S4E8 Lisa Binggeli
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Lisa Binggeli: [00:00:00] Wow. And so I didn't, I, yeah, I, and I went to college for a semester and I was like, oh, screw that. Nah, I'd rather have kids. And I just, I was ready to be the mom, and that's what I really wanted. Anyway so when I was about 20, 27, 28, I started like getting a lot of depression and I started going to counseling.
And when I went to counseling, what kind of drew out of me was that I did it wrong. Like all of these other people went to college and they got a degree and they had all these, they had the jobs and they had all these other things behind them. And I was like, I'm just a mom which is what I wanted, but yet I was feeling like I did something wrong.
And I remember the counselor said to me very specifically, she goes I didn't get married till I was 35, and then I had a kid and or two. And she's so did I do it wrong? I'm like, no, I guess not. I was in my head thinking that there was a [00:01:00] way that life was supposed to be lived and that I wasn't doing it the right way.
That I wasn't getting the result that I wanted. I had the results, but you know what I'm saying, right? Like I was depressed in anyway. I thought that there was something wrong with the way that I did it, and just recognizing at that point, at a young enough age that there's not one right way to do it.
So we're not ahead and we're not behind. We just are.
Shawn Buttner: Hey everyone. Welcome to the Meaningful Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Sean Butner, certified high performance coach, and today we have a really great guest with us. She's the host of The Common Sense, doesn't require a script podcast, a top 1% real estate agent in the US here. She's also a certified high performance coach and certified life coach.
I'd love to introduce [00:02:00] you, my friend Lisa Ley. Hey Lisa. How's it going?
Lisa Binggeli: Hello.
Shawn Buttner: Great. So the Meaningful Revolution podcast is all about interviewing people that are passionate about a topic. So we nerd out about it and celebrate it, but it's to lead to more meaningful connection, more meaningful, output.
Just living a more meaningful life by inspiring people through their passions. So with that said could you explain a time when you know you failed and that helped you find your purpose and why that ignited your passion for this topic?
Lisa Binggeli: Awesome. For sure. So the reason why that's such an important topic to me, I thought that was a good one to talk about today, is we, when we are venturing, whether we're entrepreneurs, and mostly I'm not sure if your audience is a lot of entrepreneurs in our growth journey and our business journey.
Tend to associate failure with the fact that something doesn't work, [00:03:00] right? I tried this thing, I failed, and oh, I should probably throw that to the side and I need to try something different. And we're pretty quick to cast it away. And so looking at it from a different angle, it's like when we fail at something, when we're attempting something and we fail, we need to learn from that and not let our brains take the override of, okay, that thing didn't work, so I'm not gonna try it again.
That hurt, it didn't go right. I feel like a failure. A lot of time when I coach people, that's the sentence. They say I'm a failure. I feel like a failure. And instead of thinking that thought, we can turn and think, you know what? I tried this thing. And it doesn't mean that I'm a failure. It means that I tried this.
What did I learn from it? Assess that. What did I learn from it? What can I do different? What did I not do as well as I could have? And take that and then continue to move forward onto the next level as a step by step. When we do that, we can more accurately find the purpose and what it is that we're doing.
But if we continue to spin, if we continue to try [00:04:00] fail, try something different, fail, try something different, fail. That's where most people start to just give up because they think that it's just not gonna work, right? Let's throw the hands up and give up because it's not just gonna work ever.
And that's not true. And a lot of the coaching that I do, it's, it lies within just the thoughts that we choose to think about those circumstances. That we have in our lives, the circumstances about our business, the circumstances of something that we tried how we choose to think about that.
So it's a, that's why it's such an important topic, I feel like, to me and for all entrepreneurs everyone in general. I guess not just entrepreneurs, but really important.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah, it's definitely in my coaching practice, this also comes up, so I'm excited that, you've described it so distinctly, so I'm yeah, it's definitely a like skill that one, everyone can learn and I think it's really important and it separates people that are able to succeed over the long term or burn out because they're [00:05:00] not happy on the pursuit.
Cuz if you try something and fail and take it personally that'll stop you dead in your tracks. So I'm curious now, so how did you, is there a time in your life where you. We're in that old style of thinking where you try something and you're like, ah. And when did that shift for you?
Lisa Binggeli: Yeah. Passion can take us so far. So in my coaching practice, in my coaching business I have a passion for teaching. I have a passion for helping other people. But then as I put myself out there, and it, you're very vulnerable at that point. And I put myself out there with a product and a package and what I think is gonna work for people and I'm trying to make that thing work and it's not working right.
And this is even just recently. And then, so what I would do is I'd put that one thing out there, I'd try it for a while, it didn't work, so I would move on to another thing. I'd provide a different. I'd give something else for people to purchase, right? Structure it in a different way, and then I'd try that one, and then it would do [00:06:00] mediocre, but it wouldn't take off.
And so then I, okay, so maybe that's not the thing that people are gonna grab onto. And I think that there's gonna be one magic bullet and one magic thing that as soon as I create the perfect product the perfect offering, that people are just gonna jump on it. So then I move on and do the next one.
By the time I'm done, for the last about year and a half, I've created four main products. Many more than that, but four really main offerings for my for my coaching clients and potential clients out there that I've been trying to attract. And what was happening was, it's like, it's lining up 10 soccer balls on a soccer field.
And I was going through and kicking one a little bit and kicking the next one a little bit and kicking the next one a little bit. Nothing ever got to the goal because I wasn't focused on one for long enough. You really have to get that one soccer ball. Kick it. Kick it again. Kick it again.
You kick it until you get the goal. Once you do that, then you move on to the next soccer ball, right? So no matter what we're trying to create, no matter what we're [00:07:00] trying to do, we need to focus so intently and find the purpose. So that's where the purpose comes into. You have to be very clear, have good clarity on what your purpose is, what you're trying to do, so that you can focus on getting that ball to the goal before you just go I tried that one enough.
It doesn't work well enough. Now I'm gonna move on to the next one. Cuz maybe this will solve my problem, right? Instead of staying with the one thing that we had passion for to start with. We knew it was a great idea, we knew we could do it, but sometimes it has to be tweaked. Sometimes we have to be a little different.
