How to Turn Leadership Struggles into Executive Triumphs?

What if your greatest struggles were actually the fuel for your most significant successes?

In this powerful episode of Rise From The Ashes, we delve into how the most daunting challenges can ignite the flames of personal and professional growth. Whether you're an executive feeling the weight of leadership or an entrepreneur striving for Sustainable Business Growth, this episode offers the strategies and insights you need to rise above and conquer.

Key Takeaways:

• Executive Coaching for CEOs: Learn how personalized coaching can sharpen your leadership skills and guide you through even the toughest obstacles.
• Business Strategy Consulting: Discover innovative approaches to strategic planning that can drive your business forward, even in the face of adversity.
• Leadership Development Programs: Uncover the essential qualities that distinguish exceptional leaders and how you can cultivate them within yourself and your team.
• Stress Management Techniques: Explore practical methods for managing the unique stresses that come with high-level executive roles, ensuring you stay at the top of your game.
• High-Performance Coaching: Understand how to optimize your performance and that of your team, turning challenges into opportunities for growth.
• Team Dynamics and Conflict Resolution: Learn how to improve communication and collaboration within your organization, creating a cohesive and high-performing culture.

Whether you're looking to enhance your Leadership Skills or develop Effective Strategic Planning methods, this episode will provide you with actionable insights to help you rise from the ashes of any challenge. Join us as we delve into real-life stories of resilience and triumph, proving that true success comes from within.

Tune in to Rise From The Ashes and embark on your journey of transformation. Subscribe now and don’t miss an episode that could redefine your approach to leadership and business growth.

Colorado’s best business coach, Baz Porter, has a new mindset strategy mentoring service to help you unlock new heights of growth, prosperity, happiness, and success. Book your first meeting with the coaching visionary at https://www.ramsbybaz.com/

Chapters

• 0:00 Building Self-Evolving Communities
• 7:09 Exploring Grit and Entrepreneurship
• 19:20 Empowering Grit Tips and Support

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Gentlemen, welcome to another episode of Rise and Ashes podcast. I'm your host, Baz Porter, and today I'm joined with an amazing guest. She's an influencer. She is somebody who has a vision for the future. Maya Gordon is my guest. Maya, please say hello and tell everybody what you do and where you're from.

Speaker 2: 0:22

Hey everyone, my name is Maya Gordon. I grew up in Seattle, washington, I live in Birmingham, alabama, right now, kind of headed on my way moving over to Israel in the next couple years, and you know what I do. That's an interesting question, because what we do changes a lot over time and sometimes it's a little bit less relevant than you know the core of who we are, which to me what we do, is a should be, a, you know, product or expression of that. So for me, you know I'm a curious person, I love learning new things and I love challenges, and so that kind of combination pushed me into entrepreneurship. I dropped out of college after thinking I was going to be a veterinarian. I took one zoology class, got queasy, cutting open worms, and you know kind of asked myself, man, how am I going to feel if I have to cut open someone's dog?

Speaker 2: 1:10

I'm probably not going to handle that very well. I've discovered this whole career path around copywriting, around marketing. I was really drawn to how words impact people, was kind of the core of it. I grew up being a avid, avid reader. My imagination was always something that felt as real, if not more real than reality. When I discovered keyword intent with Google AdWords I thought wow, the words we use have hidden intent.

Speaker 2: 1:35

Started in copywriting, got tired of freelance work, decided to build a couple different companies, making a lot of mistakes with each one, kind of getting to a place where I realized this company isn't something I want to do the rest of my life. Let me move on, start something new. I'm always looking for that fit, that thing I want to do the rest of my life because it's beyond me. It's something I want to contribute my life to and be in service of. Where I'm at on that journey is writing books.

Speaker 2: 2:02

I'm writing my first book centered around my nonlinear, exciting life journey up to this point, with the core theme of grit. What is grit? How do we develop it? Why does it matter? The main thing I'm focusing on right now is building online communities. Working with people who built huge followings on social media platforms or through their podcast or newsletters. I think about how do we create a space where these people feel a deepening level of relationship and are able to self-evolve. The community, A community, is not where one person dictates. It's where members have agency in how it evolves and grows. That's something I'm really drawn to.

