Brian Bogert: How To Live A Life With No Limits
There is a sleeping giant within you, snoring, fast knocked into the deepest sleep ever.
Deep within you dwells untapped potentials, undiscovered gifts, and abilities, unrefined talents, and unimagined ideas. These sleeping giants lie dormant within us – all waiting for their chance at greatness.
I spoke to Brian Bogert, a human behavior and performance coach, motivational speaker, business strategist, and philanthropic leader who helps people discover their own unique strengths and purposes by teaching them to be the most authentic version of themselves. It is Brian’s purpose in life to awaken those sleeping giants and turn them into legends.
Through his coaching sessions and No Limits Playbook, he teaches executives, entrepreneurs, athletes, and growth-minded people how to create perspective, motivation, and direction in order to connect their lives with their actual purpose and defy their own expectations. In order to avoid suffering, he encourages not just to accept change, but also to welcome pain.
Brian shared his life philosophies on “how to embrace pain to avoid suffering,” “people before profits,” and “who before what” as well as what he’s looking forward to this year.
Embracing pain and avoiding suffering
Brian’s story is a perfect example of how to respond when faced with adversity. At the age of seven, Brian had an accident that changed his life forever. He was run over by a truck and had his left arm completely severed from his body.
A lot was made about how hard things were when he was growing up – unceasing medical treatments and years of physical therapy – but it taught him resilience and strength and showed him exactly where this type of mindset could take someone so far. Painful as it may have been, his parents instilled in him an eternal flame that would never go out – which is to embrace pain and avoid suffering. “I believe when it’s done correctly, it’s also when we gain freedom,” he said.
Through this experience, he learned about mental toughness, emotional intelligence, human behavior, vulnerability, and authenticity which he now incorporates into his teaching.
“It’s to identify the proper pains between where you are today and where you want to be and learn to embrace them. I believe that we all must choose our pain or suffering will choose us.”
Who before what
“We’ve been living in a generation and the last couple of decades, I would call the era of « what » and the era of profit. And I would like to close that era and usher in the era of « who » and the usher of people.”
We live in a world where success is measured by the amount of « what » you have. In this society, we’ve lost sight of who created all these things and it’s beginning to show as many people are becoming disconnected from themselves or their community because they’re so focused on materialistic goals like money, possessions, and recognition. Brian declared, “it’s also gotten to the point that we have lost sight of the fact that none of the « whats’ » exists without the « who ».”
If we just realize that possessions don’t equal wealth and life’s too precious a gift not to spend freely on what matters most, we’ll find ourselves setting aside those things that only burden us instead of bringing happiness into our lives.
People before profits
The pursuit of profit at any cost is not uncommon at all. “We have gotten so wrapped up in the profit that we’ve lost sight of the fact that profit does not exist without the people,” Brian stated. It’s an unfortunate consequence that this mindset is so deeply ingrained in our society. It has a desperate vibe to it, but it can only last you so long.
The irony is that putting people first can be financially beneficial. In order to put people before profit, a business needs an established mission or philosophy based on the key benefit of whatever product service they provide.
“If we remember why we exist, businesses did not start to make profit. Businesses start to solve problems. Businesses solve to serve people.”
What drives a business is the desire to make life better for its customers. Businesses are created and run by people who have an idea about how they can solve someone’s problem, or at least help them overcome one difficult challenge in their daily lives. In exchange, they offer you money. Ask yourself how your business serves people, and then strive to achieve that goal in every transaction.
New endeavors
“Right now I could have looked at and said I’ve already dropped a lot of money. I could’ve just forged ahead for the sake of doing it, but I also know that we want to impact a billion lives by 2045. And if I forge ahead for the sake of doing that, the negative impact on our brand and potential impact would be so significant.”
Brian recently relaunched No Limits, a transformative course that helps you in becoming unstuck and moving forward into a life with no boundaries. Brian and his team believe that living your most authentic life requires awareness, focus, and intentionality, and this course will assist you in achieving that goal.
It has a self-led component that allows you to go at your own pace for eight weeks on your path to authenticity and intentional living, whereas the group option adds a sense of community and offers extra help from Brian and his team with group coaching sessions. If you want more information before committing, the No Limits Prelude will give you a taste of the course, where the entire introduction and the first chapter are given to you for free.
