Episode 1499 Interview with Stephen Box About How Coaches Can Find Success in Business and Still Have Time for a Life

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 1499

[00:00:04] Stephen Box: of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. Hey, I'm Stephen Box, and I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact in the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to find ways to do the most important task is key.

[00:00:25] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend Scott Maderer.

[00:00:37] You can't figure out your priorities until you know those things and that's the mistake a lot of people make is they set the priorities without having a clear understanding of their identities and their values. Once I help people get clear on what their values and their identities are how they want to show up.

[00:00:52] their priorities become more clear and then you don't have the guilt because now you understand why you're doing the thing [00:01:00] you're

[00:01:00] Scott Maderer: doing. Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling.

[00:01:15] In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, Invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:33] In today's podcast episode, I interview Stephen Box. I asked Stephen to share with you why he focuses on helping coaches build unshakable habits so they can have success in business and in life. I also asked Stephen to share with you how entrepreneurs need to start with a focus on values. I have a great book that's been out for a while now called Inspired Living.

[00:01:59] Assemble the [00:02:00] puzzle of your calling by mastering your time, your talent, and your treasures. You can find out more about that book over at inspiredlivingbook. com. It'll take you to a page where there's information and you can sign up to get some mailings about it, as well as purchase a copy there. I'd love to see you there.

[00:02:19] Get a copy and share with me how it impacted your world. Stephen Box is the founder of Unshakeable Habits and the host of the Coach Smarter podcast. He's passionate about helping online business owners, coaches, and course creators break free from their never ending to do list and confidently structure their day so that they may accomplish their high impact task and still have that extra time and energy to spend with their family, on their health, their hobbies, and their other passions.

[00:02:50] Welcome to the show, Steven. Hey, thanks for having me, Scott. Absolutely. So I gave a little bit of information in the intro of some of the work you [00:03:00] do and how you're focused on helping coaches and those sorts of folks with their life and what they're doing. But I always like to back up and ask what was the rest of the journey that got you to the point where this is what you're focusing on and doing?

[00:03:18] What brought you to the place where you are today? Yeah, I would

[00:03:21] Stephen Box: say a good starting point for me was probably around 2009, 2010. I was at the time working in retail management and I really didn't enjoy doing that. I had, I'd been doing it for 13 years. I was completely burnt out on it. And knew I wanted to some kind of change, but if anyone's ever worked in retail management, then try to go get like a nice paying corporate job, it is almost impossible because people look down on retail employees.

[00:03:51] And so I found myself just like stuck. I didn't know what to do. And as a result of that, I think, even though it wasn't a conscious thing, [00:04:00] I ate my feelings. Which is something I'm 46 now is something that a lot of guys from my generation were pretty much taught to do. And as a result of that, I ballooned up to almost 250 pounds, and I'm only five foot seven, by the way, a lot of weight, it's not like I'm 63 over here.

[00:04:21] And I ended up hiring a personal trainer, started working with them changing the way I ate, all that good stuff. Ended up losing 80 pounds over the course of 10 months. And in the process of that, realized that I had this passion for health and fitness. And I actually was able to take the one thing I still enjoyed about my job, which was coaching and training people.

[00:04:45] And all of a sudden this light bulb went off and went, wait, there's actually a profession for that. It's called being a personal trainer. And so I got my personal training certification and then over the years, as I got clients results. [00:05:00] I realized that, hey, the people that are sticking with what I'm saying are able to get results, but other people aren't.

[00:05:06] So over time, I added, nutrition to the mix, and I started looking at behavior change and sleep and stress management. And I really started studying human behavior and working on my communication skills and all these different tools that I needed to be a successful coach and get the best results from my clients.

[00:05:26] So fast forward. And to about 2020, some, something big happened that year. I'm sure everybody remembers. And

[00:05:35] Scott Maderer: I blocked that from my mind, actually.

[00:05:41] Stephen Box: So like everybody else, my business kind of suffered during that time, even though there was a huge boom for online training and coaching at that time, because so many people were jumping into the space, but that made it problematic because.