Speaker 1: 2:41

I love what you said about self-evolving communities. I'm really drawn to. I love what you said about self-evolving communities. Now, you've had a lot of experience in building communities. What are the common failures that you have come across, not just in what you've done, but you're hearing from other people who are trying something similar in these sort of spaces.

Speaker 2: 3:03

Yeah. So first I'll say I'm only 33. I haven't had a lot of experience. Even 10 or 15 years isn't long. It's important to understand. You don't start having deep insights until you're a decade into something. I've recently been intentionally building communities. I think I've accidentally built communities in my other businesses through my desire to connect people. People who care about connecting with others will naturally start to form a community. To answer your question, the biggest mistake is not caring enough. Building a community for an outcome. That is you know, and I'm not saying that having measurable goals is bad. Those are tools, but if, that's if your goal is to accomplish a number and you don't have an intangible, I don't think it's going to be successful long term. Communities have to be beyond the head. They have to really be attached to the heart.

Speaker 1: 3:57

Yeah, a world renowned entrepreneur, gary Vee, came to mind with building communities from gratitude, inspiration, from his own journey. Have there been mentors or role models you've modeled to build what you're doing today?

Speaker 2: 4:15

Yeah, so I want to differentiate between people I've looked to and learned a lot teachers from role models because I think I've learned from an incredible number of people who are teachers from role models, cause I think I've learned from an incredible number of people who are not my role models. Gary V is a great example. I think he's brilliant. I listened, you know, when I was in 2016 to 2018, I was blowing glass in my glass blowing business on the torch for 12 to 18 hours a day. I listened to a ton of podcasts Binge listened to his podcast and Andy Frisella's MFCEO project. I learned an incredible amount from those. Also Ed Milet's podcast.

Speaker 2: 4:52

But is Gary Vee a role model for what I want to accomplish in life? Not necessarily and partially. That's just we don't have an alignment on, I would say, personalities. So Gary Vee is a very passive, kind of a little bit not attacking in a bad way, but aggressive. I played competitive basketball Like I very much had that be a lot more of my personality in the past and I realized it's not the impact that I wanted to have on people.

Speaker 2: 5:18

I wanted to make people feel safe, feel comfortable, empowered, and I think you know both are necessary. They speak to different types of people, but the types of communities I'm looking to build are, you know, not ones that tell people they're doing it wrong. I want to say I understand why you're doing it this way. Here's a better way. It's a different style of communication. To answer your question, people I find to be role models. I would say rabbis and ministers are really good role models, incredibly in service of their community. You know they have an incredible amount of patience and giving. Same with teachers Not all teachers, in fact, I think there's some really horrible, awful teachers out there, but I think there's, you know, certain preschool, high school teachers at any level are incredible role models, contributing to something beyond themselves.

Speaker 1: 6:11

I love what you mentioned and that shows authenticity. I don't register or agree with a well-known figure, but I understand where they're coming from and I can align with who I am today. I have the power of being myself and not fitting in someone else's box. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's rare in your industry. Many people say you do it this way because so-and-so does it that way. You didn't do that. That's why I like you so much. You stand in your lane and I don't care what they're doing, I'm doing me. And that brings me into the next role of this is what is grit? Because grit and resilience are similar. But I want your take on how you became the expert in grit and elevating other people in your industry in grit and elevating other people in your industry.

