Getting Real with Your Tribe ft. Jodee Bock

Let's get geared up for startup success. Join Josh as he interviews knowledgeable guests from all corners of the entrepreneurial world and gets the answers to the questions you've been asking. Get ready to learn something new on this episode of From Idea to Done. Hey everyone, on this episode we have our good friend Jodi Bach. Jodi, thanks for coming in. I am pleased to be here with you, Josh. Always fun to be with you. Wonderful. Why don't you tell the listeners a little bit about Jodi and what you got going on? That's the hardest question you could ever ask me, Josh, because I am still learning that. I like to tell people I'm an accidental entrepreneur. I didn't mean to do it. I always knew I would be an employee forever and ever because that's the way I was raised and I had a boss at one point who helped me exit his organization and I decided to start my own business just because I couldn't continue in that realm. And so I became a life coach, life purpose and career coach. Back before anybody knew what that was. That was in, what, 2005? I think people thought I was a little crazy. And they still probably do because I'm, I know, I'm now reemerging again as an entrepreneur, a solopreneur. My platform is called Get Real with Jodi Bach and real is an acronym. As an English major, I have to have acronyms. REAL is radical, energized, authentic, and learning focused. So what I like to do is concentrate more on the humans than only the resources. So human resources. Because I believe that we, our organizations, will only grow to the extent our leadership does. And so I help people maybe learn things that they don't know about themselves and maybe don't want to know about themselves but the more they can learn for themselves and their teams the better off we can all be. I agree and our leadership team here at Cotillation is going through the five levels of leadership and I read that book a long time ago and it was a great read and now doing that in an organization with other people it's become real. Yeah, isn't that true? It's been hard for me because I look at it and say you know I'm a positional leader with this person. And I was like, that's a hard medicine to take. Well, it's that shadow side, right? We've got to shine the light on the shadows, because if we don't, we're limited by what we know. I just, I think I told you this offline, Josh, I just completed 40 hours of NLP training, Neuro Linguistic Programming, we're using 10% of our awareness. 90% of how we operate is unconscious. We don't know. How can we possibly do better if we don't shift that a little bit? I was trying to get over to my accountant in Moorhead the other day and I just drove right past the off-ramp for it and I was like, okay. How did I get here? Yeah, it's scary flying down the interstate in a 6,000 pound vehicle. It's what happens all the time though. This is so typical. And so what I'm starting to realize for myself, it sounds like you kind of are too, as you're doing some of this work that takes it from theory to actual application, I want to go first. I have to go first in my own journey because how can I expect other people to follow something that I'm not doing? No, it's something I've learned too in hiring. It's a lot easier to know someone's doing a good job if you've done it before. For sure. Yeah. So, well we're here today to talk about a concept of 100 allies. And this is something that we found that if you're starting something new, you want a group of people around you that understand the problem you're trying to solve, they understand the industry you're trying to go into, and give you feedback early and often because so many times entrepreneurs will kind of go into a bubble Take their idea and work on it work on it work on it and emerge six months 12 months later And say look at this thing and the world goes we don't care So the more you can talk with that audience early and often the better I Wish I would have known that before I wish that I could have had that when I started because I did exactly what you said not to do. I didn't know. I just didn't know. I thought you hold tight to the vest until you're ready to emerge. So this is awesome. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I did it once and then I shut that thing down and I did it again. I shut that thing down. Rinse and repeat about five times and only after really diving into the why behind what are we doing and why should anyone care, you know, and working with our customers kind of emerged this this 13 step thought process of, okay, I, you know, you know, we were, I was almost the do as I say not as I do and it's like, all right, reset here and we got to do, you know, run our own program that we're teaching people and again you think you're smarter than you are as an entrepreneur, you know everything, and it's really tough when you come into a group of people that you may not know or don't know what you're doing and you're trying to explain it to them and they don't get it. Yes, yes, yes. Okay, so here's a couple things I am thinking