290: How to Set Goals That Scare You (and Actually Hit Them)

[00:00:00] Brian Kavicky: Everybody says after they're done, well that wasn't so bad because they finally got through it. So you have to actually make the decision of, do I wanna worry? Do I wanna have anxiety? Do I wanna think about this? Or do I just wanna be done with it because it's not gonna change anything that I'm going to do.

[00:00:18] Brian Kavicky: So why wait?

[00:00:20] Tiffany Sauder: I am Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you. If you're tired of living a life of have to and finally ready to build a life of want to, then you're in the right place. Come on, let's go build your Life of And.

[00:00:44] Tiffany Sauder: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of the Life of and podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Sauder and super excited to have Brian Kavicky back on in our November episode. We're coming up on like a year of this partnership and have really loved the feedback you guys have given in the episodes.

[00:01:02] Tiffany Sauder: Brian and I are doing both some realtime coaching in my own life and problems and exploring just the seasonality of. What does it look like to continue to get better at life in every single season? So, Brian, welcome back to the show.

[00:01:16] Brian Kavicky: Yes, and I, I do wanna thank you for not only the partnership, but also some of the things that you do as well.

[00:01:24] Brian Kavicky: I get a lot of comments sent to me or in passing, like, Hey, that was an important episode, or, I hadn't thought about that way. I've had a lot of people who actually have become clients and said, Hey, I wanna work with you. I'm going deep on this stuff. And, and that's been transformational for them. And also the stuff that you do with the Life of And things and the.

[00:01:46] Brian Kavicky: The retreats and those things that, those frameworks that you give people of this is how to think, this is how to organize, this is how to prosper, have gotten a very positive comment. So I do appreciate this, what you're doing. I know a lot of times this is, we're speaking to this audience of unknowns and whether it has an impact, but I do clearly get the feedback of the impact that you make in this banks.

[00:02:10] Tiffany Sauder: Thank you, Brian. I appreciate it a lot. I was actually talking to my mom yesterday. And she had listened to our. Last episode on apologizing. She had listened to the episode and she accidentally like opened some mail, put this invitation to her. She was a bridesmaid in this lady's wedding, and it was their 50th anniversary.

[00:02:31] Tiffany Sauder: Mom's like, I mean, I won't hit the next one. You know what I mean? Like this is wild. And she's like, I felt terrible, and I picked up my phone. And the first thing I was gonna do was text. I'm so sorry I wasn't there. And she's like, I just listened to this episode. And she was like, instead I wrote, I hate that.

[00:02:47] Tiffany Sauder: I missed out on being able to celebrate you on walking down memory on reconnecting with people I love and mom's like, it totally framed the conversation differently to be able to say that instead of like, I'm sorry, and it becomes this like weird, contrived interaction. So. Example from my own life, even Mama, Wendy's listening.

[00:03:07] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. Which maybe she's been the only listener forever. Right. Well, anyway, let's jump into this episode. This is the November episode, and so this is very much a season of closing out the year and setting goals for next year. And sometimes when we lose momentum in business or in life, it's not because we've stopped caring, it's really because we've stopped believing that we can get to something bigger.

[00:03:29] Tiffany Sauder: So I wanna talk today about how actually setting bigger goals, this is what you texted me, gets us out of ruts, not setting smaller goals and how, when, how to transfer what we know to those that we're leading. Because I think sometimes that can crush our ability to believe we can really get there is if we have not seen evidence, I can get people behind me following quickly and when is the right time to start.

[00:03:54] Tiffany Sauder: I think this can also be this sort of. You know, I dunno, leader or entrepreneur's dilemma of like waiting for the perfect start line to appear in our lives to sort of move from wishing, hoping, wanting, planning to actually behaving and doing the thing. So let's jump into this conversation on like, how do we do this?

[00:04:13] Tiffany Sauder: How do we get outta ruts? So I texted you and uh, Han as we're planning, sometimes I'll like, Hey, this is what I wanna talk about. And you said, Hey, I really wanna. Jump into this topic. Where is this topic showing up in your life? And I'm living it as well, but would love to sort of know what prompted this being top of mind for you, Brian.

[00:04:31] Brian Kavicky: So we've been living it as well. When you are in an incremental mindset, which is, I need to grow. I need to grow, I need to grow. You typically look at evidence for how you're gonna do that. Like you say things like, well, this is what I did last year, so we could do a little more of this. Or, this is what this client did.

