Real Talk for Business Owners Who Ready To Grow with Winston Payne (#158) — Transcript
Updated: Oct 26
THE PICTURE OF WEALTH · EPISODE 158
What helps a business owner move from wanting growth to making it happen? Winston Payne joins Dustin Serviss for a conversation about coaching, perspective and the work of developing as a leader.
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This transcript was generated from the episode audio and lightly edited for readability. It may contain transcription or speaker-attribution errors. Refer to the recording for exact wording.
Chapters
[00:00:00] Opening brand mentions and the conversation ahead
[00:04:23] Working on the business and planning the next stage
[00:08:13] Three questions to begin a coaching conversation
[00:12:07] Giving the mind a problem to work on
[00:19:16] Returning to useful notes and ideas
[00:23:16] Learning through giving and receiving feedback
[00:31:07] Recognizing behavior under pressure
[00:35:15] How do you know it is time for coaching?
Guest & resources
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Dustin Serviss: Before we dive in, I wanna share something with you. Now these are brands I actually use in my own life. They aren't sponsors yet, but I believe in what they represent. If you're the kind of person who listens to T Pal Labs or The Picture of Wealth, chances are you're already dialed into a few of these. But But in case you're not, I have a few creative brand mentions. Seilu Spa Arctic ice cold plunge. Now the best decisions are made outside your comfort zone and I can tell you from experience that's why I keep my cold plunge in my routine. A few minutes each week. Again, I'm not an everyday guy, but a couple times a week in the
[00:00:35] Dustin Serviss: ice bath makes me sharper, clearer, and ready to roll. So, we're gonna fast forward because I know today the listenership is coachable, you know, achieving things, setting things, wanting to set certain markers maybe higher or maybe setting them different. The setting the bar higher might look different than a traditional wanna make better numbers, wanna do more work, make more money, sell more things, or create a status bump up. So you are coaching professionals and business owners currently and have, you know, had a successful exit from a business, took some time off, retooled, and are back. And I love stories.
[00:01:15] Dustin Serviss: So I would love if you can share in the space you're working in now, what is sort of the most common people are having in the business owners that you're coaching, that you're working with? I know you're part of Christian and sort of the, so maybe you can expand on that if you wanna talk a little bit about the background of the coaching, but what are business owners in April twenty twenty five recognizing and feeling sort of the most jolt of a catalyst to make a change, if that question makes sense?
[00:01:48] Winston Payne: That's a great question. I will just backtrack a little bit. After we sold our business in twenty thirteen, I, as you say, retooled and fast forward to twenty twenty two, I found a British guy named Christian Simpson who had started up his own business coaching academy out of the UK. This guy's one of the leading guys in the industry to train coaches. He came to the John Maxwell organization, so I met him and John Maxwell, but then he left, started his own thing. So two years later, I got accredited through his coaching academy. Very strenuous, very thorough process to become a coach. So part of that program was to teach us who we...
[00:02:22] Winston Payne: Who should we work with, develop, you know, a narrow niche and all that kind of thing. And my background being a business owner was I resonate with business people. So I've chosen... You can coach anybody, of course, but I've chosen to work with small business owners. Usually, fifty employees up a couple of locations. They're either the majority shareholder or the owner. They're the ones that write the check. They're the ones that have their houses up as equity against the business. They're the ones that have signed everything they own over to the banks, and they're the ones that got assigned payroll and all that stuff. Stuff.
[00:02:51] Winston Payne: So that's the person I wanna talk to. I don't wanna talk to corporate people. I'm not good in the corporate space at all. It's a small business person. So what's resonating with those guys in twenty twenty five? It's the same thing that resonated with me thirty years ago and when I started selling insurance. Your business is the golden goose. It's the thing... It's your baby. It's the thing that you've started, whether it was an idea or you made a widget or a widget. You... Somehow you were the technician. You had an idea. You had something you could sell to the market, and you started selling. You started making it, selling it, offering it.
[00:03:21] Winston Payne: And time goes on, all of a sudden, you're pretty good at it. You maybe hire a couple of employees. You expand your capacity. And the journey just keeps going until finally, you know, the people I'm talking to now probably have, you know, they've had fifty plus employees. They've branched out. They've got managers. They've created a team around them, and they've increased their capacity. But a lot of them are trying to figure out during the journey, mid journey, like, how can I elevate myself above the business to start managing it more, working on it instead of in it? And some people have a really hard time with that.
