Topics:

Never Miss a Beat - Get Updates Direct to Your Inbox

Home » Podcast » Mindset Coaching for Entrepreneurs

FILTER:

Mindset Coaching for Entrepreneurs

Benjamin Easter is the Founder, CEO, and Head Coach at Lucid Shift Coaching, where he helps cultural renegades and early-stage entrepreneurs manage their minds, increase awareness, expand possibilities, and take strategic action. Benjamin has over a decade of experience in individual and group coaching, and his coaching style is a blend of strategic planning, practical exercises, and laser-focused playful curiosity.

Before Lucid Shift Coaching, Benjamin was the Owner of The Power of Purpose Coaching, LLC. Before beginning his career as a business coach, Benjamin was an Account Manager for Jama Software and Notion and the Owner of Eastern Medicine, LLC. He has a BA in religion, a BA in philosophy, and an MS in traditional Chinese medicine and herbology. Additionally, Benjamin is a Certified Coach licensed in acupuncture and oriental medicine. He has also taken coaching development courses from Tony Robbins, Thomas Leonard, and Rich Litvin.

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

[04:18] How can you change your psychology and physiology through affirmations?
[08:31] Benjamin Easter discusses his work with entrepreneurs to discover freedom in their businesses
[12:38] How a coach can help you construct a better business model
[17:07] Benjamin shares the significance and features of a masculine-feminine dichotomy
[22:25] How investing in a business coach can help you thrive
[27:01] Benjamin talks about the learning and natural integration process of producing desired results
[32:16] Benjamin details the usefulness of continuing education and coaching tools

In this episode…

What is holding you back from achieving your vision and the reality you desire for your brand? Strategically thinking about your business model may seem like a daunting task, but does it need to be?

With over a decade of business coaching experience, Benjamin Easter warns against becoming stuck in a cycle of self-doubt and weighing your sense of satisfaction on the types of results you create. When you hold your self-worth hostage, it can be difficult to see through a dissatisfied state of mind. That’s why Benjamin says it is valuable to have a coach to guide and engage you through feelings of uncertainty to become an effective entrepreneur. Business coaches are great for exploring your actual situation, identifying any limiting factors that might be holding you back, and creating a unique strategy to tap into your authentic power.

In this episode of the Quiet Light Podcast, Joe Valley sits down with Benjamin Easter, Founder, CEO, and Head Coach at Lucid Shift Coaching, to discuss how having a coach can help you break free from what’s holding you back in your life and growing your business. Benjamin talks about aligning your values as an entrepreneur, transcending a balanced male-female dichotomy within your work, and producing desired results through the natural learning process. Stay tuned!

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Sponsor for this episode:

This episode is brought to you by Quiet Light, a brokerage firm that wants to help you successfully sell your online business.

There is no wrong reason for selling your business. However, there is a right time and a right way. The team of leading entrepreneurs at Quiet Light wants to help you discover the right time and strategy for selling your business. By providing trustworthy advice, effective strategies, and honest valuations, your Quiet Light advisor isn’t your every-day broker—they’re your partner and friend through every phase of the exit planning process.

If you’re new to the prospect of buying and selling, Quiet Light is here to support you. Their plethora of top-notch resources will provide everything you need to know about when and how to buy or sell an online business. Quiet Light offers high-quality videos, articles, podcasts, and guides to help you make the best decision for your online business.

Not sure what your business is really worth? No worries. Quiet Light offers a free valuation and marketplace-ready assessment on their website. That’s right—this quick, easy, and free valuation has no strings attached. Knowing the true value of your business has never been easier!

What are you waiting for? Quiet Light is offering the best experience, strategies, and advice to make your exit successful. To learn more, go to quietlight.com, email [email protected], or call 800.746.5034 today.

Episode Transcript:

Intro 0:07

Hi folks, it’s the Quiet Light Podcast where we share relentlessly honest insights, actionable tips, and entrepreneurial stories that will help founders identify and reach their goals.

Joe Valley 0:32

Hey folks, Joe Valley here, welcome back to another episode of the Quiet Light Podcast. Today’s guest is Ben Easter from Lucid Shift Coaching. If you’ve ever had a business coach, you know the value of what they bring. I chatted with Ben a few weeks ago to get to know him personally, I decided to go ahead and have him on the podcast to talk about what it’s like to have a coach, why you should have a coach when you should have a coach how to interview a coach, how to make sure it’s the right fit for you, and what what the coaching schedules are like, what the cost of a coach is upfront whether you should pay an initial fee to talk to them, or if it should be free, so that you make sure it’s the right fit all of that, to help you improve your entrepreneurial life, your personal life and your path towards your success in life. As a say, you know at the beginning of the podcast, I tell you what, if you’ve ever watched Ted Lasso, one of the greatest shows of all time, in my opinion, right there with friends and Seinfeld and some of the others, maybe dating myself by calling those out. But the professionals in this case, soccer players or footballers over in the UK, have not the coaches, obviously a coach, but we’re talking about therapists, right? Or psychologists that are mindset coaches, that and that’s what Ben is, in a lot of ways a mindset coach, something that can help you with your imposter syndrome, something that can help you break through in terms of focusing on what is going to fill your cup fully, both personally and professionally, versus just professionally. And he really he goes into a couple of stories that I think you’re just fascinating in terms of whether you should be happy when you achieve that goal, or whether you should be well, I won’t give it all away. Let’s go ahead and listen to Ben Easter from Lucid Shift Coaching. Here we go. Hey, Ben, welcome to the Quiet Light Podcast.

Benjamin Easter 2:43

Thanks for having me. It’s nice. A nice to be here.

Joe Valley 2:45

Good to have you here. I’m glad we chatted a week and a half, two weeks ago you had COVID Glad you’re back on your feet doing well.

Benjamin Easter 2:52

Yeah, back on my feet ready to dance again.

Joe Valley 2:55

Ready to dance again. Well, that’s exciting. We’ll have to record that as a separate intro. Or maybe you can show us a few steps during the podcast. I don’t know. Why don’t you give the folks a little bit of background on yourself and what you do over at Lucid Shift Coaching.

Benjamin Easter 3:09

Yeah, totally. So I’m, we’re business mindset coaches over here. And basically, my background is I have this big head injury when I was 19. It was a huge issue in my life, and I had to like recover over a time. The whole time I was doing that I was building businesses. So when I finally got into the coaching area, I started in the dating and relationship from social skills, that sort of thing. That was what I was really, I had done for myself. And then I realized pretty quickly that I just loved the business side of things I love like working with people who were going through the entrepreneurs journey, you know, dealing with all of the the mental blocks that come up and you know, the overwhelm the fear of failure, the the perfectionism, the impostor syndrome, the people pleasing that sort of thing. So that’s where I find myself today is helping early stage business owners to work through all of the stuff that happens inside our our ears when we become our own bottlenecks. And

Joe Valley 4:01

how do you how do you get over the imposter syndrome? We all have that I’ve got an 18 year old, that’s a hell of a fast runner, I got division, recruited for division one, but he still thinks he’s not good enough. How do you deal with stuff like that?

Benjamin Easter 4:13

And it’s, I would say it’s a process because we’re, you know, the thing is, we want like insights that unlock things for us. And a lot of times insights can give us a lot of motivation to do some stuff in the world. But in my experience, it’s not really like an insight that’s going to fix something like impostor syndrome, it really is going to be a practice. And when I say practice, I mean there are like certain mindset practices that are really useful for people. So I’m a big fan of like an affirmation work, which is a very particular kind of visualization. It’s not just like saying nice things to yourself and like, you know, crossing your fingers and praying that sort of thing. But it’s really like deliberately finding the alternate reality version of yourself where you already believe in yourself 100% And you tap into that version of you and you ask questions like, you know how would that person stand? How would that person talk to themselves? You know, how would that person hold themselves in conversation? Because a lot of times what happens is we wind up changing our psychology by changing our physiology and just going through the motions behaving as though you might hear the term fake it till you make it. I prefer, behave it until you become it.

