Redefining Success Beyond the Hustle, with Alex Schlinsky

Are you tired of the relentless hustle culture? Join me as I sit down with entrepreneur, coach, speaker, and author, Alex Schlinsky, for an enlightening discussion on leadership and redefining success. Our conversation dives into Alex's journey from learning leadership principles from his parents to becoming a renowned coach working with top brands across 50 markets. We also delve into the joys and tribulations of leading a high-performing team and why prioritizing what matters most is the secret to balanced living.

Heart defects don't often lead to books, but for Alex, a life-altering genetic heart disorder became a catalyst for penning "The Anti-Hustler’s Handbook". In this heartfelt conversation, we explore the dangers of the freelancer's trap, an easy pitfall for entrepreneurs who bear the brunt of their businesses, pushing them towards burnout. With engaging anecdotes from Alex's personal life and his father's experiences, we unpack the concept of the freelancer's trap and how redefining success can help avoid it.

Ever felt like you're running on empty but still pushing the pedal to the metal? We have all been there, and in our chat, Alex shares enlightening insights on detecting burnout, the significance of emotional availability in sales, and why grace and kindness towards oneself are more critical than we realize. Finally, we delve into valuable coaching principles garnered from 20 years in leadership. Don't forget to connect with Alex on any social media platform to continue learning from this world class leader. 

Chapters

• 0:02 Catalytic Leadership Podcast With Alex Shlinsky
• 12:50 Defining Success Beyond Hustle Culture
• 24:13 Recognizing and Addressing Burnout
• 29:56 Embracing Grace and Kindness
• 39:55 Catalytic Leadership Principles and Coaching

Transcript

Announcer: 0:02

Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host author and leadership and executive coach, dr William Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway: 0:17

Hey, it's William and welcome to today's episode of the Catalytic Leadership Podcast. Each week, we tackle a topic related to the field of leadership. My goal is to ensure that you have actionable steps you can take from each episode to grow in your own leadership. Growth doesn't just happen. My goal is to help you become intentional about it. Each week, we spotlight leaders from a variety of fields, organizations and locations. My goal is for you to see that leaders can be catalytic, no matter where they are or what they lead. I draw inspiration from the stories and journeys of these leaders and I hear from many of you that you do too. Let's jump in to today's interview. I am thrilled today to have Alex Schlinsky on the show.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:03

Alex founded and runs an entrepreneurial mastermind and mentorship community called Prospecting On Demand. His agency has won multiple awards and he offers a five times ROI guarantee to all his clients. Outside of coaching entrepreneurs, Alex is the CEO of Sky Social Media, a unique digital marketing firm that caters directly to his client's needs, focusing on results and ROI, with advertising across all digital platforms. They call him the Iron Man of marketing, which has an insane story behind it, Some to do with having an open heart surgery at 29 and sounding like a human time bomb. Like Tony Stark, he likes to play big.

Dr. William Attaway: 1:46

Not many people can say they helped a full time plumber create an agency that now generates over $2 million a year. A renowned business coach, speaker and entrepreneur, Alex has sold $15 million worth of products, has worked with over 700 clients in 50 different markets, including some of the world's greatest brands like the Miami Dolphins and the UFC. Alex is the author of the new book The Anti-Hustlers Handbook, a step-by-step guide for hardworking entrepreneurs who want to redefine success now and discover infinite choices for fulfillment without sacrificing everything that matters. Alex, I'm so excited that you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Alex Schlinsky: 2:33

Thank you so much for having me. What an amazing intro. I love the Iron Man line. My copywriter did a really good job with that. I appreciate you having me Absolutely.

Dr. William Attaway: 2:44

I'd love for you to share some of your story with our listeners, particularly around your journey and your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Alex Schlinsky: 2:54

Yeah, i think I actually got started because of my parents, the way that they led I grew up in a religious Jewish community. I'd go to Temple every Saturday, the Sabbath. My dad was the president of the temple when I was of the bar mitzvah age. So from 11 to 14 years old, my dad was the president of the temple and my mom was the president of the sisterhood, which is like the women's group at the temple. My mom is a big proponent of community and engaging in being a provider. She definitely has the classic Jewish mom vibes for sure. She'd have people over every single Friday night dinner for the Sabbath and she'd be freaking out for the first four days of the week. Then Friday comes, she's excited and then she's ready to do it again next week.