[00:05:56] I had always benefited from the fact that [00:06:00] I was one of the few people offering online coaching. It wasn't widely available. And now all of a sudden I'm competing against millions of other people because everybody and their mom is jumping on some kind of online training. So my business really started to suffer.

[00:06:16] And I realized that, I had built all these technical coaching skills, but I had never really learned how to truly build a business. And now I'm playing catch up. Now I'm trying to figure out how do I stand out? How do I change my marketing? How do I do all these things? And trying to find that balance around my business and still maintaining my personal goals and health and be a good husband and friend and all that good stuff.

[00:06:44] I just got burnt out and I didn't realize how burnt out I was. At the same time, I was starting my podcast, by the way. And I realized. When I took a break from my podcast, the original goal of my break [00:07:00] was, it was right before Thanksgiving, I said, I'm going to take the next six weeks off, enjoy the holidays, and I'll come back in January ready to go, right?

[00:07:12] I had episodes that were going to be published up until then, so no one else really saw the break, it was just a behind the scenes kind of break. I did not publish another episode until July of the following year, because I was literally so barked out that when I took that break and my body had a chance to actually rest for a minute.

[00:07:32] It just like everything shut down and I didn't realize how close I actually was to burning out. So really that's where I started transitioning to, I want to help other coaches. I want to show them not just how to do the marketing stuff because there's a billion podcasts out there about that already, right?

[00:07:51] I want to focus on the behind the scenes stuff. How do you build those coaching skills? How do you put those systems in place? How do you make sure that your business and your [00:08:00] life. stay in harmony with one another, or what I call work life flexibility, meaning that you get to choose how you spend your time.

[00:08:06] And that's really where I am, because I want to help other coaches make sure they don't hit that burnout point like I did.

[00:08:14] Scott Maderer: Yeah, we'll definitely talk some more about that. I, I work in the coaching industry and work with a lot of coaches over the years. And I think you're right. I've seen a lot of coaches burn out, not because of the technical skills, but because of the other The other parts of that, but before we go there, one of the things I'd like to highlight for folks is the intersection between our life journey and the life choices we make and our faith and our faith journey and the choices we make there.

[00:08:42] Would you mind sharing a little bit about how has your faith journey changed as you've gone through these different phases of your life journey? Yeah. So for me,

[00:08:51] Stephen Box: church was a thing when I was a kid. I went all the time, and I forget the exact age, [00:09:00] but somewhere in those early teenage years.

[00:09:05] They were like, Oh, now you have to go over to the big church, right? You're not in kids church anymore. It's not, you memorize a Bible verse and you get a sticker. It's all the fun stuff is over now. It's time for you to go to people's church. Now you gotta,

[00:09:16] Scott Maderer: now you go sit there and be bored. Like the rest of us,

[00:09:21] Stephen Box: but the church I was at was a traditional Southern Baptist church, And it was every week just beating you down.

[00:09:29] You're a sinner. You're a horrible person. You don't deserve anything. And I was like, man, this doesn't sound like the loving God that I keep hearing about. And so it actually drove me out of the church for 30 years. And. I still kept my faith. I still believed in God. I still, would pray on occasion and, usually when life was falling apart and everything was bad, and, but I was out of the church for 30 years.

[00:09:59] And [00:10:00] then the weirdest thing happened. We moved into our current house, which was only like 25 minutes away from our old house in 2015, February of 2015. Before we got ready to move, I'm driving down the road one day, and this thought entered my head. And it was almost like a voice telling it to me, but it wasn't like an audible voice, right?

[00:10:23] It was like that voice you hear inside your head. And it said, it's time for you to go back to church. Now, I hadn't been in 30 years, so it's not like this was like something I would just come up with on my own, right? There was no reason, while I'm driving down the road, I wasn't even passing a church or anything.

[00:10:40] And just all of a sudden, this thought pops in my head. And so I did what any, good, Christian does. I ignored it. Hope that would go away. And it didn't, it just the thought kept persisting. And so finally I was like, okay. So were you

[00:10:52] Scott Maderer: still working in retail at this point? Or were you, have you already transitioned out?