Joe Valley 5:19

Okay, I just want to say to the audience, keep listening. You may think this sounds like psychobabble. But trust me, it’s not. By way of example, again, my son a couple of weeks ago, he had some chest wall. He’s been having some chest wall pains when he runs not as hard but it’s ligaments connected to a startup. And we go to a the athletic Doctor down here in Charlotte, who happens to be, you know, the physician for the Charlotte Hornets. Ultimately, he refers him to a psychologist, a doctor in psychology, that is the doctor for the Hornets players. And for the Panthers players were the checkers players, I can’t recall which. So folks, if professional athletes being paid millions of dollars a year are speaking with, I don’t know, coaches in this situation, or in this case, a doctor of psychology to get their mindset, right, you should be doing it as well in your business. And we all have this impostor syndrome, right? We sort of stumbled into entrepreneurship, maybe because you failed out of the corporate world, or you didn’t do so great in school, and you had to take a long way to figure out your path. When you when you talk to people that have really excelled in entrepreneurship in business in life. They’ve had somebody like Ben on their side helping them along the way. Who is who is this is about you talking about instead of me, but I had to say that.

Benjamin Easter 6:54

Yeah, I really appreciate you saying that. Because it’s something that I think it’s really important to get the hang up and understand like i My favorite example is Maya Angelou, you know, after her like 11 book or something, she was like, every time I write a book, I’m like, this is the one. This is the one where they’re gonna find out that I’ve been faking my way through it the whole time. Right? Like it’s a quarter now.

Joe Valley 7:16

I could see that I could see that she’s awesome. So what what type of clients do you typically work with? How does it start? Where does it begin? Why do they need to work with a coach? What’s the benefits? Go?

Benjamin Easter 7:29

Yes. Usually is early stage tends to be some more service based business owners, although there’s some tech startups that get a lot of benefit. If they’re at a certain place. I think

Joe Valley 7:40

if you’ve tried service based form a service base, they’re

Benjamin Easter 7:43

they’re, you know, they have a marketing consultancy, or they are, you know, they’re, they’re, we’re doing some sort of client service work, where they’re helping people to build something in their business usually be to be very rarely b2c. And I think that’s just that’s been a preference of mine, okay,

Joe Valley 8:04

to just where you’re, you’ve fallen a bit into that niche, you’re dealing with people that are running some sort of agency,

Benjamin Easter 8:09

because I’m so interested in the business piece that I just like, I get really drawn to people that are doing business, because doing business to business, because I just like, I think there’s something really cool about thinking in terms of business, you know what I mean? Yeah. So, yeah, and they usually honestly, what, why they reach out in the first place is because they find themselves at some sort of bottleneck or something like that, like they see most of them. They started their businesses, most of us, we entrepreneur or startup businesses, because we want freedom in some way. And then here, they are a couple of years into their business, and they’re doing successfully financially, but they like now they’re busier than they’ve ever been in their entire lives. And they’re like, what’s it all for? Why am I doing this? Like, sometimes they’re questioning whether they’re even, they even want to keep doing the business the way that they’ve been doing it, or maybe they want to make a transition, or they’re just trying to find ways to simplify down. And that’s usually where they come and start work to me. They want to get rid of the either the psychological pieces or the time pieces to find more freedom in their lives. I find that it’s it really comes down to freedom. Yeah,

Joe Valley 9:14

I’ve been through this, Ben, you aren’t my coach at the time, but I’ve been through it with another coach, David Wood has been on the podcast as well. And I was going through a transition of just that right as, as an advisor at client light for almost a decade being crazy busy taking care of clients. You know, as an agency, we’re dealing with clients, helping them grow their businesses, helping them exit their businesses, dealing with emotions and expectations. And you do get to that burnout phase and for me I did at the end of 2020 and trying to figure out how to move into the next role within my business as opposed to exiting myself out of the business because I love this role. And a lot of the entrepreneurs listening probably love what they do. But they have to isolate certain things that they can focus on to keep them from burning out and wanting to just throw their arms up in the air and and say To hell with it move on, how do you? How do you narrow that? You know, stuff down into what they focus on or that kind of thing?

