Kevin Lawrence is a strategic advisor and coach to CEOs and executive teams all over the globe. Today, Kevin and I talk about keeping it together as a leader and ways not to meltdown as you try to grow your company.

How do leaders keep themselves together while under the enormous pressure of running a company? In his 20 years of experience, Kevin is always fascinated by how some people can do it and have fantastic personal lives, while others are just miserable throughout their entire leadership journey. 

When Kevin dug further into this, there are some very famous people like Kurt Cobain and Elvis, who at the peak of their careers, had it all and then somewhere along the line, they imploded in their success. This same sort of timeline applies to successful executives, too. 

After working with a number of very high-performing individuals, Kevin dubbed this imploding timeline as the ‘The Dark Secret of The Boardroom.’ We all have our own Elvises and Kurt Cobains inside of us. So, Kevin’s job is to help executives find their high-performing sweet spot without all the darkness associated with it. 

Kevin hosted a private 2-day event with Jim Collins, the guru of business leadership and 'keeping it together.' Jim says that when we are under massive amounts of stress, we pay a 30% tax with our health. Although Jim hasn’t written about this yet, he calls this the ‘Stress and Drudgery Tax’.

Steve Jobs even admitted to Jim that when he went back to Apple and still continued his work with Pixar, he paid more than that 30% tax on his health. Steve Jobs believed that those were the days where the seeds of his cancer were planted.

High-performing individuals deeply care about their work, but often that’s exactly what leads to their downfall. In the mental health world, experts say that we’re only one or two life events away from a notable mental health issue. This is why when executives are going through major life-changing events, they should seek help either from a coach or therapist.

Interview Links:

Coach Kevin

The Working Mind Summary

More Resources: ScalingUpBusiness.com:  Learn about how growth coaching can help you and and your business see big results. Scaling Up Business Growth Workshops: Take the first step to mastering the Rockefeller Habits by attending one of our workshops. Bill on YouTube: Short videos to keep you Scaling Up.

Did you enjoy today's episode? If so then head over to iTunes and leave a review. It helps other business leaders discover the Scaling Up Business Podcast so they can also benefit from the knowledge shared in these podcasts.

__

Scaling Up is the best-selling book, by Verne Harnish and the team at Gazelles, on how the fastest growing companies succeed where so many others fail. My name is Bill Gallagher and I'm a certified Gazelles business coach. We help leadership teams to get the 4 Decisions around People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash right so that they can Scale Up successfully and beat the odds of business growth success. Our 4 Decisions are all part of the Rockefeller Habits 2.0 (from the original best-selling business book, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits).