Al McBride 0:02
Welcome to the dealing with Goliath podcast. The mission of dealing with Goliath is to sharpen the psychological edge in negotiation, ethical influencing, and high impact conversations for business leaders who want to be more effective under pressure, uncover hidden value, and build greater connection all while increasing profitability. This is the short form espresso shot of insight podcast interview to boost business performance, using our five questions in around about 15 to 20 minutes format.
My guest today is Sasha Garcia. Sasha is the founder of the CEO University. She's a board advisor and investor. She has over 12 years of entrepreneur experience in the tech industry, including board advisor and mentoring roles, which led her to find the CEO University, which is the first business school that run out run by tech founders, where she helps entrepreneurs start, scale and sell their businesses. Excellent stuff. So Sasha, welcome to the show. Welcome. Hi,
Sasha Garcia 1:05
thank you for having me.
Al McBride 1:07
It's great to have you on. So let's dive straight in. So who would be your ideal client on what's the biggest challenge they face?
Sasha Garcia 1:16
So our ideal clients are people who want to create a product or service kind of business in tech, and they're usually starting with zero rep annual revenue, scaling up to 10 million. So within that range, those are our ideal clients, their biggest problem is usually getting into the lack cycle by fear. So their biggest problem is fear and lack of motivation. Because it does take guts and balls to scale your business to start your business and to sell your business. But yeah, they they often struggle with that.
Al McBride 1:58
Okay, very interesting. So what are the common mistakes people make when trying to solve that problem? So this is usually you know, if people are listening, and they're wondering, oh, maybe am I in this book? Is this for me? So what are some of those common mistakes they might realize they're doing?
Sasha Garcia 2:14
There is one and only mistake that I see here is that they take too long to fire to hire people or to invest, they make too long to make very risky decisions. So for example, yesterday, I was talking to one entrepreneur, and we were saying that she should start with the webinar. And to do that, she would need to invest 3000 euros into into the paid traffic, and she got scared by it.
It's like, you know, if people take too long to invest, or to hire a team or to fire a team, they're kind of slowing themselves down, and losing the motivation and getting scared into the service care cycle. And that the problem that prevents them from scaling fast, and they do need to scale fast in order to keep up winning, to keep up the winning cycle to keep up moving and moving forward.
Al McBride 3:09
That sounds fascinating. So it sounds like you're very much a believer in gaining that momentum. That momentum builds momentum, so to speak.
Sasha Garcia 3:17
Exactly. It's a vicious cycle, you have to make hard choices, but you have to make them on time, it's better to make the choice and later to understand that it was the wrong choice or the wrong decision than not to make it right. If you're not making the hard decisions in your life, then you're really lagging behind.
Al McBride 3:36
Right? So sort of a good decision today is better than a perfect decision tomorrow.
Sasha Garcia 3:40
Exactly. Exactly. In the CEO University. We are all about decisions. And we're about making them fast, because you don't know if it's going to work out well for you or not. But if you don't take them, you don't have a chance.
Al McBride 3:55
That sounds like and I love that it's better to make the decision. Find out it wasn't the right one. But that's more data, that's more information. Even if it doesn't work work, you still have learned something and then can pivot better.
Sasha Garcia 4:07
Exactly, we call this data set actually fuck ups. So the more fuckups you make along the way, the bigger that data set you have and the stronger your analytical skills become, you know, okay, we did those 10 things wrong. We have to hope that the 11th one will work out, but we just take them with a grain of salt and we take them as a necessity for an entrepreneur. You just need to have as many data points aka backups as possible as fast as possible so that you can pivot your product your service your offer. And you can only do that if you put it on the market if you don't put it on the market. If you don't make it public. You can you're on stand a chance.
Al McBride 4:52
Exactly. So my dad My dad has always is it on the shelf? Is it on the shelf is this on the shelf to sell you know cuz you can be working on things all the time. But if it's not on the shelf virtually or physically speaking, then you're not in that learning cycle or Yeah, exactly. Weren't expecting me to compare it to my old dad. He's a wise one. So yeah, he would appreciate that. So So what was one valuable free action that the audience meant that'll help. So it might not solve it, but it'll get them pointing in the right direction.
Sasha Garcia 5:25
Exactly. Well, I actually have two exercises for you. The first one is, I call it, you need to gain your power back, you need to gain your confidence. And to do that, I suggest that they write down seven waves in their life and analyze it. Yeah. So to make decisions, you need to be in that momentum, step state of mind, where you are confident enough to take you hard decisions. And to do that you need it first, to build confidence. And to build confidence, you need to make your brain believe that the things the decisions you took before were actually not so bad.