Benjamin Easter 10:18

Yeah, totally. And because you know, a lot of times that there are pieces of a role that people really love the pieces of running their businesses that they really love, but then they’re telling some story that they have to be the one to do everything at or that if you know that classic adage, if you want something, right, you got to do it yourself. And so they’re even if they have as they bring on more and more team, they’re still like micromanaging the team, a lot of times I find this is something that’s really common, especially with these high performers, is that they’re like, they’ve always been the one to do the things. And they really trust themselves to get it done and get it done well, and to like, to their level of quality. And so then even as they’re bringing on team, they’re not really letting their team do the thing that they brought the team on for in the first place. So now instead of, you know, doing all of the stuff now they’re like micromanaging the doing of all the stuff and they didn’t actually wind up netting out any freedom for themselves.

Joe Valley 11:09

And how is it that a coach makes a difference for folks like this? You know, it seems like in many ways, and I’m just playing devil’s advocate, I can sort of look at this myself and figure out what I should do. How does the coach come into play to make sure that I’m being held accountable? And that kind of stuff?

Benjamin Easter 11:29

Yeah, really great questions. Well, so one is I’m not an accountability coach, I think that there are coaches out there who do that, where they’ll like, check in with you, I don’t really think that that’s it’s not the area I like to play. But I think the container itself of coaching tends to have an accountability effect, because you know, you’re showing up and there’s like a container that we’ve agreed to meet. And there are things that you’ve agreed to do. And you’re going to show up and you either did those things, you didn’t do those things. Now, I’m not going to like beat you up. If you didn’t do those things. I’m not interested in playing in that way. But if you said you were going to do something, and you didn’t do it, that’s really useful information for us to know because there’s something going on in your psychology, that you’re not doing what you said you’re gonna do, you’re out of integrity for yourself somehow, either in the saying of what you wanted to do in the first place, or in the not doing of it. And so there’s something there’s information for us to gather about yourself and what motivates you in the world, right. But I think what a coach does, there’s a few things but like some of the the primary ones, that one is just have somebody who 100% believes in you and isn’t in your Can I swear, I don’t want to I want to be careful with your hell yes. Yeah. Okay, great. Yeah, so isn’t in your bullshit, you know what I mean? Like you’re, you’re trapped in the muck of whatever it is your own beliefs, your own, like limiting thoughts, thinking patterns, right. And so part of what a coach does is comes and listens to what’s going on for you, but isn’t caught up in the bullshit, I’m not like down in the muck. So I can hear it in a way that you probably aren’t hearing it, because you are in it, you know, one of my coaches says, you can’t see your own eyeball. And I think that’s a really like useful way of saying this, you know what I mean? Like, no matter how hard you try, you can like film it, but then you’re seeing a film of your own eyeball, you can, you know, you can try to move really quickly, but it just doesn’t work, there’s no way to do it. So it was a part of what a coach is doing is like, observing you from outside of the month, believing in you to do whatever it is. And so that’s something that I usually advise people to filter for. And a coach, if it doesn’t feel like they believe in you that they can find a 100% certainty that you can do whatever the thing is that you’re wanting to be doing. That might not be the coach for you at the time. Because that’s like a big an important role. And then to challenge thinking patterns. So to listen to what you’re saying, and then to construct your to help you construct your model of reality, so that you can understand where the limits might be happening. Like that thing that you want to do. And you didn’t you showed up and you didn’t do it for the third week in a row. Okay, well, there’s some some way that you’re building up your world, that it’s not letting that thing get done. And so usually, and this is why my business called Lucid Shift Coaching because it’s when you shine a light, lucid, sometimes just shining a light on things in a different way. All of a sudden, the thing itself changes, isn’t it?

Joe Valley 14:20

Well, nobody knows. I sneezed. I hit mute. But thank you. I appreciate that. There. You’re now they know. Oh, yeah. How does one start and what’s involved with starting? How does an entrepreneur start? When they have that first conversation with a coach and what’s it like what do you cover?

