood and your parenting and who shaped you and who.

Thoughts were you start really to, you start really to look at yourself and say, well, wait a second, I need this. But you know what, here's what I'm gonna tell you. We are in a modern world that having a therapist is normal. So I'm just another form of a therapist, right? So, um, so people ask me like, what do you do?

And I says, well, I'm like a therapist for your business and for you to accomplish your goals. And if you haven't accomplished your goals, I'm your professional therapist when it comes to that. You know, um, I do take a slightly different approach in the sense that the way my brain works, um, Kat, you're the brand architect.

I consider myself the performance architect. That everything that I do is structured and frames within, within systems as well too. So it's not just conversations with me, it's okay if we have to get you from here to here. Let's create some type of systematic plan for you to follow some type of structure so that you can measure, so you can create metrics so you can see how you grow.

'cause that's also how my mind works. And until you, until you systemize something, it's not going to be. Repeatable and consistent. So the Performance Architect, it was funny when I came up with that name, I was like, why does that sound so familiar? And then I got your email and I'm like, wait, but it's okay.

Kat and I have the, we have the Asian thing going. So we do, we do raised by fellow, fellow tiger moms to varying degrees. Yeah. And uh, it's where a lot of my discipline comes from and devotion to, to what I want. I recognize that and I'm grateful for that. Mm-hmm. And also as an athlete. I consider myself an athlete.

No, I was a, I was actually a, a gymnast when I was in high school. My claim to fame was, uh, I was a bronze medal. I was bronze medalist, uh, in all around for LA City my senior year. And that's a little bit of why Arjun hired me too for, so he basically hired a, has been high school gymnast. Bronze medalist to help a world-class level TaeKwonDo.

Right. And you already had a track record of leading people. You already were a business coach. You already knew how to create these frameworks, these systems for people. And so it's not as simple as you made it sound like he just, you know, hired this person. It's, it's all of the skillset that you already had that you were just putting into a different arena.

Correct, correct. But you know, I think athletics has really played a big part because I've competed on a city stage and I know what, I know what it's like to prepare. I know what it's like to be nervous. Um, I golf all the time and golf is probably one of the big mental head case games you can ever play.

Right? It's you in your head. Something about preparing for that. And I've done a lot of public speaking, and a lot of it is not just calming down nerves and getting over fears, but a lot of it is, um, understanding who you are, what your purpose is, what your passion is, and self-identity. So I found a lot of purpose in what I, what I do in helping people find purpose in what they do.

So for example. If I'm trying to help somebody, um, be a better leader or to scale their business, like I'll take one of my clients, I'll say, how do you identify? Like, what do you do for a living? And they say, well, I'm a loan officer. I'm a real estate agent. And I say, well, as long as you identify as that, you're gonna create constraints around what you're capable of.

If you ask me what I do, I'm not a coach. I'm not even a performance coach. I'm an entrepreneur who has. Knowledge and helping people perform, perform. So I have a business that helps people perform better, and as I self-identify as an entrepreneur, what does that entail? It entails building, creating, scaling, it.

It entails purpose. It entails passion. Um, it entails monetization, it entails all of those things. So I open myself up more for that. But um, at forward, you remember Sade Rai. The first thing that she says is that your self-identity affects your behavior. And so I have to work a lot with people, like people with that too.

Um, especially their why. It's like, what is your why in life, right? So as an immigrant, I have a different why than other people why I'm here, the opportunities that I have here. And I always look at people and I say, what is your why? What is your driving force? You look at a Michael Jordan, his whole driving force was.

It was all to get back at his high school coach for, for cutting him, you know, you know what I'm saying? And then you look at Kobe Bryant's driving force, which is mama mentality. I have that poster behind me. His, his entire driving force was, was just to be the best, or, or tiger who was pushed by his military dad.

And so sometimes I have to get into those conversations with. What is your driving force? Tell me a little bit about your family history, how your upbringing, like what is behind you? I had an entire conversation yesterday with an attorney like that yesterday, and he's my attorney client and he says, why am I not able to implement the things that you say?

