Discover how Jordon Tait turned fear into freedom and crafted an intentional business designed to foster personal growth and balance. In this episode of "Invest In Yourself: the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast," Jordon shares the secrets behind his success and how you can adopt a similar approach.
Ever wondered why having a coach might be the key to overcoming your biggest fears? Phil Better delves into this with Jordon, exploring how a coach can help you navigate the emotional highs and lows of entrepreneurship. Also, learn the invaluable advice Jordon shares with his younger self about making quick, decisive changes instead of fixating on making the perfect decision.
Curious about how Jordon builds his own freedom into his business and how you can do the same? Discover the strategies that allowed Jordon to maintain a healthy work-life balance, such as avoiding client meetings on Fridays for a 3-day weekend. You’ll also hear about Jordon's future aspirations to expand his coaching through books, courses, and retreats, offering a complete transformational journey.
Stay tuned for an inspirational story where Jordon discusses the pivotal moment that led him to pursue his passion for coaching, despite the comforts of his previous career. This episode is packed with actionable advice and motivational insights, so don’t miss it! And remember, the best investment you can make is in yourself.
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Summary:
In this episode of "Invest In Yourself: the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast," host Phil Better sits down with Jordon Tait, a seasoned entrepreneur turned coach, to discuss the transformative power of intentional living and overcoming fear in business. Jordon shares his journey from a management consultant to a passionate coach, emphasizing the importance of having a mentor, the challenges of public speaking, and maintaining work-life balance. If you're looking to gain control over your entrepreneurial path and define success on your terms, this episode is a must-listen!
Timestamps:
- **00:00 - 02:45** - Introduction to Jordon Tait and episode overview
- **02:46 - 07:30** - Jordon's entrepreneurial journey and overcoming burnout
- **07:31 - 14:50** - Insights into the importance of having a coach
- **14:51 - 21:15** - Overcoming fear of public speaking and judgment
- **21:16 - 29:40** - Jordon’s transition from consulting to coaching
- **29:41 - 35:00** - Structuring work-life balance and maintaining personal freedom
- **35:01 - 40:50** - Future goals and projects in coaching
- **40:51 - 45:30** - Advice for young entrepreneurs and reflections on success
- **45:31 - 48:00** - Closing remarks and call to action
Guest Bio:
**Jordon Tait** is a digital entrepreneur and professional coach specializing in helping business owners overcome emotional obstacles and achieve sustainable success. With a background as a management consultant and partner at Trailblaze Partners, Jordon has empowered hundreds of businesses. His current mission is to guide entrepreneurs in redefining success and maintaining their personal freedom while achieving their professional goals.
Key Takeaways:
- **The Power of Coaching:** Having a coach can help you overcome major fears and obstacles, especially the fear of public speaking and judgment.
- **Intentional Living:** Success isn't just about business achievements; it's about crafting a life that includes well-being and cherished relationships.
- **Work-Life Balance:** Set rules for yourself to ensure you maintain personal freedom—like avoiding business travel and capping your work hours.
- **Consistent Effort:** Overcoming fear and building skills requires consistent action.
- **Personal Fulfillment:** Redefine success in terms of personal fulfillment and balance, not just financial gains.
Resources and Links:
- [Connect with Jordon Tait on LinkedIn]
- [Visit Jordon Tait’s Coaching Website]
- [Phil Better’s Podcast Website]
Call to Action:
Enjoyed this episode? Be sure to **subscribe** to "Invest In Yourself: the Digital Entrepreneur Podcast" for more inspiring conversations. **Leave a review** on your favorite podcast platform to let us know how we're doing and share this episode with other entrepreneurs looking to redefine their success!
