(970) 922-9272 | jeff@jmunn.com

Jeff Munn, Creating Extraordinary Futures

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Where Are You Creating FROM?

When you are creating something, where are you creating it FROM?

It can seem abstract to ask that question, but let me give you an example—

If I call you from an intention to “sell” you coaching, to convince you that you need me, I am guessing that will feel very different than if I call you from an intention to connect and get to know you better because I am genuinely interested in you and care about you and am happy to help you whether you hire me or not.

I am also guessing that you will FEEL that difference immediately.

When you are building a business, no matter how far along you are, there are at least two places you can come FROM.

Maximizing income or maximizing impact.

Coming from Maximizing Income

There are times when I really feel like I NEED to generate some income, fast.

And it feels AWFUL. I feel bad for the people on the other end of those conversations. I talk faster, my breathing is more shallow, and I am willing to say just about anything, to try just about anything, to get to the next stage of the conversation.

AND, it has the opposite impact that I intend. I almost never get new business when I am coming from this place.

I have a former client who was convinced that he had to be the low bidder for jobs that his company did. He found himself begging for work, tap dancing through every proposal, giving up his profit to get the work.

He was so worried about losing business that he had trouble winning the RIGHT business. He was so worried about losing people that he had trouble keeping the RIGHT people.

He was not willing to take a stand for the impact that he wanted to make, and for the customers and employees that made sense for him.

Because he did not stand for anything he also did not STAND OUT.

Most companies are like him. It feels awful and ironically does nothing to grow your income.

Coming from Maximizing Impact

But things can be different.

You can grow your business by being MORE TRUE to yourself and your vision.

I understand, for example, that I have a message that may not resonate with everyone.

That message, that we are living in a world of our own thinking and that when we see that we can create our results more consciously, is easy to get intellectually but hard to really FEEL.

I have to BE that message in order to have any kind of impact. It’s not about explanation or desperation or talking about a bunch of benefits.

It’s about my being.

If I come from my message, my ideal client FEELS that.

People may not be able to explain exactly WHY they want to work with me, but they WANT to work with me nevertheless.

No matter what your business or your message, the same is true for you.

I have a client who comes from a place of top quality and long term relationships. For him to proclaim that would probably undermine his business. But he is a stand for that in every conversation. He is almost never the low bidder. He talks long term. His current clients give him raving references.

And it has an amazing impact on his work. The RIGHT people, those who value his commitment and long term focus, are WILLING to pay more for that.

The wrong people, who are simply looking for the lowest price and really don’t care about quality, run the other way.

The same is true for his employees.

He has used his COME FROM to grow his business (and his people) the right way.

And now he has a business that is growing and that he feels good about.

He has a business that, more and more, is succeeding without him.

He has stepped into a powerful freedom to create more of that both in his business and his personal life.

Where Are You Creating From?

Are you willing to work with anyone? At any price?

How’s that going?

What if you got really clear on the IMPACT you want to have?

And what if, because of that, the right people came to YOU?

How to Go Deeper

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity (thought) that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If building a sustainable coaching business that will replace your corporate income is calling you, here’s a video where I share the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

And when you’re ready to go even deeper, send me a private message or an email. I’m happy to help you in any way I can.

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Your Hard Work Is Costing You Everything You Say You Want

Executive coaching, founder, ceo
Your Hard Work Is Costing You Everything You Say You Want

“I want to work so hard that there is no doubt in anyone’s mind that I deserve my success.” —Stephen A. Smith

I’m a big sports fan and eagerly listened to Bill Simmons’ recent interview with Stephen A.

But when I heard this, I thought, “What a prison to build for yourself.”

Then I started hearing my clients saying versions of this.

“I have to be the first one in and the last one out.”

“I want to be there enough for my team to know I’ve got their back.”

“I need to be there so I can provide for my family.”

What do all these things have in common?

They start with the idea that we are not enough. That we have to always do more to prove ourselves. To others, and more importantly, to ourselves.

The Nagging Sense of Not Being Enough

In almost every high achiever that I have come across, there is a sense that there is no amount of work that they could ever do that would be enough. Often this comes from a childhood in which they were only seen for what they did, rather than who they were. Sometimes there is abuse or addiction involved. And it can go back generations.

I have struggled with this for years. As a recovering overachiever, constantly trying to prove myself to emotionally absent parents, I have to constantly remind myself of my inherent self worth.

Recently this came up for me as I was thinking about what I wanted to work on at the end of the summer, a typically slow time for me.

Rather than accept the rhythms of the business and the downtime, I stressed out. I had to bring in some clients, and I had to do it now. It felt like my life and livelihood depended on it.