[00:03:51] Winston Payne: So so I think the biggest challenge for someone that's sort of growing a business and they're right in that sweet spot where it's growing, they've got, you know, they're excited, they got markets, they can see potential, they're maybe getting new locations, but they're often still the technician. They're often still the person who's gotta touch a file or sign a check or look at an invoice or a proposal before it gets moved on. So they're often in their own way. And they sort of hit that wall, but it can't grow anymore because they can't duplicate themselves. They have to find a way to step aside, empower their employees, maybe
[00:04:23] Winston Payne: find some new leadership or, you know, raise leadership within the organization. But they gotta find a way to to leverage their abilities and leverage their scope. So that's one of the main challenges is getting out of the business and working on it instead of in it. The other interesting thing is once people have gone through that stage, and now there may be twenty, thirty years in ownership, and they're now sort of fifty ish on and they're looking down the runway going, jeez, what am I gonna do with this thing? Like, this thing is super successful. It's, again, the golden goose that's funding my entire lifestyle.
[00:04:55] Winston Payne: It's going to fund my retirement. It's my legacy. I don't wanna sell it or maybe I do. I did just have to figure out how they're gonna move from the ownership of the business to transition away from it or transitioning to the next part of their lives. So So it's that whole thinking around sell, transition, you know, have a key employee buy in, all those types of things. Those... And they're gut wrenching decisions because people are... They're so tied to their business. They're... And they're... Often their identity is tied to the business. And they sometimes have to separate that out of the equation and, like, what
[00:05:25] Winston Payne: would life look like after the fact that I'm not owning this business anymore? And for some people, that's a real problem. Like, they just are so tied to the business. But, you know, those are two probably the biggest... Two of the biggest things. You know, there's always things like, should we grow? Should we buy a new location? Buy a new company? Those decisions, once you have a golden goose, the the golden goose often funds those next purchases, and it's relatively easy to make those decisions. It's it's like... It's a business decision. It's like, yes. It's worth this much. I'll pay this, and I can use this money to pay that.
[00:05:53] Winston Payne: That's often not the hard decision. It's the decision I ought to do when it's all said and done. And what are we gonna do with this thing? You know? And if you have partners or minor partners or even the one I'm working with now, I have a couple of people that have their kids coming involved in the business, you know. And maybe one of the three adult children wanna be involved, the other two don't. So now you're into those issues of, you know, how do I treat everybody fairly? And, you know, coaching... What I'm finding is business owners, they might have...
[00:06:21] Winston Payne: If they have a good relationship with their accountant, their lawyer, their financial planner, their friend, their brother, their sister, their wives, they can talk to everybody about parts of this. But there isn't one person who can sit down with them over, say, ninety minutes, once a month that just completely focuses on that person, on the coach and say... So what... And without any preset agenda in a safe environment, nonjudgmental works through the issues. And the participant brings the issue... Topics to the sessions. And then the coach's job is to... What's your goal? What's your desired outcome? And then you actually were...
[00:06:56] Winston Payne: Have to work through the whole... We call it reality. Like, what's going on? And you gotta really dig down to what the key issues are and not... Sometimes you're in that space for a long time. You're trying to identify what are the key issues here. Like, what's holding you back? So
[00:07:10] Dustin Serviss: that's We work in common marketplaces with blue collar, you know, dirtier the business, and I don't mean sort of dirty, like, money, but like big trucks or big manufacturing, chemicals, you know, and you're dealing with business owners who come from that blue collar background. So what would you say to a blue collar person that actually gets them... Let's say they've already engaged you and they're already curious. So we're not talking high level, we're kind of getting into the weeds about a first or second meeting with somebody and you ask them something or a common thing you ask right now that seems to
[00:07:48] Dustin Serviss: be getting their attention to go, like, I really need to... You know, the line I say is that there's no email that comes in that says, Stamped, you're approved to start taking two days off a week. It comes from within. So if you, I don't know if you wanna role play or you wanna explain a past story of how that person you saw... You literally saw the light come on for them.
[00:08:13] Winston Payne: Yeah. That's the perfect client, to be honest, because that person... Assuming that person's got an active business and it's rolling, and they're just trying to figure out the next steps in their business wherever they're at with it. But coaching really... It's all about asking questions. My... I would really simply ask that person, what are the top three things you wanna achieve right now? Like, what would... If you could wave a wand and you could achieve three things right now, and you're like personal and business, what would they be? And so coaching really is just an open ended, inclusive curiosity based
[00:08:44] Winston Payne: question, which is wide open for the person to go, okay. I have a lot of breath here. I'm gonna look at everything. It's like an open ended. Opportunity to speak into the main issue. And so this might help a little bit with the answer. When I coach, I come in with a blank piece of paper and I have no preset questions. I have no preset, you know, anything to present to the client. I've got nothing. What I've got is I've got the client on... And coaching is a very specific process. Like, you set the, what's the topic goal? What's your outcome today? What's the reality? And then after you go through reality, it's like, okay.
[00:09:16] Winston Payne: What are our options here to solve this? And I spend a lot of time in the options because that's the creative part of the process where a client might say, well, I could do this, I could do this, I could do this. And I'll say, what else? And then they might say, I don't know. And then I might ask a question, well, if he did know, what could it be? Well, keys. You know what I mean? You just have to keep... It's like the unconscious mind. The answer is with them, and that's the pre... Main presupposition of coaching. You have the answer. I don't. But we're... I'm gonna do my best as a coach to provide the opportunity for you to find the answer.