Alex Schlinsky: 3:47

Just watching my parents be leaders in their community and lead my family with the appropriate frameworks of love and kindness and care, being a good person and helping other people, i think really struck a chord with me and made me want to be that type of leader In general. I'm a very boisterous person, a very loud person, a very type A person. I've always been that way. When I was little, i was always the loudest person in the room, i still am usually the loudest person in the room Pretty common for me. I like being the center of attention and it's okay to just be upfront and willing to understand. That's who I am.

Alex Schlinsky: 4:28

I think leadership came to me fairly naturally, but also unexpectedly and much more challenging than I thought it would be when it came to business and opportunities. I had to lead the charge for my small marketing agency to become a much larger agency in order to develop it. Then, of course, the biggest leadership of running prospecting on demand from 2016 to now and working with now over a thousand clients. I have to update that, which is insane. There's a crazy number to consider and how many people we lead.

Alex Schlinsky: 4:59

We talk a lot, william, about provisions and our requirements of who we provide and, as leaders, the provisions we have are for ourselves and our family, to our team and to our clients On a running basis, on a daily basis, leading roughly about 100 people total. It bears certainly a weight, but it's a worthwhile weight and something I'm super proud of to do. I try my best to do it as effectively as I possibly can with the right support around me. It's a fun journey, taking it one day at a time to be the best leader I can be, and the leadership that matters most to me is being the best dad I could be Lead my son and showcase the appropriate steps to take.

Alex Schlinsky: 5:46

I try to remind that to every single client I work with of what we're really here for. What we're really doing, and 99% of the time it's for something much bigger than making money or impacting agency owners or helping businesses. It's usually related to some sort of family result, whether it's kids or spouse or parents, like giving back to parents, giving everything they want for their spouse or giving everything they want to their kids. That leadership, to me, is really what is the most important.

Dr. William Attaway: 6:15

You know, so much of your story centers around the lessons that you've learned, the insights that you've gleaned, and your book is called The Anti-Hustlers Handbook And you talk in the book about how that comes out of your journey, your experience, how you hustled yourself into a very unhealthy place. Can you talk about that just a little bit?

Alex Schlinsky: 6:38

Yeah. So when I was 18 years old, i had a regular checkup at the doctor And everything was going totally normally until they were, you know, get put the stethoscope out and check my heart. He was checking a little bit overzealously, more than usual, and asked him if something was wrong, and he mentioned that I have a heart murmur. Did I know I had a heart murmur, in which obviously I said no, this doctor had been my doctor since I was an infant. So it was very shocking to me that that had never been found And ended up finding out that I was born with a congenital heart defect called the bicuspatoric valve. Long story short, basically my heart you know, aortic valve did not close properly, so blood leaked back into the heart every time it pumped. And so when it over pumps to get the blood back out, ultimately, like any muscle, it grows. And so the doctor had made a comment to me at that point that pretty much 100% guaranteed to have to have surgery within your lifetime. But more than likely you'll be 50, 60 years old And you know, by that time medicine will progress. So much Yada, yada, yada won't be a big thing. So just go live your life.

Alex Schlinsky: 7:42

18 year old, and so I talk about in this book the concept of you know what success means to people and this idea that you know we're all born with, unfortunately, a death sentence, and I think a lot of people don't want to talk about it. I get why. I respect why More people talk about it as they get older. I think most people in their 20s and 30s really don't want to discuss it unless they've had unfortunately been involved with that, whether through a, you know, personal relationship they have with their nuclear family, their parents or their brothers and sisters, or outside family, cousins, uncles, aunts or friends. And you know some people you meet and they haven't been touched by it at all in their 25, and other people you meet and they've been devastated by it in their 25. And I think that showcases a really different understanding of you know the quality of life and respecting time that we have.

Alex Schlinsky: 8:31

And in the book I talk about the sands of time, this idea that we all have this metaphorical hourglass and we're constantly borrowing from the future sand like oh, we'll have that time, we'll sacrifice this time now to do more work because we'll have the sand in the future. And so, 18 year old Alex, you know with you would consider I have a lot more sand left. But now we're getting told that I have heart surgery and the chances of it is very high. So in my mind, the concept was well, now, you know, the sand that I have is a lot less than what I anticipated it would be. And so because of that, i, you know, i put my hard hat on with the idea of, like, i'm just going to work extra hard And I used to have that as like a badge of honor Really Like, i'm the best hustler.