Sometimes our audience needs something a little bit more or different from us to be able to answer their needs. And so being able to focus more intently on, on the one thing until that thing. Meets the goal right before you move on to the next thing. So that's, so in my personal business that is what I finally figured out.
And I will tell you, it was very painful, when I looked at all the products that I had, and I didn't wanna [00:08:00] get rid of any of them. They're like all like little babies. And I thought, okay I have all these little babies, but I love all my babies. How am I supposed to get rid of one? How am I supposed to throw the babies out and just keep one baby?
It was very tough to do. It took a lot of intentional thinking to decide which baby to keep and that the other ones may be great ideas, but not now. And a lot of times too, as creators and really ambitious people, we have a tendency to create. We love to create, but we can't make a million dollar business out of it.
If we just continue to create, but we don't foster one at a time to make it highly successful before we start to foster the next thing. So that's been just most recently. And I tell you, I had about the stress, like the most stressful 30 days of my life. When I said it pretty much burned down my business, I combined a lot of things together.
I created one really solid master offer for my [00:09:00] agents that would provide everything that they needed or that I could tell at the moment that they needed, and then tweaked that one. And I'm just gonna continue to tweak that until that thing is gonna make a million dollars, then I will move on to the next product and just hold myself back with it requires a great deal of clarity in your purpose.
What it is that you're trying to do.
Shawn Buttner: Oh, that's amazing. I love that. And as someone that's been doing the same thing in my own business and something I felt like I've been doing since I've been certified, since forever ago trying to just find the language of how I help people and how that connects to who I am as a person.
And I could share a little bit later on how the podcast has actually helped me focus and shift that. But I'm curious then. So as you said, you had all these babies and you had to pick your favorite kids, and nobody wants to say, oh, I have a favorite child, but we all know, , we, I was the favorite kid growing up, between me and my brother.[00:10:00]
Shout out to Devin, but could you maybe go in more into that decision making process or how did you know when something was a little bit closer to what your purpose was versus a great idea? That maybe would be better for someone else with a different experience? Or focus, like how did you really narrow down the millions of amazing things and ideas that you had into this now new conglomeration of, combining your businesses.
Lisa Binggeli: Yeah, for sure. So one of the first things that I did was actually sat down and listened to my agents, listened to the things. So the people that I was serving I, I didn't need to sit back and predetermine what their needs were. I needed to ask them what their needs were, right? How could I best serve them?
So there was that. So coming up with, okay, what is it that they need in their business and what kind of coaching do they need and what product do they need? The next part of that was I had to get in touch with [00:11:00] what, like why I was doing what I was doing. That was one of the biggest pieces, was the clarity piece for me in remembering.
Why I started this business in the first place. Who it was that I was serving and how I wanted to serve them. Because what started happening for me was as I created all these different businesses, right? And then you start to look at the dollars and you look at how much you're selling, and all of a sudden your focus changes and your cha your focus is now on, oh, this product made this much money, this product made this much money.
And I was looking at the dollar figures and I was ignoring what the needs of the people are, but also why I started doing this in the first place. And it wasn't because of the money. . And so sometimes we have to be careful. We place a goal, so Sure. My goal is to make a million dollars, right?
That's my first benchmark was to make a million dollars. And and as I focused on that goal, I was focusing too hard on that goal. [00:12:00] It was overriding. My focus of why I started serving people in the first place. So while it's great to have goals or benchmarks that we wanna hit in our business, I would call it more of a benchmark.
It's a spot that you hit, but it's not something that you're so focused on that's what drives your actions. Because when that's what drives your actions, at least for me, when that's what drives my actions, they're not the most authentic actions and they're not the best actions that I can be able to take to serve with the highest purpose that I can for my clients.
Shawn Buttner: I, I absolutely love that. Being someone that is from, like the tech world and software, one of the things that I noticed in organizations is the fact that if you measure the wrong things, you don't get the outcomes you want, or you get these weird outcomes you never expected. So like focusing on, Hey, I'm gonna make a million dollars.
It's different than, [00:13:00] I wanna help a hundred real estate agents grow their businesses, help their communities and families, right? There's a emotional difference between, and you make different decisions depending on what that main focus is, or if you don't have secondary objectives, like the mission thing.
So could you share maybe how that realization shifted how you felt about your business or your life, or maybe explore the emotional side of that switch of focus?
Lisa Binggeli: Yeah, for sure. So I guess the word I would put to it is grounded. I came back and felt more grounded, so clarity was the first thing I was seeking, and now I feel more grounded.
The one thing that I teach my agents and I've always done in my own personal real estate business is that when you focus on serving, , the byproduct of you focusing on service is a paycheck. When you focus on a paycheck, people feel like a paycheck, right? That, that [00:14:00] comes across. And I've always done my real estate business that way.
And I know, so I've know that, and I've done that for eight years. I'm a million dollar, gross agent and, per year. And I lost touch with that, and I did it in that business. And I'm, I didn't transfer that over to this business. I started losing that. And so it, it never fails that when you focus on the service part of things, you will always receive the byproduct of, the paycheck or the reward or whatever it is that you're looking for.
That just comes as a result of the actions that you're taking. But the heart that you put into. And so I don't know if that really actually answered your question, but I think it's really important to note in any business that we do. I think that's what makes most businesses successful or the most successful businesses in my eyes, is when they actually, you can tell that they care about the people that they're serving.
Whether it's a store. We can go into a store and we know the stores that actually cater to us or take care of us [00:15:00] or have better customer service or help you pick out your pants or whatever it is, right? We have a tendency to, to want that connection and feel that love, which then brings you back.
Again, it brings you wanting to consume that product or learn from that person because they genuinely want to serve you. And so I think in any business that's a hundred percent key. And that's what I remind, reminded myself of is that's what I did in the other business, that I grew to a million dollars.
So why am I not doing that in this business and I'm teaching everybody else to do it. Like I need to listen to what I'm teaching and I need to do that. The same here. It's just funny that when we transfer or try a new start in a new field, right? , a coaching business is not my real estate business for sure.
I coach on real estate and mindset, but still it's a different type of business. And even though we've built something and been wildly successful at, already, we are starting over with something [00:16:00] new. And you still have to remember there's all those lessons that you still have to learn along the way.
We don't jump to the end just cuz we were successful here. We don't jump and just ma magically become successful in the new business. We have to grow and start all over again. And just being aware of that is really important.
