Today’s discussion revolves around a critical insight: inactivity is the greatest threat to your success. Neal Reyes shares his extensive experience in leadership and coaching, emphasizing how inaction can limit potential and stifle dreams. He draws on personal anecdotes and powerful metaphors, illustrating the importance of taking action, no matter how small, to avoid falling into the trap of excuses and fears of inadequacy. The episode also explores the concept of convergence, helping individuals identify their strengths while overcoming barriers to progress. By the end, listeners are encouraged to embrace their ambitions and take decisive steps toward their goals, reminding them that inactivity is not an option if they wish to succeed.

Takeaways:

• Inactivity is the greatest threat to your success and dream fulfillment.
• Don't let the fear of not being qualified hold you back from pursuing your dreams.
• Building a business alongside your current job often leads to greater long-term success.
• The richest place in the world is the graveyard, filled with unfulfilled dreams.
• You've got to quit building excuses; they trap your true potential and success.
• Someone is always waiting on the other side of your ambition, so take action.

Chapters:

• 00:29 - The Key to Unlocking Potential
• 03:06 - The Threat of Inactivity
• 11:32 - Overcoming Inactivity: The Key to Success
• 16:25 - Overcoming Inactivity and Self-Doubt
• 22:23 - The Intersection of Obedience and Ambition
• 28:03 - The Impact of Inaction on Dreams

Mentioned in this episode:

To inquire about 1:1 coaching with Neal, please visit nealreyes.com/now.

To receive emails and our latest updates, please sign-up at nealreyes.com/email.

Hey, what's up, guys?

This is Neal.

You know, I've been managing for over 28 years now, and for over half of that time, it's been as an executive leader.

And in all that time of leadership and in all the businesses I've owned and companies I've consulted for, and even when I go deep diving with my clients that I coach on a weekly basis, there is one thing that I've discovered is the number one thing that that limits people from reaching their full potential.

It's the number one thing that prevents them from fulfilling their dreams, and it's the number one killer of their success.

We're going to dive deep on that today.

Get ready.

This is your captain speaking.

We want to let you know we've been cleared for takeoff.

We have clear skies today with no winds, so we are expecting a smooth and highly enjoyable flight.

However, should you experience some personal turbulence, don't worry as you've chosen the right airline.

As we are trained in navigating unexpected bumps, our destination today is high performance and success.

Sit back, relax, get hyped, or do whatever you do.

As we too are pumped for today's flight, we understand you have options when you fly, and we are grateful that you have chosen to fly with us today.

We recognize by choosing to fly, Neil Reyes, you are committed to growing personal development and reaching higher than you ever have before.

Enjoy today's flight.

Be blessed, and remember, the best is yet to come.

What's up, champion?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and.

I want to welcome you to the Executive Perspective.

For years, I struggled to answer the question, what do you do for a living?

Why?

Because most people who ask only expect to hear one thing.

I'm an executive with a deep level of understanding of business, operations, leadership and technology.

I'm also the president and founder of a worldwide ministry and CEO of an executive coaching and consulting firm.

My number one passion is people, and I receive significant gratitude in life from sowing into others and encouraging them as they grow to achieve their fullest potential.

If you're a high performance individual like me, or you're simply ready to take your business leadership or inner potential to the next level, then strike, strap in, because I'm locked in and all in.

This is the executive Perspective.

Hey, what's up, party people?

This is your host, Neal Reyes, and I want to welcome you to today's episode.

So excited that you joined us today.

Today, I want to talk to you about the number one thing that is the greatest threat to your success.

Again today, we're going to talk about the number one thing that is the greatest threat to your success.

And that is.

Drumroll, please.

The greatest thing that is the threat to your success is inactivity.

That's exactly right.

It sums it all up.

It's so simple, but it is inactivity.

I want to talk to you today.

We're going to break this down.

I'm going to talk to you about some personal examples as well.

But inactivity, you know, as I was prepping for this podcast and putting together, some of the things that came together for me were, and I'm going to give you some of these is.

Inactivity is the greatest threat to your success.

It's the greatest threat to your success.