Alex Schlinsky: 9:13

I'm not a hustler, i'm the best hustler, i'm the world's greatest hustler, i'm the wolf, i'm the dog, i'm the guy, like, and I believe in that so much. And because I believe in that, i took in content that matched that right. So David Goggins, yelling at me while he's running a five minute mile and telling me that I'm not doing, you know, fast enough, or jockeau, willing, saying I need to wake up at 4am to be like a Marine, even though I have no interest in being a Marine, thank you to everyone. That is, you know, supports our country and serves. It's just not for me. I don't want to be a Marine, and so I just ate up that content. You know I was really interested in that And then, you know, i realized the ramifications of it. And the ramifications are pretty simple And the idea was, if you put a car in overdrive, you know indefinitely, eventually that engine is going to explode.

Alex Schlinsky: 10:03

And, metaphorically, what ended up happening was, you know, i put my car into overdrive for too long and I went to the doctor every single year. I'd get a checkup and, you know, 10 years after I was told it was 11 years after I was told that I would have to have surgery, the doctor told me I had to come back into the office, which had never happened before. Why do I have to come back into the office? They don't tell you why. You have to tell you in person. But you know, you know I have to go back in. So I remember going back into the office and the doctor telling me you know that I have to have surgery.

Alex Schlinsky: 10:31

And I think the easy way to explain how skewed my brain was at the time was we were prepping for our first large event for prospecting on demand. The event was scheduled for February 28th and 29th. It was a leap year and March 1st of 2020. Sure, everyone remembers what happened in March 2020. And the first thing I asked was can we postpone my surgery until after the event? And so, even though I was told in front of my face that your sands might be gone forever, you might lose all the sand that you had, that you thought you had my first intention and still focus was on business. And I think it was just a really apropos moment to remember and keep in mind like how badly skewed my priorities were at that time, only to realize, thinking like, really, the heavy news hit me when I had to call my parents and tell them which I will never forget, obviously, probably the worst phone call I've ever made doing that and telling them that I had to have the surgery. I had accelerated my heart problem by roughly 30, 40 years And thankfully, the surgery went well.

Alex Schlinsky: 11:34

And since it went well in that process, because of COVID, the surgery was not just postponed from December to March, it was postponed from March to June and then from June to October. So it took me 10 months from the time that I was told that I need to have the surgery to have the surgery. Those 10 months were, for sure, the hardest of my life And in the midst of those 10 months, my wife found out that we were pregnant with my first child, who's now two and a half years old, which is insane And my son was born 117 days after my surgery, and so I think it just put a really clear understanding of what priorities need to be in life, and so in the book, the reason I wrote it is to try to help people understand that there's other ways to define success, and that you can't just continue to borrow from future sand that you're mortgaging, that you have no idea if you have it or not. We all want to pretend that we have an invincibility complex, and that will never happen to me, and I'll never be the one that has heart surgery on everyone that dies in a car accident. I'll never have cancer and I will never have any issues in my life. But the reality is it happens to people. It just does. I'm sure William and I both agree that we don't want that for you We don't But we don't control that. No matter how much you pray on it, no matter much you want it to not happen, it happens. It happens to good people, not just bad people.

Alex Schlinsky: 12:50

I genuinely think I am a good human being. I really try to be a good human being. I didn't deserve to be born with a genetic heart defect and deserve to have open heart surgery, but it happened. That's how life is sometimes, and the great part is in the perspective I have now is how amazing is it that I'm able to be alive and have such little ramifications on my life when I did have open heart surgery and I did have my son born 117 days later.

Alex Schlinsky: 13:15

And here we are nearly three years later. October 15th will be three years And I'm good. I'm good And I'm grateful for that. Physically I'm good, at least, and that's something that is really impactful. So I wrote the book for myself, to remind myself of the priorities that I need to take, but also for entrepreneurs who want to potentially define success in a different way, instead of only listening to the world that we live in, which is just consistently hustle culture. If, once you get more, you need to do more, and it needs to be more and more, no matter what, it's always. More And more is the only answer. There couldn't be anything else other than more, and so there is another answer. It is a different way. It just comes down to definition and really putting in that work to define it, and that's what the book is all about.

