How to Start Over When You Don’t Know What to Do | Allison Maslan on Impact Theory

you know if your house is burning down you're not going to just bang the fire alarms that's not going to put the fire out you have to get to that burning ember so if someone is having fear or panic or worry get to when was the first time you felt this way what was really going on in your life at that time to show them that that's not what's happening now [Music] hey everybody welcome to impact theory our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right entrepreneur magazine called today's guest an entrepreneurial force she started building companies when she was just 19 and now already has 10 successful companies under her belt proving her brand of success can be replicated she's built businesses around her passions across a stunningly diverse array of industries including the beauty space homeopathy education software and jewelry manufacturing the key to her success she knows business realizing that there just weren't enough hours in the day to solve every problem through brute force she dedicated herself to understanding the mechanisms that underlie any successful business these insights allowed her not only to build her own mind-blowing string of winning companies but it also turned her into one of the most potent executors and advisors on the planet through her different endeavors she has serviced or guided some of the largest companies in the world including fortune 500 behemoths such as allstate merrill lynch ben and jerry's supercuts and many many more her more than three decades worth of experience in scaling companies has seen her covered by virtually every credible news outlet there is she's been featured by forbes success nbc cbs and cnn to name but a few and self-made magazine recently named her one of the top women entrepreneurs who inspire so please help me in welcoming the best-selling author of blast off and scale or fail the trapeze artist with nearly 20 years of high-flying experience the business whisperer herself allison maslin how you doing so great so good to have you oh my goodness i'm excited to be here awesome i'm excited to have you so i had heard even before we met i'd heard about your trapeze experience which is pretty insane my wife had a chance to try it and she came back absolutely raving about it why is that something that you wanted to do and you used it as such a powerful metaphor in the book why is it important and how's it helped you in business well i was a gymnast growing up and at that time i wasn't thinking about business but i had a gym coach that built a set of uneven bars in my backyard made out of plastic tubing and i used to flip around on those things for hours and hours on end and so as i became an adult and found out you could actually fly on the trapeze i was all over it and i found a five generation circus family and i've been training with them for 20 years wow do they have like a life philosophy or anything like a five generation just getting people to stick with something that long is already pretty incredible have you picked anything up from them definitely i mean dedication commitment persistence pushing the edge and also you know i've been doing it for 20 years and same thing with business it's not something that you do overnight you might hear otherwise on the internet but uh you know it's that overnight success story uh that took 20 years so talk to me about pushing the edge what do they mean by that or what do you mean by that i think pushing the edge is doing things differently it is seeing how far you can go and i remember you know going back to the gymnastics metaphor when you think of people like olga corbett if those remember and nadia comin each at the time nobody had ever scored a perfect 10. the thought that that could even be done they said was impossible and once nadia coming each did that then there was another perfect 10 and someone else did a perfect 10. so every time you can push your life a little bit further there's a breakthrough and then there's a door that opens and a whole new pathway opens up it's really interesting talk to me about what is it like the very first time you're gonna do the trapeze and you're climbing up what do you have to deal with what's running through your mind well when i think back to that first time i was terrified and look we're all human we all have fear so it's not about making the fear go away it's about facing the fear and jumping through it but when they said hep which means go my feet stuck to the platform and uh it didn't go i wasn't moving and so somebody on the board just kicked me off really literally put their foot behind my knees and i was flying but once i got about halfway up in the air i was like ooh that's that familiar feeling and from then i i was just hooked okay i have to ask so we live in a world where i think we're going to get a mixed reaction from them kicking you onto the thing but it really excites me and i feel like that's something that um a lot of people never get that in their life and so they they get stuck at that moment where they want to do it but just some primitive part of their brain is saying absolutely not what do you think about that are you glad they gave you that little kick yeah i kick my clients all the time i mean not uh literally yeah see okay now we're just gonna get into really weird waters but i find that this is really fascinating and i wonder myself so i had a moment not quite that cool but when i didn't want to leave for college and my mom all but kicked me out of the house and was like you are gonna go