[00:04:49] Brian Kavicky: I think I can grow them this. And that mindset gets you in this incremental thing, and it will cause you to grow and do better and improve things over time. The side effect to that is that you're only growing based on what's happened in the past. And the past doesn't dictate your future. It dictates the past.

[00:05:09] Brian Kavicky: And so when you build everything based on, here's what we know, here's what the data says, here's all these things you're putting yourself in the box to just keep reiterating what you've already done. And what I've seen is the side effects and how that's affecting companies and people. One, it causes people to actually go down and decrease because they noticed that the data had like little pivot points that said, oh, well that was just a one year thing, or that was a one-off thing, and they missed that.

[00:05:39] Brian Kavicky: The other thing is that they're burned out. They just go, I feel like every day is the same. I feel like we just keep doing this. Nothing is making an impact or affecting us, and the whole reason is. Is because we're looking the past to dictate the future instead of saying, this is what I want the future to be.

[00:05:56] Brian Kavicky: And even when you do that, you're casting too small of a goal because you're still just rooted in the past. You, you say things like, we've never done that before. We've never advanced that far. We've never grown like that. We've never targeted anything like that. And I'm just seeing that people are worn out because of it.

[00:06:14] Tiffany Sauder: So what's the disconnect for us? Like it? It is, we do look, I mean even as like a financial analyst, which is like my. Background. It's like I would go look at all of the data from the last five to seven years and say, what are the trend marks? Trend lines, and what are the assumptions that I can make about future performance rooted in the pa?

[00:06:31] Tiffany Sauder: Like I was literally trained to do this. And then you make an increment of progress on like, this is the engineering capacity we can create, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And as a result, I'm gonna make this assumption. So if we don't root in the past, this is like a real, what do we anchor in as we create these?

[00:06:49] Tiffany Sauder: Bigger, scarier goals that are not connected to the way we've done stuff in the past, the capacity we've had in the past, the success, like what do we anchor it to instead?

[00:07:01] Brian Kavicky: So the way that your brain thinks is it, it sees through the filter that you tell it to look through. So if you go down your financial analyst path, you're going in there to go, well, what can I improve?

[00:07:15] Brian Kavicky: And your brain goes, oh, I'm gonna live for what? To improve. If you went in there and you said, I need to hit this stupid, ridiculous goal, what little thing tells me I can, your brain will actually do that. But if I don't have that big, crazy goal, I'm not gonna look for the, the way to get there. And most of the time, like the theories on 10 x and all those things is, is basically there's a little thing that's going on in your business right now that has the potential to multiply and scale.

[00:07:45] Brian Kavicky: But you're doing all these other things that are just growing linearly. And if you look at this one thing and double down on that, it would go crazy. But that would actually break what you're doing now. Mm-hmm. And That'ss, where it gets scary is you're going, oh, well, if we abandon all this. And only did this where we already see evidence of success, our business would tally change.

[00:08:08] Brian Kavicky: Yes. But that is what gets scary. So the root problem is we have this brain that says, I have to be an adult. I have to be rational, I have to be careful, I have to be conservative. And we lost this mindset of a child who said, I wanna go out to outer space sometime. And we don't have that ability to cast the bigger, wider vision just because we're so trained in, but I need to have proof.

[00:08:32] Brian Kavicky: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:34] Tiffany Sauder: I feel so stuck in that. Well, you were saying in your own business too, that you're, I don't know if you've launched this to them yet, but you're like, I'm, we're gonna put a different kind of framing on our growth next year. Because you feel like people are getting worn out from the incremental 'cause.

[00:08:48] Tiffany Sauder: It takes a lot of effort even to make incremental effort. I'm finding this as I'm coming out of this season in life of an like this year was about can I prove that there is some type of sustainable economic model? And to test a bunch of stuff to figure out what do I like to do and what does the market like, what will they buy and what will they receive?

[00:09:07] Tiffany Sauder: Like I just have to test, I'm such a laboratory rat like that I don't do good in the academic. Part of it,

[00:09:14] Brian Kavicky: but even if I said to what end, so to do a test like I'm a laboratory, use the scientific hypothesis. You're gonna test the hypothesis.

[00:09:24] Tiffany Sauder: Yes.