Dr. William Attaway: 14:01

You know, alex, listen to your story and, of course, we've talked before about this and I'm blown away, every time you talk about this, by how you let this event, which for some people, can cause them to just crumble. Instead, you chose to make this a catalytic moment. You chose to say, okay, this is not going to destroy me, i'm going to take this and I'm going to use it in a different way, and that's what you've done. You've taken an experience that is horrifying, you know, for a 28, 29-year-old to get news like this, you know, with a child on the way, you took this and said, hey, okay, i'm going to get through this. And then, on the other side of it, you're like how can I help other people not hit the ditches that I drove into? How can I help them avoid those ditches? And that's one of the things I loved about your book Looking through it, it's incredibly practical, it's so. It is just bathed in personal experience, personal stories, and I'll say this again toward the end of the show but if you don't have a copy of this book, this is one you're going to want to get, because it's one you're going to doggie, or the pages you're going to make notes in the margins.

Dr. William Attaway: 15:17

This is one that's going to hit you at a different level, because every entrepreneur, every business owner, every agency owner, every leader that I talk to struggles with this. More mindset, hustle, hustle harder, do more, acquire more sacrifice, more. You know for that day that's going to come, and a friend of mine once told me that you know we wake up every day and think that that day is going to be just like the day before, and so often that's true until it's not. You had that experience, our family had that experience with my daughter and her brain tumor, her cancer. We didn't see that coming, you didn't see that coming, and so often it's exactly like what you said. You know, we just think we've got plenty of sand until one day something happens. You talk about this in the book and you talk about the traps that people fall into. One of those is called the freelancers trap. I'd love for you to unpack that just a little bit.

Alex Schlinsky: 16:19

Yeah, the freelancers trap is a really common entrepreneurial misstep. It's the idea that we can carry all the weight and responsibility of a business on our shoulders and then think eventually that we'll hand it off. But we kind of get trapped by not understanding how to say no. And so the concept that I see very often is if you break down simply you know business into three components of generating sales opportunities, closing sales opportunities and then delivering upon the service. That's a very oversimplified version of any business, but in general that's what we see If you do all three of those things consistently, which is very common. So, for example, you go to a B&I and you speak at a B&I to generate sales opportunities, you book five sales calls at the B&I and you have five sales calls. You close two of those five sales calls That one is a doctor that you're doing a website for and another is a you know attorney that you're doing SEO for. Now the opportunity cost of doing those fulfillment services withholds you from being able to go, book more meetings, close more deals and service more clients. Now some people are very gifted and capable of managing a huge amount of freelancer weight And I mean huge, like it is feasible to do a six figure income on a freelancer weight. The mental weight of it is significantly more damaging than the physical weight. But in general, what will end up happening is burnout is a guarantee. It's not potential. It's guaranteed because at some point you'll recognize one year down the line, five years down the line, 10 years down the line or longer And I've seen it happen many times that you've just been freelancing at this whole time, that you never actually built a company or business, that you are the business.

Alex Schlinsky: 18:02

And so in the book, one of the anecdotes I talk about was, you know, my dad's experience when I was younger, when I was 14 years old, my dad had a catastrophic stroke. Thank God, today he's alive and well, which is amazing. But at that time, you know, he had started his own business two years prior and he was very successful due to his community connections. But he didn't have a business, he didn't have documented processes, he didn't have anyone to help him, it was just him. He was the business. And so when he got sick, he couldn't work for a year. And when you're a financial advisor, no matter how much someone loves you and cares about you at some point, if you cannot do the work for that person, they have to leave and go work with someone else, and so he lost the whole business because it was a freelance business.

Alex Schlinsky: 18:43

And so this was the first lesson that I had, and it was actually the first onus to developing prospecting on demand for agency owners. Even before I had my own issue with the intention of hey, don't get stuck in the freelance model, don't say yes to everything. And what I commonly see is we call it a, you know, a subayota, and the joke is it's like you're a Frankenstein agency. You're combining a Subaru and a Toyota and you're just smashing them together thinking that that's going to work, because you're just going to say yes to every single offer and every single angle because you think the money is so necessary. But the opportunity cost of the time you're taking from that is really bad, and so we recommend instead developing a single product, a single niche, and focusing on doing something that's replicable and repeatable and predictable for scale. And I get it. It is. It is boring, but simple and boring. Win The perceived value of complexity is one of the greatest challenges of entrepreneurship in today's day and age, especially with the amount of stimuli we have.