In January, they launched No Limits Us, which is a small group coaching program. “We’ve got to have an environment that can be safe enough for people to feel like they can truly be vulnerable and authentic.”
Don’t forget to listen to my full conversation with Brian on the Fascinating Entrepreneurs podcast!
Transcript from Podcast
[00:00:00] Brian Bogert: At some point we forgot that the people were what it was all about and the profit drove. Now, I want to be really clear here. I, in no way, vilify money. I no way vilify, all the what’s that you can chase. I no way vilify making a ton of money and profit. I am all for people having the opportunity to do that. But if that is the beginning focus, it will not lead to sustainability and success.
[00:00:22] Natasha Miller: Welcome to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS. How do people end up becoming an entrepreneur? How do they scale and grow their businesses? Have they planned for profit? Are they in it for life? Are they building to exit? These and a myriad of other topics will be discussed to pull back the veil on the wizardry of successful and FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.
My memoir RELENTLESS is releasing in March of 2022. Go to natashamiller.com to put your name on the wait list and I’ll let you know when it’s available. The bonuses for buying the book are pretty enticing. I hope you love them all. Also let me know if you’d like to be on my advanced reader team. I’ll send you all of the details.
As a human behavior and performance coach speaker and business strategist, Brian Bogert disrupts the normative approach on how to create sustainable growth and lasting change personally and professionally. His philosophies on “how to embrace pain to avoid suffering”, “people before profits”, and “who before what” have helped individuals and companies discover and activate their limitless potential. Now let’s get right into it.
[00:01:42] Brian Bogert: Yeah. So truly like that comment came from one of my dear friends. And what he recognized is that just my whole philosophy in life, it starts with the internal journey. Everything begins and ends with you.
So often what we recognize is how people chase the “what’s” of the world. What house? What car? What amount of money? What amount of success? And in the process of doing so they ended up losing who they are.
I genuinely have this belief that the things that keep people stuck, they believe are the wrong strategy and tactics in there. But that’s rarely the case and with the hundreds of high-performers and incredible human beings that we’ve done work with, what becomes very apparent is the things that really keep people stuck is a combination of their emotional triggers, behavioral patterns, and environmental conditioning.
And so heart surgeon without a blade is they’ve described that I’ll go in and I’ll actually pull somebody’s heart out, show it to them beating, and then we repair it and put it back in so they can go move through the world a little bit more clear. I love the analogy but yeah, I never grew up wanting to be a heart surgeon.
[00:02:37] Natasha Miller: Yeah. Having someone say those things to you about you is so great. And then you can use it for your brand because it is effective. So you say there’s a sleeping giant in every human. I’d love to know more about that.
[00:02:49] Brian Bogert: Yeah, I genuinely believe right when we talk about a no limits life, right? It’s this idea that we are limited only by the limits we place upon ourselves and certainly the ones that the world has placed upon us. And I think again, when we’re born as our most bright burning, authentic light, and then parents, teachers, employers, coaches start telling us all the shades of the world, “You should do this. You should be this. You shouldn’t do that. You should be that.”
It starts literally putting layers that put us down this path, that the world’s going to accept us and can find us literally in this box. And so many of us lose who we are in that process and our uniqueness, our gift, who you are is truly where your giant and your legendary newness comes out.
And so often these actually were my words. ‘Cause somebody asked me one day, they were like, “Hey, what do you do exactly?” And I said, “I take giants and turn them into legends by helping them grab what they believe is just out of their grasp.” Because so often it’s people, high-performance, “If I just get there, I just make this amount of money. If I just get this business successful, if I just…”
Whatever. Then I will have arrived and I’ll feel whole. But again, that is not what happens. We’re chasing the external world and the way to get joy, freedom and fulfillment holistically in our lives, it’s to start inside. And it’s pretty incredible because I can tell from my firsthand experience. I almost lost everything I cared about in my life because of me.
But it’s also the ability for me to grasp and live into what I can leave as a legacy because of me. And so I have to really pay attention to the fact that you can take someone who’s had 30 years of trauma who has been living inside these shells forever, who believed that human connection and joy and freedom, and the ability to move through the world with a lightness was impossible. And in the period of months, by doing the tough work, the stuff that we typically all avoid, they are literally saying that the impossible is now possible.
[00:04:29] Natasha Miller: Did you study psychotherapy? Counseling? Is that part of your training?