So to do that, you need to write them down, until you say, Okay, I actually never screwed up myself in my life, every decision I took led me to a better level of my life. And you analyze that you gain your confidence. And the next exercise. The second one is, you could write down your current struggles or things that you know you're procrastinating on, and then understand that out of those 10 things where you're procrastinating.
Three other things are probably inevitable. And in our book, in my book, we call it the principle of inevitability, there is some things that will happen in your life, for sure. You know, like me writing the book, I was procrastinating on that for five years. But I know that inevitably, I knew a long time, that inevitably, I'll be writing books, and I'll be presenting my thoughts to the public, who doesn't make sense to procrastinate on them, because it will happen anyway.
If you have to. First build up the power, then we make the hard decisions, and we just start acting on them. So the second part of the exercise is just number down to things where you are lagging behind, and take the actions on three of them and decide prioritize the three of them, which will happen in anyhow in your life on just go ahead and start doing them. Even if it does mind that tennis racket to start playing tennis, just by the racket.
Al McBride 7:34
I love that. I love that approach. I love it. Because I created a similar exercise years ago for my clients and coach. The first one, which I called the case files, because it was like a lawyer building a case based on facts on evidence. So even when your negative mind is going, Oh, you can. It's based on facts, it's hard to argue with. So I love that because it's also it's spinning because human brain tends to aggregate to the negative, we highlight the negative from threat and all that sort of stuff. And we lower the little victories, as you say, to rebalance with with facts and information. So you're building on that bedrock? I love it. Exactly. Exactly. Second part is fantastic, where you know, 10 things, because you can also then of course say well, the three things you pick, are what are the ones that neutralize or make all the other ones much easier. Because usually three that will outweigh the others. Right,
Sasha Garcia 8:30
exactly, for some people is to start Selling for some people is to quit their job for some people used to become public. And that one thing could actually eliminate five more, right? So those are those are the things that we should tackle the ones that are that look the hardest, but you know that it's inevitable, you know, you will have to do it at some point in your life. So because the earlier you start doing those inevitable things, actually, the early, you'll be able to get the data points, the fuck up list the data set. The better the bigger the data set, the smarter your next decisions are. So it's very simple to me,
Al McBride 9:11
ominous, so it makes perfect sense. And it all it all pulls together. And so what is one valuable free resource that you could direct people to that will help them with this.
Sasha Garcia 9:24
I was thinking about it. But actually, I think that meditation, any meditation open on any of the platforms because to me, meditation is something where we can quiet down. We got into a different state of mind and we connect to ourselves and when we're connected to ourselves. We are much more empowered and we have less peers, and that's the right state in which you can make faster decisions and move faster. are.
So to me, it's actually about always listening to yourself, because your true self knows which of the things are inevitable, and you just have to start doing them. All the other scary things are the ones that you hear from your inner critics, people from your life, etc, etc. But if you're really connected to yourself, and if you start meditating like me, every day you connect to yourself every day, it's impossible to drag you out of your fog as an Earth, your power state, I would say, so yeah, that's the only one happened that happened that changed my life a lot.
Another resource or book, I would suggest people read, it's not free, but some of the pages probably are. But it's very, very affordable is a book by Byron Katie. It's called loving what is and the framework she goes around to it's called the work. It's very simple, very efficient, but the tagline that I would say is that, if you want to be able to disconnect yourself from your thoughts, and analyze your thoughts, as just a scientist making a research, that's the framework to go to, for me, it's been very powerful. It's something like self coaching, and it helps me a lot.
Al McBride 11:32
That's standing, that's something I wasn't expecting that because that's fantastic. And I completely agree, Sasha, and just for anyone listening, you know, even research on meditation, making the meditator very quickly, you don't need even that many, that much practice at it, it starts to get benefits is, you know, it lowers reaction that lowers negative thinking, it lowers you know, all of these little traps, as you said, from the inner voice, that it's all been documented from 1000s of studies. So it really is, and, and I love what you're saying there about, you know, love for his did a coaching course, recently. And that was sound similar. And it was amazingly freeing. There's a lot less, as they call it, cognitive tension, and what about this, whatever, and it just dissolves away to a lovely clarity. Yeah, so
Sasha Garcia 12:27
yeah, clarity is what we all need.