Benjamin Easter 14:38

Well, I usually start off pretty slow with a getting to know you I’m I’m really interested in values more than anything else. I want to know that there’s values alignment, but the kind of world that you want to create as a business owner as a, as a shaper of the world because that’s what business owners do is we create things in the world, you know, and so I want to check in first and foremost is the kind of world that you want to create the kind A world that I’m interested in seeing created in the world, like, can I be someone who believes in you to do this thing that you’re trying to do in the world? So that’s the first thing. And then after that, I think it’s, we’re going to do a sample session, we’re going to get in there. And we’re going to take like, what’s the one thing in your reality that you think would make the biggest difference in your, in your world and the creation of that vision for yourself? What’s the one thing that you think is either holding you back or the thing that you’re not able to see it very clearly? Or maybe you you do have a very clear vision for it. But strategically, you haven’t figured out quite what happens next. And so that’s where the most because that’s how I work with clients tends to be one of two buckets, either we’re doing the mindset stuff, where we’re really trying to figure out what are the beliefs that you’re thinking that are getting in your way, or, you know, not building a bridge to what you want? And then the strategic piece? So okay, cool. Now we’ve got the, we’ve got our mindset and our control. But now, how do I actually do the thing? And so game theory, thinking strategically about how your business works, sometimes literally just mapping the path? And figuring out what what are the events that could happen? And kind of building contingency plans, that sort of thing? As a

Joe Valley 16:13

coach, like yourself, do you do a lot of work off the phone calls when it comes to assisting your clients?

Benjamin Easter 16:20

Yeah, you know, you know, the work that I do off the calls, I find to be a lot of networking stuff, because a lot of you know, the power of a coach is like a hub of other business owners that are doing other kinds of things. So I think, thinking of what connections are really helpful to clients, that sort of thing. I do a lot of work just in the realm of coaching. So a lot of my off of the call work is in the development of models and metaphors and understanding different ways to communicate things, because you never know what a person is going to need in order to understand something in a new way in that moment. So I spent a lot of time doing research and like, kind of constructing models for my clients. And then I will I usually put a bit of time into what’s going on in the client in a given week, just to be like, kind of always opening my mind. So what possibilities what things might this person not be seeing? That can help make those little 10% unlocks that wind up making a huge impact in the world?

Joe Valley 17:23

Do you think it makes a difference with gender? is a female entrepreneur going to be better with a female coach and male with male? Or does it not make any difference at all?

Benjamin Easter 17:32

Well, I will see, I think it goes back to values alignment, I don’t think that it necessarily is along gender lines like that. Although See, I tend to work with people who I think tend to be more in the feminine value, like model or power in the world. So you know, not to get into too deep philosophy.

Joe Valley 17:54

Let’s go to let’s go. All right, all right. All right. So,

Benjamin Easter 17:56

you know, they’re like, there’s like a masculine value in the world, which is about growth. And by the way, this is I’m gonna, I was a Chinese medicine practitioner for years. And so like, my model is like the Yin Yang, as kind of what the masculine feminine dichotomy are. So the Yang is outward focused, it’s very, like vision focused, it’s very Do do do Go, go go, the feminine tends to be more inward focused, it tends to be more restorative connective, that sort of thing. And so I find that the people that I wind up working with, they tend to be more in the feminine values spectrum. And again, it’s a balanced, we all have both, so I work with men and women. But the idea being that there’s like a, there’s like a nurturing, nurturing or a nutritive component. And so I, again, I don’t think the answer is that men should find a male coach and women should find a female coach, or vice versa, or anything like that. It’s more like, find somebody who you feel in values alignment with, and that you connect around the kind of world that you want to create.

Joe Valley 19:01

Thank you. I figured that would be the answer. But I had to ask at what stage in someone’s entrepreneurial career, do you feel as though is the ideal time? And I’m sure the answer is not very simple here to have a coach step in and help them with their with their, I want to say goals, because I think, you know, so much of our success is goal oriented. But maybe that’s the wrong the wrong phrase.

Benjamin Easter 19:26

I think it’s inherently I think goals are like how we talk about the things that people want that they may or may or may not have in the world right now, you know. So I think that’s the language that we have for

Joe Valley 19:38

me, just before we go to the actual answering the question that I asked when it comes to goals, though, is it our people fault when they focus and achieve the goals? Is that the satisfaction point where they’re like I did it, or do you find that a goal you’re trying to understand why that particular goal is that really going to bring you that inner happiness that you’re looking for focus on that.