do this um and ended up being tremendously valuable in my life and i've thanked her profusely for refusing to let me back down how do you get your clients to push to that i'm sure that's something especially when it comes to business people are absolutely petrified of either embarrassing themselves and looking stupid or really losing money how do you help them over that hump well i really get to the core of what is driving that and i actually give credit to that as my life as a homeopathic physician and we might get to that a little bit later but in homeopathy which is a holistic type of medicine that treats the whole person you have to get to the core you know if your house is burning down you're not going to just bang the fire alarms that's not going to put the fire out you have to get to that burning ember so if someone is having fear or panic or worry get to when was the first time you felt this way what was really going on in your life at that time to show them that that's not what's happening now that's the past because we are driven by our unconscious mind 90 96 of our actions are from our unconscious mind which develops in the first you know three to seven years of life so we really need to get to that core if you just keep telling someone do it do it do it they might do it for a little while but they're not going to stick with it i'm deeply distressed by how much of our what i call frame of reference is determined that early in our life um is that a formal part of your coaching like do you really um track back and i ask because if you do i'd really love to know what's the process of questions or whatever that helps people identify that how often are people already aware and they don't want to talk and then how often is it they really don't realize that's what's driving them most people don't realize it i mean i'm sure i don't realize it in the moment it's not that you're going oh well that's an unconscious action and that's a conscious action right and i think you've got to test the waters a little bit some people are more open than others but most people really want change in their life they want to have that breakthrough they don't want to be in that stuck place and whether you're mentoring somebody you know on their health or their business uh you know it's if you can help pull back the curtain and help them see what they're capable of and that it's you know just a few steps in front of them you know they're more willing to to work with you on that now in your book you coin a phrase stuckness so how do you one is that just sort of where people come to you at like you know okay they're going to walk in the door they're going to be in a stuck place and then how do you get people out of that what's that kick to the back of the legs that really forces people to the other side well i get two types of clients ones that you know are stuck and they've just been hitting this wall for years you could be in business for 10 years 20 years and you had good traction for a while but you just can't get over that wall and every year comes december they're looking at the p l going here we are again or maybe just incremental growth you know or maybe the stuckness is about you know she's not really happy you know i've got success but is this all there is and then there are those others that are making good traction but they want to get to the top of the curve a lot faster let's take that five year plan and get it done in a year and so to get them unstuck it's it really is looking for each individual what are your obstacles you know if you could choose one or two things that would just excite you to get them out of the way what would they be and really dive right into that pain point and work to you know erase that what i love about the things that you put forward in the book and the really concrete highly tactical way that you walk people through things obviously comes from deep personal experience not the least of which is this stuckness notion walk us through um running yourself over with a car which is pretty fascinating when i first heard that i was like how do you do that and then how radically you allowed that to shift your life my daughter was really young at the time i was in a really unhappy marriage and i just felt like i was being run around by my life like i i just felt like i didn't have choices at that point and i had a lot of fear and one day i think this is the day the universe said we're really tired of you messing around here and we're just gonna give you a massive wake-up call and so it was like 3 30 or 4 in the afternoon and i'm with one of my biggest ad clients i'd been up almost all night working on a campaign and i go oh my god i forgot to pick up my daughter from daycare and you know anyone uh that is watching this has ever been the last parent to pick up their child from daycare you know it's kind of um you know i was wrapped with guilt and so i jump in the car and all i'm thinking of is i got to get my daughter i got to get my daughter so i'm racing to get her and the driveway was like on an incline like this at the daycare i jump out of the car and i s it starts rolling back as a ford taurus had really heavy doors and i jumped in like superwoman to try to push it back into park and the door was really heavy knocked my feet out from underneath me and pulled me underneath the car and the car pulled me it rolled over my legs and pulled me out into the middle of the street and because the street kind of went up like this right when it got to the top which it was literally at my face it rolled back and that's really what saved my life