Contact Information:
- **Host:** [Phil Better on LinkedIn]
- **Guest:** [Jordon Tait on LinkedIn]
SEO Keywords:
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You're welcome to invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast, join the podcast murder. Fill better as he interviews success for entrepreneur that make their living in the digital world. Now, let's join your house, fill better and your special guest today on invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast, hello listeners and welcome back to another enlightening episode of invest in yourself, the digital entrepreneur podcast. I'm of course your host, Phil better the podcast mobile and today's guest has an inspiring journey of entrepreneurship, growth and intentional living to share with us. Our guest is a seasoned entrepreneur who's packed to success began with a leap of faith into the world of business at a very young age. His entrepreneurial journey kicked off when he first started his business as a painter at the age of 21 while navigating the challenges of university life. Despite lacking formal training or guidance, our guest thrived on the freedom and independence of being his own boss, shading his business to align with his ideal lifestyle. But it was during his glow, trotting adventures, exploring 40 countries over four transitional transformation of that, transformative years that our guests perspective on business and life truly evolved upon returning. Our guest career soared as he transitioned into corporate business coaching and training for the wow one day painting where he honed his skills in a massive, invaluable world, real world experience. As a coach and a trainer, our guests empowered 35 new painting franchises across North America to remarkable revenue milestone, averaging over 400,000, as that's $400,000 in their first year, a testament to his dedication to supporting others' growth and success. However, the relentless pace of business travel eventually took its toll, leading our guest to confront burnout and severe insomnia, which I can say I have had, seeking renewal he embarked on a life-changing journey to Australia with his partner, where he found the space to recharge, reflect and redefine his path forward. From the tranquil shores of the Great Barrier Reef, our guest serendipilliously embarked on a new chapter becoming an owner and management consulting at Trailblaze Partners, over the years he has lent his expertise to hundreds of businesses from startups to major corporations, facilitating the growth through leadership development, people management and cultural transformation, not content with merely consulting, our guest passion for coaching and empowering small businesses, or small business owners, led him to establish the intentional business. Here he tackles the persuasive challenge of balancing business success with personal fulfillment, helping entrepreneurs claim their time, freedom and joy. Today, our guest resides in the picturesque coastal town of Gibson on the Sunside Coast in BC, very jealous, where he savours the simple pleasures of beach life and quality time with loved ones, his commitment to living with intention prioritizes relationships and well-being shines through its every aspect of his life, providing success isn't just about business, it's about crafting a life you love. Without further ado, let us dive into the wisdom and insight of my guest, Jordan Tate. Jordan, thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Bill, that was an amazing intro to really thank you for the virus. I have to, I'm a hype man, I have to hype you up before the show, like I constantly say, I'm a fan of hip hop and there's always that hype man before the main act comes on, the singer comes on, that's who I think I am, I'm the hype man as the host of the show, you're the main star, so Jordan, welcome to the show. Well you nailed it, and I don't even know what flip to share after all of that, my whole life story there. We got your whole life story, but we don't got the little minuses that we're gonna jump in today, so Jordan, we're gonna start with the first question, like always, why did you become an entrepreneur? I've been even an entrepreneur for the freedom, and I got there from a different experience than most people were. I had my own business before I had ever really got into having a career, and my first business allowed me to work eight months a year and then travel the other four, because I got to choose my ours, choose what I charged, and I loved that freedom and autonomy and the lifestyle that I was able to have, and then I went and got as you hit on a corporate job, and I gave up that freedom for four years, and it was a good trade because my skills accelerated, I learned a lot, and I really grew, but by the time I finished that period, and as you hit on again, I was burning out, I was exhausted, I wasn't sleeping well, I wasn't taking care of my fellow, I realized I needed to reorient my career and my life around that freedom that is so critical to me for my happiness, and that's why I'm a business owner, and that's also what I help other business owners achieve is more freedom in their business. I love that, and again, it's the common theme. I think that's the one theme that threads to all entrepreneurs, this desire for freedom, be it financial freedom, time freedom, freedom to do whatever you want, freedom from the stress of business, if you will, or having to make money, because being your own boss, you can hire the people that can do all the stuff that we don't like to do, like editing a podcast. Not the best, but most cost-effective time of your life, so you hire someone to do it, so I love that you also, you jump between, you went to the corporate world after being an entrepreneur, and then you