Never Stop Building
116. Asking Better Questions Gets Better Outcomes
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Thank you for listening! If this podcast brings you value - do the whole community a solid and give it a rate, review or subscribe and send it to someone who would benefit from it.
Check Out Sam Kaufman here:
www.samkaufmanofficial.com
Instagram @samkaufmanofficial
Facebook @samkaufmanofficial
Linkedin @samkaufmanofficial
What's up guys. Welcome back to Never Stop Building Sam Kaufman here, as always, very grateful to be talking to you today. Wherever you are listening to this, whether you're driving, working out, getting some work done in your office, on a job site, with your friends, family, on a walk I just really appreciate you listening. It means a lot to me. Every download, share, dm, text, comment, all of it, subscription. I appreciate every single individual, one of those, and I just want to extend a thank you for that. It means a lot because I love this podcast, I love this platform, I love talking to you guys. I wish I could talk to you more one-on-one, but this is my way of trying to do that to the masses, I guess. So I've seen a lot recently and not even just recently, I guess In the years that I have been coaching and even in the years before that when I was sponsoring men and recovery, and all the time I've been mentoring people. It's been about a decade now.
Speaker 1:There's a common theme of trying to figure out the next step in life, in business, and it's trying to find the right or correct answer, trying to find the right or correct decision what job do I take? What career do I go into? What diet do I use? How do I exercise the right way, the correct way? What business do I start? What SOPs do I document? Who do I hire next? What does our revenue target have to be? And the questions just keep going and going and going. And there's unlimited questions in life. They never stop Because there's unlimited things that you can do. And I know, like a lot of people, I used to be this. I used to have very, very scarce mindset about what I was capable of or what my life was supposed to look like. Like or what my options were, I guess is a better way to put it. Now I have a very abundant mindset about my options and in the abundance of my options and my opportunities, I've actually become a much more patient and a much more peaceful man, understanding that I can quite literally do and try anything, literally anything, and so can you. And so I want to talk more about reframing the questions that we ask ourselves and reframing the questions that we ask our mentors. Reframing the questions that you ask your team, reframing the questions that you ask your team, reframing the questions that you ask your spouse. So many people and I was like this for a long time and I would look for answers that were correct and I would squirrel my way around things trying to find them. Opportunity to opportunity to opportunity, thing to thing to thing. In 2018, I got my real estate license while growing the cabinet installation business and started a trim company. All at the same time. In 2019, launching Shopify stores.
Speaker 1:I went through the whole gambit, trying to chase the right business, the correct thing, to make the most money the easiest way. All this squirrely, lazy behavior and I didn't ask myself the right questions. And so, on the surface, the answer that I was looking at back then six, seven years ago was I just wanted a lot of money. There was never enough. Seven years ago, was I just wanted a lot of money? There was never enough. And in my mid-20s, I grew my first company pretty quickly. It cash flowed very well for my wife and I and two small kids. We didn't live lavishly and we had an abundance of money for a long time and it really like created a situation where I it was never enough.
Speaker 1:I continued to to need or want to chase more because I had this scarcity mindset that I wasn't safe and I wasn't secure and there was a number that would make me feel that way. And as I got more and more numbers, I felt more and more insecure and more and more unsafe. And so the answer to the question what do I want? Wasn't money, and I thought that it was. And because I continued to think that it was and I didn't ask myself any different questions, I continued to chase things that actually distracted me from making more money or being a better steward of the money, that I had To get deeper and ask the right questions what do I want? Okay, so if I say money is on the surface and then I say why? Right, and this is not financial advice, this is mindset advice when I say why do I want that money, well, I can tell you now. What I couldn't tell you then was I feel insecure and I feel unsafe.
Speaker 1:I grew up. I never wanted for anything, but I watched my parents struggle. I watched my dad lose his job. I watched my dad paint houses in between jobs for $15, $10 an hour, not have any money, stress out over paying the mortgage. I grew up with that and I had a very unhealthy relationship with money my whole life and it led to scarcity and fear and safety issues, and so that's why I wanted that. Okay, but what does that do for me? If I had it all, would I still feel safe and secure? Well, I couldn't answer that question. So I keep digging deeper, right, so there's more questions to ask. So, okay, so, like, what do I want? What does safety and security actually mean?
Speaker 1:And as I dug, dug deep, I started actually looking at those past. We'll call them traumas if we need to. We started looking at those. I started to look at those a little deeper and realized, you know, I never felt insecure as a kid, you know, and I look at like, I look at my. You know, even my dad now, and he's doing great. Like he went through seasons, right. So when I was a kid, he went through seasons of financial issues and not because he was, he was a great, he's a great steward of money. He is a great steward of money and that's because of that he was able to survive every difficult financial season economic downturn, you know and like, when he lost his job, his really good job is because he had a heart attack and was put. They fired him while he was recovering from a heart attack and the economy was bad at this point, it was just the perfect storm.
Speaker 1:When I was a kid, I didn't know that. All I saw was, all I learned, was scarcity. Money is scary, not having enough is scary. You've got to have more, more, more. And I developed these habits and traumas, but I didn't even know the context and you couldn't if you're a kid and so I carried this into adulthood and so when I started to dive deeper into, okay, well, like when I was a kid, I felt safe and secure. And now my dad's actually doing very, very well, which means that was actually just seasonal.
Speaker 1:So I start looking at actual evidence right, challenging my own belief system, asking different questions. Right, what do I want? Money, why? Well, I want to feel safe and secure with my family. Okay, does my family not feel safe and secure? No, they do. Do they have everything that they need, and pretty much most of, if not everything, that they want? Yeah, they do.