Shawn Buttner: Yes. Having run a business that was really analytical or like being in a field that was analytical and now going into coaching where you're dealing with people like computers and people are not the same of course.
And yeah that like beginner's mindset of, you're not gonna have the same level of competence or the same level of results. I naively when I left my business thought ah, in two years I'll have this all figured out and it'll be right where I was when I left and all that.
And that has not been the case, yeah. And it reminds me very clearly, but that's not gonna
Lisa Binggeli: be the case. Yeah, no, that, that brings up a good point too though, because what one of the other things that I [00:17:00] realized in this journey recently was the deadlines that we put on ourselves.
And like you just said okay, in two years I'm gonna have this flourishing business in two years. What happens when you get to year two when you haven't met that, quote unquote deadline that you provided for yourself? It usually throws us for a loop. . And we usually think, okay.
That's when we start to introduce the thoughts in our head that I'm a failure and I'm not doing something right and I didn't do this fast enough. And then you go into a little bit of panic mode or you start pulling triggers on different products and things and trying something new because it must not have worked.
Yeah. And and a lot of times we don't have to change our goal, but we can change the timeline to met, to meet that goal, that measurement. And remember that's just something that we made up. . Like we arbitrarily just decided one day that within two years that I'm gonna, make a million dollars a year in my business.
And it's just a completely fabricated, made up number. . But we put so much emphasis on it and we hold ourself to that [00:18:00] number and then all that does is create disappointment for us. . Some people it may drive, but for most people it just creates a feeling of failure and then disappointment, which then leads to inaction.
And then we slow down on growing our business because we feel like garbage. Yeah. So being able to recognize the things that we're doing to ourselves and what the results are that we're getting. And if we don't like the results that we're getting, we need to just change the way that we think about 'em.
, change it to something that's a lot more motivating. Makes us feel better so that we wanna continue to press forward. Okay, I've done so, I've done this well so far. Look at all the things I've accomplished. I haven't met my goal yet, but I will be. There's no deadline. And I had to tell myself that.
Why? Why is there a deadline? There's not a deadline , right? I could take the next 10 years and grow the business as quickly or slow as they want, but there's no deadline to it. I'm just gonna focus on serving people. How can I wake up today and best serve people today? What do they need from me today?
[00:19:00] And just that really, that change in the mindset, the change in the way that I'm talking to myself and thinking about it has made a huge difference in how I'm serving my community.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah. I love that, that of course you are the nine shift coach, so like that makes sense that you talk about shifting mindsets.
Yeah. . But, and it is so important in the chpc, the high performance coaching work that we do. So I, I'm curious then Is there a, how can I, trying to combine five different ideas in my head into one. Is there a time when you failed and it had a surprising result that you hadn't even thought about either related to your purpose or something in life in general?
Lisa Binggeli: So I don't know if I I'm trying to think of when, I failed. I failed many times. Failing's a good thing. Yeah. So trying and failing means that we tried something, it didn't work and we're just gonna try it a different way or try again. Just most recently I [00:20:00] waited for, it was Black Friday, and everybody kept saying, you're gonna do a Black Friday deal.
What are you gonna do? And I'm like, yeah. I got nothing. Like I, I couldn't think of anything that I thought would be valuable enough. And I had thought to myself, ah, there's gonna be ton of people in their inbox, and so I'm not gonna be another one of those people in their inbox, and so just screw it.
I'm not even gonna deal with it. And then the night before Thanksgiving, I thought, you know what? I have all these, I have some marketing playbooks that I teach in for real estate. And I'm like, I'm gonna just, I'm gonna put 'em on discount and I'm gonna offer those, what a day? Let's do seven days of deals.
And so I started out, every day I'd write an email, provide a different deal every day. And it was amazing the response that I got, the number of people that needed those trainings that needed that. And so when I was willing to fail, I wasn't really counting up, okay, if I sell X amount, I'm gonna make this much money.
Ill make it worth it, or whatever. It was. Okay, I'm just gonna try this thing. If I fail. Oh, if I put the emails out there, oh if they don't want my product, that's [00:21:00] okay. But threw it out there and sure enough, like the response was phenomenal and did that every single day. I think just being willing to fail.
So I guess I don't count like anything that I've done, even if I've done something and I don't get a response to it, or if I go to teach a class, cuz I'll do free trainings once a month. , sometimes I have a lot of people show up. Sometimes I don't have very many people show up. I serve, who shows up.
If I have two people to talk to, I do. If I have a hundred people to talk to, I do. I can learn, we can learn from everything that we do. So nothing really is a failure. Yeah. I don't, nothing's a failure to me. It's just something that I tried that did or didn't work well. And then that just gathers data.
I've become, like Brennan Burchard says I'm a scientist. Like I tried some things and the things didn't work. Now I know what things to try different. I'm testing it to see what's gonna work. And the only time we fail that we truly fail is when we quit. Like, when we just stop [00:22:00] and we say, I guess this'll never work.
And we just completely give up. That right there, that's failure.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah. You miss a hundred percent of the shots you don't take. Yeah. So yeah. I love that. It reminds me of early on in my tech career, my first manager after I like totally screwed up this project he's Hey, you're doing great.
And I was like, was not expecting that from, after like I crashed the system or something, like it was down for three hours pulling my hair out, like super stress. And he is if you are making mistakes, then you're pushing yourself outta your comfort zone, and it's not a problem until you're making the same mistakes over and over.
That means you're not learning to tie in what you were saying that cause I keep trying to ask a question to get a story. Oh, I was really like discouraged. Discouraged. Or there's a big shift here, and you're like no, it's a learning thing. And so I have a feeling that [00:23:00] we could probably spend a whole day trying to dig for that story.
And maybe
Lisa Binggeli: just, oh, go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say, I will say that for a while while I was in this transition of trying to find clarity and trying to really find purpose again about, gosh, two days of a week out of every week. I would be depressed. I would let something hit me. It would get me down.
And I would literally the self-talk was, oh my gosh, I like, I'm failing. This isn't gonna work. What the crap am I doing? Why am I starting this business like now look what I've done, right? I've got all these people that are learning from him following, and, oh my gosh, now I can't stop. Just the list goes on and on.
