Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Fundamentally, today, freedom's not a place to get to. It's a place that I choose. It's, do I get to work where I want, doing what I want with who I want, when I want, Can I say yes to what I want to say yes to and know what I want to say no to? And that's not a function of achievement, right? I thought it would be. It was the thing I chased for a while. When my company gets to a certain point and I have all these things and I have the exit, well, then I can create the life I want. Well, what I found out the hard way was it doesn't work that way. And as I said, I've spent the last 10 years. This is far too common. Right? Entrepreneurs are chasing this thing called freedom, thinking they'll get it someday. What they're doing is actually building a prison.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: You weren't born to sit in traffic, work for approval, or wait for Fridays. You were built to be free.
Welcome to Rich and Remote, the show for the ones who dare to do life differently. Here we talk about building businesses that give you choices, where you work, how you live, and what you create.
This is for the entrepreneurs who crave freedom, financial freedom, location freedom, and freedom from everyone else's expectations. If you're ready to design a life on your own terms, you're in the right place.
Rich and Remote, hosted by Alex and Carla Booth.
[00:01:18] Speaker C: All right, guys, welcome and good morning. Here we are. Alex and I are here for Rich and Remote, where we talk about how you live and perform and have your dream life, your dream business, your dream everything. So today we have a very special guest. But first I want to ask, how are you today, Alex?
[00:01:37] Speaker D: I'm awesome. I'm feeling good. I've got another guy on the podcast with me, so that's nice. I love it when there's another guy on the podcast. And he also had the corporate life and then went to the entrepreneur world. So he's someone that I can relate with. I'm going to be asking a lot of questions off this podcast, too, like, how do I make it work for me? So, really excited for today's podcast.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: Yeah, actually, that's my favorite part of having a podcast, because you can scam your guests giving you advice. This is the best scam ever. So. Okay, I'm not gonna make everyone wait. Our guest today is Townsend Wardlaw, based in Chandler, Arizona. He is a highly experienced executive coach, consultant, and the co founder of Limitless Academy. And he also owns PFC Academy, branding himself as a life transformation Architect. He specializes in working with founders, CEOs and top tier coaches who have reached a plateau and need to break through to the next level of scale and impact. He has over 25 years of experience in coaching and consulting and his work has contributed to over 1.5 billion with a B in client revenue and helped create more than $1 billion in generational wealth. His approach is distinctly transformational rather than prescriptive. And he argues that high performers do not need more advice, more playbooks, but rather a fundamental shift in their underlying operating system or mindset. That's what we're going to talk about here. Welcome, Townsend.
[00:03:04] Speaker A: Thank you. It's wonderful to be here. That's. That's the first time I've heard somebody say based in.
My wife and I just got off of the road, if you will. For the last five years we've been living a semi nomadic life, so there was no base. So whenever somebody would say, well, where do you live? It's like, well, it depends what time of the year it is and what we feel like. So when you said based and I was like, I. I guess I am. Yeah, we bought a house. We're here.
[00:03:26] Speaker D: We're not.
[00:03:26] Speaker A: We're not planning to pack up in a month. I'm actually pulling stuff out of boxes that have been stored for five years. I guess I am based in Chandler.
[00:03:33] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:03:34] Speaker D: Carla, I had a chance to talk with Townsend, I think it was last week or the week before. And I was like, I want a house just so I can buy nicer things and like store it there without having to worry about some landlord having a key or something like that. And that's when he revealed to me that he's. Yeah, they just bought a house and they're going to be kind of stationary for a little bit.
[00:03:54] Speaker A: Books on my bookshelf.
[00:03:55] Speaker D: Books on the bookshelf.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: It's wild. Some very special book.
[00:03:58] Speaker C: Yeah. I've moved to a few countries all by myself and I do have like two or three books that I rebuy each time I move because I just love having them around, which is funny because I never read them for like years sometimes, but it's just kind of good to have them around. It's like an altar, I guess.
[00:04:15] Speaker D: I have a book I've traveled with for the last five years and I still haven't read it. I don't. I'm one of those people. I don't know why.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: What's the book?
[00:04:23] Speaker D: Barbarian Days, Surfer's Life. It's. It's about a. It's a really, really cool story. I think it won some prizes. Check it out, though. I'm going to butcher the author's name, but it's a story about him from a kid in, like, the 60s working on the railroad all the way through, like, traveling to different atolls across the world to surf, like, discovering all these legendary waves. It's awesome. Awesome book.
But I don't know how it ends because I've been reading it for five years. The COVID is literally torn off this thing, and I still haven't finished.
[00:04:55] Speaker C: Literally. Yeah.
[00:04:56] Speaker A: William Finnegan.
[00:04:57] Speaker D: William Finnegan. Yep, there it is.
[00:04:59] Speaker C: What's your favorite genre to read? Townsend.
[00:05:01] Speaker A: That's a great question.
I don't read business books anymore. I figured out there's about five topics that are just constantly regurgitated and rewritten and nobody cares.
I've. I've read just about everything that exists in the category of philosophy or self help or anything like that. So I'm. I'm sick of those books. It's really difficult to find something that's all that interesting. I don't actually do a lot of reading of books these days. I do have a couple books that are. That are sort of like touchstones for me. I'll go back to them. The Four Agreements is one that I love, and I'll read that a couple times a year. I've got.
I've got the Little Prince on my bookshelf. I love that.
[00:05:38] Speaker D: Carla has a tattoo of the Little Prince.
[00:05:40] Speaker C: A Little Prince tattoo on my neck. It's my. The first book I've ever read.
[00:05:44] Speaker A: Oh, that's amazing.
[00:05:45] Speaker C: Ever, ever, ever. It opened up my love for books.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Yeah. You know, it's fascinating. I don't. I don't consume blogs or podcasts. I do a lot of creation. And these days, I'm more likely to read kind of a. A fiction book than anything else, just because everything else is just so much information and I want to turn my brain off.
[00:06:03] Speaker D: Yeah. Escape a little bit sometimes, right?