[00:04:34] Brian Bogert: I would say yes, but it’s also been a lot of actual application. I have a degree in psychology. I also have a degree in business and I sought out with no intention around doing that, but I would tell you that I have been a student of human behavior for 30 years.
As long as I can remember when I actually started looking beyond myself because of some really unique situations that happened to me early in life, I got very in-tuned to people, situations, and environments around me.
Now, what I didn’t know was how to apply that, how to interpret that, how to extract that. And that’s what years of training has developed because I took an intellectual curiosity and passion. Also if I’m being honest, the survival technique of my own. And learn how to turn that into a place to free other people.
[00:05:18] Natasha Miller: I think that’s beautiful because people find their help, whether it’s through a therapy or if you need to have medication or coaches or somebody you meet on the bus. Like it can take the village, you should accept the village. And when you feel like you’re getting really good input and really good advice and experience then feel a little weird, then don’t listen to that.
[00:05:43] Brian Bogert: Yeah. But that’s the thing is that so often we aren’t actually paying attention to the misalignment between our intellectual narrative and our emotional one.
It’s often that gap that creates resistance and energy drain that we feel as emotion, or we feel as some physical manifestation, but so often we don’t pay attention to. Because the world has told us to reduce limited or avoid pain, and we got to move fast and have a smile on. So what are we taught to do?
We’re taught to shut it down, ignore that it even exists. And so what happens is we just start compiling and compounding those over time until some point we feel right. But that’s just how we’re trained in condition. We’re not trained in condition to be like, “Oh, that didn’t feel right. Maybe I should pay attention to what that means.”
And where am I out of alignment as a result of it instead of like, “That didn’t feel good. Keep going.” That’s what we’re taught. And that’s just not how we move forward. That’s how we remain stuck in perpetually. Certainly a drain.
[00:06:28] Natasha Miller: Let’s move to the next thing. One of your philosophies is how to embrace pain to avoid suffering. Let’s talk about that.
[00:06:36] Brian Bogert: And that’s one that I didn’t develop right away. I first have to tell you where that concept came from, because it’s really important. I don’t always jump into my story, but there’s always a place where it seems to be relevant.
When I was a little kid, I was run over by a truck and my left arm was completely severed from my body. Wearing long sleeves today ’cause it’s cold here in Phoenix but if I pull it all the way up, you can see it literally came all the way off my body.
I was run over by the truck. It tore my spleen, left tire track on my stomach. And I will tell you to be perfectly honest, that those years following the injury, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 years old, extensive recovery, years of therapy, years of surgery.
And I would tell you that largely looking back, I was in a fog, never really realized it. My parents, however, were not. They were intimately aware of the unceasing medical treatments, years of physical therapy. And the idea of seeing their son grow up without the use of his left arm was a source of great potential suffering for them.
So they literally willed themselves day in and day out to do what was necessary to do, what was tough to embrace the pains required to ultimately strengthen and heal me. And so whether it was intentional or not, what they did was they ingrained in me this philosophy and way of living, which is to embrace pain, to avoid suffering.
And I believe when it’s done correctly, it’s also where we gained freedom. So I said just a second ago, what the world tells us to do, they tell us to reduce, eliminate or avoid it. And I’m telling you definitively the world is wrong right now. It made sense why we were conditioned to believe that because a hundred years ago, if you cut your leg, you could die. But that’s not the world we live in anymore. It’s just not.
And so what we have to recognize is what are we actually avoiding? And what is it developing as a result of? And we need to understand if I say pain and suffering, what do those really mean? So let’s start there. Pain’s defined a short term, intermittent, a direct cause of something and alleviated ones that direct causes removed. Whereas suffering we’ll get to in a minute, we don’t really even see clearly because as human beings, we screw up the word and definition of pain by putting adjectives in front of it, like acute chronic.
Acute maintains the definition, but chronic inherently changes it because it implies it’s no longer short-term and it persists after the wreck cause is removed. Let’s stop calling that chronic pain and call it what it really is — suffering. Now we don’t want to admit that suffering exists, particularly when it’s a direct result of our choices.
Whereas pain gets lots of attention because we feel it’s right there and we don’t like it. Suffering creeps up on us often to the point that we adapt to it and the effects can be irreversible. We don’t even know that we’re suffering sometimes. And so here’s the concept. We can embrace the pain of hitting the gym for 30 minutes a day to avoid suffering of aches and pains of a sedentary lifestyle.