And it was happening about two days out of every week, cuz it'd be one day it would start and the next day it would carry over until I'd pull myself out of it and then I'd have to move on. I'd be happy again. I'd make some progress, and then it would hit again, right? . And during that time, I did something that was [00:24:00] really helpful.
So this would help any listeners out there. I did what's called a thought download. So I would wake up and I would write down every thought that I was having. Usually it wasn't first thing in the morning, but by about 10 or 11 o'clock is when it all would hit me, and I would write down everything with no judgment, no censoring, nothing, just brain dump onto a piece of paper.
Every thought that I was having, right? Once they were out of my head and I could look at them, I could be able to recognize like what was going on with me and were they true and start to challenge the thoughts that I was having. Are these things really true or am I feeling this way because of, something else that was eye opening. And also to wake up and have a page this long of every thought I was having, and nearly every single one was negative. about my business when I would wake [00:25:00] up. It was sad, right? And when I look at it like this is sad. But to recognize that's what was in my head.
Because if we don't get it out of our head, we just continue to circulate on these stories. And the more that we think about them, the more we believe they are true. And they are just thoughts that we're having about our business. So we can choose to think the power lies in the fact that we can choose to think whatever we want.
And I can choose to think that my business is doing phenomenal, whether I'm making $4,000 or $40,000, right? I can choose to think $4,000 as a success. I can choose to think 40,000. I can choose. I can choose to think whatever I want. But being aware, finding that clarity, that's like the word of the month for me.
clarity and being grounded, finding that clarity, but recognizing like what I'm actually thinking. And understanding and realizing those things aren't true. They're fears. There's things that I'm [00:26:00] ruminating on, but they're not necessarily true, helps get rid of them so much faster and helps me to move on and break out of the cycle a lot faster.
Shawn Buttner: That's amazing. I have a similar technique that I talk about a lot where I was sitting at my first job super stressed, and I would wake up and have this like mantra of I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job doing this exact thing where eventually I'm like, there's gotta be a better way.
This isn't a good thing. I don't wanna think this way, but that's the intrusive thought. So I carry a journal and when I pop up, I take a five minute break, I just write down I hate my job, I hate my job, I hate my job. And then finally I'm like, okay, like now that I've identified that, like I can shift the language so it's not as emotionally like.
Demoralizing. . And so I would force myself to write, I don't love my job yet 10 times. Just to have a physical action to shift that thought and it was amazing how much better I would [00:27:00] feel and like just that shift in language, to get it out on the page. I we'll get into maybe some techniques on how to shift that thought, for you later, but I'm curious we might have already touched on this, but I'll ask the question anyway. Is there a mindset or belief that you hold on failure leading to purpose that other people don't commonly have? And we might have, I think you might have opened with
Lisa Binggeli: that, but maybe I would say yeah, attributing this to my parents, They never told us we couldn't do something.
We were never taught. Like we weren't like some like high to nothing. And we were just normal family lived on a really small budget. We ate a lot of baked potatoes in our family. We're from Idaho, . We were always on a budget like, but I did have an entrepreneurial father. And no matter what weird ideas I ever had growing up I started cleaning houses [00:28:00] when I was like 16.
I was like, I can clean houses. I can clean my own house. I can clean somebody else's as if they'll pay me, right? And then I'm like, oh, I can look at these chairs. I can make these chairs. Somebody will pay me for that. So I'll do that. Like I always had some random weird idea of a business that I would start.
Always did it while I was a stay at home mom for years. I always had something, but I was never told it wasn't possible. And I think that is a huge key to. Failing because I don't attribute there's failure just doesn't exist. I just, we can choose to try things if we want to, and I always know that there's a way, if I really wanted something to work, there's always a way If it's something that I care about, if I love it, right?
There's always a way, and I know that has carried over into my real estate business specifically because there's always a way to fix everything, right? It's easy to keep deals together because there's always a way, [00:29:00] there's, I don't surrender. I'm a little bit stubborn that way, but I don't surrender because there is, there's more than one way to fix something.
There's more than one way to grow a business. There's more than one way to make changes. There's more than one way to live our lives. There's. Something else. And so asking, I think being very aware of that, but also being willing to challenge yourself, challenge the thoughts that you have, but also ask questions.
Oh, we're to this point now. What else could there be? Oh, I'm stuck in this spot in my life. Okay, what other options would there be? What could I do? I'm not happy. Okay, I'm not happy, but what would make me happy? What do I wanna do that would make me happy? So we don't, we're not stuck. We don't have to be stuck.
And I think that's the power in that. Is a lot of people, they feel like they're stuck. They feel like they're caged and they don't have to be caged. They have a choice. And some people need to be taught that. Some people weren't told. You can [00:30:00] do whatever the heck you want. Go out the world is your oyster.
Go for it. Like we support you. Go do the thing. Some people were told to think small. and some people were told that, oh, if you do this thing, it's dangerous. Don't go do that thing. Don't go start a business. It's dangerous. You're gonna fail at that, or you're gonna lose money, or you're gonna whatever.
And people will listen to that and it stops them from growth. And that's huge, I think to break out of that and recognize that our families, I know this may be off topic, I don't know, the way that we grew up and the families that we had and the things that we were told, it's not all truth.
It's just somebody's idea that they had that they were imposing on us . And we like, so dumbly, because we're young in our youth, even our low twenties, somebody tells us something, we're like, oh, that must be true. Because you told me that it's definitely true, right?
Not true. I think the youth of today, I think one of the most amazing things, even though our youth can be a pain in the butt, I've got three of them, they don't. [00:31:00] And I don't know if it's just my kids, but it seems like youth in general, they don't just take, they don't just accept people's like direction.
And you hear like really older people say oh, they're being disrespectful, or they're like, whatever. No, they are inquisitive. They're asking the questions. They wanna know for themselves. They're gonna test it out and they're gonna try it. They don't just blindly say, oh, you told me this is the way it's supposed to be.
Okay, I guess I'll do that. And I think it's a phenomenal thing. As frustrating as it can be for us as parents, , I think it's a phenomenal thing that we can teach our children and allow them to ask questions to explore, to be able to make their own choices and come to their own conclusions, because they're stronger people for by the time they're done.