[00:09:44] Winston Payne: And it really is a series of skill questions. And coaching, like, I've now been taught or trained to listen at a higher level, not only what you say, but maybe physiological changes, what you're doing. Like, you might get excited. You might speak faster, and I'll say, what's going on now? And it might trigger some new thoughts, but it's really... That's for... Not sure if I'm answering the question, but I would really just ask that person, what do you want? Like, what's your problem? What's your main obstacle right now? What would you like to dissolve? And Mhmm. That just opens up that person's, you know, awareness around what they wanna do.
[00:10:16] Winston Payne: So I don't come with any sort of any preset ideas or anything.
[00:10:21] Dustin Serviss: I will I will shift a bit because I think you're a master at this is when you're feeling overwhelmed, you've recently... Or not... It's not so much recent anymore, but you've built this business now. You've taken the time to do all the things and get it going. Obviously, felt some sort of overwhelm or paralysis and analysis paralysis at some point. As a past athlete, current athlete, I will say, what have you done to help you figure out how to overcome that paralysis?
[00:10:50] Winston Payne: Zero. It's funny. That's a great question. You have to... I've learned to give myself freedom to fail, freedom to, you know, we all come with preset expectations in our own doing things. But I think... And you need space and time. I think if someone... If for me personally, I would just say, okay, I need some time to figure this out. So I'm just gonna... And this works. So I'll give you an example. I... If I am working on an issue where I will literally go for a walk. I'll go for a walk for an hour and I'll say at the beginning... I'll... At the beginning of the walk, I'd like to think into this, and I'll just let my mind think into it.
[00:11:25] Winston Payne: I'll use that space and time and exercise. But also, how many times have you woken up at three in the morning? Whatever you've been working on, that answer just appears out of nowhere. Does that... Has that ever happened to you? Almost daily. Great.
[00:11:39] Dustin Serviss: Yeah.
[00:11:39] Winston Payne: And what's happening there is when you... When your conscious mind tells your unconscious mind, I wanna solve this problem. I need to solve this problem. It could be I need to... My succession in my business or how can I expand, whatever the issue is, just put it in your mind? And it works on it twenty four seven, three sixty five, and it starts to spit things up to the conscious mind. That's just how the unconscious mind works. And until the unconscious mind is act... Asked to act on that, it won't because your habits and your belief systems live in your unconscious mind.
[00:12:07] Winston Payne: And until the conscious mind says, I wanna solve this, your unconscious mind goes, okay. It's the gatekeeper that says, okay, the conscious mind is telling me to work on this. And that's what happens at three in the morning or if you're watching a movie or you're listening to a song and all of a sudden, boom, that thought appears. It's because your unconscious mind is saying, okay, you asked me to solve this, so I'm gonna solve it for you. So you do use...... Try to do. Yeah.
[00:12:29] Dustin Serviss: More. It isn't meditation. It's not really manifestation, but it... It's using a... It's almost working smarter, not harder. It's like just trusting in the process.
[00:12:39] Winston Payne: Yeah. I think that's it. I think it's... So intuition, what I've learned more than ever in the last few years is just trust your intuition, whatever you wanna call it, your gut. Usually, your intuition's... You... I think people should never doubt their intuition. I don't think you should act on it immediately. I mean, if it's telling you to jump off a cliff, don't jump off a cliff. Put on a parachute first. You know? But your intuition is never usually wrong and... But you have to think into it. Right? But I... It sounds very airy fairy and the answer is within you, but I've actually been coached now for over two hundred hours.
[00:13:08] Winston Payne: I have a coach. She's in Trinidad Tobago. She's part of a partner of this program. So I'm a product of the product. And every time I have a coaching session, I had one this morning actually with her, and she raised some awareness on a thing I brought to the table, and it changed how I was going to approach it. And she simply kept asking. She asked me one key question that took me out of myself enough where I could look in and go, you know what? I didn't think of that, and that changed my approach. So it's how it works. Yeah. It's just... You need to be open to the... I think clients, they don't really understand coaching.
[00:13:40] Winston Payne: Like, coaching is not mentoring. So if I'm mentoring you, Dust, I'm gonna share with you my experience on how I did things. And you are interested, but you're not gonna do everything I say, And you're gonna pick out what you might... What might work for you. That's mentoring, where I'm sharing. And coaching in the traditional sports sense is exactly the opposite of what coaching is from what I'm doing. It's not like go... You go down the lane, get the puck in the center, and chuck the guy, you know, like, that's coaching. Right? You're telling your player, stick to that player. Don't let them move. Like, that kind of stuff.