We can embrace the pain of a difficult conversation with a loved one or spouse to avoid being suffering from being stuck in a loveless marriage that’s going to end in divorce or being trapped in a marriage. When you actually want divorce, we can embrace the pain or the fit your kids are sure to throw by having them put down their mobile device at the dinner table to avoid the suffering of years of lost, meaningful connection and conversation you’ll never get back.
As business owners, we can embrace the pain of firing our top salesperson to avoid the suffering of stagnant growth and losing all of our other top talent because they were the greatest cancer in our culture. And so it doesn’t really matter what category of life this exists. The concept applies to everything, and I’m not asking you to put yourself into unnecessary amounts of pain.
It’s to identify the proper pains between where you are today and where you want to be and learn to embrace them. I believe that we all must choose our pain or our suffering will choose us. I’d rather have a little bit of influence and control over which one I get to live in.
[00:09:42] Natasha Miller: This is resonating with me specifically. Because of the life I led before I had my daughter regarding my past life. I over-corrected when bringing her up and I don’t want her to feel pain or suffering because I didn’t want to feel pain and suffering. And no one helped me in the back of the day.
What I didn’t realize younger, she’s 26 now, I understand it now finally, maybe a little too late, having that pain and suffering from any kind of thing I wanted to fix it for her. And now since I’ve realized I have to let her go through it herself and she sees me trying to save her from that pain and anguish. And she’s “Mom, stop.”
[00:10:26] Brian Bogert: Yeah. So what’s interesting about what you just said. One thing I want to encourage you on it is not too late. It’s absolutely right. And I know you said that one comment, it might be too late. It is not. The other thing that you hit on is something that’s really relevant and very powerful that I appreciate that your daughter is actually attempting to do.
See, most people are waiting for a savior. They’re waiting for someone to come in and fix the day to take away their problems, to make them feel happy to have the things that they want. They’re literally waiting for a savior, which is why all these seven steps systems for success to teach strategy and tactics, to help people figure out how to become successful exist in the world, because they know that people are going to look for.
Who’s going to be what’s next. Who’s going to save your daughter instead is recognizing that this has to start. And so what she’s doing is setting effective emotional boundaries. But what she’s also communicating to you is that she recognizes and respects what you’ve done. And she’s also saying, “Mom, you’ve got to let me do this.”
And by you surrendering, instead of fighting to prevent her from experiencing it, you’re actually empowering her and catapulting her into this next phase of her life even more successfully. And so what you’re doing is you’re setting aside your own ego and you’re setting aside the fact that as a parent, I think I’m right, or I believe I’ve done the right thing.
You’re saying, “You know what, I know that there’s things I’ve done that have contributed to you being where you’re at and feeling stuck in the way that you do. And the best way to empower you is to be here by your side, take ownership and acknowledge the fact that I had a role in this and that I don’t want to negatively influenced, but only be here as a source for you to process your own future growth.”
Most parents don’t ever let go of that control. And so I would say that to her credit and to yours, you’re on a really positive path, even though it doesn’t feel like it’s where it wants to be.
[00:12:05] Natasha Miller: We’re a power team. It is a good place right now. And I will have to say that therapy for both of us, for different reasons, having nothing to do.
Us as a parent daughter team has really opened both of our eyes to the so we’re like growing together. I had her when I was 24. So I had her when I was a kid, basically. And anyway, so I love that.
Okay. Now let’s talk about people before profits.
[00:12:31] Brian Bogert: So this is an overlapping concept with “who before what”. I believe that we have been conditioned for a long time to chase the “what’s” in the world.
I hit on it pretty early in our conversation very briefly, but we literally for decades have been about the “What house? What car? What amount of money? What spouse? What physical appearance? What clothes? What car?” All of the above.
It’s all about the “what?” And we’ve literally defined success in our world through the amount of what you have. And it’s also gotten to the point that we have lost sight of the fact that none of the “what’s” exists with out the “who”. As well as a corporate and industry and country and world, we have gotten so wrapped up in the profit that we’ve lost sight of the fact that profit does not exist without the people.
I don’t care what business you’re in. I don’t care if you’re an online business. I don’t care if you are in a widget business and you’re distributing it at some point. There are people involved, meaning there are people either buying your product, service or goods. You’re delivering it to somebody. There are always people and we’ve just lost sight of this.