Speaker 2: 7:07

Well, first of all, thank you for very, very kind words. You know, to me resilience is one component of grit. I've kind of mapped out 20 different ingredients and the book I'm writing is called Grit Cake because it very is similar, like there's a recipe, there's ingredients and a recipe, and it's not just the ingredients, it's how you put them together. It's also like what cake are you trying to bake? And so you know, with grit I think there's a lot of ingredients that people wouldn't necessarily associate with resilience, even though people you know, conceptually think of those two things like interchangeably, and so one of them is curiosity. So most people would not go. Curiosity and resilience are the same thing, but in a sense they are. They share a lot of traits, including when you become curious. You no longer are thinking I can't do this. Curiosity is a forward-moving conceptual framework versus defeat, a backward positioning mental framework. It says I'm not going to move forward, I've reached the limit. Curiosity says I'm going to look in a direction I haven't looked. That's often what resilience is right. If this isn't working now, what do I do? I have to do something different. Another ingredient people wouldn't always associate with resilience, but as part of grit is openness, being open to new ideas.

Speaker 2: 8:24

A lot of times, the reason people don't take the stance I'm taking is because they believe that there's only two binary options Either I agree with the top authority in their field and if I don't, that means I must be against them. I've found a different way to navigate. I don't think these areas are wrong. In fact, I see great value in them and I would actually like to work with this person because we're complementary to each other. So, instead of thinking that things are opposing, seeing things, as you know, in people, seeing people as complementary parts to a greater whole. That requires humility. I can't be the best at everything In my field. There's going to be lots of other people who have a completely different way of looking at things that most people would say. That must be opposite, and I would say, actually, that's additive to what I'm doing and I don't have to take all parts, and they don't have to take all the parts of what I'm doing, but if we can work together and take a little from each other, we both become better.

Speaker 1: 9:28

I like what you've just said about. Firstly, the curiosity. A friend of mine and a friend of the show his name is Dov Barron invented the emotional source code. He's a phenomenal speaker. He's been a guest on the show. Awesome guy. His slogan is stay curious, always stay curious. What you're speaking into there is just that knowledge of ask questions, be open. And I think the openness hasn't been really looked at from an entrepreneurial point of view because we have all these extrovert role models who have supposedly just overnight successes, who have supposedly just overnight successes. A friend told me every success is a minimum of 15 years in the making. You've been in 15 years doing this. You left the veterinarian world. You thought, no, it's not for me. What was the life lesson in leaving that scripted life and what were the challenges you met on the entrepreneurial?

Speaker 2: 10:37

journey, yeah, I mean so. For me, the big mental switch. I grew up sheltered environment. Yeah, I'm born 1991 to give people context, and you know I was told it was you go to college and you can have a good career. If you don't, there's no hope for you to build anything with your life. I didn't grow up like no concept of entrepreneurship. It was just not something that was literally ever brought up even a single time.

Speaker 2: 11:03

Growing up for me as an option or something that anyone talked about, it was college and all the different college career paths or you're going to have a minimum wage job or you're going to you know like, you're going to work in the coal. Mine is like what it felt like and I knew I didn't want to have a boring job. That was really hard, that you know didn't pay. So I said, okay, I'm going to go to college. I went to a really good high school where most of the classes were discussion-based, small, just like really brilliant teachers who really cared and created their own you know like curriculums. And then I went to a college where I was in you know giant lecture classes where the teacher was like basically going over what we read in the book. I thought how is this valuable? Why would I pay $50,000 a year for that? At the same time, I was trying to figure out how to make some money because my parents did not give me a credit card. Some other students in my dorm were like I've got a credit card and a Mercedes my parents gave me. My parents won't give me money to buy a t-shirt Like they're mad. I went to the expensive school I'm mostly paying for it but they had to co-sign on my loan and they're really not happy about that and I'm very grateful. My parents did help me pay off a significant amount of the three semesters of student loan debt, which was more than it should have been.

Speaker 2: 12:15

When I started making more money than people with degrees doing copywriting, I was writing product descriptions and I thought how do you not know how to describe the product you created? Why are you paying me so much for it? That made me think wow, the world from a financial perspective doesn't work the way that anyone ever told me, or that, like the systems of society are telling people, there are not shortcuts, but different, different entire streets and roads that you can explore, and go on that have nothing to do with the framework of value we've been told. I started going down this path of what do people value, how do people value things? And then you know for me, to answer the second part of your question, what were some of the challenges. Most were personal, internal challenges.