As, again, as irritating as it is, as an adult mother, when I'm like, but do this thing. And they're like, I don't wanna do that thing. I'm gonna do this way. Anyway, , that's a bit off topic, but it's, I think [00:32:00] it's a really important point in finding purpose and for the kids finding purpose too.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah. I love that idea because it's creating the environment for people to be curious and explore. If I had to sum up that, it sounds like there is an aspect of you that is very curious of how the world works. And so when you have that curiosity, everything is just something to figure out. And it's not a roadblock, it's oh, I'm not happy.
I can do something about this. Like, why is that? What would be different? I love that, that thought pattern, , and it's admirable, as you said, as frustrated as it is to, it takes a probably a little bit of courage and a little bit of faith in that things will work out when you see your kids maybe struggling or they'll, they can figure it out even if I've figured this out before, this is how I did it. And they're like, no, not like that. As a business owner and as someone that [00:33:00] coaches other people could you maybe talk a little bit more or is there anything more than just having that belief that, you have to ask questions and just to support people in whatever ideas they have to entrust them to learn as they go along?
Lisa Binggeli: Yeah. I think that one of the deeper parts of it is if some people have a hard time identifying like maybe what the thought pattern is that they are having. So if you've got somebody, if somebody's listening and they're feeling stuck and they're like, yeah, but I don't know what the problem is, right?
The next best thing to do is to figure out how you're feeling. Because most of us can get in touch with how we're feeling, whether we're feeling unmotivated or we're depressed, or we're excited or anxious or any of those feelings that we can identify. It's a little easier to identify how we feel.
Once we identify how we feel, we can then backtrack and go, okay, what is it that's making me feel like that? And a lot of times [00:34:00] what happens is we are attributing like what someone else did, or, something that happened in our business. Those are things that we actually can't control.
I can't control if I send something out and put an offer out if anyone actually buys it. That's not something I can control, right? And so when we have feelings, sometimes we'll be, I dunno if you've ever heard somebody say this as the best example. But that person made me mad. That person pissed me off.
We like to say that a lot, right? I've said it before too. And it's but did they really, did they like physically come over and there's no physical way for them to actually make you mad. They did something and you had a thought about that and that's what created your anger. . And so breaking that down a little bit further so that you can actually understand that what you think is what's creating your feeling, not the thing that happened, right?
We can't control the thing that [00:35:00] the circumstances that happened in our lives. We can't control those. We can't control the people. And the sooner we realize that's where the freedom comes in. And being able to control, quote unquote control, right? But real, be able to take ownership over our own feelings and over our thoughts that are creating those.
And what I coach with my agents too and anybody that I coach is, our thoughts are creating our feelings. And our feelings are what drive our actions and our actions dictate and provide our results. If we don't like the results that we're getting in our life. A lot of people go look at the actions like, oh, but I need to do this and this, and I didn't do this and I didn't do this.
And we start to try to, a lot of coaches try to coach on the action line let me give you 10 more things that you can be able to do in your business to try to make it better, right? When you didn't need coaching in your action line, because your actions are a byproduct of what you're thinking.
About your [00:36:00] business. So we have to go fix the way that we're thinking first before we can even introduce some more things into our action line. Anyway, I don't know if that answers your question. I know I go different directions, but I had a client I was coaching, not an agent yesterday but a business owner.
Late night coaching call 11 o'clock. She's in Africa. And anyway, so I was coaching her last night and it was an amazing conversation, but she's a very she's had a lot of accomplishments in her life, in her business and her current business, but she started something new and it's uncomfortable.
. And so she's feeling uncomfortable. She's feeling like she's failing. And what it looked like was she was thinking, so what she had done, I'll give you the example. She had four people that showed up to a training. She did. She had a paid training. She had four people sign up. Okay. Her thought about that was that she was a failure.
She's only four people showed up. I'm a failure. And when [00:37:00] she feels like a failure, she feels hopeless. She's discouraged. She's hopeless. , which leads her to stop working on her business. She becomes like inactive, she's disconnected, she doesn't wanna talk to people, which then she's proving that she's failing.
The results that she gets from that is, is failure, right? . And so she's yeah, but how do you let go of that? How do you let go of feeling like a failure? She's I was a failure. I was a, and she believed that story that she was telling herself. And and so what we did was you have to replace that thought of, I feel like a failure was something that you can really believe.
Cause what we try to do is we try to thought swap. People are like, oh, just tell yourself everything's okay. Just, my favorite, just forgive people. And I'm like, really? Just forgive magically. You have to replace the thought that you're having with another thought that you can actually believe.
and if it's something you can believe, that's what's going to create a different feeling, which [00:38:00] is going to help change the results that you're getting. So for her, I actually have it on my board. Where is that? Hold on, . This was her last night. Oh yeah. Okay. You probably can't see that. Can you on the thing
Shawn Buttner: a little bit, like for the people on the podcast, we'll have to describe it.
Let her listen.
Lisa Binggeli: I'll describe it. Okay, there we go. Okay. So her circumstance, she had four people sign up for her class, right? , her thought that she could actually believe, and we had to like really reach for this was a success and I learned so much. , and she's yeah, I can believe that.
I'm like, great. How do you feel when you think that She's I feel motivated. And when I'm motivated I get out and I work on my business and I'm creative and I have high energy and I'm present and I communicate. Now she's making it possible to succeed in her business. That is the power of the way that we think about things is that simple little thought line instead of telling herself that she failed, swapping that out, but with something that she can truly believe just [00:39:00] something different and not focusing on that negative thing.
Right on. Yeah, that's the power in continuing to move forward and really diving in to be able to find your purpose and push yourself out of that negative space that we get stuck in a lot of
Shawn Buttner: times. Right on. So again, for people that are listening and weren't able to see the chart Lisa had CT a r the acronym up and again that was circumstance, thought, feeling, action result.
That's correct. Yep. So that's the quick framework should just walk through with this particular client, which is super powerful. And I love the idea of. The, like upstream change, that's how I was interpreting it, where because as a coach too, like it's never the thing that you're doing, it's how you think and feel and are responding to it.
So that is super, super powerful.[00:40:00] So I'm curious then we'll get into maybe a little bit more of the action implementation things. But is there something that about fear and or about failure and purpose that you could share with the audience here today that maybe you haven't in a training program or other podcast or other interview you've done?
