A recovering, hard-driving leader with over 35 years of Sales, Marketing, Educational and Entrepreneurial experience, I have successfully battled the negative effects of stress head-on and developed the LIGHTEN™ stress management model that will motivate you and/or your team to take action in only a few minutes per day. After learning the stress management techniques I facilitate, participants can better protect their health and handle challenging situations with grace and success.
Website: https://petealexander.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petealexander/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stressexpert
Podcast: https://petealexander.com/podcast/
Book: https://petealexander.com/book/
Stress-Buster Challenge: https://petealexander.com/stress-relief-30-day-challenge/
A recovering, hard-driving leader with over 35 years of Sales, Marketing, Educational and Entrepreneurial experience, I have successfully battled the negative effects of stress head-on and developed the LIGHTEN™ stress management model that will motivate you and/or your team to take action in only a few minutes per day. After learning the stress management techniques I facilitate, participants can better protect their health and handle challenging situations with grace and success.
Website: https://petealexander.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petealexander/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/stressexpert
Podcast: https://petealexander.com/podcast/
Book: https://petealexander.com/book/
Stress-Buster Challenge: https://petealexander.com/stress-relief-30-day-challenge/
Josh: What is up everybody Josh Tapp here again and welcome back to the lucky Titan and today we're here with Professor Pete Alexander, I'm going to call him Professor Pete just because I loved it, I think it rolls off the tongue well, and you know, I have to intro him in a really special way, because we're having in our pre interview questions here, I was talking to Professor Pete here and we could have just talked for an hour about podcasting war stories but we won't, unless you guys want that, let me know if you want us to make an episode about that because about 100 people, we could have some amazing episodes of that, that's another podcast that's we'll do one day but so Professor Pete, he has 35 years of experience in sales and marketing, this guy has a really extensive career when it comes to helping scale companies really through being a good person and so I have to walk this because so he has successfully battled the negative effects of stress head on and develop the lightened stress management model so this is really a motivational model helping you to find and I would honestly say hack motivation. I'm really excited for this, because I've been trying to do this for myself very unsuccessfully. So Professor Pete, that was a super long winded intro, but welcome to the show, if you say what's up to everybody, and we'll carry on,
Professor Pete: Josh, thank you for being on for having me on the show and thank you, for your listeners for tuning in and and their time
Josh: I appreciate it. Now, they'll love it. It's gonna be fun interview. So let's talk about motivation and the motivation is so funny, because there's all these different ideas of how you can get into state like flow state and I suck at all of them so Professor Pete what's motivation?
Professor Pete: Well, what's the motivation is you don't want to end up in the mode of burnout. That's really the thing, because, for me, the reason I got into this whole area of trying to help others with their stress, is because I'm talking from real world experience you know, I had a lot of dysfunction as a child who that gave me a lot of stress but you know, as an adult, it didn't subside and it actually really had a big head back in 2008, because I had a perfect storm of stressful like, activities that were going on, in my personal and professional life, which ended up being the end result was I ended up having a diagnosis with stress induced diabetes, the thing was, that I didn't listen to my body about what stress was doing to it instead, like any entrepreneur, I kept on burning the candle at both ends for another 10 years, until I ended up in the emergency room with a severe case of diabetic ketoacidosis and for your listeners who don't know what that is, my body was actually eating itself alive because of my stress and the crazy thing is, I still in the ICU, so I had an extended stay in ICU one and only time, hopefully, that I'll ever have in my life and I was working for the last medical device company, and that in my career and on the second day, in the ICU, I get this text from my boss and she says, you have a webinar, you need to run at eight o'clock, what are you going to do about it and instead of me thinking, well, you will figure it out. Mr. Reliable here, I start sitting there on my phone, because what a surprise, I didn't have my work laptop with me in the ICU. And I'm sitting there, pushing the envelope of my iPhone, trying to reschedule this webinar. And the nurse on that was taking care of me at that time she comes in, she checks my blood, they were checking my blood every 30 minutes as a diabetic and it's went from coming back down, when I was first admitted to the hospital, I had such high blood sugar that the medical grade glucometers could not even read it, they just said screamed high so they estimated eight to 10 times higher than normal and it had come down into normal ranges and then all of a sudden, as I'm trying to reschedule this webinar, it shot right back up like a 90 degree angle and she says to me, you realize that's what puts you in this hospital bed in the first place and that was my epiphany moment and that's, you know, it's a long winded answer to your question about motivation, Josh, but that's the thing, your body will tell you. It'll give you warning signs and I had a whole bunch of warning signs that I ignored and at some point, your body is going to break down and trust me when it breaks down, it's a lot harder to get back up.
Josh: Yeah, and that's I mean, awesome story. First off and sad story in some cases, right, but I feel like we almost all need one of those moms, there's at all times to see where we're at right is gauging that, that level of stress and anxiety and I know, I had never experienced depression or anxiety ever in my life I, from what I can tell but when I really got heavily into entrepreneurship, I started having these, like panic attacks, what is wrong with me? You know, why am I Kickstarter are these dumb things, and I got diagnosed and on a pill and all these things, right, so that I can take care of my anxiety but man, it's even with medication and everything that we have, that's not enough, and a lot of cases that you have to learn to control yourself so I want to ask you this, and maybe this leads right into where you're going but what how are you gauging that now and how do you help other people gauge that?