And I said, because I've been listening to you for 10 minutes. And you keep saying, I'm an attorney. I'm an attorney. You don't identify as an entrepreneur, a business owner. Um, a leader, somebody who's driven for success. As long as you're an attorney, you're a phenomenal attorney, but there's, but there's no reason for you to grow out of that identity, right?

And so that's such a big part of it. So this is, seems random, but it's not. So yesterday I was, um, on, I think I got an ad actually for Etsy. It was a sign. 'cause I've been looking for like neon signs. 'cause I was thinking about getting a non nice, clever sign for back here anyhow. Got an ad for the sign and then the sign that was just in the ad happened to say, good things come to those who create.

And I was like, oh, like that's exactly what we teach all the time. Right. And to shift from thinking of yourself as an attorney to thinking of yourself as an entrepreneur is opening yourself up to. Being a creator. 'cause entrepreneurs create systems, businesses, solutions, all of it, right? And, and that creative thinking is what allows you to have more opportunity.

And I think it's such a subtle shift to start saying like, I'm a coach versus I'm an entrepreneur, or attorney versus entrepreneur. But it makes a huge difference in the way that you approach. Yeah, absolutely. Um, another, another one of my whys, and it it goes down to a very, very core level is it's the whole top of the food chain thing, right?

So I identify, I identify as a provider. So what does that mean as a provider? In order for me to be a provider, to have the most leverage, the most power, power possible for myself and my family, I have to get to the top as high to the top of the finger as possible. So when your daughter wants to go to USC?

Yes. When my, when my daughter wants to go to USC, one of the most expensive schools in the nation, when she just got in as a sophomore, it's like, oh, and by the way, here's here, here's the joke that I told. So a lot of people believe their why is their children, and that's not your why. That's your who. It's completely different.

And my joke is you want, you want to know the difference between your who and your why. My daughter is my who paying for USC is my why, right? And what I mean, but the, but the joke is, is that my why is to be a provider for my children. So they are my who, but my why is to be the most capable provider possible.

Because I want to be able to say yes when she wants to go to her dream school. Do something for herself in life, but I also want to be able to protect them. I'm a provider and a protector, so I want to be able to protect them. It might be protecting them, uh, whether it's putting a roof over their head, helping them when financial times are tough, whatever that is.

And I know that being a provider protector is easier, the higher up the food chain I am, which means that I have to accumulate power and finances. The actual money. It, to me, it's not, uh, it's not a material thing. It's, it's just kind of a scoreboard because it's a currency in exchange for the things that you need.

It's the most biological why that I have is to be a provider, a protector, and a leader. And it's something that was instilled in me because I came here as an immigrant with a single mother. And to watch your mother do everything that she could to get you here and to survive. And then as a man, you say, you know what?

I'm taking that over now so that you can finally relax and rest, mom, and then, you know, taking care of my family and saying, I'm gonna continue to take care because I had two daughters. Right? So it's like, it's kind of like a natural instinct. Um, but I think that my story, it's important when I ask anybody who's listening, it's like, what is, what is your story?

And, and if you are a mother. You are a provider, right? It's, it's not just about, well, well it's my kids. Well, what does that mean? Does that mean you're gonna spoil them? Right? Like, tell me exactly what that means. Like, define that, define that a little bit more. Um, and, you know, and what, what drives you? And the other part is being an immigrant, I really feel privileged living in this country.

So I, I think that psychologically I don't want to, I don't want to be the person that has all this opportunity when. My ancestors, 'cause I don't have any family in Vietnam anymore. But, you know, people of my heritage living in Vietnam, they're struggling every single day just to bring food on the table.

So I feel like, I feel like extremely privileged. And so that comes also from a, from a place of gratitude. And from what you were saying, Candace, Brendan Burchard, he's one of the top performance co coaches in the nation. He charges, I think a, I think he said a million dollars a year to be performance coached.