Speaker 2: 13:01

The big blessing of business, and what drew me to it more than anything, is that business was a big, fat mirror that would point out everything that I was struggling with. I grew up with major social anxiety my mom every time because the internet was like happening as we were growing up. Stranger danger, especially women. Do not talk to strangers. All the men are trying to take advantage of you. Don't go to the guys in the van, like it was just constant messaging of people you don't know are bad, and so that messed me up. Even though I didn't believe that from a heart, soul level, my brain had been trained to believe that that was true because I got so much messaging from it. When I started doing cold calling, going to trade shows and vending, I was terrified. These were people I'd never met.

Speaker 2: 13:47

It took me a long time to train myself out of that, but it was a beautiful again mirror for me to understand. Why am I reacting this way? What are the core fundamental beliefs? What is all the interconnection between the complex parts of the human psyche, and how are they interacting? That was a major one. Another one was ego. I'll never be as confident in thinking I'm so smart and know everything is when I was 19. I think that's common. We get to this age when we're like in our early twenties, like late teens, where we're like I'm the, I'm the big kid on the block, I'm cool, the adults are old and they don't know anything. I'm young and hip and I've got it all figured out. Unless we intentionally work on that, it doesn't really go away. It morphs into different parts of our personality and business. Dealing with customer service, realizing it was far more worth it for me to make someone happy than it was to be right, being right kind of sucked from a personal stress standpoint. Lots of lessons like that.

Speaker 1: 14:48

I love what you've said about the ego, the lessons you learned. I'm different, brought up in a different way, not in America. From 15 to 24, I was in the forces, conditioned in a very different environment. When I came out I didn't have any identity. I didn't know what was happening. I'd been removed from it. When I went into business, I got taught the hard way of ego not to have it and I failed many, many, many times when these like very big rooms. I had imposter syndrome. But at every step you learn a lesson to create a bigger project or vision. What is your big vision? What is? Do you have a 10 year? This is where I want to be.

Speaker 2: 15:38

That's a question I've evolved my thinking around at every stage, and so, for example, two years ago I was in a place where I said you know, I believe I like fundamentally, firmly, with like lots of logic around it, in a non-delusional way, believe I can create some type of system that has global change. Now I still think that that's true as a possibility, I can certainly do that, but understanding that, where and how I'm going to add value into the world is not something I could possibly see or predict, because there are so many changing elements. It's good to have visions that lead you in a direction, but to be attached to them in a way that can prevent you from continuing to take those lessons is missing an opportunity. I couldn't yet tell you what that's going to look like for me, because I'm early on this journey, but I believe that the things I'm going through now are, even the very minute things, more important than the vision of the long-term future that doesn't yet exist. For example, when I used to have like multiple projects and one of them wasn't working. Well, I go, well, then it's time to stop.

Speaker 2: 16:54

Like you know, there's so much, I would say, messaging around. It's about what you got to cut out of your life and like, not deal with stuff. And I've shifted my perspective on that to say, okay, maybe it is something that I at some point like that I should not be doing so much, but why is it here now? And is there something I'm supposed to be struggling through with this? If I'm struggling with something, there's a lesson. If I don't figure out the lesson before I stop, I'm missing something. It's less about what I can see and aim for. What is the thing I can't see? Yet that's bigger than the thing I can see. It's a different way of thinking. Do I have a thing? Yes, building networks of communication and people that are more effective than existing networks social media, publications, blogs, television, technology based on phone calls, text messaging. There's going to be evolution in communication networks and how they're designed, and so that's the space that I'm aiming to make contribution in. But I'm also aware that maybe that's a stepping stone to something actually more important and impactful.

Speaker 1: 18:03

I love what you're speaking to now and how people find people like yourself. As the landscapes change in the world, so do the way people consume content, the way they view other people but you mentioned something earlier about elevating others was key in what you do. Can you lean into some of the community basics? Could you give some elements of what we do in that community?