about when you say that. Yes, and what if the people that you have been surrounding yourself with before you found your actual allies, your people, were doing the best they could with what they knew, and then you thought you had to match them. What if really you were ahead? This is becoming clearer to me as I'm working with more bigger thinkers. Maybe it's not that they're alone or lonely because they're behind. Maybe they're actually ahead and they're trying to connect and feel like they fit in, in a circle that can't contain them. I felt that at a point in my career to where I was probably trying to feel important, and so I'd gravitate towards people that I could maybe show off to, and say, hey, I've been here, I get it. It didn't fill my cup, and I felt burnt out, and I kinda hit the bottom, you know, and things like that. So what's the quote or the stat of like your income or something is going to be at the same level of... The average of the five people. Exactly, yeah. And you know what, that's really funny. I facilitate a couple of mastermind groups and then I'm in a couple of them. And one of them is reading Tribe of Millionaires. Have you ever heard of that book? I've heard of it, yeah. But okay, listeners, everybody out there, let's make this an assignment to go read the book Tribe of Millionaires. It's all about surrounding yourself with the people you feel the best with. I don't mean that in a comfortable way, like these people are going to let me off the hook. No, it's the people who will support you and challenge you. They had us, readers, do that exercise. They said list ten people. List the ten people you spend the most time with and then average or figure out if you can estimate their income and do the little exercise. It is scary accurate because I've got a couple people who are way more than I ever will think I can make and then those that are way below me. And you think about what am I spending all this time on? Is it fun and can we talk about other people? We were talking earlier about Minnesota Nice. We're conditioned to talk about people behind their backs and out to their face sometimes. And if you really get with the people who are your tribe, your allies, your people, it'll be a completely different experience. You know I saw that a number of years ago on some people locally on Facebook that we probably both know and they're with other people of success and it was like I looked at that as almost a effect you know that they're successful together but it's like no it's the relationship that's causing the success and not the other way around. You know that's kind of an ah-ha, isn't it? What if the relationship came first? I don't know how to not think that's the way it is. It has to be that way. Transactions happen in business. They have to. Relationships don't have to. I think you can have a business that's completely based on transaction if you want to keep doing it over and over again and having to hustle and grind. But if you have those relationships, those true allies, it makes it so much, I don't want to say easier like, oh let's all just do the easy thing, but so much more enjoyable and so much richer. Fulfillment. Yeah, completely. When you are doing your life with people you want to do your life. Yeah, well it's intentional. I think as business owners it's easy to get drug down in the grind of the business and now you're doing stuff that you don't want to do. You get resentful, you get burnt out and if you can be intentional and around those those allies does that lift up you know rising tide raises all ships. Absolutely, well it would raise you in the moment you need to be raised. I mean it doesn't have to be you don't have to look to them all the time to save me I'm drowning. No, they'll throw you a life preserver, but then they'll say, did you learn how to swim? Did you take your swimming lessons of last week like you said you were going to take? Because I can keep throwing you the life preserver. You've got to grab it. And wouldn't it be better if you learn to swim? Yeah. Because then you wouldn't have to rely on me all the time. That's what those really great allies do. Not in a mean way, not in a, I'm going to show you. I'm going to show you because I'll go first. Yeah, and I don't recall if this was a Dave Ramsey quote or where I heard it from but it was the effect of like if you're gonna smack someone upside the head you have to have your arm around their shoulder first. Otherwise that's just assault. Yeah, that's good. Well, and as much as we don't even want to think that's the truth, it is. And I need that. There are times, I mean, you need that, right? We need that. But you're right, with your arm around them, and not, or with their arm around me, I guess. Because otherwise, you're right, it does feel like, I buy into that because it's the way I've been programmed. I'm not good enough, how could I possibly know? And so if I'm getting hit by anybody, I'm always gonna think it was my fault. Yeah, and I mean, it goes back to that five levels of leadership book of, I won't say that's level two, is relational.