[00:06:06] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:06:07] Speaker C: Yeah. I'm in the same boat. I only read psychological thrillers now. I listen to podcasts, but only so, you know, only when I'm at the gym. That's it. So I don't listen to, like, rap songs, unlike Alex.
[00:06:18] Speaker D: Yeah. Carla's escape is serial killers for some reason. Like, she'll be watching true crime psychological thrillers, and I'll go on, like, a trip. Right. For example, I was in Idaho for four days and Thanksgiving, and Carla's messaging me. I'm having a really tough time sleeping at Night when you're not here, I'm a little nervous. I'm like, yeah, because you're watching True Crime all day or every night, you know, it's. Of course you're gonna be a little scared.
[00:06:43] Speaker C: Yeah.
Okay, cool. Well, that's really funny. And I think, like, the discussion on books is very intimate to every entrepreneur that I meet, because everyone says that entrepreneurship is lonely. And sometimes books are the things that make us feel less lonely. But let's talk about your experience, Townsend, and what Alex mentioned earlier in this episode. You left a lucrative corporate job to start your own business because you wanted freedom. But then you realized you ended up working 20 hour days and sacrificing your health. How did your definition of freedom change after the collapse of, like, your first company? And maybe a story about that.
[00:07:23] Speaker A: I've got plenty of stories. Something you said, though, actually kicked something up for me. You said, entrepreneurship is lonely. And I've thought that for a lot of years. I used to say that. But one of the things I've realized in the past few years is entrepreneurship is not lonely. Entrepreneurs are loners.
They're not herd animals. They are imbued with this nature that must do it themselves, right?
[00:07:46] Speaker C: Forge my own path.
[00:07:47] Speaker A: Forge my own path in secret. So they do all that. Then they go, oh, but I'm lonely. No, you're not lonely. You just don't hang out with other people. And that was very much my journey, at least building my business, right? I had this very lucrative corporate job. I was a vice president at a Fortune 500 company making a lot of money.
You know, all the boxes checked, a couple leased cars, and the three vacations a year and the house and Boulder and all that, and my company. And it all looked really good on the outside, but it really wasn't good on the inside. Because what was creating it was this drive, obviously. And that's what a lot of entrepreneurs relate to. But the source of the drive, right, the fuel that's running the car, which for me was a lot of do it myself.
It's up to me. There was this idea that this. This was all on me. And if you think about it, the only person crazy enough to start a company is somebody who chooses a life of it's up to me. And that's what's required in the early days of entrepreneurship. However, God forbid, you're a little bit successful, you start to generate some revenue, you actually have a product or service that gains traction, you start to grow. Well, now you've got to hire others. That's very disruptive for the operating system that knows how to do things itself or get other people to do things the way that we would do them, but doesn't know how to harness necessarily the unique talents and energy and enthusiasm and flavor of others. So I found myself at one point with. I don't know, we were. We were coming up on 3 million in revenue, and I had a leadership team of eight or nine people, I can't remember, and we had a whole floor in a downtown building in Denver. But it was all up to me. So everything around me appeared like nobody was good enough. Nobody could do their jobs. Everybody had to be checked on.
So the growth of the company and more people simply became more and more for me to do, more and more for me to manage. It literally imploded on itself. You just physically can't sustain it. If your model is grow by creating more things that you have to touch and assign and check on and worry about, well, eventually you're going to. You're going to crumble under all that.
[00:09:49] Speaker D: Yeah, it's kind of like, you know, as an entrepreneur, you are always at the top of your company. As a business owner, you're at the top of your company. So that saying of it's lonely at the top kind of applies, right? It sounds like.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: Well, it does. The problem is, if that's the. The ethos that you maintain, you won't actually grow the company past a certain point. I mean, fundamentally, my work in the last 10 years has been serving founders with this very problem. Right. You get your business to a certain size, it's working, but it all runs through you. Every decision, every big thing. Right. Nobody's autonomous and. And then we say it's lonely at the top. Well, it's not lonely at the top. What you've done is insulated yourself, isolated yourself, and ensured that. It's sort of like saying something like, it's really dizzy at the center of the bicycle wheel, the hub. Well, yeah, but that's how it's designed because everything has to go through the middle. All the spokes go through the middle. And if that's how you built your company, you actually haven't built a company, you've built.
Prison is a way to think about it. Which really relates to your question about success. Right. For a lot of years, success was build my company, demonstrate straight revenue, chase the dream of growing and exiting and a pile of money or whatever the heck that's gonna look like. Fundamentally, today, freedom's not a place to get to. It's a Place that I choose, it's, do I get to work where I want, doing what I want with who I want, when I want? Can I say yes to what I wanna say yes to? And know what I wanna say no to? And that's not a function of achievement, Right? I thought it would be. It was the thing I chased for a while. When my company gets to a certain point and. And I have all these things and I have the exit, well, then I can create the life I want. Well, what I found out the hard way was it doesn't work that way. And as I said, it's been the last 10 years. This is far too common. Right. Entrepreneurs are chasing this thing called freedom, thinking they'll get it someday. What they're doing is actually building a prison. Yeah.
[00:11:38] Speaker D: And I think that actually tees up a question I had prepared for you. So, you know, many entrepreneurs, they fall into the trap of working consistently because their office is always with them. For example, right?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Like your.
[00:11:51] Speaker D: Your work follows you around. How do coach founders to decouple their identity from consistent output?
[00:11:57] Speaker A: That's a beautiful question. Here's the problem. Their identity is constructed from the idea of consistent and excessive input. That is their identity. So I'll answer the question, but you can't actually change the identity. You have to uninstall the old identity and install a new one. I think about it like an operating system, right? You have to remove something that's been there for a long time. Code, which is my value is in. It's up to me. I did it, and how hard I work. If you could go into the terminal screen of a founder, you would see, you know, very deep code running in there that says, it's up to me. If I don't work hard for it, there's no value in it. So it's at the code level of the human. That is who they are. And you can trace it all the way back probably to when they were growing up. And I've done this exercise for fun with founders where we go back and explore, well, where did this idea get created? And it always got installed someplace. And it's only where they can start to see that operating system level code and then overwrite it by choosing a different line of code. Like, I can get work done through others. Or, you know, think, like, life can be fulfilling and easy. I mean, ultimately it's changing ideas and thoughts at the code level.
