Life! By Design_ 6 Steps to an Extraordinary You - Laura Morton [44]
Our first order of business was to create a new vision for what he wanted to achieve. We spent the next eighteen months trying to bring that vision to life, but it didn’t work. The market was tumbling, his profitability and margins were shrinking, and he was battling his addiction to the past—the fact that everyone told him that his company could not work. He was holding on to all the conversations he had when he first started his company, and that doubt was holding him back. He wasn’t seeing things as they were because he was on a sinking ship while focused on a vision he created three years earlier to build something saleable in a marketplace that was now virtually nonexistent.
I told him it was time to begin transitioning to his old career, which was sales, because that was where he knew how to make money. As hard as it was, he reluctantly relinquished his role as CEO of the company, agreed to hand over control to his two other partners, and got back into the sales field. This was the only viable way I could imagine he could make the company valuable enough to sell for what he had in it. At best, I believed he’d get out without it costing him anything more than he’d already invested.
A few months later, his partners offered to buy him out. His asking price was the $600,000 investment he had in the company. When he called to ask my opinion, I told him he’d be lucky to get out without any further obligations. I didn’t think the company was worth the money he was asking, and I was certain his partners knew it too. He could walk away free and clear and move on. That was my advice.
He was extremely resistant to what I had to say. Despite the failure of the company, he was still caught up in his original vision that he had to turn a profit and make the business a success. Now, I was suggesting he walk away from that vision and leave $600,000 on the table. Forty-five days and seven coaching calls later, he still didn’t see things as they were. I had grown frustrated with him, which is never a good sign for a coach. As a last-ditch effort to bring him around, I related a scenario I came up with that I thought would help him see the light.
“The FBI and the IRS walk into your office tomorrow and they handcuff you. They’ve got your wife and children in front of you. They turn to your wife and say, ‘We’ve caught him embezzling, committing fraud, and cooking his books. We’re going to lock him up and throw away the key.’ You’re done, my friend. Now, can you imagine this happening?” I asked.
My client looked confused and said, “Do I have to?”
“Yes! Imagine how you would feel in that moment if you knew your entire life was being taken away. Whether you did those things or not doesn’t matter. You’re watching your children and your wife walk out the door as you’re being led away in handcuffs. How would you feel in that moment?”
“Stop. I don’t like it. I don’t ever want to feel that way.”
“How much money would you spend in that moment for your freedom?”
The answer was obvious. “Six hundred grand,” he said sheepishly.
“You got it! You have been fighting with your partners to pay you six hundred thousand dollars they don’t have for a company that isn’t worth it. You’re trying to help them get lines of credit they’ll never be approved for. You’re the most stuck person I coach. Your resistance is blocking your ability to see things clearly. The moment this thing is behind you, you’ll be free to get back out there and do what you love most and make the money you deserve. And when you get that boulder out of your river, my friend, you’ll thrive. You’ll be back to making a couple of million dollars a year. This will be a blip on the screen.