In this empowering episode, Kim Sawyer, Founder of theWealthSource®, shares how to take ownership of your career as a pre-founder in stage 1. If you're feeling stuck in a job, dissatisfied despite a good paycheck, and wondering if you should make a change, you won't want to miss it.

You will discover:

- Why treating your career as a business where you are the CEO gives you real control

- How to discern between your current job, long-term career, and overall life priorities

- What active participation looks like to build your desired future instead of leaving it to chance

This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 1 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz

Kim Sawyer has extensive business experience and has been a professional coach for more than 20 years. His coaching firm, theWealthSource®, coaches and facilitates key professionals, executives, teams, and organizations to create extraordinary wealth — in all its forms. They accomplish this by developing unique and powerful models, tools, and approaches that elevate the performance and success of the executives they coach to the next level. Kim has coached leaders across some of the most respected organizations, including Continental Airlines, JP Morgan Chase Bank, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), IBM, Chevron, and Spectra Energy.

Want to learn more about Kim Sawyer's work at theWealthSource®? Check out his website at https://thewealthsource.com/

Connect with Kim through his LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/coachkimsawyer/

Are you a successful executive who feels stuck in your career and not sure what to do about it? Kim is offering you his $300 Career Mastery Session - FREE when you mention this podcast. There are limited spots, so sign up now: https://calendly.com/thewealthsource

Mentioned in this episode:

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If you’re a Founder, business owner, or CEO who feels overworked by the business you lead and underwhelmed by the results, you’re doing it wrong. Succeeding as a founder all comes down to doing the right one or two things right now. Take the quiz today at foundersquiz.com, and in just ten questions, you can figure out what stage you are in, so you can focus on what is going to work and say goodbye to everything else.

Founder's Quiz

Hello, hello, and welcome. Welcome once again

to the Start Scale and Succeed podcast, the only podcast that

grows with you through all seven levels of your journey as a

founder, or as we'll say today, a pre-founder. I'm your host,

Scott Retheimer, and today we're talking to all those folks

sitting in a job, maybe a great job, maybe a bad job, but one

way or another, they've outgrown it. They're staring at the door,

wondering if the grass is actually greener, or if they

just haven't learned how to grow grass yet. But whatever it is,

it's not working to the extent that it should. We call these

folks dissatisfied employees, and no matter how good your

paycheck is, that doesn't quite seem to check the box, and my

guest today, Kim Soyer, has extensive business experience

and has been a professional coach for more than 20 years.

His coaching firm, The Wealth Source, coaches facilitates and

helps key professionals, executives, teams, and

organizations to create extraordinary wealth in all its

forms, they accomplish this by developing unique and powerful

models, tools, and approaches that elevate the performance and

success of the executives they coach to the next level. Kim has

coached leaders across some of the most respective

organizations, including Continental Airlines, JPMorgan

Chase Bank, the British Broadcasting Corporation, IBM

Chevron, and Spectra Energy, and he's here with us today. Kim,

I'm really excited about this. We've had a chance to talk

through a couple different approaches here, and this idea

of folks, especially if they're a little later in their career,

second half of life, there's this feeling that the deeper you

go into your career, the more stuck you are. The energy that

you have to start over, the willingness that you have to

change, feels like it starts slipping away from you. How do

you help folks that feel like they're in that stuck place,

can't really get past it, and don't even know if they should.

First of all, Scott, thanks for having me here. I

really appreciate the opportunity to talk to you and

your audience, and it's a really good question, because the

problem so many successful executives, business founders,

and owners face that they don't even realize is that they think

if they just keep doing what they're doing really well,

everything will turn out great in the end, and it just doesn't

work that way. Now, if they tried to run their business that

way, they know the business would not turn out great in the

end if they didn't have a say and weren't actively working

toward it, but they don't look at their careers in the same

way, they just leave it to the hands of other people's

decisions and circumstances. So I'm here to challenge that

paradigm.

I think one of the things that that contributes

to that. I won't even say that it causes it. Is it's difficult

to feel like an owner when you're working, like when you

feel like a cog in a machine. It can be hard to really take

ownership when it feels like so much is out of your control. How

do you help folks, whether entrepreneurs or or even high

performing executives who feel that twinge of how do I take

ownership of this, how do I really start to build the thing

that I want.