And he has, uh. Ex-presidents, billionaires that he coaches. And he said, if you think about it, our entire purpose or what, what should drive us as human beings is growth because we are living organisms. And so if we're not growing, then we're dying. It's one of the two. And so if you see why some people are happier, you see why some people live longer.

If you see why some people tend to avoid illnesses. It's because they're growing and growing is what creates happiness. And when you become stagnant, when you become content, you die. You get sick. Right? Things stop working, stop moving. Correct. Yeah. Correct. And so I think a lot of growth is necessary for you to have a long, sustainable, happy life and, and what that, and what that brings you, right?

And so performance is such a deep rooted topic because it's psychological mindset. There's. There's biological roots to it, there's heritage roots, there's family roots. Um, there's so much behind it. And to me it's the most fascinating thing in the world that I can build a career on as well too. Keeps you interested?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And, and you know, I never thought that I was a person of service. I say that kind of selfishly, right? But there is. But over the years, all the people that I've helped, like just recently. Team, USA for TaeKwonDo, um, went to Barcelona and so they interviewed me at Ford upstairs in the suites and I did a 30 minute session and I've been getting messages from them, these athletes that have one goal, that have won silver, that have won bronze.

And they said, you know, that 30 minute talk, I'm a world champion now because of you. And so that inner satisfaction. It's like what happened with them is they put years and years and years into something that they were passionate about. And if you have, if the pressure breaks you when you finally get there, and I said, I, I played a small part in such a big thing, but that small part could have been the difference between falling and not falling.

Right. And so it's like, it's letting them realize their dreams and, um, there's, there's just so much to it. And, and. That's why performance, it's so trying to define it. Sometimes I even ask myself, what, what exactly does this mean? You know? Yeah. So when you work with someone, let's bring it to a lot of our people in our audience are in real estate or in mortgage.

If you're working with someone who is in one of those fields, what does it look different than when you're working with an athlete or. I don't, is there a system that works across the board or is it different with every person? I think the framework is the same. I think the framework is the same because the thing about performance, whether it's business performance or athletic performance, um, the first thing is that there's going to be a set of metrics.

So we have to measure what allows you. To reach the highest performance possible. Okay, so in business we're gonna measure things like we're gonna measure, um, your marketing, your conversion, your time management. We're gonna measure your commitment, things like that. And in athletics, we're gonna measure your practice, your time, your speed, and everything else.

And so the framework revolves around, when I think about performance, I think about improving upon individual metrics. Dictates overall performance. Oh, I have an example, Kai. Okay. Would that be of a metric that I, I just last year started to implement tracking that has changed my business. So my husband told me you should track every, um, lead you have that you have a consultation with.

Mm-hmm. And every consultation that you have has a dollar amount, whether or not they hire you. Right. And so I just started putting more. Appointments on my calendar being intentional about everything that I'm doing to get more appointments on my calendar, because I know no matter if that person hires me or not, there's a certain dollar amount that is associated with every single call that I have.

Mm-hmm. And so if I wanna make two times more money than I'm making, I just need to put two times more calls on my board. Right. And then, then I could track something different like, okay, maybe I need to work on my conversion rate or whatever. But the first metric is just. Get the freaking meeting. Yes. And so that's a small thing in my business that totally changed everything.

And I think before I might've been afraid to pick a metric mm-hmm. Or I might've picked the wrong one. And having someone like you, it sounds like you would help me to identify those things. So Sharon talked about it at Forward. Um, he's, uh, for those of you who don't know, he's the founder of Real Real Estate, like the fastest growing real estate company.

Now he's a partner with. Alex and Layla Hermo with acquisition. He summed it up very simply. There's quantity and there's quality, right? So when you're doing both, let's say, social media content, we're gonna talk about content and also getting in shape. The formula is the same, the athletic is the same. So what he says is the first metric is quantity.