It's the greatest killer of your success.

Inactivity is the greatest destroyer of your dreams.

Ooh, that's strong.

It's the greatest destroyer of your success.

It's the greatest limiter or limitation to your success.

And it's the greatest threat to your future.

You know, it's been said before, and you've probably heard this before on other shows, but the richest place in all of the world is the graveyard.

The graveyard is the richest place in all the world because it's the one place that has all the witty inventions.

Think of all of the inventions that people had throughout time and they took him to the grave because they never acted on them.

Think about all the dreams that live in the graveyards across the world.

Dreams that people had of doing things.

And, you know, for a dream to be big, it only has to be big to the person whose dream it is, right?

You know, if your dream is to open up a bakery, for example, well, to someone else.

You know, if you go talk to Elon Musk, who's building Space X and has Tesla and, you know, owns the new Twitter X, whatever you call it now, you know, to him, you might think, huh, bakery.

Now, I'm not saying he would treat it that way, but I'm saying if you think about it, he might think it's no big deal.

But a dream doesn't have to be big to other people for it to be big.

The dream has to be big to the person who's holding it.

But how many people went to the graveyard holding dreams or ideas?

How many people, how many of the world's best selling books or best novels or stories are in the graveyard because someone went to the graveyard and they never wrote it?

Or maybe some of the best movies, some of the best stories that are out there, and maybe people had great intentions but they never followed through.

What's the number one reason why most people don't follow through?

The number one reason simply when you boil it down, it's inactivity.

You know, when I'm coaching with my clients, when I'm working with them one on one, a lot of the times what I'm talking about is their dreams, the things that they have, desires in their heart.

In fact, when I'm speaking on stages and I'm traveling around and I'm telling you, this happens in like every room.

I asked this question, if I asked the question for people to close their eyes and for me to ask them, hey, in your heart, if you're in this room today and you feel in your heart like you just know that, you know that, you know that you're called for something greater than what you're currently doing or called to do something more than what you're currently doing with your eyes closed, raise your hand and leave it there for a second.

And I will tell you that every time I ask that question, like at least a minimum of 80% of the room has their hand held up.

Now understand this room.

No respecter of persons.

It doesn't matter if I'm in a room full of entrepreneurs and they're knocking it out, or if I have a room full of executive leaders or people who are mid management and they're growing, or if it's students, whatever.

I mean, it doesn't matter.

In other words, what I'm trying to say is all walks of life, people who are.

Some people think that sometimes it'd be a room filled with people who haven't accomplished their dreams or haven't been successful.

But you'd be surprised.

Sometimes the people who raise their hand the fastest are those that the world or that others would deem have been very successful.

It's because there's something inside of people when they're working on greatness, when they're a high performer on the inside, that most people know they're called to do something more, they're called to do something greater.

And when we talk about that and when I'm coaching people with that and I'm going through that, one of the biggest unlocks we have is finding out, hey, what is the thing you think you're really supposed to be doing?

And you know, sometimes when you're searching that out, you know, one of the things we talk about is convergence a lot when I'm coaching.

Convergence is the art, or the, I shouldn't say the art, but it's the Study of finding what you were truly called to do, connecting with that thing that you're destined to do.

Oftentimes the way we do that is by helping them to uncover their gift clusters.

Those are the strengths that they innately have within life that they tend to lean towards or grow towards.

And if you ever study someone, especially in management, the Lord showed me this so early in management.

You know, a lot of times in management, people want to take a person when they're, when they're giving them an evaluation, for example, they'll focus on them.

They'll look at them and they'll say, okay, what are all this person's weaknesses?

And then they want to go write an action plan or focus on all those weaknesses.

Now, outside of an action plan, a pip or something like that, if you're really wanting to grow your people, then what you do is you identify what are all their strengths and then what are all their weaknesses.

And the way you get them to address their weaknesses, by actually building around their strengths, you find what their strengths are.

That doesn't mean you cut out all the things that are weaknesses for them.

Now, for example, if there's something you can cut out that's just noise to them, then cut it out.