And so I genuinely believe just as an individual, it’s about shedding the layers of what the world has put on us to get back to the core of who we are so that all the what’s in our world can become a manifestation of who we are. And the reality that is in business, it’s the same thing.
If we remember why we exist, business did not start to make profit. Businesses start to solve problems, businesses solve to serve people. That’s why business exists. That’s why business structures ever existed was to provide solutions to problems people that were experiencing. And at some point we forgot that the people were what it was and the profit drove.
Now, I want to be really clear here. I, in no way vilify money. I no way vilify all the “what’s” that you can chase. I know way vilify making a ton of money and profit. I am all for people having the opportunity to do that. But if that is the beginning focus, it will not lead to sustainability and success.
And we’ve been living in a generation in the last couple of decades, I would call the era of “what” and the era of profit. And I would like to close that era and usher in the era of “who” and the usher of people. Because right now, if we don’t focus on the era of “who” and the era of people, that’s what everybody’s wanting is just to get back to the core of human connection.
[00:14:50] Natasha Miller: How does that look for you and your team?
[00:14:53] Brian Bogert: Yeah, so I think it’s about understanding what is the human experience first and foremost. I think that all of us are hardwired to desire a few things. We are all hardwired to desire, safety. We’re all hardwired to desire protection, and those are not the same thing. We are all hardwired and desire to feel seen and understood. And we are all hardwired and desire to feel connected.
Guess what? That’s the one we desire the most, connection. And it doesn’t exist unless the first three do. And so when we start to recognize that part of this is to be able to lean into vulnerability and authenticity, which I believe is the glue that binds human connection. It’s about recognizing how do we create environments of protection so that people can feel safe because this is what happens, right?
You and I, let’s just say you’re buying something from me. Okay. Now my entire industry, I don’t even care what industry I’m in, any sales person ever has conditioned buyers to believe that we want something from them, not for them. That is genuine. So what happens? We expect someone’s going to be sold.
We expect they want something from us. So what do we do? Our wall goes up. We protect ourselves. Now all of a sudden we’ve guaranteed that we’re safe because we’re protected, but we’re certainly not going to be seen and understood. And we’re certainly not gonna be. And so think about how this relates in relationships, business partners, clients, it doesn’t matter.
So many of us are conditioned to believe that the world doesn’t see us for who we are. We don’t feel seen and understood. We don’t feel connected. And so we just believe we have to exist inside this armor, but a couple of things happen when you create this armor. Okay. The first and foremost is you guaranteed that nobody’s going to see and understand you and you will not connect because that armor is impenetrable.
So there’s nothing getting in. There’s nothing getting out. You’re safe. You’re protected by yourself, but you’re certainly not getting the other side of the equation. It also suggests that you’re pushing people away because that armor creates a barrier that you don’t have an open energy to bring them into.
So how can they feel safe around you? How can they feel seen and understood? How can they feel connected when you have your own armor up? They probably have theirs up as well. The other side of it is when we realize that’s what most people are seeking is safety first.
We want connection the most, but we seek safety first. That means that as leaders, we have to create an environment of protection around us, which means we have to assume that we are safe. So we have to create environments that are built around protection so that everyone around us can feel safe because that also guarantees that everyone gets seen and understood, and everyone gets connected.
When those things happen, you’re building relationships, you’re focused on value and you’re focusing on impact. It’s no longer about selling or what you want from someone it’s about what do you want for that person? It creates a different level of relationship and connection, and that’s what I believe we’ve lost.
And we have never been in such a disconnected world because of the virtual element of how we have to get engaged.
But that’s also because we have to redefine what its connection actually look like and how do we create the environments for people to live in. The other thing that happens when we have that armor up, imagine holding two 5-pound dumbbells in front of you, how long could you hold those things?
[00:17:34] Natasha Miller: Not as long as you.
[00:17:37] Brian Bogert: Okay. So fair enough. I might be able to hold it longer with my right side than my left side. I might be dropping over here, but the point is right. It doesn’t matter. The amount of weight, it could be a one pound dumbbell. The longer you hold it out in front of you, the heavier it gets.
It’s just like the armor that we carry to protect ourselves. The thing we think is protecting us is actually incrementally crushing us over time. And it only further supports that when we live inside this container, again, it’s impenetrable. Nothing gets in nothing. It means that we don’t acknowledge our feelings.