[00:14:10] Winston Payne: That's sport coaching, which is what we've come to think is coaching, but it's the exact opposite. Mhmm. So I think in Canada, particularly in the US, coaching and human personal growth is actually a big industry down there. And in Canada, I would suggest it's not. So I'm finding in in Salmon Arm, BC, I'm trying to educate people on what coaching is. So that's kind of a... That's kind of the first thing I need to lay the... Like, sort of create space for people to think into if if they wanna be coached. Some people don't. Some people aren't ready to be coached, and some people are.
[00:14:40] Dustin Serviss: What... If you bring up something that's... I'm gonna ask you a good question here in a second. But the thought of, and I don't know if this is as I've gotten older, realizing that, you know, if I read a book when I was twenty, it kind of was like a task, and it got put in my back pocket, and it was like, oh, I know that. And so the philosophies of that book when I'm twenty, I didn't keep upgrading. And so again, now reading some of the books that I read when I was twenty and reading them with a forty three year old with kids, with a different financial situation, different outlook on life. The books are amazing.
[00:15:19] Dustin Serviss: And I see that in sort of your coaching that just because someone had, even they got coached by you and then five years went by, And then, well, it's like, oh, what would Winston tell me that I already know what he's gonna do? But it's not because you're extracting. So here's my question is, what is the dumbest thing you used to think was super smart?
[00:15:44] Winston Payne: I love that. That's a great question.
[00:15:46] Dustin Serviss: Or said in a different way is Yeah. What's one thing that you used to kinda, like, really be like, this is the only way you were kinda locked in on, like, this, and now you look at it and you're like, that was so dumb.
[00:15:57] Winston Payne: That's... You know, I'm gonna answer it this way, and I've just been... This is just a reflection I had the other day, and I'm gonna put it in my... One of my emails. So you started down a road that I'm going to go to now. So I read Stephen Covey's seven habits of effective habits when I was thirty. And if you know that book, the first three habits are independence, like how to become more independent. The next three habits are interdependent, how to be more effective with others. And then seventh habit is just sharpen the saw and just be, you know, just renewal, basically. So when I read that book three thirty, all I cared about was the
[00:16:28] Winston Payne: independent things, like be proactive, begin with the end in mind, because I had nothing. We were not... We were in a bad way financially. I was grasping at straws. I need some positive mentoring, and I didn't have any person in my life. So I was getting it through books and whatnot. So I focused on be proactive, begin with the end in mind, and all these things. I did the funeral exercise. What do I want four people to say in my funeral? Like, I did that. I did the entire... I created my own mission statement, like, my personal mission statement. Here I am at thirty because I was grasping for straws.
[00:16:57] Winston Payne: Now that book, I'm rereading it to your point. And now the second set of habits, like the interdependence, think win win, seek to understand before you understood. Those are now the... Those are the parts of the book that are resonating with me. It's like the other habits, like, the first... The independent habits, like, I... I'm not interested anymore in that. I'm not saying I've mastered them, but now I'm more focused on how can I be a bit more effective with other people? Hey. Stephen Covey died thirty years ago. The book hasn't changed. I've changed. And, you know, so...
[00:17:25] Dustin Serviss: You telling me that has... Is like when people always say, oh, you know, have you read seven of Hector? It's like, yeah. I have. But I read it twenty some years ago. So I'm guilty too. So thanks for that reminder.
[00:17:39] Winston Payne: The other book I'm reading is Think and Grow Rich. Now that book, just by its title, you think, oh, god. But that book is absolutely amazing. And the habits that resonated with me twenty five, thirty years ago were desire and thinking you can believe all those things. Because I had... I was just like, okay. I'm gonna do this because I got no other choice. And now I'm more interested in mastermind and those types of things. Again, working how to be more effective with other people. Same book. The guy died seventy years ago.
[00:18:04] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I read that book twenty years ago, and it has the whole section on sexual transmutation, where you... You know, your desire for being in the nightclubs and doing all that stuff is gonna go down and you're gonna shift it. You know, I remember thinking, I never want this to end. You know what? And now being a a young forty year old with a family and a wife I love, it's... It is a powerful thing to start, you know, having maturity and different visions to really generate results, which leads me to believe... Or leads me
[00:18:35] Winston Payne: to
[00:18:35] Dustin Serviss: which small strange behavior has produced outsized results in your life.
[00:18:43] Winston Payne: Well, I wouldn't call it small, but I... So I just wrote about history. I have twenty five of these. It's a five section notebook. And I divide it into, you know, personal fitness and business and community and stuff. But the one thing in that book I've done for twenty years, and it's just... It just floored me the other day, is I have a parking lot for ideas. So if you and I are talking and you said, have you ever thought of this? And I said, jeez. How, so I write it down. I park it and I put... And I have this parking lot. And every year I would move, I would look at my parking lot and go, Do I want this? Does it resonate anymore?