think, "Well, wait, no, corporate world is really not for me," and you jumped out of there back out of the nine to five grind. My question is, what made you decide to go to the corporate world when you had a successful business that allowed you to work eight months of the year while you could travel the other four? That's a little confusing to me. Definitely, and it was a very difficult decision in my life, but my painting business, I kind of felt like I'd hit the end of the road on where I wanted to go with it. I didn't know I didn't want to spend my whole life building a painting business. It wasn't fulfilling me. It was providing the money I needed to live and the freedom, but it wasn't fulfilling, and I knew I was capable of more, so that leap into corporate becoming a business coach and a trainer helping other people build and launch painting businesses gave me that nice stepping stone upwards and truly incredible growth from the organization I was in, and really that's when I discovered my passion for coaching, which I wasn't even aware of when I was running a painting business. Even though it kind of feels like a weird step to give up that freedom and give up being your own boss, at the time it was a huge step up in my career, and it set the foundation for where I am today, running my own coaching business and helping other business owners run their business. For me, it all came down to what are the trade-offs, and that's how I assess every single decision in my life, is what are the trade-offs and what's missing in my current scenario. At that point, it was passion and a new path, and then when I left there, it was reconnecting to the freedom and autonomy that I'd traded for that. I love how, in essence, you invested in yourself by taking this corporate gig, because without taking this corporate gig, you wouldn't have up-skilled, and you should found your passion of coaching and helping people like that. That was a huge thing. That was a major investment into yourself. I'm wondering, apart from that giant investment in yourself, is there another situation or another habit that you've developed that is a huge investment in yourself that may help others who are listening to this podcast? I'm huge on habits. I really, truly believe my current lifestyle and my success is built on the habits that I picked up in my early 20s and 33 now, but for me, I try to build habits around everything, my health, the way around my business, my relationships. For me, it's about stacking. It's identifying one that will help improve your life, and some examples for me would be daily exercise, daily meditation, reading, journaling, different things like that, that really accelerated both my personal growth and my professional development, and then outside of habits, it's all my biggest leaps in life have come with the support of a coach. I really believe that the fastest way to achieve the growth and transformation we want is with the support of someone who's either been there and done it before, and they can help us understand the path and avoid the pitfalls, or someone who can help us get out of our own way, because often we know what we want, and even often we know how to get it. We know what the steps are. The thing that is hardest is actually getting out of our own way, getting out of the fear, the doubt, and the beliefs that we hold, and that's where a coach has always helped me, because you may not be able to see it today, but eight years ago, I was terrified of public speaking, and I hated the idea of marketing myself, and I would never go into podcasts, even though I love listening to that. Best. Through working with a coach, I was able to overcome that fear as an example. I like that. I like not only investing in a coach that can help you, and as entrepreneurs, we know we are the problem in most of our business. We are the bottleneck, if anything, so I love how you're saying with a coach, you can remove yourself from that bottleneck and open it up so the flow of energy, the flow of money, the flow of success can come to you. I also like how you, I just lost my train of thought. I hate when that happens, and the fear of public speaking, I never understood that. As someone who always loved talking in front of people, I hate hearing my own voice, but I love the sound of my voice. To that makes sense. Interesting. But what was it about public speaking? You were painting, so you had to market yourself, and so you technically had to do promotions and marketing. What was it about it that you didn't like? So what I uncovered with my coach was that it was a fear of judgment, and a judgment out. I'm going to say the wrong thing, you're going to sound stupid, I'm not going to look confident, and to avoid that fear of judgment, I just didn't do it. And the fear of it, it wasn't like speaking with someone one to one, I've always been comfortable there. It was more the second I was in front of more than a few people in a room, I would start to clam up, and that's where that corporate job really helped right through that, because I was often leading training seminars, workshops, speaking at conferences. And each time I was terrified going, I was ready, like I could barely breathe, but I would get up and I would do it, and I would realize that was not very good, but it was slightly better than the last time I did it, and no one shouted at me, and no one told me it was bad. And really, I realized I'm my own worst critic, so now I've become more about do the reps, and similar to if you're learning how to hit a basketball shot, you're going to miss more times than you hit, but you just keep shooting until you get more consistently, and I think that's the same with essentially any skill. The harder part is when that skill is public facing, when you're learning and public. I went through