You have to do quantity first. Don't worry about quality. You have to consistently get the content out. You have to consistently post. Don't worry about the quality. If somebody came up to me and they said, I want to improve my fitness performance first, excuse me. I would say it's about quantity first. You get your butt, your, you need to get your butt to the gym first every single day.

I don't care what you do. I don't care if you do Pilates. I don't care if you start moving, start moving 45 minutes every time you go. After you create consistent quantity, then we move to quality. Alright, now let's look at every single reel that you create. Every single post that you create. Let's look at every single exercise that you create, right?

And it can be anything. It could be, it could be candidates with you, with sales calls. Let's look at the quantity of the sales calls that you make. It could be speaking engagements. Let's look at the quantity first. There has to be some type of consistency in it, but also the consistency of quantity also creates growth because you should analyze and you should improve.

That will help you improve the quality. So then we look at the, then we look at the quality metrics. You know, golf is the same way. I can do all the, the lessons in the world, but I actually have to practice. There has to be a quantity of practice. Then from there, we improve quality, but without quantity, there's not enough consistency to improve After you apply quality to it.

Then the final stage is quantity of quality. Now we're doing everything at the highest level, at the quantity that you want. And so one of the best examples that I use is I'm a huge Kobe Bryant fan because I grew up in LA and that's why I have a mom mentality poster, is that a lot of people talk about working out with Kobe Bryant.

He was notorious for these 4:00 AM workouts and this is before practice. And they would say, I worked out with Kobe Bryant once he killed me. We worked out for four hours. We worked out, you know, we shot, we did everything. So they always talked about the quality of the workout, but what they didn't talk about is that, and what I noticed, I said, so you did it once with him.

This guy does it every single day. Right? He does it every single day. And, and here's the thing, before his workouts were that crazy. What first came was just the four M workout. They probably weren't that crazy at first, but they were 4:00 AM workouts, and then he turned it into the crazy workouts. But the key is he does it.

He does it together now systematically. That's how we, that's how we create the framework for performance. What happens is, is what gets in the way of accomplishing that. So when it comes to quantity, I have to look at people's time management schedules. I have to look at people's motivation. I have to look at how they get discouraged.

I have to look at, do they fear, like I don't wanna do a quantity of social media posts because I'm scared. I don't like the way that I look, right? It's hard getting people just to do that. So then I start to get into the psychology just to achieve the quantity metrics. The quantity metrics is the hardest metrics.

That's putting yourself out for the, for the first time consistently in a vulnerable state. If you can get past the quantity metrics, the quality metrics is actually a little bit easier because you've gotten all the past the fear. Now we're just improving. Now the quality metrics is hard though, because it's hard in a different way because you have to push yourself past the limits of your previous standards.

Sometimes it means working out harder. Sometimes it means practicing longer. Sometimes it means. Making a presentation better than you ever have or putting in longer hours. But it's a different, it's a different metrics to, to achieve. Right? And so if I'm gonna work with a real estate agent, I, I look at it, for example, I would look at it from an objective point of view.

I would take something simple like, tell me what you're doing with sales. And I first have to create some type of consistency. I'm either gonna have them do what they're doing 'cause it works, or I might. Alter it and say, let's, let's do this instead. Okay, but we have to get some, some quantity out. And then I work in their mind, right?

And then they have to get through that and then, and then we improve quality. What happens with normal coaches, and I've been to normal coach, is they go straight to the quality. This is the best way to market. This is the best way to sell. This is the best scripts. And it never gets done. It never gets implemented.

And so what happens is I'm the, I'm the guy that tells you you don't know what you don't know. And so all I have to do is look at a real estate agent straight in the eye. And it's not about whether they've been coached before. It's, it's usually the opposite. Let me ask you a question. You have been coached before, right?

You have done training before, right? But what has actually stopped you from doing it? Because you're not successful. Not because you haven't been coached. You're you, you're not successful. Because you have it implemented it. And so they gave you a strategic plan, they gave you a quality plan, but they never gave you a performance plan.