[00:09:25] Brian Kavicky: But what is the end game of that hypothesis? What are you trying to accomplish?

[00:09:29] Tiffany Sauder: The first is it has to be financially sustaining. That's,

[00:09:33] Brian Kavicky: is that a goal? Conservative? That's a conservative position's

[00:09:35] Tiffany Sauder: a stupid goal. It's a stupid goal,

[00:09:38] Brian Kavicky: I feel like. Right? It's like, oh, is that gonna make money? I feel saying it. That's, that's the worst thing. It has to make money. It's obvious. I mean, if it makes a dollar, you're successful.

[00:09:47] Brian Kavicky: Yeah. And so this, this thing that you're struggling with is like, well, but what would be stupid? What would be hard? What would be impossible? What is it that I couldn't wrap my head around? But would be awesome if I did. It is actually the starting point, and that's a big leap for people to make is to go, wait a second, because if I do that, I'll figure out how to do that.

[00:10:14] Brian Kavicky: 'cause your, your whole point of you won't figure out how, or you're, you're always basing stuff on the how to make the goal. But if you start with the goal, the how will show the way. Because you have to figure it out. Well, I now you don't have to figure it out. Well, it, this

[00:10:28] Tiffany Sauder: framework, because you taught me this framework, the what and how made Well you go through this.

[00:10:32] Tiffany Sauder: 'cause I think it is such, and I'm, I am so clear that I am stuck in this right now.

[00:10:38] Brian Kavicky: Yeah. So, so I don't, we don't need

[00:10:39] Tiffany Sauder: to use this episode to unstuck me. But I think this what how is a very real thing. And you're right, it's super adjacent to this whole goal thing.

[00:10:46] Brian Kavicky: Yeah. So the framework is, is if we draw a vertical line and on one side of the line we put goal.

[00:10:52] Brian Kavicky: And on the other side of all align, we put how and what it becomes a framework for how we work, how we help clients and all those things. So if you think from a client perspective, your job is to provide what your clients need to achieve their goal, but you can't tell them your goal's bad or your goal's dumb, or that's not right.

[00:11:12] Brian Kavicky: If you don't have the how and what, they're not gonna hire you to solve the goal. And it's also bad if your clients come to you and say, this is how I want you to do things. This is what you want. And you kind of go, we don't wanna do that stuff. And it doesn't actually align with the goal that you set.

[00:11:28] Brian Kavicky: Well, that universal thing also works for setting directions for saying is to say, I gotta set the goal and then I gotta go find the how and what. But what we don't do is say, well, this is my how and what. Well, how do I use that to achieve a goal? You won't ever do it. You'll get closer, but it'll be a little closer, not a lot closer.

[00:11:50] Tiffany Sauder: Mm-hmm. In my like agency life, you taught me this. 'cause a client would come and say, we want a thousand leads a month and these are the three things you need to do to get there. And it's like, I mean, you gotta pick one. Either you tell me the three things I have to do and we get what we get. Or you tell me you want a thousand leads a month and you give me control over the budget.

[00:12:09] Tiffany Sauder: So that I've got, I can control the levers to get there. It was like so discreet for me in that world. It gets, I don't know, it's not any muddier in my personal life. It's just convoluted 'cause I'm so fricking close to it. And I deal with this thing too, where if I hope for it and work for it and don't get it, I have to deal with the disappointment of not getting it.

[00:12:34] Tiffany Sauder: Where if. If you more bet on the increment, it's like more likely I'm gonna get there and I don't have to deal with that disappointment of like, 'cause I can like so vividly picture things when I'm like, okay, this is what it's gonna be like and this is how it's gonna be and this is exactly the thing. And I'm like, oh.

[00:12:50] Tiffany Sauder: And then when I don't get there, I sometimes I think makes it, makes me slower to wanna bet on the gigantic outcome. 'cause I'm like, I, if I don't get there, I'm gonna be so frustrated and disappointed.

[00:13:05] Brian Kavicky: But isn't that 'cause you're measuring the wrong thing? Most people, most people don't get there because they've set a, a timeframe that they, if they just had a little more time, they get it.

[00:13:15] Brian Kavicky: So they set a, a deadline that was incorrect. Well, and they're also measuring not the right thing they're measuring forward, which is, I was working towards this instead of measuring backward, which is what are all the gains that you've made? Mm-hmm. Like if, if you set a real crazy goal for your company and you said.