[00:13:06] Speaker C: I have a question about that. One of my friends told me that to your point, about, like, identity and changing the code within A human being within someone. It's always easier to change your identity than decide to do something else. So, for example, if you're trying to quit smoking, instead of saying, I'm trying to quit smoking, or I'm quitting smoking, you say, I'm not a smoker anymore, or something like that. So that's what helped him. That's what he shared. Is it really that easy to change your identity? Do you just. Is it just a decision really? Like, is it easy? Like, tomorrow, can I be like, I want to be polyamorous? Just kidding, Alex.
[00:13:39] Speaker A: Yeah, well, a couple things. What your friend said is actually very profound. If my identity is, I am a smoker, well, I see a pack of cigarettes and I have two options, or whatever you like to smoke. I can fulfill on the destiny of. Of the smoker, which is to light the cigarette, or I can resist that. So if I am always a smoker, if my identity is I smoke, well, wonderful. I can not participate in a habit of smoking, but I will always produce thinking about, wouldn't it be nice to have a cigarette? Ideas about that. And then it's up to my willpower. Number one, that's exhausting. Number two, people don't have a lot of it. Number three, God, that just sounds miserable.
I was working with a gentleman yesterday, and this is a very touchy subject for some folks, but one of his core identity is that he is an addict. And he spends his days resisting the temptation, which are really his thoughts and his urges to use. And it had never occurred to him that we could go after that, which was creating the thinking itself, which was the I am an addict. That's the path we're on. To your point of, is it easy? Well, it's simple as hell. I wouldn't say it's easy. And let's use something that's really core to our identity, our name. Say Alexander woke up tomorrow and said, you know, that guy Townsend was really cool, actually.
Name's really cool.
[00:14:54] Speaker C: It is.
[00:14:54] Speaker A: Hey, hey, honey, sweetie pie. Whatever he calls it, I'm going to be Townsend from now on. That's my new name. So he would tell you, he would speak it. He'd go and get, you know, his name legally changed. He'd get his IDs. When his people would say, hey, Alex, good to see you. Actually, it's Townsend now. And he would be at least on paper and at least, you know, when he spoke it, Townsend. However, he's not no longer Alec, because he's been Alex for a lot of years. So there Is a, you know, there is a memory, an etching, a being I like to call it. There is a depth of identity that is Alex. And I would say 10 years could go by, he'd have the people in his life trained to call him Alex. He'd remember to introduce himself as Alex. He'd remember like all that would be there and then he'd be in the, you know, park or something and somebody go, hey, Alex.
He would still turn. I mean, that to me is the best metaphor for identity and the persistence of it. And the truth that you could have any identity you want if you are willing to create it with a sufficient level of commitment. And by that I mean for the rest of your life.
[00:16:00] Speaker C: Right.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Truly. So what's fascinating is, is in my work with founders and other, other folks who are on powerful journeys is how quickly we can create transformation. Not just change, but transformation. And it's interesting, I'll go into the difference in those two, but we can create transformation very quickly. When they start to see how this works and practice it and we do the work that I do with people and then some time will go by and I'll have a conversation and somebody will say, you know, stuff's been creeping back in or this has been happening. And what I hear is, oh, seems like the old identity is back. Well, it's not back. It never left. It just was there, you know, being created subconsciously. Right. You don't have to go now. What's my name again? It's just Alex. It's just there. It's self replicating.
So this process of identity shift is something you have to be incredibly committed to because it's easy to change. It's also easy to transform back.
[00:16:53] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: You are what you speak and you think and you write.
[00:16:55] Speaker D: I've seen that with myself so many times where like I make a decision, a very hard decision, I'm going to do things differently. Right. And I make it a week down the road. I'm consistent, I've got it. And then it, the old me creeps in. Right. So it's like creating that distance is probably where things aren't easy. Right. The, it's simple to make the decision, but then it's not easy to make it consistent.
[00:17:19] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:17:19] Speaker A: Okay, that cut out a little bit. My Internet went a little funky. But what I heard is you tried to, you said you've made a decision to change.
[00:17:25] Speaker D: Yeah, made a decision to change. Was really consistent. At it for like a week. Right. And I was feeling the change. But then let's Say it was, I'm gonna exercise, I'm gonna be more, I'm gonna be healthier, I'm gonna be going to the gym every single week. And maybe I did it consistently for two weeks.
And then that old me started creeping in. Maybe I missed a day. And then I just slowly go back to that old me. And I feel like that's the same idea, it's the same concept of identity change, whether it's working out.
[00:17:54] Speaker A: It is. But there's something, there's something important that I saw that I'd love to.
Yeah. Point to. A decision to exercise is a decision made by the old you. There is no new you deciding to exercise. It's still Alex, who, let's just make it simple. It's an exercise saying, well, I'm gonna exercise. So he puts it on his calendar. He subscribed. But. But we haven't done anything to change the identity. This is the fundamental thing that people miss. They think that a choice we make in and of itself will create change. Well, it might, but it actually will not take hold at the level of identity for a long, long, long time. If you have discipline, right? So there's Alex who does an exercise, who puts it in his calendar and maybe even enrolls others to hold him accountable and things like that. Well, then he goes to the gym. So he has a habit of going to the, the gym. But that habit is simply think of it as scaffolding designed to prop up a behavior and thoughts that he wouldn't otherwise have. Right. An athlete wakes up and doesn't have something on their calendar like to remind them to work out. They are an athlete. They train.
[00:18:56] Speaker D: That's what they do.