And that's the difference. That's the difference. And sometimes I tell people, you can continue to use your business coach, which will give you the most strategic ideas, but I'm gonna be your performance coach to make sure that you. Right. And now a lot of people talk about accountability. And ca you're gonna like this topic because like, why?

I need you to keep me accountable because you know my feelings, you know my feelings about accountability. Yeah. Because you're gonna yell at me and I kind of go like this. All right. I get to be your tiger dad. Right. I get to be like your Asian tiger dad. And people say that to me. I, he's like my Asian tiger dad.

Right? But accountability is an, accountability is an interesting thing because people respond differently to accountability. Some people like to get yelled at, some people don't. Um, accountability sometimes comes from personal motivation. Accountability sometimes comes from looking at numbers.

Accountability sometimes comes from are you living the life that you're supposed to fulfill? And how do you feel about yourself? And I think that people simplify accountability as if is, if you hire me and I'm gonna tell you what to do, if you don't do it, you're gonna yell at me. It's that simple. And we know it's not.

Unless you grew up Asian and you got a, you got a tiger mom, right? Then you had no option. It's that Or the streets like. 4.0 or else. Yeah. Right, right. But it's not, but it's not that simple. And people will tell you about it. Now, the people that say, well, we went through this program and look at all the success, that's true.

But it worked for a subset of people. And generally those programs, it's, it's kind of like bootcamp. Bootcamp filters out people. And so when you have coaching programs that have like these high level accountabilities and say, they say, well, look how accountability works. It's like, yeah, but it only worked for the 30% of the people that made it.

But I'm the person that sits there and says, but I wanna help the 70% that, that didn't make it through the high intensity, uh, you know, Sergeant Bootcamp style. How do I help them? They need to be re reprogrammed a little bit. So one of the things that you say is that you help people reinvent themselves.

What does reinvention look like or what does someone have to accept to be okay with reinventing themselves to take those next steps? Yeah. Well, there's internal and external influence. Okay. So reinventing yourself is partially internal. It's what you currently believe and. What you've been told. Um, but so much of reinvention is external.

Um, so what is the saying? You're the average of the five people that you spend the most time with? So part of reinvention is you need to hang out with different people, right? You need to be around different people because you need that external influence. I mean, if, if, if I'm dealing with even a teenager that.

I just had a bad upbringing. The first thing I'm gonna do is if I put him in a better upbringing, right? With a a, with a new family, with a new environment, it's gonna completely, and they're going to reinvent him. Okay? And so. You have to really look at your external environment, including your, your working environment.

Like what is your, like this is my workplace, right? And so is it inviting? Is the lighting good? And sometimes to re reinvent yourself, I look at people and say, just look at, look at where you work. You might need to remodel your office because it's gonna provide you a different energy. And so a lot of reinvention comes from modeling.

And my last coach told me something really simple, and it's the simplest way he said it. He said. If you were to take a guitar lesson, you're not gonna learn how to play a song that you wrote. You're gonna learn how to play a song that somebody else wrote. You're gonna learn how to play Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin.

That's like the, you know, that's like the stereotypical one that I learned when I learned how to play guitar. But that's what you do. And so when you want to improve yourself, the first thing that you should do is you should model somebody. Not just say, I want to be better at these things, but like, who do you want to be like.

That person, like who encompasses everything that you want to be their success, how they carry themselves, how they lead, how they participate in the community. If you wanna be Tony Robbins, you gotta spend your time. Like Tony Robbins spends his time. Yes. And you have to spend time with people. Cool.

Plunges included. Yeah. Yeah. And we were introduced through LFG Society, which is success by proximity. Right. And since knowing the two of you, that affects my mental. Uh, motivation and how I think about myself and I get inspired by the two of you. I'm sitting here going, do I need to like, change my platform on Riverside?

Like, what am I doing right? Yeah. We've been inspired every time we've, you know, I had the pleasure of sitting next to you at dinner a couple years ago in San Francisco, and I was like, oh, like, we need to, we have, we need more kai in our lives, basically. Um, because the energy is just infectious and the amount of people who treat you with such respect.