We don’t pay attention to those little energy moments that we talked about before. And so what do we do? We just start shoving them down into the container that we built around ourselves, which means that we have a never ending building pressure below us on all the stuff that’s unresolved. It’s just guaranteed to explode at some point.
So how do we do that? We need to start focusing on connection again, when you start focusing on vulnerability and authenticity, when you start focusing on people on the other side of the conversation, not what can I get from that person.
And when we can start to align and center ourselves with who we are, who we’re doing this for, who we want to impact and who we’re doing this with, we start to see a lot more clear world because we make it way more complicated than it needs to be.
[00:18:41] Natasha Miller: So all of this makes sense. I have two questions. So regarding you and your own team, how do you manifest that provocation? And what do you do with people that are shy and introverted because they communicate differently?
[00:18:55] Brian Bogert: I will tell you that I absolutely have to pay attention to the energy with which I enter into every single room always. Because I will tell you that if I have insecurity, if my shame is getting tripped, if my fear is getting tripped and I walk in and the place where I cannot protect.
As the leader, I take responsibility for setting the tone in the room that I walk into. And it’s the same thing in my household and my family.
If I know that I’m walking into the household at the end of the day, I can literally set the tone in that room by how I walk in. And so I like to believe I’m a thermostat, not a thermometer ’cause I can believe that as a leader.
I think most leaders are that way they can truly set the temperature and the environment. So I walk in with a realm to truly be, make sure that I am not guarded at all. That there is no misrepresented energy and that I’m taking ownership real time for what I’m projecting into that environment, which also might mean owning real time. “Hey guys, I’m having an off day. I’m gonna do the best I can to deliver from here on now,” again, vulnerability and authenticity.
And I will tell you that simple act just by itself, manifests within our organization. Because I’m at the top and I’m setting the tone. And I can tell you for a lot of our clients, this is exactly the thing that we have to get them to do as the business owner. The leader is to start to recognize that again, someone said, Alex Charfen not that long ago. I heard a quote from him and he said, “If you’re constantly putting out fires in your business and in your life, there’s a good chance.”
And so I’m a big believer, like I said earlier, that everything begins and ends with you. So as the leader in an entity or in a household, I believe it’s us to determine the environment that we create around protection.
Now, how do we do that? We have to do our own internal work. We have to see ourselves more clearly. We have to understand where our emotional triggers are and how are those actually creating reactions that might be creating damage intentionally or unintentionally in our world. And then when we create damage, we have to seek to create repair as quickly as possible.
So if I’m having an off day and I projected different energy and I haven’t owned it up front and it might make one of my team insecure, or they might not know how to lean into it, it’s up to me again to actually take ownership after the fact and say, “Hey, the way that we interacted yesterday, I might’ve projected an energy on you that wasn’t about you. And I just want to make sure that we’re clear and that you understand where that came from.”
I do that with my son all the time. Yesterday in fact, I had an off day. And as we were leaving soccer from practice, I was feeling a little bit tapped. My wife was running late. I knew that I was going to have to get dinner and I wasn’t overly stressed, but I had a heavy day.
And I looked over at my son in the car and he had said a couple of things that I felt the edge real time. And I just looked at him and I said, “Hey, dude, I just want to tell you right now that dad’s had a really hard day. And I want to make sure that you don’t misinterpret any of my energy from this point forward.
It’s not about you. If I’m short, if I’m not quick to admit what’s happening, I want you to know it has nothing to do with you. So if I react to you, it’s not about you and I’m gonna do the best I can to not react.” And my son took that, received it processed. “Oh, got it.” No issues from that point forward.
[00:21:37] Natasha Miller: Moving right into whatever else he was doing.
[00:21:39] Brian Bogert: Totally. So I would tell you that in general, that’s probably as deep as I can go to answer that question right now, but it always starts with us. And that means I have had to put the work in first. The second piece is how does this relate to different personalities? All it is different depths of how much people who seek to protect themselves.
So someone who’s more shy probably has a deeper armor. It’s stronger in that foundation. It’s probably going to be harder to break through because they’re shy, they’re likely very misunderstood and not seen or connected often because they don’t put themselves in that. So it’s even more important to make sure that people like myself that talk fast, have a strong energy speak loud, can pay attention to how might they be receiving me in my energy, because although whatever they’re dealing with, isn’t my fault.