[00:13:33] Brian Kavicky: I wanna triple what I'm doing within the next six months. And you doubled it in six months, would you go, oh my gosh, I'm a failure? Yeah, no. And so everybody's afraid to set the goal because then their brain says, well, what if I don't hit it? What if you don't hit it and it's still awesome?

[00:13:51] Tiffany Sauder: Mm-hmm. Okay.

[00:13:53] Tiffany Sauder: Good point. So. The way that we get ourselves unstuck, the way that we give ourselves more energy. I mean, I'm like, so at the crossroads of this, I feel this like intense need to prune some of what I'm doing. 'cause we're a small team and I need to get focused and this at some level, emotional attachment to everything I've done and tested.

[00:14:16] Tiffany Sauder: And so like, just like it's hard to know what to shoot. A little bit to make it go away. So I, again, we don't need to triple click into that in this conversation, but I'm, I'm just like, I'm so there right now as I'm thinking about 26, what to fund, what to scale, what to push into, where to use my energy and unique abilities,

[00:14:37] Brian Kavicky: but just everything you just said.

[00:14:39] Brian Kavicky: Yes. What to do, where to do it, all that you're living on. The how and the what, which says you haven't set the goal yet.

[00:14:48] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah.

[00:14:49] Brian Kavicky: And so that's for everybody. If you're stuck and what do I do? How do I do it? Where do I look? Set the goal first and then back into it because that's where you get all your nos. I can't do this, I can't do this.

[00:15:03] Brian Kavicky: I gotta double down on this. That's right. I gotta do this. You have to set the goal first.

[00:15:07] Tiffany Sauder: I think I'm struggling to know like. And I don't know why I am making it hard. 'cause I've set goals for 20 years. You know, I don't know why I am trying to make this different, but I, I get stuck in my brain on, is it financial?

[00:15:24] Tiffany Sauder: Is that the goal? It's like, Hey, I'm, I want it to be a million dollars in revenue. That's the goal. And I don't really care how I get there. Is it about a financial goal? And this are the number of days I want to work because I want it to be contained. Into a certain percentage of my life. 'cause it's not the only thing I'm doing, is it the number of people I impact?

[00:15:48] Tiffany Sauder: And that is the goal. And then figuring out the financial model around that. Like why am I making it a Rubik's cube? Why is this so, why like, do you wanna punch me in the face? I wanna punch myself in the face.

[00:16:01] Brian Kavicky: I think this goes back to why you do this. This is called the life of and why can't it be all three of those things?

[00:16:07] Brian Kavicky: What goal allows most people impacted all, all the things you just said. Yeah. What is the goal that actually allows all of those things to occur?

[00:16:17] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. 'cause I'm like, I love to speak in front of people. I love it so much, much. Perfect. Okay. And it is excruciatingly hard on my family when I'm gone a lot.

[00:16:31] Tiffany Sauder: So I have a belief in my head, which I can. You can probably tell me, I can disprove that if I say I'm gonna do 50 speaking events next year, that that is gonna require me to be gone a lot. And

[00:16:45] Brian Kavicky: it could. But if your goal was, I wanna impact and be in front of the most people, it might be five speaking events that were much larger rooms.

[00:16:54] Brian Kavicky: Like, do I wanna do 50 events to 12 people or one. To whatever the math is.

[00:17:00] Tiffany Sauder: Okay. That's helpful. Alright, we'll move on. For all of the poor humans who are having to listen to this, to me struggle, I guess it's like, I think it's the honesty of like, this is not an exercise of mastery. It is an exercise of staying in the struggle of, of forcing clarity.

[00:17:18] Tiffany Sauder: And there's this like in-between that is so uncomfortable and unsettling when you're an achiever who like thrives on focus and tasks. Which is what I de great in. And when you're in the season of sorting, it's so unsettling. It's like so unsettling to me.

[00:17:34] Brian Kavicky: But if you, if you go back to one of our very first meetings, if not our first meeting, and you said, this is what my revenue for my marketing agency is.

[00:17:44] Brian Kavicky: And I said, so what do you wanna do? You got very angry with me when I said, oh, we'll do that this year.

[00:17:50] Tiffany Sauder: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:52] Brian Kavicky: But you did. But you were, at that time, you were at the same exact place where you were just stuck in that mindset of I can only do this much. I only have this much capability. You, you weren't thinking about how to do it faster or what to do, so the simplicity of that.