Definitely makes me go, like, everyone in this room has so much respect for Kai. I wanna be sitting next to him. I wanna learn for from him as well. And so there's definitely something about your energy that you bring that is really impactful and, um, you know, if Arjun trusts you, like we definitely do too.

Um, and you've just been able to coach people at such a high level. And like you said, coaching gold medalist. Like that's probably not something that you imagined earlier on in your career, and you get to do that regularly, which is so cool. And we could say that you reinvented yourself and what you do.

Um, with that though, I know you also created a framework, it's called the Shift Grow Scale framework. Is that something that would help our audience? Something that they can take notes from? Yeah. Um. Well, everybody talks about growing their business or scaling their business, and it's usually in that order.

You grow your business, then you scale your business. But people forget about the shift part. Um, it's that first part. You have to shift your mindset. You have to shift your identity, you have to shift your behaviors. And I think that's where people struggle the most because it's, it's like, like I said, I can use any example.

I wanna start getting into shape. And so you, so you think about the growth part of getting into shape and going to the gym, but. You first have to shift, well, what is your schedule like? You have to shift the way that you eat. You have to shift the way that you sleep. And it's that, it's the transition that's the hardest.

And that's, and, and, and I would say that's where the majority of the mindset and the performance coaching resides is in that, is in that first part. It's in that. Shift stage, um, and sometimes shift is just in the goal of the client. I've had many clients come to me that are thinking of career changes or they're stagnant, right?

And so we don't immediately say, so, like I said, I have an attorney and he said, oh, I want, I want to grow my business. But then I started to realize, well, you only identify as an attorney. You're not identifying as a manager. He says, I'm not really a people person, so I, I cannot apply, I cannot apply business strategy to him.

I can't say, well, you know, you're gonna go out and you're gonna hire this, you're gonna hire that. I worked with him for months just reframing his self-belief, what his goals were as a person. And, and my, my latest, uh, my latest advice to him was, was he said, well, well, how do I find people? How do I find people that want to influence me?

And I said, do I just randomly like, Hey, I want to be your friend. And, and I says, I said, well, you told me that you wanted to play golf one day, so why don't you join a country club? Because if you join a country club, what you're gonna be around is you're gonna be around affluent people that will influence your life in a much different way.

But see, that's the shift, because we cannot, because he said, I, I want to grow my firm and I wanna hire attorneys. I don't think that way. And so I've gotta shift him first before we can get to that point. And then I get to the point where we grow as a business and we say, okay, you're gonna start this new part of your firm, um, and, uh, you're gonna start a new practice.

And so that's what he did. He started going to different practices. And the scaling part is when you figure that out. And so now you wanna open up different locations, you wanna hire people and you wanna take yourself outta the business. In my experience. Yeah. Sorry. Good. In my experience, and I think, Kat, tell me if you've experienced this as well.

People just wanna skip the steps. Mm-hmm. So, I, I don't wanna do the shift part. The shift part is not sexy. The shift part requires work that I was not mentally or emotionally prepared for, and I just wanna make more money. Kai. Yeah. Yeah. Like I, I don't wanna do what you're telling me to do. I don't, I don't need friends.

I don't need to join a country club. I just wanna make more money. But that is the critical step, that shift mm-hmm. Before anything else can happen. Well, 'cause we see that if, if people, if, if you were to have a million dollars dropped into your bank account tomorrow without shifting your mindset and your identity, would you even know what to do with it?

Or would you just feast or famine spend it all and you're back in the poverty cycle that you've been in for your entire life? Like if I gave somebody a, if I gave a real estate agent a hundred million dollars. Business that was in, you know, that was inherited to them by somebody who's, who's retiring.

How fast would they ruin it? How fast would they ruin it? Now, for the listeners, if you want the biggest shift book, 'cause it's my favorite business book of all time. It's the E-Myth. It's the E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. Because what it explains is how do you shift from a solopreneur to an entrepreneur?