[00:18:57] Speaker A: So the brain produces thoughts of I'm be, I'll be training today. Let's see what that looks like. It's not like they have to create external structures for it. So this is the, this is the challenge with the self help movement. This is why I say self help is bullshit. Idea of change is bullshit because changes of behavior, it's something outside of you you're trying to do. Transformation is something that occurs inside. And when you effect an internal transformation, the outer world follows because we start having thoughts. If, if I could go into, let's just say the coding of your identity and I shifted it from I don't exercise to I'm an athlete. I'm a well oiled machine. You wouldn't have to put anything on your calendar. You wouldn't require motivation, you would not require accountability. Yeah, it's just something you would do. Just like you don't need to be reminded or have anything outside of you to respond to your name. Yep. You hear the word Alex, your brain produces thoughts. Maybe they're talking about me. So that, that's the essential difference here in how most people approach. Right. And this is why I say, particularly for high performers, systems, processes, frameworks, structures, how to all horseshit. They're all horseshit because they rely on creating external. Again, I'll call it scaffolding. To promote behaviors and actions that aren't naturally occurring in our mind and produced.
[00:20:16] Speaker D: What do you, what do you see as like a common, I guess not characteristic, but like recoding that you're having to do that brings the most value for these high performer CEOs or you know, founders that are trying to get to that next revenue level. Because I know you are now working with what, 7. That stretch from 7 to 10 million, right?
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Primarily, actually these days it's 10 million to 100 million. So it's, it's those going to that level. Yeah.
[00:20:43] Speaker D: Good. So like, does that code change? Does it differ from each group or is it relatively consistent for these high performers?
[00:20:51] Speaker A: It's. It's relatively consistent. It has a different.
We'll just call it depth, intensity, severity, the bigger you go.
[00:20:59] Speaker D: I think what I did ask though too, it's just like what are some of the common. I guess recoding that needs to be done when people are at that.
[00:21:06] Speaker A: Well, yeah, yeah, cool. So I'll answer that. I've got a list of the top, you know, 20. What I would say what I want to be is very clear though. The idea that a. There's a wholesale replacement of the code is not accurate. Right. Simply doesn't work that way. Over time you'll see the code switch out, but it's not like the old code is gone. So I really want to be clear about that. The second thing is the old code is not a problem. In fact, it has been the solution up till this point. So think of the code or the programming at the level of identity as that which gives thrust and motivation and puts the human into action. Just like the fuel you put in a car gets the car to go. So the code that has been installed is not a defect, it's a feature. However, the feature has some challenges.
Say that again.
[00:21:54] Speaker D: Yeah, it's not the problem. Instead of looking at it like it's
[00:21:57] Speaker A: not a problem, it's. Yeah, yeah. Here's the thing. One of the most common. I call it legacy operating system code. Sometimes I call it default operating code. Sometimes calls it legacy or default ways of being. One of the most common one is in and around the area of enoughness. I am not enough. Like, imagine at birth you were given a name. I'm Townsend. And then you were also given another name, which is and I am not enough. Right. Imagine that's your name. Now, would that be a problem? Well, only if you didn't like that. But what's fascinating is that code, that name puts you into action. What is somebody who is I am not enough do? What does somebody name Alex do when somebody else Alex? Well, they turn their head. What does somebody with I am not enough do when presented with a problem? Well, they do more. Now, actually, some people don't do enough. We don't hear about those people or I don't work with them. They just kind of sit in the corner and watch tv. But the ones I work with use that code as the fuel, as the thrust. I'm not enough. Watch this, hold my beer. It's up to me as something that was programmed into me from a very young age. I could literally go back and tell you the stories of how it got there. That was never a problem. That was the source of my success. It's up to me was the source of my success because in any situation I knew nobody was coming. And I would have to find a way to do it if I wanted what I wanted and I did it. And over a lifetime of knowing that, thinking that, producing actions from that and creating results from that, that got really strong. To the point it's up to me is waking up every day. And in addition to being married and having two kids and living a life is running an 80 person company. Now that's a sight to behold, right? In my day, people would look at me and go, how do you do everything that you do? Like I would work people into the ground and then you. Not even a nap. And it was a marvel. And I was rewarded for it. I was praised for it. I was successful because of it. However, there's a flip side. This not enoughness it's up to me produces what I would just kind of think about as a toxic byproduct. Just like gas produces carbon monoxide, right? And emissions and CO2 and all that stuff, right? Well, I'm not enough. It's up to me produces bitterness, resentment, right? Every unit of not enoughness that I used, every unit of it's up to me that I use to create produced this. I would just call it a toxic byproduct. That was either stress or resentment or something else I can't even explain. And, well, you need some amount of. It's up to me to get to a million. We need twice as much of that to get to 2 million. But the toxic byproduct doesn't scale linearly. It scales exponentially. So what happens again and again and again to founders, people that are up to great stuff in the world is they reach a point. And the fuel that got them there, the code that got them there, is producing so much pain, discomfort, bitterness, anger, stress, it becomes unbearable. And they start to think, what's the point of this? So here's some of my favorites. These I would call de energizing, or I would say these are operating system commands, codes, ways of being that produce de energizing thinking. Worthless, weak, superior. Not enough, need to do it my way. Undeserving, unworthy. The amount of folks that I know personally and have worked with who have more zeros than we'll ever have combined, who are up there going, I'm not enough. I don't have enough. I don't deserve any of this. Who are undeserved. Their fuel is I am not deserving. It is astounding. You guys, like, show me somebody with an extraordinary amount of outer world success. It's like I can read their mind. I know what they go to bed thinking about and worrying about, and I know what gets them up in the morning. It's not the joy of the game and the pleasure of what they're creating. It is the fear of losing it all. It is, I need to prove myself. I need to show them. There's a massive list, but it's all the same. One of my core ways of being that created a lot of my life was not just I'm not enough. I didn't really feel I'm not enough was I need to do more. Like, if you could get down to the various levels and kind of measure the thinking, the most base thought, the thought that never went away is, I need to do more. I need you more. I need to do more. More, more, more, more. Now what was I doing? I was doing more. What was I creating? I was creating more. But this I need to do more was like this.