But if you can't cut that thing out of their schedule, you don't limit their growth by taking away the things that they find challenging or unenjoyable.

But what you do is you learn how to pair those things with things that are enjoyable to them or things that they are strong at.

And you help them grow with that.

You help them figure out what it is that they're strong at.

Why understand why?

I'm gonna say it again.

You gotta understand why they're strong at that.

And then whatever that is, you help them apply that towards the areas of their weaknesses.

In other words, you help them apply those same behaviors.

You can even habit stack it if you need to.

And someone might say, well, how do you know what areas they're strong in?

That's the simplest thing.

The things that people tend to lean toward and do the quickest and easiest, the things they find most enjoyable, those are centered around their gift clusters.

It's the things that they avoid.

Why do people avoid things?

Because they don't like them.

They're not enjoyable to them.

And so when I'm coaching with people and we're helping them in the areas of convergence and finding what they're called for, what they're destined for, one of the things that we realize and understand is when we're Finding those dreams, the question then comes up is, well, hey, are you going to do this?

Do you want to commit to this?

And sometimes they're like, yes, I want to do this.

It's the greatest desire of my heart.

Oftentimes when people contact me for coaching, they're contacting me because they want to work on something specific on how to launch that business or how to launch that next product or how to, you know, scale their business or do something in some way, or they're shooting for the next promotion or they want to, you know, in some way grow themselves.

And as they're doing that, that's the dream.

We figure it out.

But then we have to pair with that.

What is it that's holding them back?

Now, sometimes not everybody struggles with inactivity, but most people and most businesses struggle significantly with inactivity.

You know, one of the things I've been blessed to do is to help consult with businesses, not just lead businesses from an executive level, but also to own my own and also to coach businesses.

And I will tell you that I recognize this in my own life, long before I recognized it and someone else's.

You know, this isn't one of those things where I'm, like, doing my business and I'm watching the business over there and I'm like, you know, that.

That they struggle with inactivity.

But I'm not focused on my.

No, these are things I walked through.

These are things that I learned within my own business, my own business walk.

And as I learned with that, I was like, gosh.

And when I realized how significant it was, I started to put action plans in place to be able to address it.

Now as I go and consult, it's easy for me to see that now in other environments, but it's easy to see because this is something that I've lived through.

This is something I had to grow through and grow out of.

And to be honest with you, I still have to stand guarded against it every day.

That brings you to our first point that I want to share with you today.

When we're talking about inactivity as the number one thing or the greatest threat to your success, or inactivity as the number one thing, the greatest thing to your dreams, it's the number one thing that can stand in the way of you and your dreams.

Now, sometimes when people think about their dreams, they think the number one thing would be lack of resources, whether that's lack of money, whether if it's lack of people, whether if it's lack of equipment that they need or supplies or whatever that is.

And that is not the number one thing that's standing in the way between you and your dream.

The number one thing that's standing the way between you and your dream is an activity.

And I'll give you some examples.

You know, not everybody desires to have a business.

Now, I know many of the people that watch and tune into this podcast.

They do, or they're already business owners or entrepreneurs or they're leaders of some sort within their work environment, their executives or something of that nature.

You know, you have entrepreneurs and then you have intrapreneurs.

The difference between that an entrepreneur is someone who starts their own business and builds their own businesses.

But intrapreneurs, those are people who, they have giftings in their life.

They're gifted at building businesses, but they don't want to build their own business, so they focus on building other people's businesses.

That's.

There's nothing wrong with that.

But either way, whichever one of those spectrums you're on, when you focus on what it is, you're growing and when you focus on how you're going to grow that thing, inactivity can limit you significantly.

If you don't learn to break through that, you have to learn how to break through the inactivity.

In other words, not starting, you have to learn how to break through that.

There's so much to this, but I'm telling you, when it comes to dreams, the number one thing that is your greatest threat is inactivity.

Not starting in the first place.

The first point I want to tell you to.

Because most people, they build excuses around this thing or they build reasons to keep them trapped.

So the first thing I want to share with you is quit buying the lies that you're not qualified.

I'm going to say that again.