[00:19:16] Winston Payne: Do I need it? Get... Or I get rid of it? And that was kind of my filtering. And that process... Like, I I had a Samsung phone, and I used to put them on my phone last... So eight years later, I go to iPhone. I get an iPhone. You can't transfer your notes. So I literally had to go through all my notes to make sure. I had six hundred and eighty two notes on my Samsung. And of them, about fifty of them were like, wow. I can't believe I missed this. Like, I can use this today. It... You know, I can use it in a part. So that process, that's the smallest thing maybe, but it's been huge because I don't miss things.
[00:19:45] Winston Payne: And and then I have a chance to reflect on. So
[00:19:49] Dustin Serviss: Well, I think that's a good trait to have. Rich Barton, I don't know if you're familiar with that name, but he was the founder of Expedia, and then he went on to found Zillow. And Zillow, which is the online marketplace for real estate in the US, he worked under... In Microsoft originally. That's where he was under Bill Gates and then the engineering department. But he talked about that. And literally going back in his... You know, he didn't call it a parking lot, but the ideas... And once he sold Expedia, they had money and connections. It was like, well, what else do we wanna do? We don't wanna be retired yet.
[00:20:22] Dustin Serviss: We're still only, like, thirty five or whatever it was. And they started going through ideas and going through their parking lot and out came Zillow, which was somebody at a long time ago and said, what about an online marketplace for real estate? So whatever your thing is, I've used Evernote in the past. I do struggle a little bit because I do use the notes app on my iPhone, which doesn't go to my Surface that I have where Evernote is on my desktop and on my phone. I'm super guilty of emailing myself.
[00:20:54] Winston Payne: I do too? Yeah. I did too. To what... I mean, honestly. Yeah.
[00:20:58] Dustin Serviss: And just batch it. So what are you most excited about right now? I know we've heard and felt a lot of excitement, but there's... I love how you called it sharpening your saw. Right now, you are getting a little bit, you know, I... Somebody might say dangerously good at something. You know? What is sort of at the forefront of, like, what you're doing with your craft right now of coaching?
[00:21:18] Winston Payne: Oh, thanks for asking. So I've worked... I've done one to one coaching with clients the last couple of years. And, again, I've been doing that gradually in learning the craft and working with organic clients in Salmon Arm now. So I've got clients here. Where I'm getting excited is the mastermind concept, and that sounds so so airy fairy from the Napoleon Hill world. But, really, it's a very structured process where I will soon be looking for groups of four individuals that are compatible. And it's a very it's a very structured sort of annual planning process split in the quarters, and I look forward to developing those groups.
[00:21:53] Winston Payne: And literally, what they are really is in one quarter, you'll have a day face to face with everybody, and each person will have, say, an hour to present their information to the other three, and we feed into that person. And then you basically just rotate times four for that date. And then you have a one to one coaching session on top of that per month with each of those four people. And then months two and three, it's just, like a Zoom two hour call to check-in with everybody in group. But then one to one coaching in group... In months two and three. So that process, it's gonna allow me to scale up.
[00:22:25] Winston Payne: It's gonna allow me to do one to one coaching, but it's gonna... In a group form, in the mastermind concept form, it's very powerful because you get by giving. And someone else's concern or what they're working on is awfully similar to yours. They're gonna be business owners, so it's gonna be sort of compatible people and, like, they're running businesses. That's their commonality. It won't be people in the same industry, so there's no competition in the room. It has to be safe and confidential. But I'm really excited about that. I actually see that getting to the point where I could have five or six masterminds running.
[00:22:56] Winston Payne: And if they're done right and there's value, they don't end. Like, they could go years path. It's not a one year contract type of thing. It... Because people will see the value of that. So I'm excited about that. That's where I believe I'll be. In about a year's time, I hooked up two or three of those set up.
[00:23:11] Dustin Serviss: What did you find by going through the mastermind process with Christian?
[00:23:16] Winston Payne: So it's three sixty learning. You get the chance for people to pour into you when you put your topic on the table, and then you pour into other people when their topic's on the table. And then you get critiqued when you're... When they're pouring into you. So you're actually... You're giving feedback and you're receiving feedback. And it's... The combination is really powerful. And it's a real it's a real rapid spiral up where everybody starts to become more aware, conscious of what they're doing. They get more focused. And the biggest part of coaching that I haven't talked about is the accountability side.
[00:23:45] Winston Payne: Like, when you talk to a group of four people and you say, here's my three or four options I'm gonna take forward, then they become a... You've become accountable to those actions to yourself. But the other members will ask you the next time you sit down, oh, how do they... How those go? And, that process is really powerful because you're... You know how if you left to your own and when you try to coach yourself, we all have blind spots that you just can't... If you're in the picture, you can't see the frame. Right? You just cannot get past. But when someone asks a question that's sort of a third party looking at
[00:24:16] Winston Payne: what you're talking about, often that releases a new way of thinking or a new idea. So it's very powerful. And my experience with masterminds is that the growth is rapid, and you also develop a really good relationship with the participants, with your co coaches, in my case, coaches. Mhmm. So it's been good.
