What and Who To Say Yes To | 328

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What and who to say yes | 328

Dan Kuschell is an accomplished entrepreneur, business advisor, and author. He currently runs Breakthrough3x, a company that helps founders and entrepreneurs triple their profits and impact without multiplying their workload and stress.

Dan has owned 11 companies since 1992, building multiple businesses with revenues exceeding eight figures before selling. He is also the host of the Growth to Freedom podcast, where he interviews industry leaders and experts in a variety of fields.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn: 

  • Dan Kuschell talks about the challenge of determining which opportunities to say yes to — and which to say no to
  • Some of the best advice Dan received from a mentor
  • The importance of aligning your core values with your decision-making
  • Dan’s strategies for gaining clarity on the core values of your business, family, or team

In this episode…

If you’re an entrepreneur or business owner, chances are you have a number of opportunities coming your way every week, month, and year. But, you only have a limited number of hours in the day. So, how do you determine what — or who — to say yes to?

According to Dan Kuschell, the best way to weed through your options is to make decisions based on your core values. Recently, Dan was offered an opportunity to coach his local high school football team. But, before saying yes to the time commitment, he asked the current coaches about the core values of the team. Their response — to play hard, play smart, play together, and play true — aligned directly with Dan’s core values. Because of this, he felt confident taking on the role of football coach without worrying about losing his freedom in his personal and professional life. So, what are Dan’s strategies for identifying and staying true to your own core values?

In this episode of Growth to Freedom, Dan Kuschell talks about the power of aligning your core values with your decision-making. As an entrepreneur, you have a lot of opportunities to choose from, but it can be difficult to determine when to say yes and when to say no. That’s why Dan is here to share his strategies for setting boundaries and accepting the kinds of opportunities that will help you achieve greater freedom in your life and business. Stay tuned!

Resources Mentioned in this episode

Sponsor for this episode

Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com.

Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day? Or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall in growing your business? Well, let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com. That’s breakthroughstrategycall.com.

In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com. That’s activate.breakthrough3x.com.

If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

Episode Transcript

Dan Kuschell 0:06

Welcome to growthtofreedom.com, the show that brings you inspiration, transformation, and leadership. We’re helping you connect the dots, see the blind spots, and get unstuck. So you can go out and generate more leads more sales, more profits. More importantly, so you can go out and have a bigger reach, a bigger impact, and make a bigger contribution. How do your core values play into your decision-making of what you say? Yes to? Or what you say no to? Or, more importantly, who you say yes to? And who you say no to?

How do your core values play into your decision-making of what you say yes to or what you say no to? Or, more importantly, who you say yes to and who you say no to. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Have you ever found yourself struggling with all the opportunities that may be coming your way? You know, what do you what do you say? Yes, I’m doing this. What do you say no to? or more importantly, who do you say yes or no to? I have a damaging confession. For me, I just had some DNA tests done through this very special lab or whatever. And there’s all kinds of scientific data, I don’t know how to read it or comprehend it or understand it. But one of the things that stood out as I was going through this DNA assessment with, you know, a coach, or whatever you want to call it, as Adelia shared with me, she said, You have ADD. And I kind of knew that. But until I got this DNA test, I wasn’t for certain, right? And if you know, if you’re anything like me, where you have maybe add or you love opportunities, or shiny objects are really appealing, it’s easy to say yes to most things. I mean, because let’s face it, if you’re a creator, you likely have an ability to see opportunity in so many different things in so many different ways, right? And even for opportunities, you feel like wow, I can go out, you can go out and turn them into great opportunities, right? So if you can relate to that, then you might appreciate what I’m going to share with you about how values can really add clarity on your values can really play a critical role in what you say yes, to who you say yes to and also as importantly, what you say, No, two years ago, I had a mentor i think i was i was 24, 25 years old. And he had this saying that at the time, I thought I understood it. But the older I get I’m now in my 50s, the more I realize the power of this statement, he said, You’ve got to really be be choiceful, and work where you’re deserved, not where you’re needed in the world. And I’m going to repeat that, because I think it’s so profound in deep work where you’re deserved, not where you’re needed.