Alex Schlinsky: 19:41

There's an enormous amount of information and stimuli available more than ever before in history, and so when you're constantly getting ideas from everyone else, it becomes really, really challenging to simplify, because everyone else is making it very complex. But the people that are having their most success, financially and emotionally, is through simplification. People try to make passion and profit happen together at the same time so often, and it's very, very challenging. It's a gift if you're capable of creating passion and profit at the same time. There's nothing wrong with creating profit and then pursuing passion. That's an okay thing to do, because if you pursue passion only with profit, you're almost guaranteed to either wane on the passion or or not make enough profit. In general, that's what we see a lot of times with the freelancer trap.

Dr. William Attaway: 20:30

I think everybody listening is scribbling right now writing down so much of what you just said that is so helpful and is so practical for so many of the leaders that I talk to. They fall into that freelancer trap. It's like it's this giant gaping hole that's in front of everybody. How do you avoid that? How do you get around this? If you have found yourself in it, what's your next step?

Alex Schlinsky: 20:53

Yeah. So the first thing to do is understand that if you have a Frankenstein agency and you're working with five different types of industries, with four different types of products and three different price points, and you have like a VA from the Philippines helping you, the one thing that you can do is you don't have to necessarily throw that business away. We have to do those, be willing to take significantly less profit. What you have to find is the freelancer that's going to take it over for you. So I have a client that we worked with named Eric Haskin. He's a great guy, super intelligent human being, and he came to us with a very successful freelance business that he's been running for roughly 20 years. It's called Charlotte Media Partners And his business consists of roughly eight different products, from one-off products like web design to ongoing products like SEO or website management, with probably six to 12 different price points, but really only him and like one VA. And so what we identified was this business was making about like $25,000 a month, but it was just impossible to scale because there is no real product. It's just a bunch of random things put together, and so what we did is we brought someone in to have Eric be shadowing Eric for roughly two months and then we gave that person about a 30% margin of what this business is, so basically paying them about $5,000 to $6,000.

Alex Schlinsky: 22:14

Yes, eric's revenue dropped and profit dropped, but his time availability increased by roughly 80% And with that time available now what he's capable of doing is building a business. And so what he did was he focused on building an attorney marketing agency offering a $2,500 marketing service from Google ads to every single client he works with. That has a roughly $1,100 consistent profit for every single client. And then he built a client acquisition system by running ads and doing cold email the same thing over and over. Then he would have the same calls over and over and then he would bring them into the business and he would deliver the same onboarding experience over and over.

Alex Schlinsky: 22:54

And that replication built what is essentially in an agency assembly line, something that is the consistent same quality of product that he can provide, that's easy to sell and also easy to delegate, and that business, just about two months ago, over nine months, was able to get three months straight over $100,000 in revenue. So, yes, he did have to hand off the Frankenstein agency, which he still has, and the person he hired still works with. You don't have to cancel it all together, it's just you need to remove yourself from it and understand the collateral damage that comes with it. And the collateral damage is pretty easy to understand. Some clients will be disappointed that you are no longer POC and they can either choose to leave or they can choose to be okay with the current person that you put in place. And two, you will make less money upfront, but the time value of your money is way greater, because now you can focus on building a real business, and that's what it takes.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:44

Hmm, you said that hustle culture always leads to burnout.

Alex Schlinsky: 23:48

Always.

Dr. William Attaway: 23:49

And I'm thinking about the story that you just told with Eric, like if he had continued down the path he was because I've got to make more money, or just got to work harder, i've just got to hustle more, yeah, which is what so many people say. That's what they think That's what they do. What are some of the early signs that you are nearing that burnout point?

Alex Schlinsky: 24:09

Yeah, it's a really good question And I would say also related to Eric. When he joined POD, he joined with the understanding that he was in burnout, that he had already gone through the position of saying those hustle-isms, which is part of the book of expressing, like you know, if I just work a little bit harder, i just work a little bit harder. But he came to me with the beautiful clarity of, like I'm saying I need to work a little harder, but I'm like, really working very hard. I don't really understand why my brain is saying I need to work harder And it's because there's no other possible area. Right, if you play that game from Bob Barker's game, i forget what it's called The pressure, right? Yeah, right, so one of them is called Plinko, right?