[00:18:09] Brian Kavicky: But once we laid out the plan, you were fine. You're like, oh, actually the math works to get there. But it had to be that this was a cra. And then what was crazy is I just cut the timeframe. You were going, we're gonna get there. But it was no, we'll do it this year instead. That actually gave you clarity so that that's what everybody needs to do is here's what I want to go and this is the timeframe I wanna do it, and how do I align to that?

[00:18:34] Brian Kavicky: And the how shows the path

[00:18:37] Tiffany Sauder: well, and it's so editing to your behavior when that's clear. It's like, yeah, this is what I have to do. And it's already decided. It's like so freeing. That's why I love working with a trainer. 'cause it's like, these are my goals. Just tell me what to do. And it's like, just tell me what to do.

[00:18:54] Tiffany Sauder: I wanna take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey behind the microphone. Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you're trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy, or get your leader behind a microphone, they're gonna help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful.

[00:19:18] Tiffany Sauder: So one of the reasons I think that we also can doubt that we can go as far and as fast. As what we can is that we get frustrated that the people around us don't get it. The people around us aren't following the people around us like don't have the clarity that we do. What role do we play in that as leaders?

[00:19:40] Tiffany Sauder: How do we unsolved that so that there's velocity around us as well? Do you know Jeff Simmons very well? Have you watched him speak ever? Do you know who I'm talking about?

[00:19:49] Brian Kavicky: Uhuh.

[00:19:50] Tiffany Sauder: So he's the CEO of Elanco, which is. Gigantic global publicly traded company. You know, he's like on MSNBC and CNBC talking about the future of agriculture and whatever.

[00:20:00] Tiffany Sauder: He also has a family office that has seven different entities inside of it. Their family just bought a winery in upstate New York that they're like rebranding, like I'm like, you know those people? You're like, you somehow. Get more hours than the rest of us. Like I, it's like inconceivable to imagine running a global organization and having the capacity to do these other things.

[00:20:22] Tiffany Sauder: And I was at this fundraiser last night and it looked like all he'd done all day long was like, like, I don't know, like walk in Meadows freshly showered before he got there and like had on a freshly pressed soup. But in fact, he'd like just got off a plane from DC like 32 minutes earlier. The car dropped him off, didn't know if his wife was there or not.

[00:20:43] Tiffany Sauder: And I was like, this is wild. But I think in part the magic to people like that is that they are masters at this, at getting people around them to get it so that it can happen so well and so quickly. I don't know, I'm just exporting. Help me here.

[00:21:01] Brian Kavicky: The alignment is about. Being clear with the goal and then the ability to translate that goal into things that benefit those that are required to get to that goal.

[00:21:18] Brian Kavicky: So it's a, it's a mindset of a, a we versus me mindset.

[00:21:23] Tiffany Sauder: So say that again. Getting other people to see how they benefit from the goal. Was that what you said?

[00:21:29] Brian Kavicky: Yes, because. Nobody wakes up in the morning going, I am here to make the company grow. You are waking up for your goal to be achieved. So the mastery in getting everybody rowing in the same direction is not to say, my goal's important, so you all need to row.

[00:21:49] Brian Kavicky: Mm-hmm. It's, this is what I see for us and this is how it benefits us, including how it changes or affects you personally. And so some people do that with, well, you'll make more money. And that allows you to have things in your life that you don't have today. The best at it. Make it about purpose of this is the purpose for what we do, and this is how you can help contribute to that purpose as long as you buy into that purpose.

[00:22:21] Brian Kavicky: And if you don't buy into that purpose, you really shouldn't work here. And so there, the way that those organizations are constructed. Is that they have the mindset of our shareholders are shareholders and investors have funded us and continue to buy shares in us because they believe in what we're doing, the success of what we're doing.

[00:22:43] Brian Kavicky: And to some degree, appro you, you, you wouldn't buy a stock that you don't believe in what they're doing. And so it's aligning all those things together is what they're typically good at. The thing you described is, well, how does he look doing that and how does he make that happen? Is that the organization in turn says, this is what we need you to do for us.

[00:23:03] Brian Kavicky: In order for us to be successful, which means we're gonna provide you with the money, with the private jet, we're gonna give you a driver so you can be productive in the car and we're gonna make sure you have everything you need so that your mind is working in a way that provides value to us. It's exactly the same thing.