Speaker 1:So then what is it that I'm chasing? Okay, well, I want to be like, I want to feel joyful and I want to feel happy and I want to feel at peace, and I'm always stressing about money. Okay, great, is more money actually going to make that go away or is it going to actually make it worse? Well, in the mindset that I was in over those couple of years, like it would actually have made it worse. And so then I asked the question of, okay, like what makes a joyful, peaceful, happy Sam as a husband and a father, and I started to visualize and document what that looks like. Well, I'm in shape and I'm home for dinner and I spend weekends with my kids and we vacation and we travel and we have fun. And all of a sudden, like I realized I'm not doing any of those things and they have nothing to do with more money. And I started to ask the right questions and I started to change habits and behaviors around the real desire, the real truth, what I actually wanted.
Speaker 1:And then changes started to take place and, over the course of years and challenging belief systems and unlearning behaviors, I started to become that exact, safe and secure husband, father who's home for dinner 99% of the time, like, unless I'm traveling or we have you know, we're throwing events here locally but like I mean 90% plus I'm home for dinner. Right, I spend weekends with, I do all those things we travel, we hike, we enjoy a time together, like I'm not stressing about much when I'm with them, even when things are at their worst. And since 2018, I've had multiple seasons of things at their worst and I still have been able to spend and be that person because I unlearned and challenged those belief systems. And this applies in life and in business, and so in business coaching, I often try to dig deeper, with the client, asking the right questions, and so even like SOP development, for instance, which is standard operating procedures like this is such a common theme right now for people.
Speaker 1:So much of this country is in desperate need of leadership and so many businesses need leadership, so bad Owners need to step up and be the leaders that their companies need right, and that means making really hard decisions that a lot of people aren't going to like. That's part of the deal. Leaders make the hard calls, no matter how anybody judges you for it, feels about you for it. Whether it's growing your business, shutting down your business, stabilizing your business, hiring people, firing people like that, it's the leader's job at the top to make the call that's best in the best interest of everybody, no matter how people feel about it, because facts are facts and in order to get facts, we have to ask the right questions. Feelings distract us. They are very valuable and necessary in context, but they are very dangerous for most people in decision making. So we have to ask the right question.
Speaker 1:So back to like standard operating procedure development. The question is often not what does the SOP need to be? What's the correct way to do this? It's really okay. How can we do this in the simplest way? How can we do this in the way that provides the most peace to our entire team? How can we do this in the least stressful possible way on us and on the client? Because if you set up your standard operating procedures in a way that keep your team satisfied, stress-free, at peace, your client will ultimately be okay anyway.
Speaker 1:Now, whether or not your team follows the standard operating procedures because I've experienced that too is your job as the leader. It's your job to make sure that they're following those standard operating procedures, and if they can't, they have to go. Take it from a guy who kept people who refused to follow SOPs way too long it will destroy so many things that you can't even see. And so you have to be the leader who can ask the hard and right questions and dig and dive deeper. What protects our peace, what keeps things simple? And those questions apply everywhere. What protects our peace? What keeps things simple? What keeps stress low? What provides the highest ROI holistically? Return on investment can't just be about money. Return on investment is energy, it's time. Your resources are not just money. Time, energy, emotion, finances there's a bunch of resources that you deploy in any situation. So when you talk about ROI, you got to calculate the whole ROI, the holistic ROI I'm going to coin that somehow. Holistic ROI means the whole and you have to take a look at those things Again, whether it's in marriage, in your business, with your kids.
Speaker 1:You got to ask those questions and really what they come down to and what I'm basically rewording here mission, vision, core values Does it align with the mission of the company or our family? Does it align with the vision of our family or our business? Does it align with the value system that we have in place in our company or with our family? Does it align with those things? And those questions are the most important questions and so often people are staying surface by saying, well, what's the correct answer? This is why people really appreciate a done for you model in coaching so frequently is because they want what somebody else tells them is the correct answer, because it takes the decision making process and the digging process off of them as a responsibility.
Speaker 1:But the most valuable thing that you can learn to do in this life is be a critical thinker, a problem solver. You are rewarded for the level of problem you can solve. The bigger the problem, the bigger the reward. The smaller the problem, the smaller the reward. Look at services in business as an example. The highest paid services are the ones that solve the biggest problems. Even if you're just thinking about home service, for instance, handyman services pay a lot less than full interior remodel, and interior remodel pays less than build from the ground up, and build from the ground up pays less than total land development, and land development pays less than the people who manage the money of the funds of the people who invest in the land development and the building.
Speaker 1:As you go up the ladder of problem solving, you go up the ladder of reward or compensation, and so what I want you to start doing is really diving and digging to the root of the problem you're trying to solve. Does it align with your mission, vision, core values? What delivers the highest ROI, how do we keep it simple, how do we keep it peaceful, how do we keep it aligned? And ask the harder, deeper questions, because there's always more, it always goes deeper, and the deeper and more honest you can get, the further you can actually go towards the true desired outcome.
Speaker 1:And most people don't know what the desired outcome actually is. They know the surface one and then they get it and they don't know what to do with it because it didn't do what you assumed it would do. And I have been there more often than I'd like to admit, and I'm in the season I've stepped into now is one of patience, alignment and clarity. One of I know exactly what the desired outcome is, I know exactly how to get there, and the truth is so do you Deep down somewhere, logically, you know exactly what you want and you know how to get there. And most people are too afraid to be honest with themselves about it because they don't trust themselves to do the work. And if that's you, I implore you to believe in yourself, like I believe in you. Talk to you guys next week.