Quit buying the lies that you're not qualified.

You know, sometimes when people want to go out and start that new thing or do that new business, they struggle with it.

Because at some point this little thought creeps in the back of their mind that they're either not qualified or that they're not educated or that they're lacking or.

Or what if they fail?

Or what if this, what if this.

You got to quit buying into all that noise.

If it's something that's in your heart that you're desiring to do, then you need to push forward and do that.

And understand this is what sometimes really plagues people.

Sometimes people think in order to start with that dream.

And again, I'm going to Go back to my clients I work with sometimes.

Sometimes they think that in order to jump into that next thing, they got to leave the thing they're currently at.

And no, that's not the case at all.

In fact, gosh, I've seen so many podcasts and reels and things lately, even of people talking about where they're asking the questions.

In fact, I was watching one with, I believe it was Cody Sanchez the other day, and she was talking about how there's a study that came out where they were saying, you know, is it best for.

If someone's going to start a business, is it best for them to quit their current job and go all in on that business?

Or do they tend to have greater success if they start to build that business around their job that they have until they build it to a point where they can grow further?

And she said, surprisingly, and they had interviewed all these different people on it, and she said, surprisingly, they actually found that people who built it alongside of their main job, those were the people who, in the long run, had the greatest success.

I would tell you from my own personal experiences, I concur with that.

I don't think there's anything wrong with someone stopping and jumping full into a business.

But to run a business, it takes things like capital, it takes money to run businesses.

And there's a lot of pressure you put on yourself if you just exit whatever it is you're in to go into that all the way.

What I will tell you is that sometimes it's the next thing that leads to the next thing.

And when you're working on businesses, whatever that thing is, or whatever dream it is you have, and I'll give you an example of a different type of dream.

You know, maybe for someone, their dream is not to own a business at all.

That's not their business.

Their dream, their dream is to go back to school, in other words, college, and get their degree.

Maybe it was something that they were working on and had to stop, or maybe it was something that they never got to pursue and now they have a desire to do it.

You know, maybe they're married and they have children or life is, you know, they're further in life, but their dream, their desire, is to go back to school.

Well, if you buy those lies that you're too old or, you know, you were supposed to go right out of high school, or you can't go at all, or that you don't have time, you're buying the lies.

You cannot buy those lies that you're not Qualified.

You got to jump into it.

That brings us to our second point I want to share with you today.

Our second point is quit building a wall of excuses.

This barrier keeps your true potential trapped inside and your success locked on the outside waiting for you.

I'm going to say that again because it's a lot.

Quit building a wall of excuses.

This barrier keeps your true potential trapped inside and your success locked on the outside waiting for you.

Gosh, I'm going to tell you.

You know, there's this person who I listen to a lot.

She's someone who I see as a mentor within my life.

Her name is Terry Savelle Foy, and she has this phrase that I've heard her say for just years and years and years, and it's that someone is always waiting on the other side of your obedience.

You know, the first time I heard her say that, it was like it pierced me.

You know, sometimes we hear things that are so profound, it can, like, pierce the core of us.

It can pierce us to the core.

The way I view it is that it's like.

And sometimes something will come on so strong like that that I'll take a moment before the Lord and I'll ask him, lord, I'm asking you that you please write that on the tablet of my heart.

Lord, transcribe that on the tablet of my heart like an inscription so that I don't forget it.

Because I know this is a guiding post statement.

This is something I need to keep in front of me.

This is something I need to focus on, that I keep in front of me so that I don't lose sight of.

And when I do that, I will tell you that when I heard Terry Savelle Foy say that for the first time, that someone's always waiting on the other side of your obedience.

There were years, you know, if you don't know.

I have a lot of videos online.

You know, this is a brand new podcast that we've created through the leadership of our coaching business and things of that nature.

But we have a whole other realm of videos that we do that I've done in ministry and things of that nature.

And what I will tell you is there were so many nights that I'd be working full time and as an executive and I'd come home and I'd.

My kids were small and I'd get them to sleep and I'd work, my wife would have dinner and get the kids to sleep and everything.

And you want to know what?