Did it change things? No. But I did get the “satisfaction” of trying some things before I saw what I was doing.

Caught. Again.

What You Get From Working Too Hard

A Harvard professor in human development, Robert Keegan, writes about what he calls “competing commitments.”

A competing commitment is often invisible to us but keeps us from doing what we know we should be doing.

“I have to work hard” is ingrained in many successful people I know, this “grind it out” philosophy of success based on rules that we do not see we have written.

That “success” (itself only a concept) only comes to people who work hard.

That our sense of self worth comes from working hard.

That we can feel like we are enough, that we deserve success, if only we work hard enough.

That working hard is based on output and efficiency and productivity. We must constantly be thinking about how to get MORE things done.

However hard we work, though, it never seems like it is enough or could ever BE enough.

And notice how much working hard gets in the way of what you really want in your business.

What You Actually Want From Your Business

To maximize your income and net worth, you want a business that runs itself. You might set the strategy, at least for now, but eventually you must give up even that.

If you are essential, you can never sell the business.

You have only maximized the value of your business when you are completely unnecessary to it.

This means—

Delegating everything.

Turning your knowledge into systems and culture and teams. (Or better yet, hiring someone who can do that for you.)

Getting out of the way.

The very things that your “I have to work hard” self would call lazy.

This is the paradox of scaling your business. The very reason you got into business, to prove yourself, constantly gets in the way of everything you need to create a sound business.

But that ignores an even bigger paradox—the relationship paradox.

The Biggest Cost—The Relationship Risk

The biggest cost of hard work may be something even more tragic than exhaustion.

One of the main upsides to having a successful business is the security that it provides for your family.

But you can feel like you have to neglect your family to get there.

And then you feel unappreciated for neglecting your family. That they don’t understand your sacrifice for them. That they complain about your absence without understanding WHY you are absent.

I am working with multiple clients right now who are dealing with different aspects of this.

One has been incredibly financially successful, yet realized in a quiet moment that what he most wanted was a close relationship with his wife.

Everything he has built from the outside looks like success. Yet he is still afraid to be vulnerable, to show any signs of weakness, of humanity, even with his wife.

The work of the business, which he is quite good at, is taking him away from what he most wanted, not helping him move toward it.

Because there is no dollar amount that can give him what he most wants—the sense that he is worthy of love, even from himself.

Freedom Can Only Be An Inner Game

Seeing these strategies—both how they have worked for us on the outside and what they have taken away from us on the inside—is the first step to true freedom.

Seeing the thought-created reality that you have been living in. Seeing that the stories you have created to protect yourself in that reality are no longer serving you. Seeing that you have the power to create something new—not on top of your old reality, but in place of it.

Seeing that freedom is a state of being, not something that you will ever create outside of you.

Having a partner or a coach who will keep pointing you back to you to this inner freedom is critical, because like any habit, it usually takes some effort to change it.

How to Start

If you are a founder wanting to scale and sell your company, there are three shifts in identity (thought) that can help you do so with twice the impact and half the stress. Take a look at this video.

If a building a sustainable coaching business that will replace your corporate income is calling you, here’s a video where I share the the top three mistakes I see coaches make when trying to build a sustainable business—

http://bit.ly/creatingextraordinarycoaches

You can subscribe to my YouTube channel here.

You can follow me on LinkedIn to make sure you never miss a post by hitting the bell on my profile.

If you want to subscribe to this Creating Extraordinary Futures newsletter, you can do so here.

And when you’re ready to go even deeper, send me a private message or an email. I’m happy to help you in any way I can.

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The Three Mistakes You Must Avoid to Build a Sustainable Business

founders, business owners, ceos
The Three Mistakes You Must Avoid to Build a Sustainable Business

The first step, the leap of faith, is the scariest one.

I coach founders on the internal work that helps them stand, scale and sell their businesses with more impact and less stress. Often, my one-on-one clients have a business in the 8, 9, or even 10-figure range before they think about selling or going public. Growing a business at that scale is thrilling.

But to me, the most audacious moment of the entire journey is that leap of faith at the very beginning. The idea, for example, is that someone could leave the corporate world, leave a 6 or 7-figure job and make it on their own as a coach or consultant and NEVER GO BACK.

My own journey to that place has been thrilling and I love supporting others in theirs. I’ve learned a lot since going out on my own and building a business that exceeded my prior income, but in this article, I’m going to focus on three mistakes that I see founders make over and over again right at the beginning.

Don’t Start Scared

A lot of the founders I see simply aren’t ready for the break they are going to have in earnings while they build their businesses. While they might catch a break early, most businesses take some time to start generating revenue. For example, in the coaching world, I suggest someone have EITHER savings that will cover two years of expenses, OR have a job that covers their expenses while they are building the business.