Energy suck, force suck.
Well, what we never consider is the possibility is that we would actually create just as much with the line of code that says, I've done enough. And in fact, if I'm talking to a founder, I say, you know, we're having this conversation about it's up to me or I need to do more. And we have the idea, we start to play with the idea that you don't need that thought. Right. You could have a different thought that was running the show, which is, I've done enough. Well, their fear is, well, then I would stop doing. Yeah. Because I need to do more. Produces the idea. If I go away, what do you do? You'll probably sit on the couch and eat bonbons and watch Oprah and who knows what. So the whole work that I do is about helping them see the possibility of transforming the thinking, the fundamental ways of being that have created their life up to now into new ways of being that. That create just as powerfully without the toxic side effects. And you think about it, if I wake up every day with, I need to do more. The more I do from that, the tireder I get, the more drained I get if I create all day. So these days when I wake up, what's running in my mind is, I've done enough. I could sit here all day and do nothing, and the world would pay me. Like, literally, that's the thought that I have. And with that thought, I sit down on my computer, I do what's on my calendar, I create, I build, and I go, this is fun. This is joyful to be. My battery doesn't go down.
[00:27:18] Speaker D: Yeah. I can recognize those days that I've had that mindset versus the days that I've just been trying to conquer, prove myself, get as much done. And it's funny because I'll get more done on those days when I come in with the right mindset. Right.
[00:27:33] Speaker A: Yeah. Isn't that interesting, though? You've had that experience, but yet you don't go, well, let me do that again tomorrow.
[00:27:39] Speaker D: Exactly.
[00:27:41] Speaker A: That's the identity side. The identity says, well, that was fun. That was nice for a break. But that's not who we are. That's not how life is. That's not how it works. Back to do more. Yeah.
I don't know if that's how.
[00:27:52] Speaker D: I don't know if you were doing this too. But as he was explaining these different kind of moments of fuel for all of us, I was going back into, like, my childhood or my thoughts. Like, okay, why did I, you know, have so much drive? Why did I want to be the first person in my family to go to college? Why did I want to, you know, pick myself up when I was down? This conversation made me go back in my mind. I. I feel like I know what yours is, but I don't know if you had the same kind of flashback
[00:28:18] Speaker C: as well, a hundred percent. I definitely never believed that I was never enough because my parents made me feel like I was absolutely enough. And my big mindset right now is money is available. If I want it, I know how to get it. If I'm feeling like I want to chill today, I'm going to chill today. And it's there, it's available, it's there for the taking. And why wouldn't I deserve it? And my favorite affirmation. I recently shared this with Alex. I said, oh, I have a new favorite affirmation. It's good things happen to girls like me because it's. I just feel like it's a very positive thing. And it's. And it's also very. Both objective and subjective. Objective, because I know myself so I. I can run like reasons why I deserve these good things. And then it's also subjective because I'm not, you know, I'm not. You could be better than. You could be a better person. That mean you actually might deserve it better. But I don't know that. That. So.
[00:29:08] Speaker A: Yeah. Can we play with something with that?
[00:29:09] Speaker C: Huh? Yeah.
[00:29:10] Speaker A: Can I play with something?
[00:29:11] Speaker C: Of course.
[00:29:12] Speaker A: So. So I love affirmations.
And affirmations are things that the being says about stuff outside the being. You said good things happen to girls like me, Right. So that's a beautiful affirmation.
And it works to a certain extent. But what it does is it requires you to source and create, for example, reasons why you are deserving. Here's the question. When you say good girls, good things to girls like me, who is me? Who is the girl like you? Who is that girl? Woman, whatever.
[00:29:45] Speaker D: At.
[00:29:45] Speaker A: At their essential self. Right? So good girls, good things happen to girls like me. Well, that's nice, but that also puts you in the object and things happening as the action. And out here's the subject. Life is out here and good things will happen to you. Who would you need to be such that of course everything was there and you didn't even have to to do anything for it and nothing out there needed to happen. And I'll give you a hint. The concept is deserved in this. I can do something that deserves a reward. It still creates a dependency on this idea called deservedness. Who would you be that doesn't need to do anything and everything will already be there for you when you want it.
[00:30:24] Speaker C: Right?
[00:30:25] Speaker A: What would the I, I am be?
[00:30:26] Speaker C: Well, in that sentence, my gut answer was, I am the person who, like good things, come easy to Them or something like that. Yeah. But I can't right now. I can't think of another concept beyond
[00:30:39] Speaker A: that statement as an idea.
I can do things to be deserving. What would it look like to not have to do things? What if I was just the thing? And that word is what I am.
[00:30:50] Speaker C: Deserving.
[00:30:50] Speaker A: Yeah. What if you were deserving?
[00:30:53] Speaker C: So would that.
[00:30:54] Speaker A: Period.
[00:30:55] Speaker C: Yeah. I mean, I genuinely think Alex calls me spoiled, so she definitely is.
[00:31:02] Speaker A: Do you think you're spoiled?
[00:31:03] Speaker C: Sometimes I see a gap. Gap between what I think I deserve or what I know I can get and other people thinking. And then when I compare myself to that, they call me spoiled. And so I agree with them.
I don't know if I just have no energy to argue with them because I also genuinely believe that I deserve everything that I have and more. And like I said, like, I've always believed it was easy. That's why I always tell Alex, like,
[00:31:29] Speaker A: why do you deserve everything and more?
[00:31:31] Speaker C: I don't know. I just. Just do time.
[00:31:34] Speaker A: Alex says you're spoiled. Yeah. Well, that's cool. My guess is there's always a calculus going on, though. What do you deserve? What don't you?
Probably earning.
Yeah. Next time Alex says you're spoiled, say, no, I am deserving.
[00:31:49] Speaker D: Giving her ammunition, Abs.