and uh in that moment that i knew that i was gonna make it i said that's it you know this is you know either it's a hell yes or in no way i'm out of here and i i said i have got to live a life that i'm passionate about i don't care how much money that i make because this is not success and i walked away from that business with nothing and i walked away from a difficult marriage set out in the world as a single mom no money no idea what i was going to do and really happier than i've been in years wow that's phenomenal what advice do you have for people on the marriage side that are in a similar situation it's not working out anymore um so many people stay in a relationship because they just cannot face the either acknowledging that they couldn't make it work or the what if what if i never find love again or you know whatever the scenario is that they're playing in their head what did you learn through that experience that you can pass on yeah i mean it actually was kind of similar to the business because what i would tell people is never settle in your life and especially you know with business or passion or opportunities it's never going to be the right time people stay in a career even that they hate for years because they're so afraid of what's on the other side i mean in a in a marriage if there's a little more i had a have a beautiful daughter and she was seven years old so it was a big decision we did a lot of counseling there was a lot of processing and again same thing i really felt like i gave it everything that i could and i don't regret it i don't regret that relationship i that was my growing up time there were a lot of lessons i chose that relationship and i feel that i needed to go through those things that time to bring me where i am today to give me the resilience that i have today yeah resiliency that that's uh probably one of the most important traits that i think somebody can have if they want to be successful at anything let alone being an entrepreneur it's critical because that's the only way you're going to be able to learn and keep pushing and you know bring together all the lessons that you're learning to build something what would you say is the number one trait that's made you successful persistence why persistence i say persistence is stubbornness all dressed up uh i was born stubborn uh my mom will would definitely attest to that if i got something stuck in my head as a kid it was it was going to happen but the persistence part is a little bit different i mean stubbornness can also be an obstacle and get in your way because as you become a leader you need to be flexible you really need to listen and and and know that you don't always have the answers you know lots of times but persistence is that you are so determined that you're going to make it happen even if it looks like all the cards are against you even if you wake up going there is absolutely no proof that this is going to happen but if you have that persistence inside of you that you're just gonna stick with it and you're just gonna stick with it until it happens it always does it always does what's the process that you use for that because i loved what you said earlier and this is something that my mom said to me when i was a little kid as well and i think there was a tv show with like my friend flicka or something and the kid that rode the horse in the show didn't know how to ride a horse but his mom said if anyone ever asks you an interview or an audition if you know how to do something just say yes we'll figure it out so they said you know how to ride a horse he didn't but he says yes they you know hire him and then he goes and learns before they shoot for the first day and when my mom told me that story that always stuck with me so i love that but many people don't know how to follow that up with how to go learn how to ride the horse so in your tenacity your perseverance sticking through with something what is your process and this is the thing that i want people to really understand about your book there's no fluff or hype in your book you're just like do this do this do this learn this go here it's like it's so instructional it's basically an instruction manual which i love and it's one of the reasons that i respect the book so much so what is your process for when you've said yes and now you have to go learn how do you actually in an efficient manner go learn something new well i mean in the book you know just backing up a little bit i wanted to not only inspire people to break through and to be able to scale their business in in this last book but i want to give them the steps to do it you know let's make it easy business doesn't have to be complicated but i think that as far as persistence goes and once you say yes and your backs against the wall you're either you got two choices you can look like a complete fool because you kind of oh yeah i can do this you've got to back it up so having a little pressure on you i think is a good thing i know that when i was a single mom and i had no money and i mean getting purses and shaking them out trying to find a few coins to be able to go get a cup of coffee there's something about being there that's really good and humbling because it makes you want that more and to say you know what that's the impetus that's going to push you forward and you know i think the beginning is ask for help i think that people feel like asking as a sign of weakness asking for help is a sign of weakness and i really feel like it's a sign of strength and it's just smart you know if if you ask someone that's been there and done it you