this more recently with me writing posts every day and posting on LinkedIn, and social media, and the first few I did were really hard. I hated putting myself into them, hated putting them out there, I had so much fear, and then now I can put up three or four weeks without ever thinking about it, but it's because I've just done the rest. So you just, one of the things you learned from your coach, I would presume, and I don't mean to be presumptuous, is that the more you do it, the less fear comes of it. Yeah. What I say is fear is the gatekeeper on our growth, and I held myself back a lot throughout my life. I prevented myself from doing the thing I really wanted to do because I was afraid of failure so judgment of whatever else it was, but what I learned was the more action you take, the quieter the fear gets. And so going back to my focus on habits, if there's something that I'm afraid of that I want to overcome, I figure out how can I challenge this consistently as often as possible. So writing as an example, eight months ago I'd never really written a post and shared it on social media as much because I was afraid of self-promotion. I committed to, I'm going to write three a week, and I'm going to do that for a year. And now I've written hundreds of posts, and again I don't think about it because I just show up and do it. So it's building to have it, and that's helped me break through the inertia of, I'm afraid I don't want to do it, but it's important to me. So when I'm coaching people through fears, what I always say is, is it a fear bigger than the dream that you have, and as long as that fear is bigger than your dream, you won't take action. But once you realize that the only thing between you and what you want in life is your fear, and that you have the ability to overcome it without ending your life or breaking or anything, then everything gets more exciting because now you can actually start to really grow. I love that. Now it's interesting because you're bringing in some points that I don't think most the experiences that some of our guests would have with dealing with coaches is probably different. Given that you started a very young, your entrepreneurial journey at 21, how do you feel starting so young has shaped you as a coach? The experiences that you had as a young entrepreneur, building your first business, all of that, how do you feel that has affected you as a coach today and when you're meeting with your clients? I love that. What comes to mind is I know how hard the waves of growing a business are, the emotional highs and lows, the stress, the pressure, the fear, and I wrote that really hard. Like I said alone the first few years, I didn't have a coach, had no training, and I was basically just learning through trial and error and making a lot of mistakes. It caused me a lot of time and money and frustration, and that's where I now love to help people is helping them smooth out that roller coaster so that the highs are still high and the lows are less painful and less stressful, and to try to avoid them in the first place by saying if you're at this stage and this is the thing you're trying to do, I know exactly what you need to do because I've done it myself before and I've trialed it with hundreds of other owners and have seen what works, where people get stuck, what doesn't work, and I'm trying to smooth out that path where people help them find the easiest path to where they're going with the least effort and pain and frustration. I like how you're trying to save them from the hurt that comes with being an entrepreneur. The bruises and scars that some of us have from our journey and battles that we've faced as an entrepreneurial journey, I'm curious because you've had like technically like three so far, three parts to your life and your journey as an entrepreneur. You had your youthful entrepreneurial journey, you had your corporate life, and now you're back into being a coach, back to being an entrepreneur, if you will, helping other entrepreneurs, other business owners, do you see another possible pivot to maybe a different domain, different type of coaching, or maybe jumping back into the corporate world to upgrade your skills to the next level, what do you see kind of like in the future for you? So I actually started my current business eight months ago and prior to that for three years, I was a management consultant and partner, so I was growing in another business and it was an amazing experience and again, I learned so much through the process, but what I learned through that experience was it's making more money than I'd ever made before. I was working good hours and I had pretty good flexibility and I mostly enjoyed what I was working on but as I got deeper and deeper and started to start to ask that question of where do I go from here in my career, the thing that became very clear to me was I'm not as passionate about consulting, not as passionate about project management and some of the things I was dealing with there. I'm really all in on coaching, I love providing that impact on people's lives and I love learning and developing my own abilities, so I left that business not because I wasn't happy, not because I wasn't earning good money or had the freedom but because I identify that my biggest passion and the thing I find most enjoyable is coaching and so that's where I'm at now and my goal is that this is what I do for the next 20 years and there'll be considerations within that, you know, I'd like to write a book and build courses and most retreats and do workshops and all these other things but all within the guise of coaching to help people build better businesses and live better lives and I will never go back to corporate. I was, I know that very clearly because I would never give up the freedom and control