Lisa Binggeli: Something about failure and purpose that I haven't shared. Oh, you're making me dig deep now. Let's see. Yes, I know. Making that means
Shawn Buttner: it's working.
Lisa Binggeli: That's working. Yeah. . I think if we remember with failure and purpose that there's not one right way I think is really important.
We like to focus on like the one, especially with our instant gratification, Instagram ads, Facebook ads, Google ads, all the things that we see that everyone has, like the magic solution. They have the [00:41:00] magic bullet. You know that's gonna solve all your problems and this is the key and this is how it's gonna work for you.
And to realize that, again, that's just somebody's idea, but that there's not one way, like that way could work with you, like for you. But a different way could work for you. It doesn't mean that you are doing something wrong because you didn't do it the same way that somebody else did. I think my greatest lesson when I learned that is when, oh gosh, I was 20.
How old was I? I was probably like 28, 29. It was the first time I really started going to counseling and I was having my early midlife breakdown. I don't know what you'd call it, but I had three small children and I had, I got married when I was 18. Wow. And so I didn't, I, yeah, I, and I went to college for a semester and I was like, oh, screw that.
Nah, I'd rather have kids. And I just, I was ready to be the mom and that's what I really wanted. Anyway so when I was about 20, [00:42:00] 27, 28, I started like getting a lot of depression and I started going to counseling. And when I went to counseling, what kind of drew out of me was. That I did it wrong.
Like all of these other people went to college and they got a degree and they had all these, they had the jobs and they had all these other things behind them. And I was like, I'm just a mom which is what I wanted, but yet I was feeling like I did something wrong. And I remember the counselor said to me very specifically, she goes I didn't get married till I was 35 and then I had a kid and or two.
And she's so did I do it wrong? I'm like, no, I guess not. I was in my head thinking that there was a way that life was supposed to be lived and that I wasn't doing it the right way. That I wasn't getting the result that I wanted. I had the results, but you know what I'm saying, right?
Yeah. Like I was depressed in anyway. I [00:43:00] thought that there was something wrong with the way that I did it. And just recognizing at that point, at a young enough age that there's not one right way to do it. So we're not ahead and we're not behind. We just are like, I am where I am right now, and that's great.
That's good enough, right? That makes me happy and I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. I think that is the biggest thing that I can tell myself when it comes to avoiding feeling like I'm failing or avoiding feel like I'm not fulfilling a purpose, is that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.
I do my best every day, and sometimes my best is I just didn't do the dishes for two days and I maybe wore sweatpants for two days. Like whatever it is, right? That's good enough. That's what I can handle for those two days. And. I'm [00:44:00] exactly where I'm supposed to be and exactly what I'm supposed to be doing, because anything else that we put on ourselves is just something that's made up by us or by somebody else, or by society, or by Instagram or Facebook or whatever.
And none of it's true. And it doesn't serve us.
Shawn Buttner: Yes. That is so great. It, I love that, there's this phrase, so I lived in Arkansas for a while for a job, and there's a phrase that I heard there that is disturbing, but Oh encapsulates like there's no single way to skin a
Lisa Binggeli: cat.
Oh yeah. My mom says that. Yep.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah. And it's like, why are you skinning cats? That's terrible. But like the idea that there's more than one way to go about it, I think is really good. And I'm also picking up that there's like a sense of more of a deeper presence when you believe in that, like, When you're not, when you're where you're supposed to be.
And that's okay. And, you're doing that you're more in the moment than [00:45:00] thinking about, I'm not where I should have been. Like, I should have made different choices. So you're in the past or I'm not going where I want to go, which is that kind of like future thinking. So I picked that up.
Does that seem true?
Lisa Binggeli: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. Because what happens when we think those other things, it doesn't help us at all. Usually what it does is has us detract from spending time with our families. It occupies space in our brain that doesn't need to be, used for that. And it leaves us thinking every day that we're, we haven't achieved, we haven't done this thing.
There's, it's like we can see it and we wanna reach it, but we can't get there. Like we can't quite get to it. And living that way is not any fun. I don't know what you think, but Yeah, I would rather. I would rather live and have fun and be happy in whatever it is that I'm choosing to do instead of beating myself up.
By telling myself, but I haven't reached the thing and I wanna reach it and there it is and I'll get it by next week. Or I have to, I have to [00:46:00] keep working because of this or whatever it is. If it's never enough, that's a really painful way to live. Yeah. Really painful way to live.
I definitely choose not to live that way no matter how much I have. Don't have. Even when, even when we were single family income and I was home with kids and we didn't have a lot of money. It still was always, it was enough. It was great. How do we make with what it is that we have, how do we make it the best that it is?
And that's good enough and it was fine. And it brings a lot of happiness and joy in life to be able to find that place to be. Okay.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah. So another thing that came up, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, cause it also sounded as part of this story that we haven't talked about, that you could have multiple purposes in life when you don't have to have one single focus at a time.
So the idea that you really wanted to be a mom and the best mom or whatever, all the things that [00:47:00] go along with that, and then you achieved it and now you're like now what? , how much of that depression or that bad feeling was one you, that being the dog that caught the car, right?
You're like, okay this is not as cool as I thought it was gonna be. , or I'm very proud of what I did, but now I'm searching for that next
Lisa Binggeli: thing. Yeah. Yeah. And maybe finding a place of content but not complacency. Yeah. I think too I think that, if we're, there's a fine balance in not trying to focus on something so much that you let the balance go in your life, right?
Your balance with your family, the balance with your physical health, your mental health balance with work. And so keeping that in check is very important to where you're still fulfilling all of those buckets that you need to fill in your life. . So I think that's a constant process because sometimes that can be outta balance.[00:48:00]
Sometimes it needs to be a little bit outta balance. Sometimes it's heavier on family, sometimes it's heavier on work. But that doesn't remain consistently out of balance is important. For myself, when all of my kids went to school, And I found myself, we lived in the country and we'd just moved to the country like a year prior.
All my kids were in school fulltime. And I legit, like they were, the thing that I focused on, that was the thing I was quote unquote achieving right? Was . That was my purpose. And when they all left, I found myself crying about every single day because I was lonely and I was getting depressed and I, I didn't have purpose anymore.