Benjamin Easter 20:01

That’s a great distinction. Yeah. And yeah, absolutely. Because I don’t think goals are necessarily a place for us to get to like, thinking that your goals are going to make you happy. That’s just an error in thinking that that’s like the idea that crossing the finish line is going to make you happy. And maybe there’ll be a moment of like peak experience when you cross the finish line and something. But think about all the time that you spend running that race, not just the actual running of the race, but I’m using a metaphor here, but not just the actual running of the race, but the preparation, the training, and all all of the time that it takes you to get ready to run a race, just so that you can cross a finish line, right. And if we’re waiting, we’re delaying our satisfaction in life, our sense of meaning and fulfillment in the world, for the crossing of the finish line, well, we’re going to spend the vast majority of our lives dissatisfied, and then that maybe if you’re lucky, you get to 30 seconds, as you cross the finish line of satisfaction, before it’s on to the next goal. And so what happens then is you find that we get stuck in these like cycles of holding ourselves our sense of satisfaction and meaning in the world hostage based on our good behavior, and, and what kinds of results we can create in the world. And I think that it’s much more useful to think of goals as a place to come from, or the kinds of person that we want to become in the world. And that now we have that whole training process is in service to becoming the person that we want to be rather than just the moment of crossing the finish line. Does that make sense?

Joe Valley 21:34

Absolutely. I think it’s fantastic. I love it. Thank you. I’m glad I asked that question. Right? Because if if Yeah, I crossed the finish line, if then you have to move on to the next school, I’ve got a friend that does that she’s a crush, it ranked ranked, you know, top 25 in the world for her age bracket. And she just finished competition didn’t quite get there. And didn’t, you know, the rules changed. She didn’t get to go to the world event. But two days after not doing that she’s on to the next one. You know, as opposed to, you know, being happy throughout the training and what she’s doing, which is just incredible. So although I think I don’t mean to pick on her, she’s listening.

Benjamin Easter 22:18

Yeah, totally. And society will give you that this model, like this isn’t like a new model that goals are what makes you happy. And that it’s the achievement of goals, and that it’s this kind of treadmill of always picking than achieving goals. And that’s the rest of the formula for success in the world. I’ll be happy when that it just, it doesn’t wind up working that way. And we wind up spending so much of our lives in a dissatisfied state or a striving state. Whereas there’s a there’s a world in which the same goals can achieve. We just also enjoy the meaning of the process as well as the actual achievement of the goal.

Joe Valley 22:53

Yeah, it makes total sense. I love it. Okay, back to the original question at what point should could is best for an entrepreneur to engage with a coach?

Benjamin Easter 23:03

Yeah. So I would say, well, first and foremost, when you’re ready to have somebody be a part of the journey with you, which that might sound like flippant, but it’s, it’s really important that you be it that you’d be ready to be seeking help, because a lot of times we are in the pull ourselves up by our bootstraps, you know, like, fiercely individual and I go through cycles like this in my own business where sometimes I’m like, I got this, I’m like, I don’t need and I’m a coach. So I work with coaches regularly. But there’ll be times where I’m like, You know what, I need to do it myself for a little while. And so at those times, it’s not as useful to have a coach because I’m going to be, I’m not going to be engaging in the services, the way that I really could be getting the most out of it. And so it might just might not be the time to invest in that time in those moments. But I think so first and foremost, I think, being ready to and willing to have somebody else along the journey, and listen to what they have to say. Because again, part of the role of a coach is going to be to reflect back to you how you’re showing up in the world. Right? And so if you’re not open to that, then that’s probably not a great time for a coach. It is usually where you have some thing that doesn’t feel right for you. Maybe you’re not experiencing as much freedom as I said, or maybe you feel like there’s a bottleneck in your reality and you’re not quite sure what is slowing you down or what’s getting in the way.

Joe Valley 24:34

Why Why do you say in your reality instead of in your life? Hmm.

Benjamin Easter 24:37

Because because I just draw the distinction that we’re so much of what happens happens in our minds and we think that most people think that we’re going around describing the world as it is and you know, there’s a there’s a tree and there’s a light and all that sort of thing. But actually what’s happening is we’re filtering are all of us because there’s too much stuff to process and this is something that I think is like At a useful point to get to understand as a person who is operating in a universe, we don’t, there’s so much data going on all the time, everywhere that you can’t even become aware of the remotest sliver of what’s actually happening. We just don’t have the processing capacity. So our brains are actually designed to make things to filter out as much as they possibly can. Because there’s just too much data to process. Is that

Joe Valley 25:26

why I don’t remember anybody’s name my, in my, in my personal life, my wife and you know, the kid, I’m like, if that person’s name is not important, I filter it out, right?