I had a TV studio I had built in my house that the Lord blessed us with.

Like at 11 at night, I'm recording these videos while everyone else is asleep around me.

And as I'm recording those, I'd get done.

And this is how I used to do it back in the day.

I would rush in there, I'd record the video, I'd get done, I'd go and start editing it on my computer and I would edit, edit, edit, edit.

And then once I was done editing it, I would hit render.

If you haven't done editing before, basically what it is is when you compile your project and no matter what kind of tool you use, whether if it's Adobe Premiere Pro or DaVinci Resolve or any of the other ones that are out there, you know, when you create that project, you then have to turn around and put it all together as one file.

And how you do it as one file is you render it.

And so I'd hit render and I'd go to bed and I set my alarm for like an hour or two later because I knew it was going to take an hour or two for it to finish rendering that.

And so my alarm would wake up like an hour later.

You know, keep my middle of the night now, and I wake up and I rush over there and I hit upload to YouTube.

And then I go to bed and I put another alarm for another couple hours later.

And I'm waking up a couple hours later and I'm posting it.

Now it's.

It's loaded up to YouTube.

Now, obviously I've gotten better about this, but this is how I started.

And I turn around, load it to YouTube.

And as I load it to YouTube, I'm then, you know, now it's uploaded and now I'm putting all the things there, I'm putting the thumbnail out there and I'm giving the descriptions and I'm doing all that kind of stuff so that I can post it by a consistent time every morning, which at that point was 7am And I was producing five of these a week.

Five videos a week.

Now, is there a better way I could have recorded?

Yeah, there was.

And I learned how to do it better along the way.

But these were things that I knew I had to do.

But if I had waited for perfect conditions, you know, it tells us in Ecclesiastes 11:4.

And I know this isn't a Bible study, but I'm going to tell you God is involved and at the center of every single thing I do.

And so I will quote things from the Bible because that's how I've grown in these things I'm sharing with you.

But Ecclesiastes 11:4 tells us that those who wait on.

Well, let me break it down like this.

It said, those who.

Who watch the wind will never sow, and those who regard the clouds will never reap.

Here's what that means.

If you walk out of your front porch and you're going to go sow some seeds so you can, you know, let's say you're a farmer and you want to harvest, but if it's blowing like crazy and you're concerned it's going to blow your seed and scatter it all around to the wrong places, and you wait.

But the next day you come out and it's blowing again, and the next day you come out and it's blowing again, you're like, forget it.

It's just too windy out here.

Then you'll never get that in the ground.

And.

But if you do get it in the ground, and when you go to harvest it, if you walk out and you see some nasty storm clouds in the distance, and you're like, oh, it's gonna be a nasty storm today.

I'm gonna wait till tomorrow.

And then if tomorrow it's another nasty storm, and then another nasty storm, you could lose your window to bring in the harvest because you were waiting for perfect conditions.

Business is very similar.

I wasn't going to allow inactivity to keep me from creating the videos.

So until I could develop a better routine or a better rhythm, I was in there at night because that's when I was able to have a quiet time to record without my family and my kids making noise because they were small and I wasn't going to put undue pressure on them, but it allowed me to be able to record.

And then I would turn on and edit it before I went to bed.

Let's just say I didn't get a whole lot of sleep back then.

But it's something.

And it was my commitment that I was willing to do.

These are important things.

Now, I will tell you that as I was sharing that thing by Terry Savelle Foy, that someone's always waiting on the other side of your obedience.

Years later, in fact, about a year ago, a little over a year ago, the Lord personalized that statement even more for me.

For me, he said.

I heard him tell me one day, he said, someone is always waiting on the other side of your ambition.

Oh man.

When he said that, it hit me at the core again.

This is one of the things, Lord, write that on the tablet of my heart.

Inscribe that on the tablet of my heart, Lord, so I don't forget that someone is always waiting on the other side of your ambition.

Now this is a personal thing for me and if you want to take that for you, then do it.

Use it for you how I use Terry's for me.

But that was so significant because I have ambitions in life and there's things that God has dropped in my heart.