Speaker 2: 18:32

Yes, I'm building out my own community called the Grit Squad. It's less about people who want to develop grit. It's more about people who see the value in growing as human beings, creating deeper meaning and impact in their life In One Support. It's a hard journey. There's therapists, mentors, business coaches and life coaches. Community is a form of support that throughout human history has existed and that we've lost a bit in recent times, especially in person. There are things in a digital space. I also think there's things in digital space not recreatable in person. They each have their advantages in this Grit Squad community, and then I'm building communities with other people too. So I just wanted to say there's lots of formats. I don't think one thing makes community effective. It depends on the members and context.

Speaker 2: 19:18

For the Grit Squad, it's evolving. I started this two months ago. The core is daily grit tips and then a weekly kind of summary that speaks about a particular ingredient of grit. But the tips are basically you know my way of building out a database of exercises that are really fun that people can search through, and then there's a WhatsApp group discussion where people can talk about their experiences. So the way I structured the grit tips is here's the quick, actionable items. So, for example, as I was telling you kind of before the call, one is a commitment jar where each day you write one commitment it can be small on a piece of paper and put it in the jar. Then I share a scientific, you know, data backed and it creates more, more level of commitment for us when we do something, versus in writing something in and of itself as an action but putting it in a jar. There's something psychologically concrete about that. I share a personal story about. You know either that specific action or a context around you. Know how have I used this in my life? You know how has this impacted me in some way? And then, in the discussion group, encourage people to share something specific about a commitment they've struggled with. If they're going to use that action item, share how it's going. It's cool to see people sharing struggles in the community coming in Not just me as the community leader.

Speaker 2: 20:41

Someone asked me hey, I'm really. Someone said you know, I'm really struggling to post content, like it's really hard for me and it's really hard for me to message people, I imagine because they probably have some some anxiety around that. And so I, you know, came in and said okay, here are some tips for how I, when that, when that was really challenging for me how I overcame that. I thought about this thing and I didn't focus on this thing and then, like three other community members came in and said, oh, and here's another tip, and here's more advice, and I think more even than the advice itself. The support of having multiple people say you got this and we're going to help you and we believe in you is such a powerful. That's a tactic the army uses. You have a team encouraging you and telling you you can do it and that you're going to feel like you don't want to let down.

Speaker 1: 21:27

That's great advice for anybody now who is looking to build community value focused and also build an entrepreneurial business. These tips that you're sharing, and have been sharing for the last half an hour, are awesome. Is there any word of wisdom you would like to share with everybody?

Speaker 2: 21:47

Yeah. So that's such a hard question. I would say the wisdom that I'm sitting in a lot in the last eight, ten months is we're not just bodies and we're not just brains and we're not just hearts. I fundamentally believe human beings have a soul and that soul has infinitely more power and wisdom than any other part of us. No matter what struggles you're facing that are observable on the outside, tap into that power of the soul so that you know you can overcome whatever it is you're facing. You have the ability to overcome it, not because of a trait you have, not because of, you know, a circumstance or a privilege or anything. You don't need anything other than your human soul. It's hard to believe until you start connecting with that concept. You feel empowered to take on things that you couldn't logic or reason why you would be able to accomplish it. Human beings defy logic. There's, you know, endless, endless, endless stories of people who defied every logical.

Speaker 1: 22:52

You can defy logic because it's built into your nature logic, so that's a quote I'm going to put on the title. Very much for joining me. I know you want to rush off to another meeting and encourage people to share, download, support the show, and it's not about me. It's about you learning from the lessons from people who've done it, been there, and then growing to that next level for myself. Thank you very much for joining me. This is rice, me, she's podcast and maya.

Speaker 2: 23:21

Thank you for being here today I give you a lot of credit for the way you speak with people, the way you think about human beings. I'm really grateful to be here.

Speaker 1: 23:29

It's probably a pleasure to have you. I'm sure we'll be talking again shortly. Please be safe, be well and live with purpose and legacy. My friends, talk soon.