[00:24:34] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. I found one thing that I would say that some people might say is, oh, should I be masterminding with other experts in my industry? And I wanna mastermind with people who are leveled up than me. You know, these are some things that over the years you kind of look at. And one of the things that I would, from personal experience, would be making a big shift in business. Or when I made a big shift in business in our mastermind group, it was one of the individuals that was in the group that was a tech person. And so he was not in my business, but I knew he was one of the most conservative first people in our group.
[00:25:09] Dustin Serviss: And so when we all went around the table and we were all pouring into sort of the situation I was in, this and... You know, when everyone was saying, I think you should do this, I think you should do this, yeah. And then even this was that, yeah, I think all the ducks are in a row, and it was like a light bulb went off, that I didn't need any more analysis. If this individual was saying, Okay, I knew it was, Okay, how much more do you need to make this decision? And so having that sort of group around you is extremely empowering. And there's all your resources on your website, which will have
[00:25:44] Dustin Serviss: a link at the end, but just even looking up Napoleon Hill Mastermind concept is a great start if someone is looking to try and understand you know, that that value it does provide. So thank you for bringing it up. I do have a closing wealth lifestyle question for you. What expensive thing do you do regularly that most people would call irresponsible, but you know as part of, you know, your bigger picture that fulfills you?
[00:26:15] Winston Payne: Oh, man. Well, I have to say this coaching academy that I... And, you know, you've just done strategic coast. I think I'm gonna hit a chord here. But I have invested enormous amounts of money in the academy in my end. So his annual... I call him CE credit dues. Like, to be in his world, it's an enormous amount of money. I don't debate it. I I actually... I have created a whole new community around me, and I'm the only Canadian in the program, by the way. So I... The person I was on the phone with this morning was in Alabama. Yesterday, I talked to my buddy in in Arkansas. My coach is in Trinidad, Tobago. I have... I mean...
[00:26:51] Winston Payne: And so I've just developed this really close network of friends, and we meet once a year. We we float it. We float to England a few times. We went to Texas last year, and it's just a whole new community of similar minded people. And what I'm spending on that and what I'm making out of it currently, because I'm just I'm going slow and steady is... You would cook... You could call that name. It's irresponsible, but I'm loving every second of it. So...
[00:27:14] Dustin Serviss: But I think what's important is you're the one that's in control. You're the one that's feeling it and experiencing it. So I think that transposes to the rest of the world. When someone owns certain things or buys certain things, they... You know, there's probably a select people that buy stuff just to keep up with the Joneses. I think that is a real thing. But at the same time, there is more to, at a certain point in life, you have a certain sense of security and you've got your certain nest egg and you've got this thing called time. And you don't want to be, you know, you've identified, you don't want to
[00:27:50] Dustin Serviss: be retired and just stick your feet up and drink beers every day and play tennis. So this is purposeful. It provides connections. And I did have one guy. I don't know if you ever met him through our family. It was Danny Hooper. Yeah. So he had this thing, and I wrote it in my journal this morning, which was SPF. So I think I'm gonna change it to be SPF ten x. So, you know, like sunscreen, but it's simple as s, profitable, and fun. Those three things, if an endeavor has those three things, or at least two with probability of profit. If you got simple and fun and potential for profit, then go after it and do it because if not now, when?
[00:28:38] Winston Payne: Well, that... I qualify for that. Yeah. I mean, the whole financial part of this was what I know for sure. Well, the the call... I mean, different words, law, compensation, whatever. What it means basically is if you provide value to people, you will get paid. Don't worry about it. Just keep going. And that's... I've never worried about the financial side of this thing. I know as I get better and I put myself in the right rooms with the right people, I'll get paid. I'm not worried about it.
[00:29:02] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. Is there any final thoughts that you wanna share with the listener to help them on their journey to make a change, to take a different path, to level up, whatever it means. Is there any final thoughts that you wanna share with people?
[00:29:19] Winston Payne: Yeah. I think it's a really interesting exercise I've gone through recently, but the whole... A values exercise. So if you could identify your top three values, and I went through an extensive process to do that, not only will that highlight previous decisions that were either good or bad and you'll know why because you were living congruently or incongruently, but if you know your top values, your future decisions are a lot easier when you know that even value two is more important than three. Buy a sliver, but it's enough to skew the decision. So my mine ended up being integrity and independence and truth. And independence always wins over
[00:29:56] Winston Payne: other... Like, that's so critical to me. So everything I've ever done, and it turns out that was my overriding value all my life. So it makes sense. And I learned that late in life. Right? So I wish I'd known that earlier. But that's just... If you can kind of identify your key values, they'll drive every decision you make.