'cause they're completely different. I think people misinterpret. So the E-Myth revisited is. What you define as an entrepreneur is a myth, because it's not true. People believe that an entrepreneur is somebody who's self-employed, somebody who's a solopreneur. I, I hear this all the time. I'm an entrepreneur, so you're gonna see me working 24 7.

Ooh, that's not how I, that's not how I define an entrepreneur. That's a solopreneur. That's somebody who's self-employed, that's a contract. And in the book it says, as a matter of fact, if you're self-employed, if you're a solopreneur. Your job is worse than having a job because you're a slave to your own business, and he talks about the principles of you have to have a manager and you have to have technicians doing your work.

Now, what is the most egotistical thing people do when they want to hire people is that nobody does it as good as me, which is a complete lie because many people do it better than you. It's just that you're a control freak. You just don't know what you don't know, and you also, you're married to this myth of perfectionism, which is just gonna torture you to death.

So the entrepreneur mind shift says, I want to create a business that allows me to achieve my true goal of autonomy and not financial freedom, but time freedom. The only way that I can do that is to release myself and hire people so that I can make profits off of arbitrage. And I want to hire people and train people that will do it better than me, so I never wanna step back in.

That's the hardest part of me working with agents, s loan officers, brokers, is getting them to let go, getting them to delegate, getting them out of the mindset that nobody does it better than me. And, and I have to explain certain things to them, like, do you realize that you make as many mistakes as your assistant does?

The difference is that you're more forgiving on yourself instead of being patient. And so this is where I become a parent. I say, let me ask you a question. If this was your child, right, how would you treat it? Because isn't your role as a parent to raise a child who is self-sufficient and autonomous in the world?

So I did this with the client once I, I asked her this question 'cause every time there was a problem, she would solve the problem for her staff. And I said, let me ask you a question. You have kids. How old are your kids? She says, you know, they're 17 and 15. I said, do you, do you brush your kids' teeth? She says, of course not.

I don't brush my kids' teeth. And I says, well, right, you taught them how to brush their teeth. You see, every time you step in and you do something for your staff, it's like you're picking up the toothbrush and you're brushing their teeth for them. So I actually sent her a box of toothbrushes and I said, every time you do something for your staff, you gotta do that right in the gut, Kai.

Right? Right In the gut. Gut. It's like some mental cues. No, I love that. But that's the shift. And that shift is harder than anything. I always try to think about like what my superpower is. Right? Everybody is, is like, what's your superpower? And. It has been articulated to me and, and how I say it is that I have a way of making the complex simple, and that's what I do.

So that's why I design frameworks. That's why I create terminology, because all I'm trying to do is I'm trying to simplify the communication so people understand. So if I say the toothbrush story, people understand if I say. I say certain things that the people understand, and that's why when I talk to people about business sometimes I will say, well, let's pretend we're getting into shape.

This is why quantity matters first. And then once they understand that, then they understand that. So that's a lot of my coaching philosophy is that there's so much complexity in the world and I feel like I'm the conduit to making the complex simple to get you there. And so that's, that's applying. And you know what's really interesting about that?

Because everybody has like an origin story. The way my brain works, like I have an extremely intelligent father, like he went to, uh, Caltech, right? Which is like this high-end tech, and he was so complicated in explaining me anything. And my brain has to simplify things and I'm extremely visual. And so like when my, my sister who's younger than me, she would go to him for math.

She wouldn't understand that she would come. To me for math help, and I would always simplify it. And I told her, I said, it's not so much that I know how to simplify things. I said, it's that how I know things. That's it. If I were to sit with the two of you and I said, Kat, Candace, can you please explain to me right how to build my brand?

You explain it to me, and as you're explaining it to me, my brain is reorganizing everything and categorizing it in a simpler way. So that I can understand. And more than likely, if somebody were to ask me, Hey, what did Kat and Candace teach you? I'd probably say it different in my simplified way, right?