Benjamin Easter 25:35

Yeah. Well, I mean, actually, that is what is happening when you when you do filter out, like when you’re when you can’t find a name, maybe you’ve been introduced to somebody, and you can’t pull it up. That is what’s happening, your reticular activating system that says, hey, you know what, that is not the highest priority thing for us to hold on to in the world. Right? And so don’t

Joe Valley 25:54

make me an asshole. Thank you. Okay,

Benjamin Easter 25:56

I didn’t say that. I’ll let you be the judge of your own character. Let your wife decide that it sounds like. But yeah, so we’re filtering, we’re filtering our reality. And this is a good thing. It’s it’s a feature, not a bug, right? That we that we simplify things down, and we filter. But when I say in our reality, what I’m drawing the distinction that we’re not describing the reality, we’re not describing the world, we’re describing our version of it, we’re really mapping our desires, and our hypotheses about how the world works on to, quote unquote, reality. So when I say in your reality, it’s just to give a nod to the fact that we have a choice.

Joe Valley 26:36

Appreciate it, I found that doing weekly coaching sessions for me was too much. It was good for the first few weeks, and then I just found myself showing up unprepared not doing the work. And eventually, I just ended it as opposed to maybe I should have adjusted it every two weeks or every three weeks. What What is your thought in terms of the cadence of coaching sessions?

Benjamin Easter 27:01

Yeah, I used to do weekly, every week, 90 minutes, even, which is a lot, it gives us the opportunity to go deep. But what I was finding is that the the more call it successful business my clients became, the less time anybody’s got for that sort of thing. And also the less intense engaged we can be because there’s not really that period of integration, you might say. And so I found that the sweet spot tends to be somewhere between every other week to three weeks on one week off something in that kind of realm. So there’s that week of integration. And that’s has has worked really well for my clients in the

Joe Valley 27:44

past three weeks on, one week off. Yeah, I think I did that a little bit with David as well. But it was at a time in my life where I needed a coach, right? Because everything you’re talking about, it’s like, Okay, what’s going on here? Why am I frustrated? Why am I tired? Look at this world that I live in. It’s amazing. These people I work with are incredible. But something’s not feeling fully satisfied. And eventually, it took a while. And you know what, I’ll be honest with you. It took some time, after I ended the coaching sessions to have some of the stuff that we talked about in the coaching session start to make sense to me, and have me implement them and put them into practice, in my life and in business. And life is much better because of it. And I’m not I am sleeping, man, I’m sleeping for the first time in like, a decade. See what I got an A 90 sleep score last night. Like, it never happens to me as though fit that thing. But you know, that kind of stuff, when you’re an entrepreneur, and you’re taking on everything that you’re taking on, if you wake up at all, in the middle of the night, your mind immediately begins to race, at least in my life it did. And being able to shift away from that, and, and just all the different tools and resources that were given to me, you know, maybe 10% of them worked. But it said 10% was gold. So you know, it’s interesting. And

Benjamin Easter 29:17

I just want to double click on that. Because there’s a there’s a really useful model here to understand. And you’ll see it everywhere in nature, but it’s almost like, like in a war on a chessboard or in a war or something like that. First you’d like take up space, and then you consolidate your ranks. And this the same way that the learning process works. So we first were like, you work really hard to build neural pathways because when they’re new, they don’t, it doesn’t happen quickly because there’s nothing to base it on. But once you have the initial neural pathways built now it’s much easier to reinforce those neural pathways. And so that takes Basically, most of the effort of building a new neural pathway happens upfront. And then once the connections are made, then to To reinforce and to kind of keep it going and make other connections that are related to those neural pathways is a lot easier. And so I think that’s part of the just the natural integration process in the world is you do a lot of work, you do a lot of effort, and then you get the results. And it consolidates, so you expand and consolidate, expand, consolidate. And that’s just like the, the natural learning process.