The first thing I have them look at is the broader

perspective. Okay, this is my job today, or my business, this

is my career, in which my business is just the current

state of my career, and then this is my life, and career and

job are just parts of life, and all of them have to serve each

other in that order of priority, my job serves my career, my

career serves my life. Now, given that it's suddenly time to

start thinking, well, goodness gracious, how am I going to do

anything about my career or my life if all I'm doing is working

in my current job or business? Once they grasp that, then it

just begs the question of, well, how do I go about actively

participating in my career?

Yeah, yeah, how do you help folks discern

between those, because you know, at some point they feel like

they're all the same thing. My career, my job, my life, they're

all happening at the same time. How do you help folks start to

discern the differences between those and and the work that they

need to be doing on each

great good question for most people, especially

employees, but even business owners, they think when they go

home every day, their career's over, they get up, they go to

work, they go home, their career is done until something. Happens

outside their control, and suddenly it's not going right,

and they realize they hadn't been doing anything to have some

influence on what was going to happen next. So the first thing

I have them do is to realize that just like your employer's

company is a business, just like your current business that you

own is a business, your career itself is a business, and you're

its CEO. You're bringing yourself to market. You have one

current customer, which is either your current business or

your employer, and if you did nothing but sit around serving

that customer all day long. What would happen to your business?

Well, no, that would be insane. So I need to be engaged in

things beyond serving my current business or customer that will

help build what comes next in the future, so that it fits me

and so that it happens when I'm ready for it.

There's this word we tend to use in this,

this sphere of thought quite often, and I don't think we're

actually using it properly. I think we're talking about

something else and putting it in fancy language, but a lot of

times we'll think about loyalty, and we'll think, hey, if I'm, if

I'm thinking about something like that's being disloyal to my

job or to my current commitment. What is that loyalty? Is that

something else? How does loyalty play into all of this?

Well, first of all, loyalty has a context. Okay,

it's not infinite and boundless. If I'm in a relationship with

someone or an institution, a company, then they're, we have

an agreement that they're going to do certain things for me, and

I'm going to do certain things for them, and within that

relationship we honor, trust, and serve one another, but

beyond that, we each can live and operate the way we choose,

so for me, if I were the CEO of a business, okay, and I were

looking to find new customers or go to new markets or launch a

new product, would that be disloyal to my current customer?

Would they think somehow I was betraying them? No, that only

makes sense in the paradigm of I'm at the mercy of my employer

or my current company.

I have found that folks who are really,

really frustrated with their job, sometimes that's because of

the job, but sometimes it's because of something in us, and

if we try and solve the problem in us by quitting our job, we

just take that problem to a new job. How do you help folks

discern whether the problems that they're feeling, the

dissatisfaction that's boiling, is job specific or has something

more to do with a lack of attention to their career or

their life.

Actually, it's all the above. The fact is, if I want to

grow my business, I want to take great care of my current

customer. I want to build a good relationship there. I want to do

my part to make it really work and serve them and make sure

that they're also treating me in a way that I want to do business

with them, so my current job, it's up to me to make it the

best it can be, and that means I have to learn what I have the

power to do and change, and what actions I can take to enhance

it, because it's my friend, it's the basis on which I'm going to

stand, so that I can move into the future without it. Then I

would be lost, I would be unemployed, I would be some guy

on the street looking for an opportunity, not a good place to

stand when you're trying to run a business or launch a career.

Yeah, when, when folks are thinking about a

big career change, and they're, they're wondering, hey, should

I, should I switch companies? Maybe they've always had a dream

of being an entrepreneur, or, or starting something of their own,

but they're wondering, like, can I really start over again? What

advice would you give to them in that moment?

First of all, starting over again is a bad idea.