These are things he's deposited within my life that I know that I know that I know I'm supposed to do.

But with inactivity, if I allow inactivity to come in the room, you know, if someone.

If my doorbell rings here in a minute and I go and answer it and when I open it, there's two people there, let's say one person is a dream and the other one's inactivity.

If I let dream into my house and inactivity follows it in, I'm not going to get a lot done.

I might get a dream.

I have an awareness now of this really awesome thing, but inactivity came with it and it means I'm never going to get anything done.

You know, if I open that door and it's dream and inactivity is walking by on the sidewalk and it sees I open my door and it takes off running, try to get in, you gotta shut the door on that thing.

You gotta tell inactivity to stay outside.

Inactivity ain't allowed to come in here in your mind.

Inactivity and allowed to come in here in your heart.

Dreams allowed there.

But how do you get dream once dream gets in your mind and once dream gets in your heart, how do you get it outside for the world?

You get it outside for the world through being active.

You get it outside to the world by doing that thing you're supposed to do.

And maybe you have a dream that's not necessarily going to be a world changer.

At least maybe it's not going to affect mass numbers of people, but it will affect you and it will affect your family and it can affect future generations in ways you don't even know.

I remember a long time ago, I heard this thing that man knows how many seeds can come from one apple, but only God knows how many apples can come from one seed.

I'm going to say that again.

Man knows.

Mankind knows how Many seeds may come from one apple, but only God knows how many apples can come from one seed.

That dream that's residing in your heart, don't let it die.

That dream that's in there, don't let it die.

You gotta fight for that thing.

You gotta contend for that thing, and you gotta push for it like none other.

Now I'll get ready to close, but I'll wrap it up with this.

I want to share a story with you that I heard.

This is one of the most profound stories I've ever heard, and it marked and changed my life.

And it was by a woman named Jamie Kern Lima.

If she's hearing this, hello, Jamie.

I appreciate you and value you greatly, but Jamie Kern Lima.

And I'm not going to go into all her story, but holy cow.

If you want to be inspired, go listen to Jamie Kern Lima's story.

But at the Growth Day event in Austin.

I had never heard Jamie Kern Lima before.

And I went to this Growth Day event.

I had never heard of Growth Day prior to that really much either.

Maybe I heard about it a month or two before, but I found out there was this event in Austin and I went to it.

And it was a room filled full of high performers.

And as Jamie was speaking, she was talking about the things that, you know in your heart that you're supposed to do something that you're supposed to get done.

And she posed this question to us, to the people in the room.

She said, what's that thing that you know that you're supposed to do or that you've been pushing off or postponing, but you know, you're called to do it that you haven't done.

And now with your eyes closed, she tells us, I want you to picture fast forward five years in the future.

At five years into the future, you still haven't acted on that thing that you know you're called to do.

How has that impacted you?

How has that impacted your family?

What things are you missing out on?

What things should you have had now that you don't?

What opportunities would that had created for you that you missed out on because you never started?

Now, fast forward 10 years and how has that grown man?

I'm writing these things down at five years.

I'm writing down this list of all the stuff on my remarkable.

And then she goes to 10 and I'm like, oh, my gosh, the magnitude is so big.

So I'm tracking like a few of them, but it was so big, it was the magnitude of what me and my family would have missed out on was so significant, I couldn't even put it to words.

And then she takes it out to 20 years.

And at that point I just put my remarkable down because I just, I was blown away at the 10 year mark because this, it was so significant of what not starting would mean to me and my family and what it would cost us.

The number one thing it would cost me more than anything was that I had a dream in my heart from God to do something.

This podcast, just so you know, is one of those things that I knew at that moment I was supposed to do.

But if I didn't start it, I would have to go before God one day and give an answer and an account for why I didn't do the thing that I was supposed to do.

Guys, I'm going to tell you that no matter what that thing is that's in front of you right now, and no matter how much time you've already delayed on or how much time you've already missed, I'm going to tell you it's never too late to start.

And I'm going to tell you that inactivity is the greatest threat to your future success.

Don't allow inactivity to delay you another day.