of my time again and for any amount of money because that's the best part of building your own businesses, you build your own freedom and then it's really hard to imagine giving that up again after I've already done that once before. I could imagine how difficult it would be to relapse into being a corporate nine to five or again or your own version of nine to five given the amount of freedom that you now have reclaimed in your life and probably increasing. With that said, like you're working with clients who may be stuck, maybe facing difficulties that you have faced yourself. What is possibly the most, maybe not the most common, I'm going to use the word common, but it can't really come to the world right now, common problem or issue that you see your clients face when they come talk to you in the last like eight months or even through your whole journey as a, as a consulting coach type thing. So there's a larger problem, which is kind of more of a pain and then I'll explain why that happens. So the reason I created my current business and the core problem that I want to help people solve is that so many people start their business or the reasons we're talking about or freedom or enjoyment of their life, form or balance and control. And then as they build, it gets harder and harder and they get busier and then the business is succeeding and then they get busier and a lot of people is, it's a natural progression. They find themselves working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, never taking a vacation, never having that freedom that they thought the business was going to provide. And this coming victim of your own success, you've just got too much. Your business is growing beyond your capacity to handle it. So that's a huge pain because if you start your business for freedom and enjoyment of life and balance and then you lose all those in the pursuit of growing it, it gets really frustrating and difficult. And I've seen most of people hit that within three to five years of launching a business. Some people can stay there for a long time, but that's this plateau that unless you figure out how to break through, your business will always take over your life. So the reason this happens is because when you start out, you've got a ton of time and you're not earning a lot of money. So you're building it and you're just putting in as much effort as you can and you get busier and busier and it starts to grow and you're happy so you just keep putting in more time and there's a big return on the effort you're putting. Then eventually you get to the point where you are maxed out and it doesn't matter how many hours you put in, you just can't keep up because the workload has become unsustainable and you're trying to do too much yourself. And so the biggest trap that people fall into is they try to do it all themselves for too long and they don't hire support sooner or more frequently to help buy back their time and freedom as they grow and it's a big, big challenge for people because hiring costs money, it takes time, it can be really frustrating and not everyone feels capable of managing and leading a team, but what I always share with people is until you have support, you will be stuck where you are, unless you're willing to pull back on your business, slow down your growth. So it's a very challenging place that people end up in and that's what I love to help them break free from is I want them to be able to grow a bigger business but while working less hours and I want them to have that freedom to take a vacation again and when my client get there and they're like hey I'm going to be away the next three weeks, I'm going to Columbia with my partner, I'm like yes, that's what this is about, your life not just your work but it's really easy to attach all your significance and your self-worth to the size of your business, size of your bank account and get it totally railroaded on missing the part of your life that business was supposed to provide. I love that, I love that and I think now that I've been interviewing multiple entrepreneurs, I'm at nearly 500 now it's insane, I love how we're redefining success because before success was your bank account, your house, your title, right, that was the success that I grew up as an elder millennial and probably a lot of people we're listening, who we're listening grew up with and now every time I get a new entrepreneur on the podcast it's a redefining of success, it's success on our own terms, what is it that we as individuals who want, that's our success, be it a vacation to Columbia or having the opportunity to recharge ourselves in Australia after a very tumultuous period, pardon, and that speaks volumes about the importance of self-care and balance, how do you maintain that healthy work life integration now and what advice do you have for entrepreneurs dealing with burnout? Well you hit on it perfectly, when you define your own version of success, it becomes a lot easier to achieve and it's easy when you're young, you're 20s and you're getting out of university and you're getting into your first jobs to chase what everyone is selling you as success, the dollars you were and the hours you were, the things you own, what's fun is once you start to get those things, you start to look at how am I happier, is my life better, some things do add value and some don't, so an exercise I really encourage people to do is just define what is success to you and ask yourself like three to five years from now, if everything is perfect in my life, what does my life look like? And there may be some things around money and things but I bet you a lot more is about time and freedom and enjoyment and family and all these other things, so that's kind of a side angle from what you asked about how do I manage work life balance