know they're walking the talk then they're going to get you directly to where you want to go it's like a geo force moving you forward to your solution yeah it's interesting when i hear people talk about solutions i think about one of the most important things you had in your book which is clarity and your whole notion of it's either a hell yes or uh no way and how does that all work together what is the concept of hell yes or no way why is clarity so important yeah the hell yes or no way first came to me you know after that accident when i think that when your desire for change becomes stronger than your fear because your fear will keep you crippled will keep you paralyzed but when you want it so badly that you're like you know what fear out of my way you know that's really where the breakthrough happens and the clarity is it's just that feeling inside where everything is congruent where the way you feel the way you live the way every everything on the inside your values your beliefs are in sync they're in alignment with what you say and put out into the world i think there are a lot of people that are depressed ill because they're living one way but they're feeling another and there is this constant battle there's this constant fight so the clarity comes when it finally all comes together and it just feels like oh yeah that feels right that feels good yeah that's getting in that alignment is really important i know that you walk people through how to create that clarity in their life how do you help people with that and what can somebody watching now like what kind of process can they go through to get the level of clarity that they're going to need yeah so it obviously depends on what type of clarity they're looking for but i really like to give people the space to do that i think that if we're like pushing it and pushing it and searching it doesn't always come so when you can get yourself into a creative space like when you're a kid and you're just playing and having fun you are who you are you are in alignment you're not doing it because you have responsibilities or you have demands or you're going to feel guilty if you don't do it you're just doing what feels right so i think if we can take moments and part of why i love the trapeze but whether that's painting or whether that's gardening or taking a walk and really allowing your mind to clear that's where the best ideas come so the first is just to clear your mind and get to that space and in the book i show several processes to get to that clarity and one of them is looking at what did you love doing as a kid what did you love from 0 to 12 12 to 20 and what were some things that you've always wanted to do like your bucket list but you've never done what are your talents you know what are your passive talents like oh i'm really organized or i'm i'm very compassionate or those active talents like i play classical piano or i know rocket science whatever whatever it is and you start to pull all these things together and this is some of the things we do with our clients whether we're helping them create new revenue streams uh you know or a new business all together or taking their business to the next level it needs to be in alignment with who they are because if they're just doing it for the money they won't stay with it they won't give it that persistence that's needed in the long haul to see it through to see it through to success it's what's gonna get you out of bed on the tough days what's gonna get you excited when the doors are slamming in your face what's gonna you know get you rah-rah for your team when you just looked at your p l and you can barely cover salaries it's not going to be for the love of money it's got to be that deeper passion that bigger reason your legacy that is going to fuel you forward and then that ultimately turns everything else around because then you stick with it and you give it that persistence so as you continue to build your businesses and take it to the next level you've gone across so many different industries obviously it takes an extraordinary amount of time you must clock an unbelievable number of hours but one thing that you've spoken to is just being absolutely critical is self-care why is that so important do you think of work life being a balance um i know you said that that there's a real crossover between life and work for you but how do you integrate that in a way that's healthy for you well after you run over yourself you kind of re-look at the way you're operating and that was not healthy for me and i would say over the years a couple other times that i really crossed that line not not in you know an automobile but uh where i was just really run down or i had a friend going you look like hell you know it's like okay i need to to sleep uh i um when i the trajectory was when i got out of the ad business i discovered homeopathic medicine and that actually changed my life why is that well uh i had you know as i was raised in oklahoma i my mom always took me to the doctor i didn't even know what holistic was and then if you had to define holistic you gave a brief definition before but if you really had to break it down for somebody that's watching that doesn't know what that means well holistic and homeopathic are very different and i think a lot of people interchange and use it as the same and it's incorrect holistic is just mind body spirit it's the whole picture a homeopathic does cover the you know it treats the whole person but it's actually a system of medicine that's been around over 200 years over 100 years longer than western medicine allopathic