[00:23:19] Tiffany Sauder: I think it's interesting, I think as an entrepreneur and somebody who's like. You know, driving your own, it's hard to say that to yourself. Like when a business says, 'cause he was even explaining when his family was moved to Brazil with Lily. They set him up with a compound. There was, there was security, there was a driver, there was somebody like walked his kids to school practically, you know, like, this is what we're gonna provide you so that you've got maximized opportunity and comfort.

[00:23:44] Tiffany Sauder: I think it can be harder for us to, to create that for ourselves.

[00:23:49] Brian Kavicky: Yes. And that because it comes with the mindset of I don't deserve that. It's easy for somebody to say, we need to do this because we don't want you worrying about your kids getting to school. We want you worrying about the business, right?

[00:24:02] Brian Kavicky: We're gonna take care of that. You won't go, well, I don't wanna worry about my kid. I, I, I can't do this because I got my kids to worry about. I got to go to the grocery store. I gotta do it. Yeah. We won't do it 'cause we don't deserve it. The other thing is that we don't see ourselves as as valuable. And those situations to go, my time is worth this, or others are depending on me too because we have this overwhelming, but I don't deserve what it takes to do that.

[00:24:27] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, it's a really interesting thing, but if someone else paid for it, demanded it, you would begin tos. It's really interesting. I read this question, I don't know, it was probably on Instagram and it said, if, if a high functioning CEO stepped into your life, what is one of the first changes they would make?

[00:24:46] Brian Kavicky: Oh yeah. It's brutal. I have,

[00:24:49] Tiffany Sauder: huh?

[00:24:49] Brian Kavicky: It's brutal.

[00:24:51] Tiffany Sauder: Do you have an answer to that question or do you feel like you're,

[00:24:55] Brian Kavicky: oh, no, I have Mr. Perfect. Like for me personally. Oh yeah.

[00:24:59] Tiffany Sauder: You see yourself as Mr. Perfect. No.

[00:25:01] Brian Kavicky: Yeah, they would say. Why are you still spending time with people who are below your hourly rate and not paying you for the time?

[00:25:08] Brian Kavicky: That's worth? When there's people lined up to meet with you that will pay your worth, why are you not opening your calendar up more to your internal team? Because those are the people that you're now serving. Why aren't you saying no to this, this, this, and this? Because it doesn't get you in the direction you want to go.

[00:25:25] Brian Kavicky: I mean, they would just destroy it

[00:25:27] Tiffany Sauder: and you feel. Like it's a matter of time until you make those choices or you're saying My values in different ways drive those choices and I feel good about them.

[00:25:39] Brian Kavicky: So for me personally, it's my values. Have justified those choices up to this point, but with a different destination, my values won't change.

[00:25:52] Brian Kavicky: They'll just be applied differently. Mm-hmm. It goes back to what lens you're looking at. My values aren't gonna change, but how those values show up as executed will look very, very different. And then you have this thing of, well, it's gonna negatively affect people. Well, it's not, it's their choosing. That they're going, like if I call a client and say, I can't work with you unless this is what you pay, so you have a choice.

[00:26:16] Brian Kavicky: Now, as long as I give 'em a wave to do that. Mm-hmm. That isn't destructive to them. If I go to them and say, you're below my hourly rate, I can't work with you anymore, that would be terrible. But if it's like, here's the options we have. So that you can still have this experience, it's just gonna look different.

[00:26:32] Brian Kavicky: If they say, I don't like those options, that's not on me.

[00:26:34] Tiffany Sauder: You walked me through that. When I would like leave for maternity leaves or like kind of was getting outta client work. You're like, you've gotta provide a real viable solution before you say peace out. Right? Yeah. With capacity and training and all those kinds of things, like that's your job to have the integrity to do that.

[00:26:53] Tiffany Sauder: In my notes, I had written this idea that like people around us when they don't get it or they're not following us, that leadership isn't about doing as much. It is is about translating. And I think that can be such a powerful reminder that we get, so even you saying I'm not serving my internal team as much as I quote should be like.

[00:27:13] Tiffany Sauder: We can get so in demand as leaders to the outside world, to the projects we're working on, to the work streams, we're running to the constituencies that we're serving, that we forget that our primary job is to keep the vision alive and vivid, to translate for our people the goals that we have into priorities and.