[00:31:50] Speaker A: Yeah. There's a fundamental difference between I deserve X or I. I deserve X because Y and I am deserving.
One is conditional, one is absolute.
[00:32:01] Speaker C: Right? Right.
[00:32:02] Speaker A: One of the ways I create my being, my operating system, because much of my life was I can have whatever I want if I'm willing to work for it. And it was all about, I can have what I want, but there's always a condition. There's stuff I have to do, and it works. One of the ways I create is no one is more deserving than I am.
I am deserving. And deserving is not a product of what I do. It's who I am. And then I do things. That's the difference between an affirmation and statement of being.
[00:32:31] Speaker D: I'm gonna start saying this to myself every time I go golfing and I'm trying to break 90. I am a low handicap golfer. I deserve.
[00:32:40] Speaker A: That's right. That's right.
[00:32:41] Speaker D: Handicap.
I'm gonna try this out on the golf course. I really am.
[00:32:45] Speaker A: I promise you, if you. If you created I'm a low handicap golfer, you know, I don't know, a dozen times a day and, like, your score would change because you're working at the right end of the problem. You're not working at the, you know, I get a good score. I like who you are now. This isn't witchcraft. Yeah. This isn't woo woo.
If you create yourself as a low handicap golfer, that's who you are. Well, it's not like you're gonna walk out one day after not playing golf for a year and just have a low handicap. What you will begin to do are the things that somebody who is a low. Right. Show me a low handicap golfer. And, and there's things. Right. If you identify with that as a way of being, your mind will begin to produce thoughts like, I should go to the range this weekend. I'm going to get a golf. Like, you'll come up with different thoughts about what to do and that will produce the result. But it's not trying to get a result by changing the actions or disciplines. It's who I am. And then you magically start to change your thinking. If I am an athlete, I don't go, hmm, what should I do today? If I am an athlete, I train.
[00:33:45] Speaker D: Yeah, I really like that mindset. That's a great mindset. I really like that.
[00:33:49] Speaker C: Yeah. This is why I always tell people when it comes to like building the identity, you know, like it's, it starts a lot when you were like a child. I always tell people all of it. It was a really great experience for me to start competing when I was a kid because it helped me build an identity of a winner. And of course you're gonna lose so many times. No one wins the first time. But it made me forget all those losses because I had these moments where I won and that became my identity and that's how I started to approach life. And, and no, it was conditional because, yeah, I had to win those things because, but I was a child and I didn't know, you know, I didn't know any better. So I'm, I'm very grateful that I had that experience. So like, when it comes to like entrepreneurs and how they manage their thoughts, in your previous experience, you've talked about 3am voice that tells high achievers that they're frauds. Maybe like imposter syndrome. What is the first step to quieting that voice? Is it also related to this change of identity?
[00:34:50] Speaker A: Absolutely, Absolutely. I mean, let's just use that example, right? They're all going to find out or they're, they're going to realize they don't belong. What? You know, let's use imposter syndrome. Well, if you think about it, that's a very high utility function. It's not something coming after you to cause you harm. It's something being produced to create, thrust in your life and produce results. Every high achiever, myself included, who woke up at 3am in the morning with the thought, didn't like that thought. So they did the things necessary to overcome that thinking. What they didn't realize was by doing so they were reinforcing that which was producing the thoughts. If a dog bark, if a dog barks and you give it a treat, when you're training it, that's how you get treats. So if I wake up in the middle of the night and I go, I'm a fraud. I'm like, why don't be a, I don't want to be a fraud. Hey, let me open, you know, Claude, cowork and get prepped and do more work. Well, great. You just increasing the, you're increasing the cycle and it looks like it works well and it does work well and does, it doesn't work anymore. Right? Because those thoughts come at one level and all of a sudden you're running a 50 million dollar company and the same kind of thinking, but now applied to what seems to be an exponentially larger risk and downside. So there's more of it and it keeps coming back and it gets louder and louder. So you gotta consciously reprogram. I'll give you a great example. Last, last October, my wife and I were in Denver. We were getting prepared to leave the Airbnb there. We had a drive to Arizona and then we were going to change some stuff in the storage unit because we were going to Europe, but we had to fly through Miami. Like we had all these things. Well, I was up at three in the morning with the thinking, as you might imagine, it might be familiar of my mind creating everything that could go wrong on that trip and cataloging and indexing it and then starting to put in there, you know, remediation and how we would handle that if we get a flat tire on the way. Well, we'll do this. So I'm woken up from a sound sleep with my mind creating a plan of a bunch of shit that might happen that goes wrong and what we're going to do about it. Now that's not a fun way to sleep. It's very useful for someone who has at their core some code that reads like I need to be prepared for whatever happens and who for their entire life has always been the prepared one, had the thing that was needed at the time when somebody like, gosh, I wish we had some. I got Advil Right. I'm the guy that has everything in the trunk of his car you need, including, you know, food and water and stuff like that. Because I'm prepared. That's what that guy does. That's what that being does. But that being is not useful at three in the morning. So a couple options I could have gotten up, started making list. People do that. That'll get it out of my head. That's nice. That's not going to solve the problem. I could sit there and wrestle with it and say, this is ridiculous and I shouldn't be thinking this, that might have some utility, et cetera. Instead, I slowed down and I got really as quiet as I could so I could use this word sort of metaphorically. Hear the real voice that was going on. Because the real voice wasn't the list. The real voice was you need to be prepared for whatever happens, no matter what. Right? That's the command line code. And I started to work with that voice. And again, I'm speaking metaphorically. There's, there's practices I have, but they're less important. Important. You don't need the specific ways to say it and techniques. The concept's much more important. And the concept is an acceptance that that voice is me. It's not to be fought with. It's not bad. It's not against me. It's actually trying to assist me. So rather than argue and fight it, I think about it as I. I seek to love that first and foremost, I seek to love what is which is the voice that's trying to make sure my trip goes well, like it always has. And then I create. Actually, we're going to run a different, different line of program here. And the line of program is I'm always prepared for whatever happens. Or I think in that particular case, it was. Everything happens exactly the way it's supposed to. Anything that occurs in that journey will happen because it's supposed to happen, including the flat tire, think I'm preparing for, etc. I'll know exactly what I need to do when I need to know what to do. So I started working those thoughts over in my mind. So rather than working at the level of my thinking, we'll say I went to my metacognition is one way to talk about it and seek to replace that. And not surprisingly, as I was doing that, that the other thoughts just went away on their own. If you fight with those thoughts, it's going to make more of those thoughts. If you write them down, it'll make plenty more and it'll do it again next time. And you got to get up and write it down. I want to go back to bed. About five minutes later, I was back asleep.