Al McBride 12:30
salutely, particularly when you're running these things, where there's a lot of uncertainty, about yourself about the market, about what what people want, all those sort of things. Yeah,
Sasha Garcia 12:43
starting your business, running your business, scaling your business, it requires a lot of being friends, with the unknown. And you can only be friends with the unknown. If you If you know yourself, you can act yourself if you feel calm, and confident and clear about yourself and the world and the things that happen in your life, if you can leave through your emotions without going nuts. Because I mean, being an entrepreneur is a big load of responsibility, right? Because we are supposed to pay the salaries were supposed to predict we are supposed to deliver results to our clients, and to grow and scale our business so that it's attractive for the investments or for the buyers of the business. And that is a lot of tension. It is
Al McBride 13:37
definitely and I love that you said that when I was researching my course. And a lot of business owners the thing that came up which I found really humanely surprising, was the grit to greatest fears, particularly with creative entrepreneurs, but entrepreneurs or entrepreneurs. Number one was falling into mediocre work. Yeah. And number two, was having to fire good people.
Sasha Garcia 14:06
Because I didn't make enough money last month.
Al McBride 14:10
Exactly. Exactly. So amazing stuff. Amazing stuff. So Sasha, what was the one question I should have asked you?
Sasha Garcia 14:19
I think the question would be what enables or kicks off the growth cycle in any kind of person, and in any kind of business, you would say, or professional life. And to me that's first things. First is responsibility. So when you take on a new level of responsibility, like when you start a family, or when you buy a house, you buy a car, you buy things and you feel you're growing, the things that you own, and the things you have to feed to take care of.
They just each bite of your little bits of your little piece of your energy and your focus and You have to start making the money to kind of support all those things that you are responsible for, for your family, for your children, et cetera. So the first thing that kicks off the growth cycle for any personality to me is to take on more responsibility.
On the next one is if you want to create a new product, or a new source of income, or a new business is to connect to your true self. And to do something that you really enjoy, in your deep heart, not something that other people say is profitable, or what everybody else is doing. But you should choose only the things that you would be excited to do and to run the business for the next 10, 20 years, should be something that you will never get bored of. So that's why it's very important to me to start business that are built on your authenticity, right?
The third thing, what I usually do, when I start product, a course or community, or I write a book, I do massive action is like, Okay, we want to do this. And I work like crazy for a very short period of time. But I, I put massive action and massive effort. And when I'm done, when I did my best that is currently available to me, to my team, to my level of budget to my level of effort to my level of network, when I've done my best, I let go completely and I check out and I see how my market accepts it.
They accept it or not. If they accepted, well, great, we have profit, if they didn't, we have a data point. And we are able to make another decision better. And those cycles that I'm saying, we usually run it right now with my team during the three, four weeks. So tomorrow, I'm going on vacation, because it's time to let go. I'm having a short break to recharge to clear my mind completely so that when I'm back, I can start a new growth cycle. And yeah, that's that's the way it runs. And that, I think, is a very important thing to realize this cycle. Because then you kind of have an opportunity to lower your stress. You know what happened?
Now, you know, what's the next step to take? The next is massive action. Okay, you're ready to work your ass up next. Okay, relax, let go. Let's see how market takes it. Okay, that's it. So you kind of jump the stairs, you take on more responsibility, you come up with authentic idea, massive action, and you let go of control. Because we're not gods. We're trying to make a dent in the world, but only the market decides if that's something they want, and they will pay for it, if that's something that brings value to them or not. So when you know this cycle, I think it's very, it brings you inner peace.
Al McBride 18:05
Absolutely. And there's a lot of wisdom there in the sense that you're not hard charging all the time, which leads to burnout, you know, you're gonna we're gonna we're gonna focus on this window and blast at it and make so much sense. So much sense. I love that I love your first principle as well, it kind of reminds me what somebody said, you know, the spider man, saying, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. And they said it the other way around. If you take great responsibility, you get
Sasha Garcia 18:36
to grow. Yeah, you have to you're like, Okay, I really have to make money for this, because I already took on this responsibility. And it's in the beginning. It's kind of a jump of faith. Like, can I or can I not like when you're hiring your first team member, for example, can I afford or not? What do you have to make good money if you hire them. So you have the money for the first couple of months. And then each month you have to grow so that you have the salaries lined up, but you just don't have another choice. So that's it. That's how you grow.
Al McBride 19:10
That's how you grow. Sacha, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. Where can people find you? Where can where can they reach out to you?
Sasha Garcia 19:20
I'm definitely on LinkedIn, just Sasha Garcia and the CEO dot world. That's our main resource. And I'd be happy to answer any questions and chat a little bit. Please share your feedback. Share your thoughts. What do you think about this chat and thank you so much for having me on the show.
Al McBride 19:42
Thank you for thank you so much. Great to have you. Bye bye. Bye bye
Transcribed by https://otter.ai