[00:27:33] Tiffany Sauder: Even the pacing and timing that that can be absorbed by the organization, the encouragement that we're gonna get there, and the reminder that this is the values that's gonna guide our behavior as we go through that. And I think we can get so consumed by our doing and our calendar and the sort of ego driven demands of our time, at least for me, that those, they almost feel like benign behaviors when you're doing them, but they're such massive unlocks when we get it right.

[00:28:02] Brian Kavicky: Correct.

[00:28:03] Tiffany Sauder: Okay, so the third piece I had here was like, when to start. You said to me why procrastinating and delaying makes everything worse. In my old age, there's like a country song that's like my give a damn is busted. It's like I find in my old age, my give a damn gets a little busted a little sooner, but when I was young I was very procrastinating, very patient.

[00:28:28] Brian Kavicky: But in what ways? Like when you say I don't care as much anymore, what changed in what you care about?

[00:28:34] Tiffany Sauder: I think that I understand now that I was delaying the inevitable. I think that I understand now that you are oftentimes compromising values and your high performers when you don't make crisp early decisions on people or performance or those kinds of things.

[00:28:55] Tiffany Sauder: And I think that I also have learned the greatest, the biggest way to chase away my imaginary fears is to just get started. And it's almost like when you're getting ready to walk into a cold plunge, you can like go in slow or you can just get it over with. And I think getting to work on the things that I'm afraid to do, it just like makes fear.

[00:29:24] Tiffany Sauder: Like the imaginary sense of like, what could go wrong and what will I feel and will I get it rejected? And what if I'm picking the wrong starting point? Maybe this is the third most important priority and not the biggest, and I just didn't see it. Like that noise goes away when I have clear behaviors I'm doing instead of just like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting.

[00:29:46] Brian Kavicky: So procrastination is like pressure. There's good pressure and there's bad pressure. Procrastination. There's good procrastination and bad procrastination, so sometimes procrastinating actually helps compress time so that you can work much more efficiently, not overdo things, not overinvest, all those things.

[00:30:05] Brian Kavicky: Most people use it negatively and they say, I'm going to avoid doing this thing. I'm going to wait to do this thing. I'm gonna take time to do this thing. And what happens and, and you described it, is the end is inevitable. It's going to happen anyway. Is that not only is it not going to change anything.

[00:30:25] Brian Kavicky: But now we're extending the period where we have the fears, the worries, the anxieties, the thinking, because we're still living in that. So your cold plunge example is perfect. I can either have the shock of it's cold by just dropping in, or I could say, it's cold, it's cold, it's cold, it's cold, it's cold, it's cold.

[00:30:44] Brian Kavicky: And the longer that I wait, the worse I actually feel about that outcome. And then that's why everybody says after they're done, well, that wasn't so bad is because. They finally got through it. So you have to actually make the decision of, do I wanna worry? Do I wanna have anxiety? Do I wanna think about this?

[00:31:03] Brian Kavicky: Or do I just wanna be done with it? Because it's not gonna change anything that I'm going to do, so why wait?

[00:31:10] Tiffany Sauder: Well, and I sometimes I have this thing in my mind where I say, well, we'll see if it's true. Well, like, I bet I won't be able to fill this. These slots. I bet people won't pay this. I bet people won't like these things that like go into my head and I'm like, well, I guess we'll see if it's true.

[00:31:25] Tiffany Sauder: It kind of like gives me the courage to jump in,

[00:31:28] Brian Kavicky: right? And then you find out, oh, it actually worked because you actually did it. But if you had it, you would actually find out you'll actually change the outcome because you'll wait a little bit longer, you'll experiment a little more. You'll say, Ooh, maybe we should do this instead.

[00:31:45] Brian Kavicky: And you never got to test the thing you set out to because you've iterated so much by overthinking it that you've made it worse.

[00:31:53] Tiffany Sauder: You say two things that I think sometimes can, on the surface seem contradictory, I think are related to this one. It's always worse than you think, and then you'll also say it's never as bad as you thought it would be.

[00:32:06] Brian Kavicky: So it's always worse than you think means. Once I execute, I'll go, wow. I would've executed this a lot earlier if I'd known and realized all these different things. But the execution is, oh, it's never as bad as you thought. Mm-hmm. Is that it doesn't have the drama, the difficulty, any of those things, and the feeling of, oh, it's gone.