It's like the whole thing, like, explain it to me as if I'm a fifth grader, right? Like I'm five years old, right? Um, and that's just how my brain works. And I think, I think that's one of the reasons why I'm in, you know, this, this position that I'm, I think it's, it's probably my gift, you know, to do that. I think it is.

So, Kai, every episode we have a listener write in and ask a question, and this is zero chance to give like straight advice. You don't have to give any fluff. Okay? Every coach and strategist says that I have to pick a niche, but every time I try, I feel so boxed in and I feel so bored. Can I just keep being good at lots of things and or is that setting me up for, for failure?

This is from multi-passionate and mildly panicked. I like that. I like that. Um. You know, the term niche, I think it's just an ambiguous term, right? Um, I was actually telling somebody at Ford that my strength is knowing so many things, but I realized that my niche doesn't have to be a particular subject or a particular topic.

What I realized was my niche was, um, how I simplify so many things, right? Like, so my niche is in the simplification of things that are complex and because that's my niche. That's, that's, that's my. That's my expertise. I can apply that to multiple things. Um, but a lot of people say that your best niche anyways is your former self because you know your former self better than anything.

And when it comes to passion, I don't think anybody is more passionate in teaching your young self or your former self. And so that can be a niche. Which inclu, which includes multiple things, right? So the niche is just your former self, that you're teaching them multiple things and you're teaching it in the way that, that you do it.

That's what I would say to them. Um, you know, in terms of niches. Yeah. And now, Kai, do you have any final tips for us on transformation, on how we could take action? What are your final tips for the Clever crew? Um. So I'm doing something right now that I think is important to a lot of people. I think a lot of people want to change, they want to improve, but the question is always, well, when are you going to change?

When are you going to improve? So this is something that I, that I have on my phone. So I have an app on my phone, it's called Countdown, and I first put it on my phone when I had to count down the days to my 50th birthday, right? And, you know, I look young, but I'm Asian, so I'm 52. But yeah, we got the genetics on our side.

Yeah, so I, I remember I put the countdown in the earlier in the year and it was like, you know, a hundred days till my 50th birthday, 90, like counting it down. And then I did the same thing. I counted down the days to when I, when I moved to Austin, Texas from m la and it was a countdown. So I have it on my phone right now and um, you can see it, it's the big orange and it says right now, 152 days to the end of the year.

It's my reminder. There's only 152 days to the end of the year and tomorrow there's gonna be 151 days and then 150. Hold on, I'm gonna download that right now. Yeah. BRV. I'll share it to you'll. I'll send it to you in a text message, but here's what I recommend. Okay? Everybody here, you should have a sense of urgency and that sense of urgency is tied to a, to a date.

That means something to you. It could be the end of the year. It could be, I wanna get in shape before that wedding 'cause I gotta fit into my wedding dress. It could be before my 40th birthday, whatever that is. But if you wanna have a sense of urgency, I highly recommend you put a countdown clock on something that you look at every single day.

Because every single day you're gonna get closer and closer to that, you're gonna run out of time. And I notice is that as I get older, my sense of urgency gets higher because I have a higher sense of mortality. That I have less time. And you know, I've seen kind of like, I don't know if morbid is the word, when people say, how many weekends do you have left on this earth to spend with your parents?

Not yourself, but with your parents. If you think about how old they are. Oh, I remember this. This almost made me cry because the person was like, maybe you see them once or twice a year. Maybe they have 10 years left. You only have 10 weekends. Like, correct. If you see them twice a year, they have 10. 10 years left.

You only see them 20 more times. Right? So that should create a sense of urgency. Maybe I should call my mother more. Maybe I should visit her more. Why just 20? If I see her four times a year, it could be 40, right? But you need a sense of urgency. So you need, again, a system or a framework that you look at and remind yourself every single day that will should kickstart then your.

Initiative to want to get better and to improve your performance and to improve your business. Text me that immediately, please. I will. I'll share the app with you. Thank you so much, Kai. We really appreciate your time and your expertise. This was so fun.