Professor Pete: Well, so it's a good question. Um, what I found is that one of the things that causes us a lot of anxiety is, you know, we, first of all, as entrepreneurs, we're driven to try and succeed, of course, so that we're our own worst enemy, you know, that inner critic stuff but also, we're all tasked with, you know, a limited amount of time and the other challenge is, what might work for you, let's say, for example, may not work for me, and vice versa so you have to have a whole bunch of different types of tools to try and once you find one or two things that can work for you, I always recommend you run with those, you run with those, because if you start getting into a habit of utilizing a tool that works for you, and it only takes you one or two minutes, let's say per day, to utilize that tool, the compound benefits over time will be enormous but you got to start today, you know, you just got to do it, you can't just use it once in a while, because it won't work as effectively and you know, like, for example, as you mentioning, about having that anxiety, you know, there's, there's an opportunity to if if you are, you have no distractions, there's a technique that I used to help people walk them through what you know what that anxiety is, and then you know, they're able to get into Believe it or not, their unconscious mind to be able to change the outlook of that anxiety and so it's it's just, it's, it's just a matter of applying different techniques.
Josh: See, and that's, that's cool because the fact that it's even there, that there's a way to gauge it, I think should be a really a place of hope for a lot of people, I know for me, even I used to love working out, it was like one of my favorite things to do right after I graduate high school and then I stopped for years and often I played sports or whatever, right? But not no, like, fit reset routine but one of the things that got me back on it was just understanding that losing weights and, and gaining muscle or what have you was 100% tied to math, it was just a math equation less calories a but if you eat within this range of calories and you work out X amount of time you buy some more calories, it just made sense and it brought me clear back into to wanting to change that area of my life because for me it was it was more believable instead of oh, just go to the gym and eat healthier, right, if you're not tracking it, it makes no sense so when it comes to to motivation, how how are you really like, what what are some of the tools that you use to gauge that for you and your clients?
Professor Pete: Sure. So what what happens is, typically, we'll be talking on a weekly basis and so one of the things that I have them do is I always give them an assignment at the end of our session and it's based on wherever they are right now because when we first start working together, we have we set goals and you know, as entrepreneurs, we all know what those you know that setting goals is really important and working towards those goals so it's a matter of trying to figure out where do we get from point A to point B, right and so as we're going through it, I asked, okay, so what is, you know, the situation what is there anything stopping you right now, what, what happened from last week, to this week, etc. and so depending on what's going on with the individual, we'll go ahead and we'll do a couple activities as we're talking, and then I'll give them an assignment, have them go off, and then they come back the next week with whatever they were assigned to do, if they don't, you know, let's say don't complete it, you know, there could be you know, everybody has something that happens to them during the week that could stop them from that, it's okay Mulligan here and there but if it's consistent where they're not doing the homework, then we have to have a conversation about Okay, are you really, you know, are you committed to this goal so you It's all about figuring that out first, and then working on a customized program that fits them for not only their long term goals, but also short week to week goals because we always end up with things that happen, life happens, you know, and if life happens, there's going to be some times where you need to take, you know, an alternation on the road to success deal with that right now so that, you know, when they start getting sidetracked, they don't stay sidetracked and that's, that's the key, and it's highly customized, ah wait, you know, if I, if I told you that I had a cookie cutter, you know, script for it, I don't, I don't, the only cookie cutter thing I have is I have the same opening that I do, which is a grounding exercise I do with all my clients but other than that, there is no cookie cutter because honestly, there if you have somebody who's got a cookie cutter, the exact same thing that they're asking, they're probably got a script from some franchise.
Josh: Yeah, I would agree with that, I think when it comes to this sort of, when it comes to coaching a general right, I being coached by somebody is it has to be tailored to you individually, I love to see that you have that, that you have the frameworks that you stick within, to help people to, to hack motivation, right? So let's talk through a little bit about the tools you can use to inspire motivation in yourself, what are some of the big, the big tools that you use as far as, as helping people to bring motivation into their lives?