Work where you're deserved, not where you're needed. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

Right. And so as I fast forward today, you know, as you look at what do you say yes to right, I just had an ability to be a podcast guest on on a show. And the reason I said yes to that is because it fit into our core values, right? In the years past, I would have said yes to almost anything that seemed like it could reap some kind of financial reward. And I encourage you to think about this at home, do you have core values established in your family? Right, maybe you’re a coach, you know, I’m blessed enough. You know, I think some of you who know me for a while you know that I’ve been coaching youth football for a few years and just love building young men, and helping instill qualities of leadership and characteristics into these young men. And recently, I’ve gotten the privilege to be able to team up with a couple of the best coaches in the in the state of Arizona, Coach Mark Carter and Marcus Carter. And they asked me to come on and be the freshmen head coach, to come in and help build leadership in more young men, which is an incredible gift. Right? And the reason that I was able to say yes to that, and the reason I said yes to the podcast. And the reason I say no to certain things is because of understanding core values, right? And having alignment with core values. And I asked you to think about it, how aligned are your core values personally, and professionally, you know, you see and hear a lot of companies, right? They go, I’ve got core values, my business has core values. And as I’ve gone into hundreds and 1000s of companies now I see core values that are good platitudes on a wall, but they don’t really live. So no, we’re not talking about platitudes that sound good, but what do you live by? Right? And I’ve found that usually, if you have more than five core values for your organization, for your family or for your for your company, you likely have too many, right, really narrowing it down.

Now, you might ask, well, Dan, like I’ve heard about core values, but how do I translate this to my family, or my team or what have you? So I’ll give you an example. teaming up with Desert Edge Football and coach Mark Carter and Marcus Carter. One of the first things that I asked them and also wanted to know is like, what are the core values of the team, and they have four core values. One is play hard, like kind of makes sense that you got to be committed, you got to put it on the field, right? And anything you do whether it’s football in that case or life play hard, right? play smart, right? I’m sure you’ve heard the idea work smart, not hard, right?

I'm sure you've heard the idea: work smart, not hard. But you can do both. Work hard and smart. - Dan Kuschell Click To Tweet

But you can do both work hard and smart. And that’s what I love about these first two core values, then the other is play together. We is always greater than me, like, have you ever met, you know, or take take sports out of the way. But if you ever been around people where they’re egocentric, right, where they they’re the smartest person in their business, the smartest person in the room, they’re the smartest person on the field. Like it gets annoying, right? Right. Together, everyone achieves more. So play together. And then lastly, is play true play with your integrity, right, your reputation, and realize that it’s all bigger than us, you’re playing for, you know, whatever you believe in whatever that might be, or universe or God, in my case, you know, you’re laying it out there, you’re a servant leader, right? for, you know, your higher power. In my case, it’s God in Christ, right. And for our families, for our community, in case of a school we’re playing for our school first, then individually, right, and when we have those values in alignment, like it’s magical, right, so those were what I assessed, and I was like, Wow, those are amazing, I love those. And then I have our core values, my personal core values, which are also the same as our company. Our number one is being hyper growth minded and focused, right? Like, I love to grow, I love to challenge I love to go beyond and just stretch and stretch and stretch, growth, learning, new capabilities, being innovated, looking at things uniquely different, bringing outside perspectives in, bringing out you know, things that are outside of places into other places, right, which I think I first learned from Jay Abraham some 30 years ago, or whatever the case might be. So being hyper growth focus. Number two, is collaborative, teamwork minded, right? Which again, you can start to see how these these values are almost I mean, they’re synonymous, right? Just potentially different words, right, but collaborative and teamwork, focus. And then lastly, number three, is contribution based, right? impact base, right, you know, being very blessed in the time and frame that that we are right now, you know, 30 years of business has brought a lot of great experiences some failures along the way, right? I’ve got the T shirt with that. Having gone through a lot of failures, you many times as you know, you fail your way to success. But when we come from the right place, contribution and impact, like their version, which is play true, right play together. Like, again, when you bring these kind of core values together, like it’s easy to say yes to that, isn’t it?