It’s absolutely my responsibility as the leader for them. And so where I can bring them out. That’s one of the things I do best. I create environment, make people feel safe so that they can see themselves as clearly as I can see them and then they get to flourish.
And so that is one of the things that I would say the personality type doesn’t necessarily change the approach because the concept is identical. It’s the depth at which we might need to create that level of protection because of how deeply ingrained their patterns are because of their personality type. Does that make sense?
[00:22:52] Natasha Miller: It does. And everyone that has an organization probably has different types of personalities. They probably should have also, you can’t hire all the same personality and make anything work. So the next question has a little bit more to do about your business as a whole and the operations.
What is a challenge operationally or in your business that you’re facing right now today?
[00:23:17] Brian Bogert: Being able to create the systems and processes at the speed to execute with the growth and the influx of activity. That’s just truly what it is. There was a whole lot of things that we were in the process of building and developing and the pressure and momentum was building quicker than we thought it was.
And so we literally three months ago pulled back on a handful of things because I will not forge ahead for the sake of just making sure. I will only forge ahead if it’s going to meet the standard and the customer experience and the level with which we want to operate, because I don’t care about the money.
Is it important? Of course it is, but I care about the impact. So if what we’re about to release isn’t at the level that I think it’s going to be, we need to recalibrate and readjust, right? So I’ll give you an example. We developed a course. We spent a lot of money on this course and last July of 2020, it went live.
I never sold it. I never distributed it. I never pushed it. In fact, within three months of being live, we completely took it off the market. And the reason is the customer experience was not what we thought it needed to be. And not because the content wasn’t great. Not because the framework wasn’t great, but our learning management system didn’t support the process that we wanted.
Right now I could have looked at and said I’ve already dropped a lot of money. I could’ve just forged ahead for the sake of doing it, but I also know that we want to impact a billion lives by 2045. And if I forge ahead for the sake of doing that, the negative impact on our brand and potential impact would be so significant. We might not ever escape it from one decision.
And so we recalibrated and we spent the better part of a year where we’re at right now, though, is another great example. We’ve been so blessed and I don’t say this to impress a senior principal point. So much activity coming at us, super blessed. And we’re trying to scale in two or three different entities all simultaneously, and we’re doing it.
But again, to me, I will always under promise and over deliver. I want to, in a situation where there’s a high dollar item in particular, I want our customers to be thanking us for the value that for the major investment they made.
If it’s anything less than that, then we are not doing our job because to me it’s not an equal exchange of value. It’s like we are going to literally amplify people to elevate and empower them to go do this on their own. And so we brought in some additional operations support in October, we’re now two and a half months in to developing a couple of new systems and processes as a result of it.
It also exposed some leaks in our organization that we were able to close relatively quickly. And so that’s where we’re at right now is we’ve got to make sure that our execution keeps up with our opportunity.
[00:25:33] Natasha Miller: I am in a program which I will not name, which is a very good program. But their LMS is such a mess and their communication is such a mess.
So internally, like when I really wanted, and I really liked and trusted the person I got in their processes person. And I was like, oh my God, this is not what I expected.
[00:25:56] Brian Bogert: And your experience in that will probably affect your desire to even want to be in the platform, which means that they are actually doing a disservice to you because the hurdles that you experienced trying to capture the knowledge you believe they can give you was too great. And so that’s exactly why we pivoted and changed it because that’s the truth.
Like we looked at it and said, great. We could push out a product that we, I believed in. I created it. I believed it. It was beautiful. But when we started to see how chunky the process was and how difficult it was for them to navigate.
If your ability to consume information is more difficult than the information is to process, then you’re never going to get to the information.
[00:26:33] Natasha Miller: I think for this group, they grew too fast and they outgrew their LMS and their systems and they aren’t taking the time to go in and have someone objectively go through their system and go this is this.
So everyone has their own pattern in the past. Last question is what are your goals for your business and strategy for growth next year?
[00:26:58] Brian Bogert: I laugh around that because what’s interesting is I am very big on vision creation and future, but I’ve gotten less specific to tying goals to specific years because I don’t view time as a beginning and an end. I view it as constantly evolving infinite game. And although I can look at it in 2022, I’m also very anti like new year’s resolutions and all these things.