Everything is a transition from one state to the next state. I

don't want to leave behind all the gold I've created and the

value I bring to the table from all my experiences and

relationships and skills. I want to take it with me into the

future. However, I may want to add some new things to that and

move it in a direction that I have more interest in, or more

passion. So I need to look for opportunities that take where I

can take. What I do now, and bring it to different people, or

in a different way. Otherwise, I start over again as a rookie,

entry level in whatever I'm doing. Not a good thing. So,

it's all about managing a transition, planning for the

transition, exploring for the right directions and

opportunities, and then when it appears, then it's a time to

make the move,

yeah, yeah. I love that you say rookie,

because it's actually what we call stage one of the processes

that rookie, or the trainee, and, and, and, and one of the

things that, because I almost exclusively work in the world of

founders, so I work with folks who've made the decision to go

out, start their own thing, and do that, and unfortunately, I

come across a lot of people who shouldn't have. They really

shouldn't have. There are much easier ways to fulfill the

vision that they have for their career and their life than

getting rid of the boss by starting their own job. How do

you help folks navigate that decision. Should I, should I

start something of my own, or should I engage in an existing

enterprise

like anything else? My coach used to tell me, Kim, the

answers, the instructions are in the box, not on the box, so I

don't know what the best future is. Reality is much bigger than

what I know, and the future hasn't happened yet, so I have

to remember I move in directions that seem like good ones, but

then I learn as I go. New things happen, new people show up, I

learn more about me, and ultimately I run across the

right next thing. We find each other, I'm actively engaged in

exploring. I have some ideas where I want to go, and I put

myself out in front of the right people. Something shows up, then

I know that's the thing. Now it's launching a business is

something I'm considering. Then I need to begin exploring. Is it

franchises? Is it launching a startup? Am I joining somebody

else's startup? I need to begin taking some classes, exploring

if I have an interest or not, reading a few books, so I can

really see if that's a fit for me. And then, if it is, begin

building the pieces while I have my day job, and then when it's

starting to work and it's demanding more time than I have

to give, then I can see if I can go to contract in my day job and

begin to divert time, or at that point I make the leap, but I've

got to make, here's the thing, most businesses fail in the

beginning because the business owner depends on the business

revenue to pay their bills, so the time isn't right to make the

move unless you know your basic bills are paid safely and you

can run your business for its own merits.

Yeah, gosh, we could stop on that and it would

be worth its weight. But I do have a couple more questions for

you here. The first one is a question that I ask every guest

that's been on the show, and the question is this: What is the

biggest secret that you wish wasn't a secret at all? What's

that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening

today knew?

That the future doesn't take care of itself, it's going

to happen one way or another, but if I want it to end up

someplace that works for me, I've got to participate in it

actively, whether that's the life I want to live someday or

it's the career I want to have someday. It takes active

participation to have a say in my future.

Yeah, so good, Kim. There's some folks, and

they're right there, they're in it, they, they, they're in that

spot they don't want to be in. They'd love some guidance,

helping get beyond the frustrations of their current

job, and, and into the deeper things of what they want and

value, and in their career, and in life, even more. So, how can

they reach out to you? How can they find more out about the

work that you do, or take us their next step forward?

So, first of all, again, I want to thank you for

having me here, and I want to thank all the audience for

listening in. If what I've said so far, and what Scott and I've

talked about, resonate for you, if you feel like you're in one

of those positions, I'm offering my career mastery session,

complimentary session. We'll meet, we'll explore your career

history, we'll explore what's possible for you, and we'll take

a look at what you can do about it to begin moving forward.

You'll walk away with a couple of clear action steps to take,

and whether you choose to work with me or not, you'll get

launched with some new ways of thinking. Normally, it's $300

but if you mention Scott, it'll be complimentary to you. I'm

going to give Scott all the information necessary to put

into the podcast notes, so you can redeem this offer.

Absolutely fantastic. Well, we will do

that. We'll get all those notes in. And the episode notes for

you, so take a look there, wherever you're watching or

listening to this. Kim, it was just such a privilege and honor

having you here today. I loved this conversation. There's,

there's so much more that I could have dove into, but for

the sake of our listeners' time, we try and keep them nice and

short and sweet. But thank you for being here, really

appreciate it. And again, love this conversation, and for those

of you who are watching and listening today, you know your

time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as

much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait

to see you next time. Take care. Hey everyone, Scott Retheimer

here. Thank you so much for listening to the Start Scale and

Succeed podcast, I hope this episode gave you exactly what

you need for the level you're in right now. If you want to

discover what level you're in, take our 10 question founders

evolution quiz for [email protected] That's

foundersquiz.com it'll pinpoint exactly where you are, and give

you tailored tips to move forward and reach that next

level in your journey as a founder. If you got something

out of today's episode, don't forget to subscribe, rate, or

review. It helps us reach more founders like you. And let's be

honest, it means a ton to me, my team, and all our incredible

guests. So, keep starting, scaling, and succeeding, and

I'll see you in the next episode.