Alex Schlinsky: 24:47

I think it's like you drop a ball and it falls into you know, any number of options, right? Well, when your brain drops the ball of how do I solve this problem? And the only option consistently is work harder, work harder, work harder, at some point you'll get to a position of I'm literally at 95%, 99%, 100% of work harder. How could I work harder? It's impossible. Now what we have to do is open up the options You got to find the other available things right. And so when you start finding yourself in the position of waking up with you know fright with working on the weekends, with working, and you think it's normal 12, 13 hour days, when you are constantly stuck drowning in fulfillment and starting every month back at zero without any security net whatsoever, it's very likely that you're gonna lead into burnout. People that are much more emotional and type A personalities have a much faster time going into burnout, whereas people that are more, you know, type B and aren't as emotional, more pragmatic, might not have burnout for a really long time. I'm talking about multiple years. I've worked with some web design agencies that every single month for 20 years they start back at zero because they have no recurring model at all And they didn't really have burnout, they just were disheartened, and those are two very different things. But eventually burnout will happen, especially if you're someone that is an emotional person, whereas their heart on their sleeves really cares a lot about the work that you put in. Eventually, you're gonna get burnt out and disheartened because you're not progressing the way that you want to, and the easiest way to know it is by the sure tell tale signs of I'm tired, i'm frustrated, i'm short with people that I care about, i'm not feeling good physically and mentally. I'm having a hard time sleeping. I wake up in terror, i go to sleep thinking about clients and I'm constantly in a state of worry. That means you're going into burnout or you're already there, and that is a very dangerous place to be, and it means that you need to do something about it immediately, and that's why you wrote the book 100%.

Alex Schlinsky: 26:46

One of the concepts that we talk about is the idea of how many red lights you've run. A yellow light means you should slow down, but we all know what actually a yellow light means. To most drivers in the United States, it means speed up so I can get through it before I get to the red light, and I'm certainly do the same. So I'm not saying that that's a horrible thing, but it happens. The bigger problem, though, is when we start running red lights, and running red lights is when you express to yourself like oh my God, i'm so tired, but then you still push through Running a red light once or twice or three times. Okay, not the end of the world, but every time you run a red light there's a serious danger. That can happen both metaphorically and literally, obviously. Literally every single time that is red light is run, you're putting yourself at danger and someone else in danger, right, william? you told me something really valuable about a year ago. You said hurt people, hurt people. When you run a red light, you're a hurt person, potentially hurting someone, and that's very dangerous right Now. Metaphorically, what I mean when you're running a red light, it's when your body is trying to give you the signs of I'm tired, i need a break, i'm emotionally spent, i don't have anything more, and your mindset only falls into that. Plinko board of you gotta work harder And work harder is just telling you to keep running red lights. And so the metaphor that I would give you is how many red lights have you run? How many red lights have you run?

Alex Schlinsky: 28:02

I had a sales call or, excuse me, an onboarding call with a client that joined POD about a week ago really good guy. And on the call he said I just don't wanna mention, i don't think I have any more emotional availability for sales, cause right. So we had to continue the conversation. I brought that back up as a red flag. How long have you been saying that, for It's like, oh, probably three months. How many other red lights are you running through consistently? How often? Because at some point you're not gonna be able to say it anymore and you're just gonna have nothing, or you're gonna just do a horrible job consistently on your calls because you don't have the emotional availability, like you just said, and you need emotional availability for that, and that's something that's really important. So just understand what the red lights are for you and start trying to identify. How many times am I really running them? It's so practical and so helpful.

Dr. William Attaway: 28:52

And I think that's gonna speak to a lot of people. It certainly speaks to me at different parts of my journey, as I look back, because there are times in my life when I can see man, i just had the pedal down, just flat down to the floor. Red, yellow, green, doesn't matter, just keep going, just keep going, just work harder. If you could go back, if something happened and you were able to go back and talk to the 20 year old version of Alex, what would you love to tell yourself?