So instead, I’d rather answer it just given that we’re recording in December of 2021, not knowing when this will go live. I want to be very clear when I answered this question, I’m talking about the next 12 months. It just happens to coincidentally be the next calendar. Is that fair? Because I’m constantly reinventing the next 12 months because I believe we have to do that.
I am extremely excited because we finally are in a relaunch period for this course that I’m extremely proud of now. And despite the fact that we’ve done extensive work on it, we are actually still in a beta process mode because I have a number of individuals that despite- I don’t view it as we put it out and it’s final. It will be a constantly refining living, breathing course from this point forward.
But I’m excited to actually allow it to be released to the world because we’ve had people wanting to access it and we’ve not had a vehicle for them to access.
[00:28:08] Natasha Miller: Tell us about it.
[00:28:09] Brian Bogert: Yeah, it’s called No Limits you and really what it does is it helps people understand how to see themselves more. Clearly we begin with the end in mind was structure and idea of helping make sure that we can understand the proper pains to embrace, but truly we help people see themselves to a place where they can start to unroot those emotional triggers that are keeping them and circling that drain.
And so we’ve got a self-lead component of the community component and it’s literally called NoLimits. You can go to nolimitsyou.com. If you want a preview of it or a prelude of it, rather, you can also go to nolimitsprelude.com, where we give the entire introduction and the whole first chapter to you for free.
And I say that very clearly, because I want to make sure that you will get value out of whatever there is in the free course, regardless of what you decide to do from that. And so we’re very aware that to impact a billion lives, 99.9999999999% will never pay us a dollar. And we are very okay with that.
And so you can get all the details on the full paid option at nolimitsyou.com, or you can just start to preview with nolimitsprelude.com. Either one will get you there and into the community. So really excited about that.
The other thing that we’re excited about is another solution that we’ve been being asked to provide for about a year. But again, because of where our structure and focus was, we just were not in a place to do it. So I could have taken the shiny object and be like, great. I can monetize there, but like we weren’t ready to deliver on the solution.
And so I’m really excited that we finally are. In January, we are actually launching No Limits Us, which is our small group coaching program. I say small group because they’re kept at groups of eight. Now our logo happens to be the infinity sign. And I didn’t realize that when I selected the number eight, then when I turn it on its side, there’s also the infinity sign.
So I was like, oh, that was pretty good universal connection. But we kept them at that size to keep them small. Because again, we’ve got to have an environment that can be safe enough for people to feel like they can truly be vulnerable and authentic. And so we’re really excited about that.
We had a bunch of people raise their hand and say, “Yep. We’ve been waiting,” because up until then and our coaching world, we just had my one-to-one or our other coaches that were one-to-one and one-to-one is incredible, but it’s not the solution for you.
And so we’re excited to finally have solutions across the whole spectrum from people that just want to engage and be self-led, to have some community element, to have some group to not all of those are one-to-one stuff. Very excited about that. And that is going to be a big piece of our focus in 2021.
It’s a big part of our vision and our priorities is to really make sure that we are not only launching these appropriately, but that over the course of three to six months, we’re gathering the information we can to actually refine it and make it better because I don’t believe we create it and it’s done. That is just the beginning point of how we create the impact moving forward.
And so the strategy on how we do that, we’re being very significant in a beta mode on all. I beta test, all of our businesses, all new product launches. I will not take something completely to market unless we’re disclosing it’s the first time. And this is a beta. And so all of our No Limits Us groups are beta founders.
They are the ones that are helping us launch this program. And then the last thing that I’m honestly really excited about, I have many that I’m excited about, but we have four entities. And so what I’m really excited about is, two of the entities, I was not expecting to be revenue positive in 2021 and the growth and the opportunity outpaced our projection on timeline.
So we actually posted positive revenue in three of our four new entities this last year. And that’s incredible. So those are both going to be ones that we’ll launch. And I’ll give one last website, not for promotion or vanity, but iamnolimits.com as a place that you can just see what our world is all about.
[00:31:29] Natasha Miller: Brian talked about how to tap into your fullest potential embrace pain to avoid suffering, and that people are the absolute, most important element of business. For more information, go to the show notes where you’re listening to this podcast.
Want to know more about me? Go to my website, natashamiller.com. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you loved the show. If you did, please subscribe/ also, if you haven’t done so yet, please leave a review where you’re listening to this podcast now. I’m Natasha Miller and you’ve been listening to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.