What happens if you don’t have that? Unless you have done a lot of deep work (which I think is essential for coaches, by the way), it is very hard to have a conversation from a place of needing to sign the client to feed your family. Clients can sense that. No one hires someone who is needy or scared. Do what ever you need to do to come from a place of confidence.

Don’t Start with Strangers

When I started my coaching business, I was very uncomfortable talking about coaching, simply because I had no idea what I was doing. I still remember the first time someone asked me about how I work with people—at a party about a month after I started. I broke into a sweat, quickly excused myself, found a restroom, and hid the rest of the evening!

It can be easy to think that you can find clients through Clickfunnels and social media ads, but at some point, you’re going to have to talk to them and convince them that you can deliver something of value. In my experience, it was much easier building a business by networking with people I knew, reeducating them (and coincidentally, myself) on what I was doing, and asking them who else I should be talking with. Having conversations with real people will build your business much faster than getting “leads” from services, and then talking to them without any kind of established social capital.

I’ve been posting on LinkedIn quite a while now. But even today, most of the people who reach out to me after a post are people I already have some kind of relationship with. At the beginning at least, social media REINFORCES the connection rather than ESTABLISHING it.

Don’t Stay Superficial

This is the one rule that you might want to think about breaking. Because it is true that people will absolutely pay you for things like business coaching, time management coaching, and other ways to execute on doing more things more efficiently.

You can build a decent business doing this, but you will likely exhaust yourself and your clients in the process. And you will have a very hard time distinguishing yourself from other coaches and consultants who do the very same thing that you do.

But there is only one way that I am aware of to build a business where you have no competition, and where a small number of people will pay you very high fees.

To do that, you have to be willing to go deep. You have to be able to be comfortable in silence with no agenda. You have to have nothing on your mind.

When you are able to do this, you might see a possibility in the person in front of you that they haven’t even seen for themselves. And from that place, you can be the person who can help them be the person they need to be to reach their dreams.

When they see what you have opened up for them, there is no way they are going to go to someone else.

The right people will fully commit to their dreams, and any fee will seem like a bargain. Go deep, and your clients will follow.

How to Start

If a sustainable business, on your own, outside the corporate world, is calling you, here are three steps you CAN take—

Subscribe to my email list and get a special bonus as a thank you—https://jmunn.com/about/

Subscribe to my YouTube channel here— https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4FuzFAukDC_3nEGQB6AYbQ?sub_confirmation=1

Hit the bell on my profile to never miss my LinkedIn posts.

If you are not already subscribed to my newsletters, you can do so here: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/creating-monthly-6930267414546821120

And when you’re ready to go even deeper, send me a message.

leapoffaith coach founder founders

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Success is Meaningless

Most people take the idea of success, of arriving “there,” as something that means something really important about them.
That they have “made it.” That they are finally “somebody.”

Let us ponder the concept of success. Success is something we are taught to strive for. But what does success really mean? It can become the focus of an individual’s career, identity, and even self-worth. However, despite its perceived importance, success itself is completely imaginary. It is a concept that is unique to each person and has no objective, external reality. Therefore, the very ideas about success can get in the way of us achieving it.

There are three main things that most people think look real about success: the solidity of success, the importance of what success means, and the significance of not having success. Yet when we look at them closely, we can see very quickly that they are one hundred percent made up.

First, people treat success as real and solid, when it is only made of thought. There is nothing that you can point at in the outside world and get uniform agreement that it is success. Therefore, success is a subjective experience that is unique to each person.

The second thing is, people believe that success means something important. However, this is also something that is made up. Success is not imbued with the mystical ability to make us feel whole and happy with ourselves. The symbol of success only feels good for a little bit and then loses its significance.

Finally, the third thing that people think looks real about success is the significance of not having it. The idea is that if we do not get success, it means something, too. This is also something that is made up. Failure is not a tangible thing but rather just a story that we tell ourselves.

What all of these point to is that success is but a subjective experience that is unique to each individual. Its reality exists solely within our own minds. Thus, we find that the very idea of success can often hinder our pursuit of it, as we cling too tightly to a figment of our own creation.

The joy is only in the doing, in the creating because that’s the only place it can be. The joy is in whatever is emerging for you, right now. Now is the only thing you’re not making up. Therefore, the easiest way to achieve success is to let go of the idea that success has any tangible, external reality. Instead, focus on the present moment and the joy that comes from creating and doing. This is the ultimate success.


Contact Information

Phone: (970) 922-9272
Email: jeff@jmunn.com