[00:10:56] No, I left retail in 2011. Okay. So [00:11:00] you'd already left retail and

[00:11:01] Stephen Box: we're working out. I had already been doing my own thing. This was just like, this was a transition in my life in terms of we were, moving. Yeah. And so I go into, this conversation with God where I'm like, okay, I guess you're trying to tell me something.

[00:11:18] So let me maybe just listen. So I said, okay I'll look at it. So I'm going by and literally I'm driving by churches and I'm just getting this feeling of no, that's not it. And I pass out of the church I'm at now and instantaneously there was like that feeling of this is the right place.

[00:11:35] Went checked out of service and just immediately felt like I was in the right place. Now it's interesting because what happened was this is all happening around the same time that I'm starting to really transition a lot of my business over to this idea. I wanted more of a a holistic approach to what I was, but at the time [00:12:00] nobody was doing holistic health.

[00:12:02] It wasn't really a thing. And. I wasn't sure how to do it. And I'm being constantly told left and right by people. You can't do that. You got to focus on one thing. Just solve one individual problem. You can't do this holistic thing. It's not marketable. And that really created a lot of struggle for me because I'm like, look, the biggest problem I see with people is they have poor, time management.

[00:12:23] They're not doing things like that's people's biggest complaint. I know I need to do more than just give people workout programs and diet plans, right? But I wasn't really sure why God pushed me back into the church at that time. Did the church thing for a couple years, waiting to see what the answer is, trying to figure stuff out.

[00:12:45] Fast forward to 2020, when all of that stuff is happening, right? Where I'm hitting burnout and everything else. And that year, I was in our [00:13:00] associate pastor's small group. And when COVID hit, they shut down the church and they started doing a online thing that just happened to be at the same time that his small group was.

[00:13:16] Here's the funny part. Literally two weeks before COVID actually became a thing and they started shutting everything down, I started getting this like feeling of you should go lead a group. And so I went and talked to him about it. And literally two weeks later, Here we are, we shut down and he comes to me, he goes, Hey, can you take over my group?

[00:13:39] And so now I'm getting pushed in that direction of okay, now I'm doing this. And then I led a group for a little while for a few years now, actually. And then I started getting a little bit burnt out on trying to lead my own group because I kept having this feeling of. I want to do something specifically to help me.

[00:13:57] And I actually tried to take my business in that [00:14:00] direction, right? I was like maybe that's what I'm supposed to do. So I tried to focus just on helping men in my business. That was an utter failure because we don't like to ask for help. But the thing I learned from that was I was trying to apply it in the wrong place, right?

[00:14:16] So I had to back myself up and go, okay, I need to ask for guidance. I need to actually see what God's trying to tell me right now. And that's when this past year we actually re launched our men's group at the church. It's like a whole new thing. And my pastor Kennedy goes, Hey, I want you to actually lead a group next semester.

[00:14:45] So this coming January, I'm going to be leading a group specifically on men. And so now it's like now I have the best of everything, right? I'm actually in my business. I'm getting to serve a group of people that I'm very passionate about helping, which is online [00:15:00] coaches. In the church, I'm getting to serve another group that I'm very passionate about helping, which is other men.

[00:15:06] And at the same time. I get to have this sense of purpose in both my professional and personal life because I'm getting to serve those people. And that to me would never have happened Had I not had that thought pop on my head in 2015.

[00:15:26] Scott Maderer: So that, that, one of the reasons I wanted to call that out or verify like about the, were you still in retail is, so this part of the journey, it isn't, it didn't really happen like when you burned out from the retail part, but it did happen.

[00:15:42] It was actually almost preparing the ground before you went through the burnout. On the coaching part and repositioned and relooked that. And what do you say now? Do you think you, do you feel like you're filling, living out your calling at this point, or do you think there's still more change [00:16:00] to come?

[00:16:00] And you just don't know what it is yet.