[00:30:13] Dustin Serviss: Any other tools up in the last... You know, again, you've been working at this new this new you in business for the last few years. So any other tools, like I was thinking personality profiles or along the same lines as what you just described, that helped you get clear or helped you have a little bit more conviction to get you through maybe a dip?
[00:30:35] Winston Payne: Yeah. That's really amazing you asked that. So John Maxwell organization, I'm a member of that, have been for many years, but I don't... I'm not active there. But they have a disc... It's called disc. It's a profiling thing that I'm accredited to to use. And it's simply a series of questions people answer, and then it kicks out there, basically, what kind of profile there psychology for... So DISC is a dominant, you know, compatible with synergistic, and then what's the I is. Anyways, the guy in the room that everyone notices. Right? The I Yes. Incoming. But anyways, that profile system has actually helped me.
[00:31:07] Winston Payne: It actually kicked out a few things. It showed me how I act when I'm under tension. So I didn't realize that I have a certain profile, but when I... Under tension, I go to a different type of personality to get through that situation, and I go back to my sort of non tension, the normal personality trait. So that was really helpful, and and that's part of the coaching process. I actually do a disc with everybody before we start the process. It's just a great... It doesn't drive the coaching process, but it's more awareness and information for the client to go, oh, wow. I'm a motivator or I'm a leader because they... He actually...
[00:31:39] Winston Payne: That profiling system kicks out a kind of a category what you are, but then it speaks into some of your high points and low points on the graph. So it's actually very specific to you, but that's one tool I use. And the other thing is a wheel of life, the old good old wheel of life, you know, divide a wheel and eight parts and family, business, community, financial, whatever key categories. And then from this middle of the circle out, you know, zero to ten. So ten is on the edge of the circle. And once you do the plots, just join the lines. And quite often, you'll see where your wheel is unbalanced. And that's actually...
[00:32:11] Winston Payne: I use that also before coaching to identify the areas of someone's life that they wanna work on or what they wanna work on. It'll show someone like, jeez, I'm really weak on the whatever side. Like, I'm not spending enough time with my my spouse or I'm really weak on the community side or I'm not doing anything with friends, you know, that kind of thing. And then that's often a... That's actually a clue for what you wanna start working on. So those are two really simple good tools. And then we do the values work in coaching. I... At somewhere during the process, I like to... It's a session unto itself, but...
[00:32:41] Winston Payne: And it's a series of pretty heavy questions that kick out values that then we play the values off head to head in, like, an hour and a half, two hour session. If you have twenty five values, I'll literally say independence over loyalty, And you'll say loyalty like you did. So it's a process that you go through, and then you eventually whittle down to the top five. So that's a really valuable exercise that I've... Everybody seems to love.
[00:33:02] Dustin Serviss: Yeah. What would you say to people who are like, I don't wanna do your assessment shit. I like to use them. I've used numerous other ones as well. And sometimes with staff, you might have low adoption or you want to do, they're like, Oh, you really like that stuff, But I think it's important to know where you are. And of course, you're just like, oh, I don't know my personality. I am myself. Well, how... Why wouldn't I know that? What would you say to someone that's like, I don't believe in that shit?
[00:33:32] Winston Payne: Yeah. It's actually, Let's just... So so how do you feel about personal growth? How do you feel about where you are now versus where you wanna be? And if... I think, you know, that's actually... So before I coach somebody, I actually have a half hour. I call it assessment call. And those are exactly the questions I ask. Like, so what... How do you feel about personal growth, and what are you prepared to do to change some of the things that you wanna change? And, you know, you unearth whether they're actually going to be active participants in the process because I won't coach anyone that doesn't wanna be coached.
[00:34:01] Winston Payne: That's just a complete waste of time. But to your question about someone that doesn't wanna do one of the assessment tools, I don't hinge coaching on the assessment tool. I'd say, well, I would try to get them to do it and say, it's awareness, it's information. You could put it away. It's yours. You know, and it could trigger some thinking in terms in terms of what you wanna bring to coaching. But I don't get hung up on that. But it raises a question. Like, if you're not into that, then what are you into? Like, tell me what else you might not be into. Yeah. Because it's torture for both parties to try to coach if the participant was...
[00:34:31] Winston Payne: Doesn't wanna coach. And so I tried to nurse that before we get started.
[00:34:35] Dustin Serviss: That's what I was trying to go to was the person is listening, and they wanna know if they're, they're listening and they're like, Oh, that's good information, but I'm either don't need to be coached or I do need to be coached and I do need to paradigm shift my thinking that I've seen coaching costs before and, woah, those are expensive, and I'm not going to get any value. Because there is a bit of that around where you have, oh, what am I really going to get? You're going to talk to me and I'm gonna pay you this much money? Or what I, you mentioned, choose a coach, I fly to Toronto once every
[00:35:15] Dustin Serviss: three months and it's X amount for one day of meetings. It's like, yeah, it is valuable. So how do we give the listener a kind of a hook to know that they are ready or it's time to maybe get some coaching?