Professor Pete: Mm hmm. So you know, once we know what their ultimate goals are, where do they want to go so it's all about targeting that and so we have to figure out, what is it that is going to help them so as you say, like, you know, if you have, if they're anxious, I always like them to pick a goal that is obviously a stretch and, you know, from that motivation standpoint, you want to stretch it enough, where all of a sudden, you know, there's that old turn the big hairy goal, you know, the one that's going oh, my gosh, I am really nervous about doing that now we're in the, the ballpark is what I would call it of what we want to accomplish because if you are getting nervous about doing that, then you're at a stretch goal and so you want to do that because if if, you know somebody says I want to do this, and they don't have any nervousness about it, that ain't a stretch goal, they don't need my help, I'm going to help them be accountable and so it's a matter of figuring that out me giving them that stretch goal and then it's a matter of saying, okay, so you read, you know, what, what is what what is it about this week's milestone that you needed to do, we celebrate it, if they if they hit it, if they didn't hit it, we take a look and say, okay, what stopped them that motivation, what got in the way, what was more important about something else that they did, or didn't do in order to get that next step in their process and it's a matter of getting them to realize that when you have somebody who is holding you accountable, yeah, you need to know that it's the big difference between having a coach and having a counselor and let's say a counselor is going to listen to you talk all the time that they're getting paid to just listen to you talk a coach on the other hand is there to help you know obviously listen, but then keep you accountable for whatever it is that you want to accomplish and so I don't know about you, but for me, I have a coach as well, I don't like to disappoint my coach at all and so that in itself is a motivator that I'm going oh God I you know, I have this you know, so so so the weekly thing that they're supposed to send me It's very simple, it's there a few questions and stuff and what I'm doing is I'm, I'm getting that information before I have my call with them and the reason I'm having that is because I want to make our time together our hour together as efficient as possible and get right to what it is that we need to work on and so if they give me that, you know, what worked what didn't work from the previous week, I know exactly what to focus on and so it's it's it's all going back to that accountability and as a coach that's what you utilize, I keep copious notes, I listen enormously well, I mean, more so uh, you know that that that 100% present with them because I'm listening for not only what they're saying that's, that's having them Have you no telling me what's going on but I'm also listening to for any kind of patterns, if I'm noticing a pattern that they have where it's a consistent thing that oh, okay, do they have an issue with this do they have an issue with that and that's, that's a, that's another key element of it, so those are the things I do with the motivation side.
Josh: Love that. Thank you for sharing those, I think, I mean, for all of you who are listening, you probably know, those are a couple of tools that you could apply today and then what I'd recommend to all of you, and I know we've we've talked about this P here is is it having a coach is probably the number one investment you'll ever make in your life, I know for myself, I currently have four coaches, wow. Right and the way that the reason why is I found for myself that I learned so much quicker, when I could go to somebody and get specific help for a specific problem that I had and some of those I even do group coaching, just to make sure that a it's cost effective, I don't have to pay them hundreds of 1000s of dollars a year to to coach me, but but getting into those environments really helps me to scale, right where getting a course or looking on YouTube or trying to do things for free. They really well.
Professor Pete: You know what? I was just gonna say sorry, and Rep but I will also say that, you know, some people ask me, they go, well, do I really need a coach and the thing is, is if you really want to step up your game, the best way to look at that is think about, like professional athletes all of them have coaches and they're making you know, how much hundreds if not millions of dollars, hundreds of 1000s, if not millions of dollars a year, and that they understand that they need they need coaches, and the most successful executives etc. They have coaches as well and as you said, Your understand this, you've got four different coaches, I commend you for that because, you know, you realize that you want to have somebody that is a specialist in one particular area, when you see somebody that is a coach of everything, that's a coach of nothing.
Josh: Either a one stop shop, I'm out of there.
Professor Pete: Oh, I know. It's and it's usually because they'll say, Oh, can I help you with this? Oh, no. Can I help you with that? Oh, you know, and, boy, that desperation, you probably have that too, Josh, that desperation that some people have that they're just chasing to try and get that elusive client and that's the wrong energy absolute wrong energy.
Josh: Yeah. And I love that the specialization portion of that I know for for us, and what I've seen is my favorite coaches are the ones when I when I've reached so for example, usually with a coach, you hire them for a set time period, nine weeks or what have you and after nine weeks, the best coaches are the ones who say, Okay, this is I've taken you to this point. Now here, here are your next needs and here's a great coach to take you to that next step. Yes, those have been my absolute favorite coaches, because instead of buying into something and feeling like I have to stick to this person for life, they're handing me off to the next person but Funny enough, I go back and buy from the old coach anyways right? It's people just don't realize that especially being a coach, it's it's a huge, some tidbits for you to take away right, if you are a coach.
Professor Pete: Yeah, it's it really, you hit that nail on the head, because what you're doing is you're providing value beyond just your own income, when when you're you know, you're when you're giving your clients suggestions for what they can do, and who else they can use and stuff that builds your credibility with them and the next time that they feel like, Okay, I need a coach for something they're gonna check with you and if it's in your wheelhouse, great, if it's not, you know, you're still providing value to them and a great reference.
Josh: Right. So I want to ask you this couple final questions here so, first one is you have your program, where can people gain access to that?
Professor Pete: Sure. So they can go to my website, petealexander.com. They'll see the all the different things, there's my blog, I do a weekly stress relief activity, which literally takes one to two minutes to try each week, there's over 150 of them there, you can check out my stress Buster challenge, it's one to two minutes a day to build habits as we're talking about to to to get stress relief, as well as if you want to hear more about my story and what happened to me. There's all that information is there.
Josh: Awesome. So make sure you go check that out. We will add the links in the description and somewhere around the video if you're watching this, so Pete, just to end this off, I have one final question for you so if you could leave one final parting piece of guidance for our audience. What would that be?
Professor Pete: Hmm, that's an excellent question, I would say that trading your health, for your career or other responsibilities is a very bad trade, don't do it, take care of your health because your without your health, nothing else matters.