[00:38:57] Speaker D: So you're accepting. That is you. And it's okay to have. That's part of me. That's okay. However, I want to see if I can rewire myself, think about this a little differently, and plug this in at the core of myself. And, you know, because that actually really related to me. I grew up. Grew up as the family of camping since a young age, hunting. Just a lot of preparation. Right. And everything. Survival situation.
And I find myself being like, Carla is so good at being. Let's go and do this on the
[00:39:24] Speaker A: phone all the time.
[00:39:25] Speaker D: Yeah. And then I'm like the prep guy. And I found myself in that situation, and I did do the writing, you know, get it out of my head. Let me just write this down. I love that you brought up that specific example that related to me, to my.
[00:39:37] Speaker A: Witnessed. Yeah. Cool.
[00:39:38] Speaker C: I still hate camping.
[00:39:38] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't solve that one for you. I like that. I like the idea of camping. I used to have all the gear, and now I'm like, we can just go stay at the Four Seasons now.
[00:39:45] Speaker C: I have actually, Townsend, you gave me a really good ammunition for Alex now, because he always wants me to go camping. Alex, I am not a camper, a room service person.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: I am a bougie bee.
I'm a bougie. That's what I am.
[00:40:04] Speaker D: She's mentally preparing because we are leaving Mexico and going to Idaho. I've heard in the next few months, and my whole family is super excited about it. And we're going to slowly break Carla into hiking and doing these things, and she's just trying to dig her very soon.
[00:40:19] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:40:19] Speaker D: Yeah.
[00:40:20] Speaker A: Amazing.
[00:40:20] Speaker C: Maybe he'll be a camper. Who knows? You know, who knows?
[00:40:23] Speaker D: Yeah, There you go.
[00:40:24] Speaker C: I'm open. But, yeah, we really love everything that you shared here. Townsend. I genuinely. I felt the difference between you and some of the other coaches that we talked about. I think Alex will even tell you that this is probably the podcast where I talk the least, because you just gave me a lot to think about, and we really appreciate it.
As someone who has coached for, like, over two decades, I think you've said that a lot of coaches are about to be left behind. Is this because of AI or is there a larger mindset gap or a larger gap in, I guess, teaching or mentorship that is present?
[00:41:02] Speaker A: That's a great question. I mean, fundamentally, I divide the world of Coaching into lots of categories, but the simplest two are, there are information coaches and transformation coaches or, or informational coaches and transformational coaches. And I'm not talking about people that sell Systems and my 10 steps, I'm a real estate. Those aren't coaches, they're marketers and consultants, but people that at least purport to be in the, you know, the helping others, you know, business. Most coaches, vast majority trade in information techniques, strategies, work, some advice, etc. Well, well, I don't know about you, but I don't need that anymore. In fact, I've got, you know, the tools of the world at my disposal. And up to and including, I have tools that, you know, when my wife and I are having, you know, challenges of communication, I go and talk to the, you know, for lack of a better term, the GPT that I've built. So if what you're doing is based on information and stuff that's out here, well, that's ubiquitous and it's free. Good news, bad news. I don't think coaches are going to go away. People love talking to people. The question is, is what will they value that how much money you're willing to spend? A lot of coaches out there make very little money. I think it's something like 75, 80%, maybe more of all coaches don't make more than $35,000 a year. You can't live on that. And if that's your passion and you love doing it, that's great. And if you like sharing information and about this book you read and this philosophy, that's wonderful. You'll be able to coach friends and family and make a couple dollars, but you're not going to be able to work at a level of even serving, I would say, large organizations because the information is free, it's everywhere. So the only thing I believe that will retain any value is the ability to assist another human in transformation, which is literally helping them see themselves and the world differently. I work with a lot of, like I said, powerful founders and other people on big, big missions. One of the simplest things that I seek to do is assist them in transforming a world that shows up for them as full of problem.
Right. Which they like to solve and do something with and require effort and time and money to seeing a world where a problem is just one label you can put on a circumstance, you can put something else on it. One of my clients last year was going to market with their company. They're about 12 million. And they were going to go out and, you know, bring in the round of investments and grow the next level, et cetera. And at the beginning of the year, in my work with the founder, he's been a client for a couple years. What we created was a context, I'll just say it that way, for the game called let's go raise, you know, a bunch of money, let's go sell the company for $100 million was the plan. Now what showed up to him naturally on January 1st of last year was this is going to be hard. It's going to take a lot of work going to get it done, but you know, here's how it's going to go. Now he didn't need me to tell him the things to do to go out and put his company in the market. What we worked on was his concept, his idea, his thinking and ultimately the being that had the idea this was going to be hard and needed it to be hard. I've been through chance of helping founders grow and sell their company for lots of years and have had a number of successes with that. But at the end of the process, the result is always a founder who is drained and at the end of their rope and like crawling across the finish line. So you get the outcome you want, but the experience isn't particularly pleasant. Long story short, we created a different game. We're going to have the most fun anyone's ever had selling the company for $100 million. Like we created the entire experience of the year before we took a single action.