Alex Schlinsky: 29:23

Give yourself grace, give yourself grace. I'm a words of affirmation person. That's my love language. Great book also by Gary Chapman. Yeah, you know I love empowering people. I love doing it Probably my favorite thing in the entire planet Love getting on stage and just I know that I'm very capable of empowering people when I'm on stage and also one to one, but particularly when I'm on stage with a group of people that have never seen me on stage before, i get so excited because I know what I'm capable of bringing.

Alex Schlinsky: 29:56

And I know the truth is the majority of most speakers, at most events, they're not gifted speakers. They're just gifted at the skill that they're sharing, which is fine, no problem. Most people don't care. I care because I know that I'm gifted speaker and so I get flustered when it's like constantly listening to not good speakers with good content, right. But I know I'm both and I love the opportunity to not just share good content but to light someone up, to fire them, just like a head coach would in football. Like I love that stuff, i love getting fired up by motivation, like I just love that and I love being that person. And so to me, i empower people a lot, but I think the voice in my head over the last 10 years is a majority negative.

Alex Schlinsky: 30:42

I have immense self-confidence and capability. I very rarely have failed at anything that I've set my mind to in life or in business, which I'm super grateful for. And yet, as if some weird chip on your shoulder, it's just necessary to be like you're not doing enough, you're not good enough, you're not working hard enough and all of those elements right. No matter how much you tell yourself not to be that way, you just keep doing it. And so I've heard many different comments from different coaches and mindset people related to the value of positive psychology and this idea of putting down the metaphorical bat and picking up the feather and being kinder to yourself, and I think, in the world that we live in, i think more people want more grace and more kindness, less shortness and frustration, except, at the end of the day, everyone is going through something.

Alex Schlinsky: 31:31

You just don't know what they're going through, and some people are more willing to share it and not. I truly believe vulnerability and transparency is the bridge to connection. It's where people are able to break down walls and feel comfortable sharing uncomfortable things. You talk about truth as kindness. Right, and I agree with that. I believe in that wholeheartedly, and so to me, if I could go back, i would express, like, the amount of grace that I share with others. If I could just share that to myself more would be good, because the way that I light people up, it would be healthy if I could light myself up more, and I think that would be a really good piece of advice.

Dr. William Attaway: 32:10

I love that And I think that's one that every one of us can take to heart Absolutely, because we all have that voice right, and the voice I think could really be the voice of hustle culture. Oh yeah, right, that's just constantly driving you down, just constantly tackling you and saying, hey, it's not enough yet, keep going, it's not enough yet.

Alex Schlinsky: 32:29

There's a concept of hustle culture. That is just a bold-faced lie. I'll never agree to it or believe in it. But the mindset of people that say I work better with my back against the wall Hmm, that is just 100%, patently false. No one works better with their back against the wall. Right, the pressure makes diamonds. Oh my God, such an outrageously stupid comment. Like so stupid. It's just so silly to make up that. Like, utilizing that as a metaphor Oh, when you have more pressure, it's like OK, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to work in flow state and without an immense amount of pressure and putting the stakes so high?

Alex Schlinsky: 33:09

People equivolate their business to the same stakes that an airline pilot would have or a surgeon would have or a police officer would have or a firefighter would have. Those people have the highest stakes every day, every single day. I don't want my doctor going into my surgery and being like well, whatever happens, happens. No, like yes, it'd be perfect, yes, it'd be perfect. As a business coach, i don't have to be perfect, i don't have to hold myself to that standard because the stakes are low. They're low. Yeah, people pay me And, yes, i try to give the best advice possible.

Alex Schlinsky: 33:42

And that's not saying that I'm ambivalent to it or indifferent related to what the results are. It's just I'm not a heart surgeon And I'm not an airline pilot who crashed the plane and killed half the people and be like I'll do better on the next one. And so if you lower the stakes instead of saying I'm just going to be in a pressure cooker at all times, what ends up happening? if you're in a pressure cooker at all times, you implode, just like the Titan that just imploded the Titanic vessel It's the same exact thing. You're going to explode or implode or break, whatever word you want to use. So the idea of that pressure makes diamonds, like in a season at a certain time. But it can't just be a never ending pressure. It's going to make you explode And that's a super common problem that I see.