[00:32:32] Brian Kavicky: It's no longer, I'm no longer carrying it. A burden always feels better. Like, oh, why did I wait so long? So they're actually the exact same thing. It's, why did I wait so long? Why didn't I deal with this earlier? And if I'd known what I know now, I would've done it so much quicker. Mm-hmm. So just go accept all those things and just execute quickly all the time.

[00:32:52] Tiffany Sauder: So we are like on tiptoes, starting to be over the diving board edge going into 2026. So the things I'm taking from this conversation personally are as I'm looking at 2026. Don't let my historical behavior evidence metrics trajectory inform what I set my goals for 2026, as like those are unrelated events.

[00:33:22] Brian Kavicky: Correct?

[00:33:22] Tiffany Sauder: Look for evidence in my past testing and behavior of what can grow exponentially, but don't be contained or constrained. By its current size or evidence.

[00:33:38] Brian Kavicky: Yes.

[00:33:39] Tiffany Sauder: The second one is to make good on that, I'm going to need people with beside pushing me, helping me, et cetera, and so take the time to align their outcomes to the purpose of this project and to.

[00:33:57] Tiffany Sauder: The results, not typical goals that we're running at because that will give them the courage and motivation and connection to where it is that we're going. And the last one is I think just to have the courage to like start now and. For me, it's trusting my intuition, like shipping on the first time I feel or see it, and not waiting for this like pattern to emerge to believe it, and so to like stop procrastinating, get to it, and then linking back to a, a conversation we had a couple episodes ago.

[00:34:35] Tiffany Sauder: To me, it's translating that into my cookbook so that it actually makes its way into my daily behavior.

[00:34:40] Brian Kavicky: Yes.

[00:34:40] Tiffany Sauder: And then that links this audacious goal. My people are aligned and my day-to-day behavior is gonna make it come true. So, all right, so in the next 30 days, how long should it take me to get clear? I mean, that's such a stupid thing to ask.

[00:34:55] Brian Kavicky: Get clear on what you're doing in 2026. Yes. Yeah. You can do it by this weekend.

[00:35:00] Tiffany Sauder: I can do it by this weekend.

[00:35:02] Brian Kavicky: Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because the thing you're mostly missing is what's the goal?

[00:35:06] Tiffany Sauder: I know once

[00:35:07] Brian Kavicky: you have the goal, like tunnels open up of, oh, this is what I gotta do, and then you become super clear on the how and the what.

[00:35:15] Tiffany Sauder: Okay. I am gonna email you by noon on Monday with my goal.

[00:35:22] Brian Kavicky: Sweet.

[00:35:23] Tiffany Sauder: All right, y'all. If you wanna email Brian by noon on Monday with your goal then, and if you're

[00:35:30] Brian Kavicky: fak when you press send, it's not big enough. Okay. If you're not like, oh my gosh, this is exciting, but super scary at the same time, not a big enough goal.

[00:35:38] Tiffany Sauder: Okay. All right. All right. I am doing it. Literally, Brian has been with me for. 12, 14 years I was pregnant with Ainsley. I was pregnant. My second 14 years is involved in all of my businesses and has been an early champion of this Life of And Project, and it's been very fun to work in this capacity.

[00:35:57] Tiffany Sauder: So if you're looking for this kind of support in your business, in your personal life, getting unstuck, pushing you and your teams to the next level of growth, I'm telling you he's been. A massive partner for me in every season of my life and development. New mom, new entrepreneur, to middle-aged mom, still with young kids, rocking into my Life of And.

[00:36:16] Tiffany Sauder: So thank you, Brian, for your partnership. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for caring about me and my life. Enough to continue to push me and thank you for sharing what it is that you know and love and are learning with my audience. And there's a link in the show notes if you guys wanna connect with Brian.

[00:36:30] Tiffany Sauder: There's a short little form you'll get on his calendar. Until he decides that he's not meeting with people who aren't paying him anymore. Um, all right. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks, Brian for being here. Thanks for listening to the Life of And this is your weekly reminder to keep making bold choices, saying clear yeses and holding space for what matters most.

[00:36:52] Tiffany Sauder: As always, if you like this episode, I'd love for you to drop a review and share it with your friend. It's the fastest way that we can grow the show. Thanks for joining us. I'll see you next time.