So long story short, November company transacted. I think it ended up being a 70 or 80 million dollar transaction. So quite successful. I got a nice check out of that because I work with my clients on a very, we'll say, embedded basis. I'm tied to their outcomes and we play a big game and I get a big piece of that. The greatest moment of the entire process for me was not when the deal happened, not when the big, big check went into his account, not when the not quite as big a check, but still big check went into my account. But was when I, I spoke to him about three days before the transaction was supposed to fund. And I'm sitting there talking to this guy who was tired, right? This is an exhausting process. He'd been working 14, 15 hour days.
But he wasn't hollowed out. He wasn't just stripped of everything, you know, and all of his life force. He was still connected to his family. He'd been like he was where we had created. He wanted to be nine, ten months earlier here like that's the beautiful part. I say to folks, you don't, you don't need me to help you go make a bunch of money or sell your company for a lot of money. I could help you with that, but you don't need me for that. There's lots of people who could do that. And you'll be able to do it on your own or you won't be able to do it. However we work together, you'll never have more fun, you'll never have more energy, you'll never have more peace and freedom and love and connection through the whole process. It's funny, people get excited about the outcomes. I created the money, I'm like, yeah, that's, that's the booby prize. The money is the booby prize. Successful people will find a way to create success, but at what cost, right?
[00:45:52] Speaker D: Really love kind of like the gamification approach you're mentioning. Just like, let's make this fun, right?
Carla and I are both in the staffing industry, right. Carla's handles literally every role above a va. I handle customer success. So a lot of times we're staffing these companies and these founders are able to go to the next level. And then even after we've, you know, helped them get there from our staffing side, we start to see new problems arise, right, with these founders where they're, they're struggling with different things and it does impact their team. So like from founders at all different levels, what are maybe kind of the warning signs that they should reach out to a professional coach and get one on one coaching. Like what is the initial, like flashing light that they should be on the lookout for?
[00:46:36] Speaker A: Oh, that's a great question, great question. The thing that pops in my mind is they're not going to listen anyway. You could tell people, right? I mean, you know, the average person sees the check engine light and drives for another, you know, 10,000 miles. Founders are worse than that. That I have a belief that we're actually all here who learn the lessons we're supposed to learn in this lifetime, nothing happens that's not supposed to be happening. I have a deep, deep belief in that. That's very helpful in my line of work because it keeps me from chasing or trying to get people somewhere, get people to do things. Like to me, they are perfect as they are. And if you had shown up on my doorstep, if anybody had shown up on my doorstep, let's just say circa 2008, before everything fell apart, I mean everything and said, oh, you know, I could help You, I probably would have thrown you out of the window of our third floor office. Right. It was just absurd to me. There was no universe where I was going to get off the highway before the, you know, the rollover wreck. Yeah. And it served me deeply. So I think the real answer is everybody, most everybody, most humans wake up at some point, you know, metaphorically in their life and have an idea. Maybe it's not supposed to be this hard or maybe it's not supposed to be this miserable or know, there's like a thought of maybe. So all I would say is if you have that thought, if you get that nudge, follow it. There might be something there. And if you're ready, you will. And if you're not, hey man, have at it. I work with lots of founders that we get started and they want to be coached and then we spend a little time together. And what's clear to me after a few sessions is they're not ready. And I'll say, I love you. You're great. You've got about another five to 10 years of putting your face through walls. I'll be right. And I'm not saying that like I'm making fun of them. Like, yeah, I get it. That's it.
Yeah. Like there's not, that's not the wrong way to do it. Please don't kill yourself. I would ask, but you know, divorce and bankrupt, like, that's kind of part of it. And you'll look back on that and laugh someday also. I do.
[00:48:32] Speaker C: Yeah. Wow. That, that was really, really awesome. And it made me think once again, over and over again two decades down the road, how unique and experience entrepreneurship is. It is an overall a mental, spiritual, psychological marathon that never ends. But it's also very, very exciting. You meet amazing people and you discover a lot of things about yourself. So. And there's people like you who can be that bridge to making entrepreneurship a little bit more bearable for, for a lot of entrepreneurs. So I know some people, a lot of people. A lot of our listeners will be curious, curious Townsend. How can they find you? How can they beg to work with you even when you tell them you still have five years? Where do you hang out?
[00:49:16] Speaker A: Well, thanks. Less and less these days. Actually I have a fairly significant substack page or do my a lot of my writing. So you can find me on substack. I think I'm the only Townsend Wardlow there hopefully. I have a website, Townsendwardlaw.com it's a one page website, but on there are a few Other podcast things and other links to my LinkedIn. Social's just become such a cesspool these days and just noisy and a bunch of AI craps. I don't do much with that. I come to really trust that the universe sends me the people who I'm supposed to work with, and they find me or I find them or they pop into my life. But yeah, you can. You can find writing on Substack and also the other links that I have to LinkedIn, et cetera, are on on that website, the Townsend wardlaw.com.
[00:49:56] Speaker C: yeah, we'll link it on the show notes. So for everyone listening, you can check it out. Just click the links on our show notes. Yeah, Alex.
[00:50:02] Speaker D: All right, Well, I really enjoyed this episode. I think I've got a little bit of reflecting I need to do, which I don't know why I didn't expect that coming into this call, but I definitely should have. And, Townsend, I just want to thank you for the time. This has been an awesome conversation.
You know, really glad that we got to meet.
Our conversation last week is still in my head as well. So I'm excited for future conversations with you, and I hope you enjoyed talking with both Carla and I. Let's get over the Arizona and hang out with this guy.
[00:50:30] Speaker C: Yeah, for sure.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: Now. Now that I'm based here.
[00:50:33] Speaker D: Yeah, now that you're. You're no longer a nomad.
I know.
[00:50:38] Speaker A: All right, well, thanks, guys. This was a lot of fun.
[00:50:40] Speaker C: Likewise. Well, thank you so much. And everyone listening, see you next week for another amazing conversation here at Rich and Remote. Bye.
Thanks for listening to Rich and Remote, where freedom isn't a dream, it's a decision.
[00:50:54] Speaker D: This is Karla, this is Alex Booth,
[00:50:57] Speaker C: and this is our journey to our dream Rich and remote life.
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