medicine homeopathic means same disease allopathy which is western medicine means opposite disease and so with homeopathy the the body cannot hold two like diseases so for instance have you ever experienced where you might have let's say neck pain or you you have some chronic pain and then you get sick you get a cold and then that pain goes away so the body cannot hold two like diseases so you take a substance a homeopathic substance they're those little tiny pellets that you get like in whole foods right and they are highly diluted substances plant mineral animal so there's not the actual substance anymore it's the molecular structure and this is where so many people uh pooh-pooh it say you know nothing's there but they have actually been able to show that the water holds the molecular memory and so by taking a substance that causes the symptoms that your body is experiencing one knocks out the other that's the law of similars and so that's really what happened to me here i was had the car accident major change you know leaving a marriage i had been in for nine years my confidence was like this uh i was you know just did not have a lot of clarity at the time i had aches and pains i had tire tracks on my legs from the car i went to this homeopath somebody referred me and she chose this one homeopathic for me and i took that and it wasn't like a drug-like effect it was just gradual over the next six months i felt more clarity i felt confidence i felt excitement about life again and i just felt more resilient and i thought gosh this is incredible and this just makes so much sense so that's really how all my businesses have evolved if i'm passionate about it and i'm excited about it then i want to delve deeper into it and that led me to 20 years running my homeopathic practice and building one of the largest homeopathic schools in the country in 1999. so going back to the self-care what does your process look like do you have a daily regimen like how do you really stay in tip-top shape for me the biggest one is sleep because i'm a night owl and i really it is genetic in my family we could do a conference call with my mom my brother my sister at 2 a.m we would all be up and so that's uh i finally have just accepted i am a night owl but i really need that seven at least seven seven and a half hours of sleep and so i will just plan out my week if i know i'm going to be up late because i get this creative burst and i allow myself that i make sure i don't schedule anything till a little bit later on in the morning or late morning to get started so that is a gift to myself i have had the same fitness trainer for over 20 years and that you know having that discipline you know the boost of endorphins and that's given me a lot of over resilience over the years and the other the biggest thing i would say is that i only do what makes me happy wow now how do you stay true to that while building businesses because there are inevitably times where there's things that are not so much fun okay let me let me back up on that statement just a little bit the purpose of what i'm creating i am totally in sync with that i'm totally in love with there may be some instances or some conflict you know it's not my favorite um that you that's just part of it but i know that you know what i have what i'm doing really has meaning to me and if i come to a place where you know what there's a sense of completion i'm done i'm ready to move on right so you talked about meaning just a second ago and i think that's so important and you in your book talk very wonderfully about the power of storytelling um how we conceptualize what we're doing in the frame of a story um walk us through that like what is the importance of story and storytelling and how can anybody use it in their life i think that people don't realize the value of their story and what is their story well their story can be their journey and there's so much wisdom in their journey you know they say it's not about the fall or the fail it's what you do once you get up that's the you know you know that's the golden ticket so we got to learn from our story and uh but you don't want to then live in your story either you don't want to be living in the past and there's there's the old story in the news story i think people that are too stuck in their story stay in this place of being a victim they're playing the blame game and whatever scenario it is unless you're a little child you've made the choice to be there in let's say 99 percent of the cases but i think story can is a great way to connect us with others connect us with community it's a great way to get your message out there and people remember story if i'm on stage and i'm speaking i could teach several things but what people are really going to remember is the story and then the valuable lesson from the story so how do you get people to begin to understand that their life can be seen as a story and that the story you get to essentially decide the meaning of that it's not predetermined how do you help them find the power next i'm sure people come to you a in victim mode right they're stuck okay we can help them out of that but then how do you help them reshape the same sequence of events but to see them in a new light that hopefully is more empowering you know sometimes when people come in victim mode it's hard to shift them out really have you ever had somebody that you couldn't get out of yeah i think sometimes people are so they get a lot out of staying stuck in their old story that's interesting can you go deeper on that what do you mean they get a lot out of it