Alex Schlinsky: 34:25

Season's come and go, but if you're always in it, that's not a season, it's just life, something that we've spoken about many times, the idea and concept of you. know I believe in the concept of seasons, but if there is no off season, well then you have to come to a realization of this isn't a season, this is life and there needs to be a wake-up call on it. Right, that's been the hardest part of writing the book. You know, i had to finish the book. It felt like at the end of the book it kind of felt like I was hustling the anti-hustle book and I felt so disappointed in myself, I felt so defeated. But at the end of the day it was, oh, that was just the season, right, i just have to do it. And then the next season was oh, i got this event, and then the next season with this, and it's like are you practicing what you preach?

Alex Schlinsky: 35:07

And I think it's a very common thing to have imposter syndrome and to not be perfect, and that's why, you know, the cobbler shoes are always the worst. The maid's house is the most uncleanly. This is just a common thing that people do and instead of giving yourself grace, you punish yourself. You say you're not doing good enough, you're not worthy of this, and I think that's the thing. It's just a never-ending cycle of negativity, and if we can bring ourselves out of it together by helping one another, that's what leadership is. Leadership is not being sanctimonious and saying I'm better than you. Leadership is being vulnerable about the flaws that you have, to express that to other people that are being led by you to understand that the flaws that you are having are not death sentences. They're just make you human right And at the end of the day, that's all that I am. I'm just human with a little bit of Iron Man inside of my heart.

Dr. William Attaway: 35:58

Alex, you've dropped so much gold today. This has been so insightful. I'll ask you the thing I ask everybody If people walk away from this episode with one thing, what do you want that one thing to be?

Alex Schlinsky: 36:14

If you have your parents still with you, call them today and say that you love them. It's definitely the number one thing I want you to tell them. If you don't have your parents with you, your closest relative, closest friend. There's a concept of giving flowers, right, And it's really disheartening how we see all the time famous people that pass away or regular people that pass away not famous. That's when everyone comes out of the woodwork to talk about how great they are. And, as someone who is a word of affirmation's person, it's like why do we always wait? Why do we wait till they can't know anymore? In regards to whatever your religious beliefs are? I'm just talking about the physical world that we live in, right, Why do we wait? And so, don't wait. Don't wait. Time is too valuable.

Alex Schlinsky: 36:59

I remember, like I said, calling my parents and telling them about it that I had to have the surgery was horrible. It's a terrible experience, Worst call I've ever made And at some point, unfortunately, in my life, the likelihood is I'm going to get a call about something going wrong with my parents. That's just the reality of life. That is just the reality. I don't want to wait till the last second or where you don't even get a chance whatsoever. So you know, I try to do that every single day. I try to express my gratitude as many people as I possibly can every single day And I think, if you listen to anything from this, not only giving yourself love, but go give some flowers. Go give some flowers to the people you care about, especially your parents, if they're still here, especially So much wisdom there, so much experience.

Dr. William Attaway: 37:46

Alex, thank you for being so generous today. I know folks are going to want to stay connected with you and continue to learn from you. They can get the book on Amazon. What are other ways they can learn from you and stay connected?

Alex Schlinsky: 37:58

I'm on every platform. Basically, you can find me at Alex Schlinsky, pretty much anywhere AlexSchlinsky. com. Prospectingondemand. com, my Facebook group. Seven Figure Sales Savages, pretty easy to find online. Pretty good at it, share content every single day And always trying to be out there. Now I'll finish with this comment related to content.

Alex Schlinsky: 38:18

William last week met someone that has been following me for a while and they asked me how do you do this so easily? And I was like what way do you think this is easy? Where did you get that concept? Like, oh, all the posts that you do on social media. I'm like that is the smallest window. One percent of what I choose to put on there is not easy in any way, and so I'm going to go ahead and do it in any way. And so just a reminder for anyone that does end up following me which I'm grateful for or follows anyone else Now everyone's just airing all the laundry out there.

Alex Schlinsky: 38:49

Everyone's going through something right. Give a little bit more love and grace to yourself, your loved ones and also the people that you follow, and don't just lionize someone because of the stuff that they post on social media. You have no idea the circumstances of what's happening. Focus on your race. That's the best thing you could do And that would be my number one goal. For anyone that is listening to anything I ever share, Fantastic way to tie a bow on this, Alex, thank you.

Dr. William Attaway: 39:13

Thank you. I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalyticleadershipbookcom, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you and we'll get one right out. My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. If you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, i'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalyticleadershipnet to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, please, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Announcer: 40:36

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