And I did that for about a month, , maybe not every day crying, but I very vividly remember my poor me moment where I went and laid on the couch and everybody's gone and I was legit out loud, sobbing, . And I was like, this is so not bad. And I was totally depressed. And I, at that [00:49:00] moment, I had this talk with myself and I said, okay, Lisa what do you want?
What do you wanna do? . And I was like, okay I never asked myself that because what I did was take care of my children. That's what I wanted, that's what my job was. And so I seriously, and I get emotional about it because I really remember just laying on the couch and I was like, what do I want?
And I was like do you wanna be a doctor? I just, I opened it up and I was like, sky is the limit. If you could do anything in your life, what would it be? No limitations. Do you wanna go to school? Yeah. Do I don't know why I said, do you wanna be a doctor? That was dumb. I don't, I can't faint at blood.
That's but I just asked myself, what do I love? What do I wanna do? And I loved houses. I was like, I love service. And I always loved the market and I loved pricing. I just swapped from pricing, groceries to now pricing houses, right? . It's just something that I love to watch and do.
And I was like that's what I love. And and [00:50:00] I would love to do that, got on the phone, I called a friend of mine that's a broker, and I was like, if I got my license, would you hire me? And he was like, oh heck yeah, I'd hire you. And I was like, okay, great. Caused my husband. I was like, I'm signing up for real estate school.
And he's okay, whatever you wanna do. He's always been very supportive. Okay. And and that kind of started that leg of my journey which was into selling houses. And I loved it so much. Talk about imbalance. I loved it so much. I was a bit outta balance for the first few years in my business.
Working so much because I was so engaged and just like eating it up. It was like drinking from a fire hose because I'd been home for so long, I think. And as a mom and a stay at home. We definitely go through this phase where we lose ourselves because we become whatever our kids need us to be, and we focus so much on them that we don't develop ourselves very much.
I didn't develop myself and then all of a sudden everybody leaves and you're like, who am [00:51:00] I? And what am I good for besides folding laundry and cleaning the kitchen and, helping my kids. And so I did have a, I had a few rough years of imbalance where I worked so much because I was like, I loved it and I loved feeling that new purpose and finding myself, and I was like, oh, I'm good at something.
I'm good at something besides being domestic, this is so exciting, right? So that was a bit of imbalance for me and I finally figured out how to level that one out to where I could balance my family better with my business and but everything for a reason. Like it taught my kids that you can grow a business, it showed them that I could be mom and that I could be mom and run a business.
And one time now I'll get emotional. Geez. I remember my daughter, so my kids play sports. Okay. And every sport of course, right? Two to three times a week we have games. And in the summer they have summer ball. So two to three times a week during the summer, they'll pay summer ball. [00:52:00] I go to everything.
I may be that mom that's on my laptop in the corner plugged in, because that's the only plug I could find. I'm out of battery, but I, writing an offer on a property. But I go to every single one of my kids' games. I think I've missed two ever. And my daughter said to me once, sometimes she used to be like, mom, you work all the time.
And then she said to me, her friend her friend told her, How awesome it was that her mom got to come to everything, because I was the o like one of the only moms that actually could show up to all of my kids' activities, all the games and everything. And they were like, they were jealous. And I think that right there taught my daughter like, oh, I, I should be grateful for that, like my mom does, right?
. Anyway, I know that's a bit off topic too, but, and it's all about purpose and balance in our family and our lives and finding like the work that we do, I always want to make sure that whatever I do, I can fit in what was my first love, [00:53:00] which is being a mom, right? And Sylvia be available for my kids.
That's always been number one. But then also being able to fit in, like the growth that I personally have as well. The things that I discovered, like I'm freaking good at selling houses, like . I wanted to sell five houses my first year and I sold 48. Just because I loved doing it. Yeah. It was like over the top, like phenomenal.
And I just kept selling and selling every year until I'm selling 120 houses in a year all by myself. It's phenomenal. But to know that I'm good at something. So anyway, so it's a cool balance. So every different area in our life I think has we're shifting, right? Nothing is ever staying the same. It's like they say if you like put a floating candle in the, in a lake, like it doesn't sit in one spot. Like it's always gonna move like backwards or forwards. There's no standing still at all.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah. What a beautiful story. I just wanna honor [00:54:00] that. And what comes up to me, and I'll just call it out, is just how much you.
Care about your family, how much you care about your personal growth, how much you care about your business and career. And the thought process of like never questioning oh, I have to give up one for the other. You embody this belief of I can figure this out and make it work. And there's maybe there's stumbles as you, you learn and okay, like you said, like maybe I was a little too focused on work and then needed to come back to this thing.
But I really admire your ability to find multiple purposes and then just wrap it up into who you are as a person and, having, talked with you outside of this conversation that, that also shows up there. So I just wanna say I, I just wanna honor that real quick. Thank you.
So on that note, if we're trying to think of other folks out there who Might be struggling with, [00:55:00] oh, to put these intrusive thoughts of oh, I'm not succeeding. I'm not really I'm not a success. I'm failing all the time. I'm not where I need to be. All these types of things. How do you have a quick method or set of habits or a couple of habits that would help people shift into a more like growth mindset, as we would probably say as coaches or a little bit more of that, that more motivated, positive, like moving forward type mindset.
Lisa Binggeli: .
Yeah. I'd say the life hacks, the hacks of the I use that have really helped me in my life is if you can't identify, sometimes we can't pin what what the cause of it is. , right? Sometimes it takes us a while if we're feeling like demotivated. It takes us a while to figure it out.
It's not quite as easy as oh, I'm just gonna look at my thoughts and decide that, oh, this is why I'm thinking this thing. Sometimes it takes us longer than that, so in the meantime, I don't give myself an option [00:56:00] to wake up and still do the things I'm supposed to do. It's not negotiable. So if I don't feel like getting outta bed, I have to, I still have to get bed if I don't feel like getting outta bed, and I know I have a hard time with it.
So like for me personally, you get through the winter months and it gets dark sooner and it's cold outside. I hate the cold, and I know for myself, if I don't get up and make myself do something, I just won't. I'll sleep in and sleep in, and then the days get I sleep in longer and longer. I don't know about any other entrepreneurs when nobody says you have to show up at the office at a certain time.