and escape or void burnout and this because I hit such deep burnout for about 80 months in my last corporate job, I'm super clear that I will never go back there again because I was not at my best in my life or in my work, I was dragging myself through days and it was the low point in my life realistically, so when I came out of that what I did was wrote down some rules for myself, kind of defining my own success in the future in any job or career or business that I build, how do I want to work and live and what I created for myself was I'm definitely done with business travel because that was the primary reason for my burnout was spending weeks and weeks every month on the road and hotels and airports and stuff, so I'm done with business travel and I won't do it anymore. Number two is I won't work more than 40 hours a week because I truly believe if you put in a good 40 hours, you deserve the rest of your day and your week to live your life and realistically now I work like 30 to 35 hours a week because there's just too much good stuff to do outside of work. And then third was I don't want to give up control of my schedule at any time, so I don't want to have to bang someone for a day off and I don't want to have to bang someone to get off work an hour early so I can go to Tony with friends. So by becoming my own boss, I set those as my initial goals and the way that I hold them is I've got a really clear structure for my schedule where I don't start work before 8.30 or 9 and I finish work at four every single day and I've stuck to that for years and if there's more work to do, I'll do it the next day. And then what I also do is Fridays are my internal day, where I don't have client meetings and our project meetings or anything. So if I want a three-day weekend and I take it and I don't have to ask anybody and if I want to have a busy, productive day off the business, then it's there for me. I love how you went to left and you were relaxing on the nice, sandy beaches of Australia avoiding the sharks, apparently, on the jellyfish. I hear they have a problem with sharks and jellyfish and drop bears too, I heard. I'm not sure. Yeah, the drop bears will get in. Yeah, so I heard. I love how you define it. You wrote down the rules to your life and I think that's something really important that before we jump into entrepreneurship, that's something that everybody should do. We are coming to the end, which I hate because I feel like we just started talking short and getting to know each other and so I'm going to invite you back in a little bit because you just start, like you said, eight months in. I want to see what you're looking at like in 18 months into the business and how that is. So we're going to definitely have you back on. But before we go, I would love to know, I have your 10-year-old self right here running around full of energy and sugar, sorry, I gave them a whole bunch of candy. But I would love to know what is one piece of advice you would love to be able to hand back to your 10-year-old self. I wouldn't say if you ever feel stuck or frustrated or unhappy in a situation, change something fast and I used to fixate on making the right decision and I would stay stuck for months, four years because I was like, I have to think of the perfect way out before I can change. What I've learned over time is that just experiment with different things. If you're unhappy in your job, try thinking about what are some other jobs that I could try or other skills or side hustles. If you're unhappy in your relationship, don't waste time, stop, talk about it. Change something because I think that it's very easy for us to get used to discomfort and just accept that this is good enough or this is difficult, but I'll just keep going. But everything in my life has always been better when I make that change that I was waiting for. And on the other side, you uncover new ways of living and enjoy your life. I love a great piece of advice to all our younger selves or to any age we are. Don't stay stuck if you're unhappy. I think that's some amazing advice. Jordan, I'm going to jump off stage here. I want you to let my audience know where they can connect with you if they're looking for an amazing coach for a more intentional business, looking for that freedom. If they resonate with you, so I'm going to jump off stage here, please let my audience know where they can connect with you. Sure. Yeah, thanks everyone. So if any of this is resonated with you and either you're thinking about launching a business or you're in that stage I hit on, which is you're just so busy and overwhelmed trying to grow your business that you can't keep up and your life is suffering, I can totally help you and I can do that through coaching. So you can find me on LinkedIn at Jordan Tate, or you can find me at www.theintentionalbusiness.ca. And in either one of those places you'll find a link to book a call with me and it's a free opportunity to connect and talk through the problems you're facing and the goals you have. And I'll try to give you a couple steps so that you can achieve those faster and with less of that stress and overwork. I love it. Jordan, I want to thank you so much for being here, sharing your story and giving us such great pieces of advice for both our 10 year old self and our 33 year old self. So Jordan, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Love chatting with this stuff and you have such good questions. I thank you so much for that. Again, amazing compliment. To my audience, make sure you check out the show notes down below because I'll be able to connect with Jordan. I want to thank you for listening. I want to thank Jordan again for being an amazing guest. And as always, remember to invest in yourself. Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