Joe Valley 30:22

So based upon the language and the terminology that you’re using, one doesn’t just show up and say, hey, I want to be a coach, let’s be get a coaching business, you’ve had some, some life experience and training, some focus on how to be the best possible coach you can be is how do you other than, are you on the right page? And have that right connection? How does one determine the qualifications of someone who calls themself a business? Coach?

Benjamin Easter 30:51

That’s a great question. And one that I struggled with because like I said, I was an acupuncturist for a while. And I and I don’t know 16 Other people in my class, graduating class all got the same, like, quote, unquote, credential. But there were some of them that I would never have let touch me with a needle, let alone like their hands, let alone the needles for sure. And so it’s like, it’s such a challenge to find that when you don’t know what you’re looking for, to find it in the world. And so I wish there were an easier answer to this, I think, look, I got a coaching certification was that useful to me, I don’t know, maybe kind of, in my own credibility and my own belief in myself, but honestly, my ongoing education and the amount of books that I’m always reading and podcasts that I’m listening to, and kind of, again, always engaging with the content in some way, something that’s really useful. So you know, if you’re, if you’re talking to a coach, ask him, What are the last few books that they’ve read? Maybe, you know, and how do they think about them? Or how would they, how would they think about their qualifications or credibility, that sort of thing. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to the coaching, though, so if there if you aren’t able to get some kind of coaching from them and experience the coaching, because, again, you could have read all the books in the world, you could have gone through the certifications, and still not really be that effective for an individual who’s in front of you. So I think it comes down to like, try it out and get really curious about what you would want to come from a session, or are

Joe Valley 32:27

the initial consultation calls? Could Do they come at a cost? Or is it a free consultation to determine if it’s a good fit for both parties?

Benjamin Easter 32:36

It’s a great question, you know, I for my business, it is worth US writing the check for that first session. Because I would, I didn’t do that when I was first starting out the business. And I would wind up in these and get long engagements in contracts for six months, with someone that I really didn’t feel energized by or love. And now we’re here we are in this contracts that’s going on for a long time. And so for us, it’s worth just giving away that first session as an investment in my business and investment in the way I call it just service projects. You know what I mean? Yeah, I think a lot of coaches charge for those and more power to them. I just found that it wasn’t serving me and it wasn’t serving the clients to do that. So

Joe Valley 33:19

I think it’s great. We did the same thing on the podcast, you came, we chatted for a little bit determined it was a good fit, that you could help the audience with no hidden agenda or anything like that. And then we schedule a time to record I think it’s a great way to do it. So

Benjamin Easter 33:33

appreciate it. And as far as a service based business model, by the way, I highly recommend that model out there for any service based business is to like serve first, and then have that be you just call it an investment and we’ll write the check. You’ll write the check for this session. Right.

Joe Valley 33:51

Like, like, alright, we’re running short on time, Ben, how do people learn more about Lucid Shift Coaching? How do they reach out to you all that good stuff?

Benjamin Easter 34:00

Yeah, we so we, you can find us on the web at lucidshiftcoaching.com. You can DM us at on Instagram at Lucid_Shift_Coaching. Or we’ve got a podcast so if you want to hear more of the how the actual coaching stuff works, so the mindset piece is like, what the different ways of looking at the world are all these things that I was talking about the books and the you know, the podcast, that sort of thing. You can find our podcast at the Shift to Freedom podcast.

Joe Valley 34:24

I think any of those Yeah, definitely do it, folks. I’ve done it myself. Again. It wasn’t with Ben we hadn’t met at that time. But it did make a difference. And I think it’s, you know, find, find the right fit, check out. Lucid Shift Coaching, listen to the podcast, consider if you’re feeling a bit of impostor syndrome, if you’re feeling overwhelmed by business and not focused enough on life, or as a colleague of mine said last week, he feels like he’s gonna buckle under the burden of running two businesses and raising three children as well. You don’t want to be in that position, get some good coaching to help you narrow down your focus and bring up your joy a little bit. Ben, thanks for joining us on the Quiet Life Podcast greatly appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Joe.

Outro 35:11

Today’s podcast was produced by Rise25 And the Quiet Light content team. If you have a suggestion for a future podcast, subject or guest, email us at podcast at quietlightbrokerage.com Be sure to follow us on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram and subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next week.