The sun doesn't come up and I might be sleeping in until eight 30 or night. So I give myself a schedule and I abide by my schedule. So I decide what should it really look like, what's realistic and okay, these are the days I'm gonna wake up. I'm gonna go get my exercise in, because I know for me, my mental health really [00:57:00] benefits from exercise.
So even if it's 30 minutes or 20 minutes or an hour, like I get up and I get my exercise in that I'm gonna feed myself some healthy food. It's really just the little step by step things if you're in a spot that you can't get yourself like out of. And then eventually as you do that and you feel a little bit better, at least physically, your mind can be able to start to identify like, why am I really feeling this way?
Or why am I bummed out? I think that's what helps me to move out of, cuz we don't know right away. I even for my Gosh, it was just a few weeks ago. Something totally was stressing me out, but I could not identify what it was for the life of me. I was like, I do not know why I'm feeling this way, but I feel like this.
And it's just, I couldn't figure it out. And I went for about, it was like seven or eight days, and finally one day it clicked and I was like, and that was a deadline thing. I was like, I'm putting these stupid deadlines on myself, , and it's making me anxious. Like [00:58:00] why? Why am I putting deadlines on myself like this?
It's not working, it's not helping. I need to get rid of that. But for all those days like that, I was bogged down. Just stick with the schedule, find the things, and just be in tune with what helps you, whether you like it or not. My husband's do I like the exercise? Maybe not, but Right. You feel better if you get up and just be very aware of how you react to things and what's good for you and what's not good for you.
Okay. And then, Abide by it.
Shawn Buttner: Right on. All right. So the, to break it down, there's this figure out what's happening and then the act like activating your body is what I'm hearing for you particular is really important for sorting it out. Is there anything is there another step? It feels like you're okay, you identify it, you're feeling good is there anything else to get you over that line?
Lisa Binggeli: Talk to someone. Get a [00:59:00] coached . Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's sometimes, unless we say it out loud, it doesn't, we can't get it out. We can't identify it either. So whether it's a counselor or a coach. My favorite my favorite description of coaching was somebody said, coaching is for like the future.
Coaching is to be able to move forward. We need counseling when we have something in our past that we need to deal with. That's damaging for us. But man, I went to counseling for, a long time and I got really tired of just talking about my problems because there was no real forward thinking and there was no like, here's some tools to be a better person, right?
And so I think that's where coaching is so amazing. Is you can get help with identifying what's going on with you and questions asked you to draw out those thoughts that you're having to, whether the light bulb can then go on and be like, oh yeah, that's the one that's causing my issue and I could, I didn't know it.
[01:00:00] Speaking it out loud is really helpful. That's why the thought download is really helpful too. Because it at least gets it outta your head and then you can be able to identify what it is and then come up with a plan of action for how you're going to combat that. So I guess that would be the next step too, is what's your plan of action?
If we don't like the way things are going, then what do we need to do differently to be able to get there. And in between that is, if you don't know quite yet, just keep forcing yourself to get up and moving, right? So that you can keep keep moving forward or at least. Staying stagnant or, or close to while you're trying to figure it out.
You just don't wanna tank yourself and like regress a lot.
Shawn Buttner: Yeah, that
Lisa Binggeli: my, my, my kids I'm happy that my kids have at least picked up this habit a little bit. I don't know if they picked it up for me or not, but as they've gone off to college my, my son was about four months in his second year and he messaged me one night and he is texting and he.
[01:01:00] Mom, I'm sleeping a lot and I'm, and he starts to identify, these are all the things that are happening and I think I'm depressed and I don't really wanna get outta bed, and what do I do? And it's okay, we've identified it. Now we're to say, okay, what are the things that can be helpful? How's your diet?
Maybe some exercise would help, and what's stressing you out about school? And how can you maybe position things differently if you need to? Or like then finding out some solutions to go with it. But being very aware of how you're actually feeling, to be able to identify those feelings is really key to solve it.
Yeah.
Shawn Buttner: That's super cool. And again, that's such a great example of the identifying and then working through the steps to get moving forward. So I got one more question for you. And I'm so thankful for this conversation. I have a couple pages of notes I always remembered.
It's, I always remember to tell people to write notes at the end of the podcast instead of the beginning, but[01:02:00] hopefully my audience has picked up on that. But if you could create a more meaningful revolution about something, what would that be? And maybe what would that look like? Trying this new question
Lisa Binggeli: out?
Oh, okay. More meaningful revolution. I think what's missing, at least in, in most industries, what's been missing and in my industry for sure, what's been missing is the heart of service. Really when I. Coach all of my agents. That is the biggest thing that I teach, and that's, I think what attract them to my style of coaching in general and my style of business is being able to serve other people genuinely.
And not just, again, not just focusing on whatever, like the byproduct the paychecks that we receive, but focusing on the service. And it's been lost in so many industries where people are just like, let me take your money. I'll just take your money. I don't, I don't [01:03:00] care if I help you. I don't care what people don't really get a rats, whatever, like about actually, The thought and the feelings of other people.
But creating relationships and providing great service to people I think is so important. And for any business owner for any neighbors, for any people that are your friends in your church, like anyone like service is so important and it's so fulfilling because you can't sit for too long in your own self pity when you're serving other people
Shawn Buttner: ever.
Yeah. That is so powerful. Nobody at the end of their life says, oh man, I wish you would've helped less people. Yeah. It's usually the. Yeah, it's such a powerful thing. I love that part of creating a meaningful revolution. Thank you for answering that, that question. Thank you for showing up and for sharing.
And I really love the, this topic [01:04:00] of, we didn't really talk about failure because we don't believe that failure really happens. It's something that helps you learn to propel you and find your purpose. So that, Lisa, thank you so much for being on the show. If there's if people wanted to follow up with you what's the best way to get in contact with you?
So we could put that in the show notes below.
Lisa Binggeli: Okay. Yeah. My, my website is agent leader.com and my podcast link is on there as well. And you can find me on socials at agent leader or agent leader Lisa on Instagram. Okay. And agent leader on YouTube.
Shawn Buttner: Okay. Right on. I'll have all those links below for you.
Good folks, again, thank you so much. This has been so much fun. And hopefully we will talk soon. So take care. Thank
Lisa Binggeli: you.[01:05:00]