[00:35:30] Winston Payne: I would just ask the person, like I mentioned before, what are the top three things you wanna achieve in your life? What are the obstacles you're facing? And if you don't take part of the coaching, how will you go about solving those problems? And it... They they may say, well, I, you know, I have a resource or whatever, and I mean, that... That's great. I'm not looking... I'm not trying to catch them on the answer. It's like if you truly believe you can make some headway without coaching, that's great. But, you know, we can self coach to a point, but when you're in the picture, it's hard to see the frame. And so many times...
[00:36:02] Winston Payne: I'll share one last story with you if I can. Is that... Sure. You have time? Yep. Yep. So I... In the program, I'm coaching colleagues. So I coached probably the most senior coach in our academy. She's a twenty five year coaching vet. She's... She coaches five hundred, you know, Fortune five hundred companies in the US, and she was my partner in the program. She was about to have a meeting with her key employees, so she brought that as a topic to the session, and the key employee happens to be her brother. So she's worked with her brother for a long time. There's always been tension, the brother sister thing, but... So she was having...
[00:36:31] Winston Payne: She was going to have a huge meeting with him about, you know, his role in the company, how he was starting to act to ownership... Like, he didn't have any ownership in the company. He was just one of the managers, but he was starting to act like he owned the company. These types of things, and she wanted to have a meeting with him about that. So she was discussing how she was gonna set this meeting up, and then a question came to me and I said, well, who's running this meeting? Is it big sister or is it owner... Company owner or big sister? And there was a silence for about forty five seconds. And she said, holy shit.
[00:37:01] Winston Payne: I've I've been running this company like he's my brother. I've been treating him like my brother. And she said, I have to treat him like an employee. Now this is a woman who has... Who's one of the most aware women I know. Like, she's very high end, very bright lady. And she... It was like she didn't realize she'd been treating him like a little brother the whole time he worked for her. So she... Long story short, she changed the agenda of the meeting. We were actually... For the rest of our time, we worked out what she was gonna do and talk about. And I got an email a couple of days later, and she said it was a great meeting.
[00:37:30] Winston Payne: And his comment to her was, this is the first time you've ever treated me like an employee. Wow. When you're in the picture, you don't see the frame. Right? And that's... Like, we can self coach to a point. And she had tried to self coach herself through this situation. She thought she had it all the way through. I've got this. But it was, you know, it was just a simple... It was a third party looking at it slightly different. It was a different question and then mailed her. Yeah. So I think if people are trying to... Like, if people... It's the difference between the performance gap. It's between what you're doing and how...
[00:38:00] Winston Payne: What your potential is. Right? So how do you connect those two? And coaching is probably the most transform... Transformational process I've ever seen. I've been part of it. I've experienced it. I'm working with people, and it's feedback I'm getting. But the person has to be ready for it. They have to go all in. They can't... Like, one guy said to me, just give me the answer. And I said, it doesn't work that way. It doesn't work that way. So if people are looking for a quick fix, I'm not the guy. But if they... If they're truly are gonna dig in, and personal growth is the hardest work there is. Like, it's super hard work.
[00:38:31] Winston Payne: It's frustrating hard work.
[00:38:33] Dustin Serviss: You're vulnerable. You're, you know... And you gotta think in places and take time to take a breath and just sit there and just embrace the question. And I am definitely not the expert person, but I think we go through and you read all these things. Again, we talked at the start. I got that figured out. I got that figured out. But really, it's an evolution. And this podcast for me is an evolution of bringing together people and reengaging my own brain. So thank you for getting that fired up today. Where could people find you, Winston?
[00:39:05] Winston Payne: W p coaching services dot c a. It's a website. It's skewed to it working with business owners. And throughout the website, if anyone ever wants to reach out for a half hour chat, love... Would love to do that. Really, it's one to one coaching, and then the group coaching is evolving. And I'm about to start looking at ways to... You know, people don't wanna go to one to one coaching because it's an... They may not know enough about it. There's gonna be some sort of, maybe one off the cuff coaching session with a disc report for... Just so they get a taste of it. So I'm about to go down that road and I'll be...
[00:39:36] Winston Payne: But really, the starting point for me right now, if anyone was interested, just chat for half hour. You get... You you see what you get. Just meet here and, you know, we... You can... We can make some decisions after that in terms of what they might wanna do. But the, the two to three... The one to two session with the cool... With the disc report is probably gonna be pretty successful because then they'll experience coaching.
[00:39:56] Dustin Serviss: Well, listen. This was super special for me. So thank you for coming on the show today and sharing your wisdom.
[00:40:02] Winston Payne: Thank you. And congrats on all your success. It's awesome. Thanks,