well because maybe it created a family dynamic that when they're the victim everybody runs to save them uh you know it's maybe they didn't get much attention as a kid and that's their way of getting attention or you know or maybe it's the story that their parents had and so they're holding on to it with dear life and they believe that you know the world is a terrible place and everyone's against them and then this horrible thing happened and see i told you i told you i was right you know it is all so bad so sometimes when they are so wrapped that it's part of their identity it is hard to break that and you know it's hard to be around people like that i'm sure you've experienced that right you know so i like to be around people that it's okay to be scared it's okay to be stuck we're going to help you through that but let's at least be willing to you know open your eyes to things try things and be coachable you know don't work with a coach if you're not willing to do what they suggest that you do and i think too in business and it's just what people see and hear you know this overnight success story like i was saying earlier and you have to do the work you have to be willing to stay in the game even though you don't see the results happening you just know that you're you know a few feet from gold but what if you quit and you never saw that you know there's one thing that you've talked about that really resonates with me and i wonder how much you use it and what particular style but what is your take on meditation yeah so i am a fan of meditation when i can sit still like that and i did tm for quite a long time and it was really beneficial to me now my husband meditates almost every day but i just really struggled with sitting still you didn't want to do it or you have add or what was the driver for that not being easy yeah i just felt like i was sitting there there were i was i was wanting to do other things i just think that my constitution likes to be in motion so therefore when i am on trapeze i am in the most meditative state that i could ever be in i mean when you're on up in that platform time stands still and you you know you have to be focused because you know you don't want to kill yourself but it's it really does bring you into the state of being so grounded even though you're up in the air and when i come down after you know a session of of flying for like an hour or so i feel my feet on the ground it really does bring me back into congruency i love that all right before i ask my last question where can these guys find you online well go to my website alisonmaslin.com or pinnacle global network which is our mentoring company and [Music] yeah and wherever books are sold fantastic all right my last question what is the impact that you want to have on the world well i believe i've been given this gift to understanding business and i truly believe that business owners are the change makers of the world they're the innovators they are the inventors and whether it's health or technology or the environment or making people feel more beautiful whatever it is that if i can help them to break through then it is my way of elevating consciousness through business one business owner at a time and ultimately impacting millions that's how you change the world awesome allison thank you so much that was wonderful guys the notion of breaking through i think is so important and i think that that's something that all of us naturally gravitate towards we want to push ourselves to the edge we want to get to that next plateau and then hopefully be on that one and be on the next one beyond that but to do that you've really got to have the tenacity that she's talking about and most importantly you've got to have some kind of road map and that's what i was really impressed with is her book is that road map it is very tactical it's not fluff it's very direct it's very clear it talks about the things you're going to need to instill in yourself the things you're going to have to learn the tools you're going to have to be armed with in order to move forward and she walks you through in a way where each brick stacks on itself until at the end you really are armed to build your own company now the great news about the book is if you want to build a company it's a no-brainer but even if you don't i think that there's a lot of information in there that really applies to not business and so you'll notice in this interview i didn't really ask her a lot about business because i think so much of what she talks about just applies to getting the clarity we want in our own lives the self-care the things that are going to apply to everybody so it really is quite powerful in having that systemized approach and i think it's really extraordinary that she's been able to do this 10 times it's replicatable and when something's replicatable it's teachable and i think that's really the unique gift that she's put something together that really is helping people have those kind of profound breakthroughs so i highly encourage you guys to check it out i think that it will give you something that will help you have your own breakthrough and begin to build the life that you want all right if you haven't already my friends be sure to subscribe and until next time be legendary take care [Applause] everybody thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 229,816

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Allison Maslan, Allison Maslan Impact Theory, Allison Maslan Tom Bilyeu

Id: Xhw6loEFvk4

Length: 40min 18sec (2418 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 19 2019