How To Make Work Meaningful And Joyous With Nigel Clayton

The culture of capitalism and consumption often makes us lose sight of why we work in the first place. In this episode, we’ll attempt to uncover what you really want to make work meaningful and joyous. Nigel Clayton is an entrepreneurial business coach/mentor and the owner of Ultrapreneur Success. His method is helping people pull out that leadership part of them without telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, underscoring the importance of figuring out what you really want in life and in business. Join him and host Stephen Jaye as they dive deep into today’s culture and the issues being brought to the surface by the recent pandemic and the changes that will come with it. Stay tuned! --- Listen to the podcast here: How To Make Work Meaningful And Joyous With Nigel Clayton Welcome to the show. In this program, we’re all about opening up to more possibilities, getting you out of what I call the scripted life, and getting you into the life that you really want. That’s going to mean different things for different people. I’m not here to tell you what that thing is, what it means for you, or what your path is going to be. That’s for you to figure out, but for a lot of us, that path is going to involve some form of entrepreneurship. Even if you’re not specifically starting your own practice or starting your own business, there are aspects of the entrepreneurial mindset that can benefit you in any of these pursuits. I bring to you my guest, Nigel Clayton, who is an Entrepreneurial Coach and Mentor and has been for a few decades. --- Nigel, welcome to the program. Thank you. I appreciate it. Thank you so much for joining us. Having been an entrepreneurial coach for so many years, you have so many insights into what makes certain entrepreneurs succeed and fail. My first question for you is, what is the mindset that anyone needs to adapt before going into any entrepreneurial pursuit? If you can't think about what you want, think about what you don't want. And then think about what's the opposite of that. Share on X I think that’s a hard thing to do in a way because the majority of our lives have been trained to be followers, whether it’s in school or working for somebody else. Somebody has been there telling us what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. People then get this bright idea of, “I’m going to be an entrepreneur. Everything is going to be great. I got this plan of selling this product or service.” They’re all jumping up and down like Tony Robbins and saying, “I’m going to rule the world,” and then they realize after a while what they’ve gotten themselves into. Part of it is there isn’t somebody telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, so a lot of them are not prepared to be in that situation. They either react to it positively and they’re able to make the decisions they need to make quickly, or they don’t, and if they don’t, then they try to find somebody that will help them. Much of the time, that person is going to end up being the next trainer that’s going to make them stay being a follower. They need to go from being a follower to being a leader, but you can’t train leadership in the entrepreneurial world. Training somebody means they’re still following somebody. In Corporate America, since it’s a completed structure and there are little pockets of leadership in there, they can be trained within that little pocket. In the entrepreneurial world, everything is their responsibility. They’re like on stage. All the lights are on them, everybody can see them, and they got to make all the decisions. That’s the biggest problem they have. What I do is help them pull that leadership part of them out of them without telling them what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. I don’t tell people what to do. I don’t keep them accountable. I don’t say, “Did you do this?” It’s all of those kinds of things that a lot of people do to try and get people to be entrepreneurs, but they’re doing corporate light, which doesn’t work. It’s like a half transition from back in school. You learn the teacher tells you what to do, and then you wait for the teacher to evaluate it and give you a grade. No one even realizes that you get a C on your assignment. That’s just one person’s opinion, so that can be an interesting thing that we all go through and that people need to break free from that entire system whether it be growing up the teacher and your parents, or as an adult, the boss, or whoever deems themselves the ultimate authority. Is there something someone can do to start breaking free? Let’s say someone is in a corporate job right now, and they’re not in the financial position to leave it and start their own firm, but they have an idea for doing it down the road. Is there something someone could start doing to start learning those skills needed to become that decision-maker, to become ready to be accountable, to face that fear of being on that stage, and having that decision impact their company and their own followers they are eventually going to have such as employees? Make Work Joyous: What everybody’s looking for is joy, but you don’t hear that word being used in business. The biggest thing is not necessarily a skill. It’s digging deep into who I am, which is a very complicated question. What makes me me? What makes me make a certain decision? What happened in my life that makes something more important than other things when I decide? What things make me make decisions even though it might seem risky to other people, but there are things that I do because it may be part of my value system? Who am I is a very important but complicated question. Most people don’t dive deep into that typically unless they have a near-death experience, somebody they love that’s close to them dies, or somebody close to them has a near-death experience, then they go, “Who am I? What’s important to me?” The same question is asked if they have a near-death experience. What do I want to do now that I’m looking at it from a different perspective and I’m not following the crowd? I’m not one of the other Brown buffaloes in the Brown buffalo herd going over the plains. They’re all saying, “I’m not a Brown buffalo, I’m a White buffalo, but nobody can notice that,” because you’re doing everything the brown buffalos are doing. Who am I, what’s important to me, and why are very important questions to start asking yourself and digging deep, and then how important is it for you to be successful with whatever you’re thinking or trying? What I ask people is on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the most important thing to you, what is it? I typically get something like, “It’s a 6.5, maybe a 7.” You’re not going to make it. It’s got to be a 20, 100, or 1,000 on a scale of 1 to 10 for you to even have a chance. This is not like, “I’ll do as much as I can in this class, and I can make a B.” It’s going to take everything you’ve got to make it work. You may not know what it is. If you can’t think about what you want, think about what you don’t want, and then what’s the opposite of that. One thing I’m wondering as far as figuring out that sense of self, I’ve been introduced to this tool called the 5 Whys, which is you ask a question and when you answer it, you ask a question about that question and do that in five iterations with the hope that that gets you to the real, deep-seated reason for why that surface-level action is happening. Is this a tool you think a lot of people can use to discover their sense of self? Absolutely. Let’s say you get a group of people, and you ask them, “How are you doing?” Most of them are going to say, “Fine. Good.” It’s the public answer. It’s the answer I’m going to give to the public for that question. It’s coming from the rational brain. It’s something that they’ve thought about, like, “If I’m going to answer, this is the answer I’m going to use.” Maybe everybody has learned this is the answer, but that’s not the real answer. People would come to me and say, “I need to make more money this year,” and I’d say, “Why do you need to make more money this year?” They’d say, “Last year, we didn’t make as much money, so we weren’t able to implement the things that we wanted to do last year, so this year, we need to make more money to implement those things.” It’s coming from here. The more I ask them, “Why is that important?” The more you ask that, it goes from here to your heart. That’s where the real answer is, and the real answer might be, “I want to prove to my father that I can do this.” That’s the thing that’s driving them. That’s the thing that pulls them forward. That’s the reason they’re doing it. It may not be a positive reason, but that’s the reason. Is there a danger in negative reasons? Is that something that would prevent people from succeeding more than people with positive reasons, or are they just as powerful? They’re powerful. My brother went to work for a tile company when he was nineteen. They said, “If you sell a certain amount of tile in a month, you can stay as a salesperson.” He sold it in a week. He never sold tile before. He said, “I listened to what people said that they wanted, and I gave it to them.” Ten years later, he was in charge of four states in the Northwestern United States and all the stores in those states. His goal was to be a millionaire by the time he was 30. He was 29 and was making really good money. He went for a checkup with his doctor, and his doctor said, “You’re overweight. You have high blood pressure. You’re stressed out, and you’ve bitten off all of your fingernails. If you don’t change your lifestyle, you’re not going to make it to 30.” I said to him, “What are you going to do with this $1 million?” He said, “I don’t know,” and I said, “You’re killing yourself to get this, and you don’t even know why?” He says, “I don’t.” I said,...