Right, but how about you? Right I what stimulated this was an email from someone in our accelerator program, which is one of the programs that we offer work with private clients to help them grow their business with a lot less stress, and usually two times 3x their business and more with just smart strategies, building an operating system around marketing and sales. And she sent in a question about, you know, how do you really create boundaries for yourself? And, you know, I’m starting to realize that maybe for me today, it’s easier. But I can tell you, I struggled at this for decades, the first 15 to 20 years of my business. Right? It probably wasn’t until about 10 years ago that I went through a health experience where I ended up an operating table with my heart issue that I was just going at things because they were exciting, because I could do them because I just said yes, I didn’t have a lot of discernment of who and what I said yes or no to. So I encourage you like what would happen for you, if you got crystal clear on your values? And ideally, you hearing about the core values of a high school football team, you hear about our company values, what could you build as far as your personal family values? Right? And if you got your family values in order, and you got your business values in order, or your team or church or your organization, whatever it might be? Like what would allow you the freedom to say yes to right, because of our aligned values. It gave me the freedom to say yes and make the adjustments necessary to say yes, yeah, I’d love to team up. I mean, you got two of the best coaches in the state of Arizona, arguably even I would say I would stack them up against any high school coaches in the country. In the time that I know them. They probably wouldn’t want me saying that publicly, but I feel that way. Their character, their qualities, what they’re building and young men what they’ve done for decades of building their success path. Right. And, and then also, what do I say no to what do I let go to be able to create the freedom to say yes to this opportunity?

How about you? What can you do today to get more clarity on your, on your core values, right, you can start by borrowing But I would encourage you, here are a couple keys, key strategies. Number one, make sure they’re true to you. And here’s a simple exercise you can do go ask five people who know you pretty well and say, Hey, what do you value most of me as a person? Now, if you’re going to do this for your business, you go, Hey, what do you value most of our business, you’re gonna, if you ask five to 10 people, you’ll start to get answers that are connected. And it’s through those connections, that then you can narrow down ideally, three, four or five core values that are easy to remember. And if you ask my kids, I, we have family values that are a little longer, but we built it in an acronym, so it was a little easier. And I started brainwashing my kids. Yes, I said that word brainwashing, right. Because we all have some form. And that’s called that’s learning is brainwashing. And, you know, I started teaching this to our kids at like, I think three or four years old. And so if you ask my kids today, I believe if you ask them, unless they’re being a little rebellious, which are they’re both my daughter who’s 15 is certainly at that age, and my son is getting in that, that phase. If you ask them, Hey, what are the crucial core values, they would go champion, choose, health, action, mastery, purpose, invest in yourself, being an opportunity seeker, and never quit on you. Right? That’s the simple version, there’s a little bit of an expanded version, but if you ask them, they would say that. So like, you can have family values. You can have business values, you can have organization or team or sports values. The bottom line is what will values give you the power to do, it will give you freedom, it will give you confidence, it will give you clarity, it will give you the freedom, to be clear on what you feel excited to say yes to who you feel excited to say yes to, and also what and who to say no to. Right.

And by the way, there are ebbs and flows in time. Right, I remember one of one of our business clients that we had worked with, we had worked with for a long time, we were in sync with our core values. And then at some point, we weren’t in sync so much, they started having more expectations and more demands that kind of started falling outside of these things. And then it was time to part ways. So we resigned from working together. Right? So it gives you the real power, the clarity, the confidence, also the ability to be creative, to come up with the right plans of how to be able to grow, how to be able to scale and also how to be able to impact so I challenge you today, build great core values, get clarity, three to four or five, ask a handful of people, what do you value most about my business about my team about me get those perspective, you’ll start to see how they connect, and you can come up with your main three to four, and start just being more clear on what you do say yes. And so Stephanie, this is for you, that great question that you asked about boundaries, and so on. And by the way, I don’t feel I’ve ever perfected this. But boy, I can tell you, I certainly feel a lot more freedom today because of having this clarity than at any point in my life. And it’s such a gift. And I also have a great partner and a great spouse and a great wife, who also helps me stay on track with these core values too, because she also lives in them as well. So anyway, I hope you got a lot of value. If you want to get more insights, wisdom like this, check out our podcast at growthtofreedom.com, growthtofreedom.com. Also, if you want to learn more about our sports team, our Desert Edge Football team will have some stuff here on the page or other resources available. Go check that out, as well. And by all means, seize the day, make it a great week, and we’ll see you on another segment some point soon. Bye for now. Thanks for listening to this episode of growthtofreedom.com. Are you struggling to get a steady flow of new clients every day, or maybe hit a plateau or hit a wall and growing your business? Let’s help you solve this problem today. Let’s review your business and have a conversation. You can do that for free today at breakthroughstrategycall.com, that’s breakthroughstrategycall.com. In addition, if you’re looking for a simple way to implement some of what we’ve been talking about in today’s episode, I want to encourage you to get our free small business toolkit. You can get that at activate.breakthrough3x.com, that’s activate.breakthrough3x.com. If you’d like access to the special resources and all the show notes for this special episode, make sure to visit growthtofreedom.com.

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