[00:16:02] Stephen Box: I do feel like I'm living out my calling right now, but I've also said you never know what your future holds and. I've just learned that anything you're going through right now might be preparation for the next stage. So I would definitely not be bold enough to say Oh yeah, we're done.

[00:16:20] This is it.

[00:16:22] Scott Maderer: Yeah. By the way, don't do that because God will prove that you're not. It's almost like a dare.

[00:16:29] Stephen Box: Yeah. So I'm going to leave that at, I am in a good place right now. And whatever God wants to do with people.

[00:16:38] Scott Maderer: Yeah, there's a it's like praying for patients. Don't do that.

[00:16:42] God will give you the opportunity to practice patience. Yeah. He will give you patience. He'll give you the.

[00:16:51] So be very careful sometimes what you pray for. So let's back up a little bit when you think about you, you almost gone through two different kinds or [00:17:00] two different experiences of burnout. It sounds once around the retail world and then once again, when you were already coaching and doing that part what do you think, or what do you see, somebody right now is hearing that and they're going, yeah, I feel like I'm burning out too.

[00:17:14] What are some of the signs or some of the things that can bubble up for folks that show that they're on that path towards burning out, instead of just, instead of just being busy or tired or the other things that, what's the difference between that and burnout? I

[00:17:29] Stephen Box: think for a lot of people, It's something that actually mask itself.

[00:17:34] That's what happened to me. I didn't realize that I was there. I thought I was handling everything and I didn't realize just how bad it was. I go back and I look at some of those interviews, especially the videos. And I'm like, I look like death worn over. It's like to everybody around me, it was probably obvious where I was mentally, but I hadn't noticed it.

[00:17:57] So I think the first thing I would. tell people [00:18:00] is it's very important that you get aware of where you are physically, mentally, spiritually, emotionally, all of that you need to have awareness, otherwise you will miss the warning signs, because in hindsight, they were there, I can see them now, I couldn't see them at the time because I had such a lack of awareness of where I was, and part of that was because I was running myself so ragged that I didn't stop to see the warning signs.

[00:18:28] But it was the little things like something that would normally get excited about feeling like a checkbox. I have to go do this interview. Okay. And I would go, I would do the interview. It would, it'd be great. I would love it. I'd feel energized afterwards, but going into it, I was like, I have to go do this interview.

[00:18:49] Oh man, somebody else is on my calendar. Great. Kind of thing. And the other big one for me was. I started [00:19:00] noticing that I had behaviors that were different from before. So say for example, instead of going to bed, I would sit up at night, like watching TV or, scrolling on social media or things like that.

[00:19:16] And I actually found out later on, there is actually a term for this. It's called revenge bedtime procrastination. Am I okay? It might not be the exact wording of it, but the idea here is you have so little control throughout the course of your day. You look for any control you can get. And for a lot of us, the one thing that we can do is we can control when we go to bed.

[00:19:44] And so instead of going to bed, it's almost like this is my me time. This is my time to unwind and have to myself. And so you just end up staying up late. And so I started doing a lot of that kind of stuff. And Of course, then [00:20:00] that leads to less sleep, which then leads to less focus and less energy, which just makes matters even worse, right?

[00:20:07] But I felt like I was doing that. So I started looking for little things to try to make myself feel good, to make myself happy. I started dreading things that I normally would have liked to do. Of course, there was the physical fatigue. There was things like skipping my workouts or just. Settling for going to get fast food because I didn't really feel like cooking.

[00:20:32] I didn't feel like I had much motivation for things. I would find a lot of times I didn't even want to be around people or talk to people, which I'm introverted in the first place, but even more so than what I normally was. And I was even able to look back to when I had that burnout during retail.

[00:20:52] And I saw some of those same patterns, but I didn't Where I started showing up to work late, or I would just get there like at the last minute, [00:21:00] and I didn't really feel like doing stuff, and I would get irritated when customers actually, came to the store to buy something, which was the whole point of me being there.

[00:21:07] Little things like that I was able to look back on in hindsight and realize those were the early warning signs that I was headed towards burnout.

[00:21:14] Scott Maderer: So when you think about burnout let's back up a minute. So let's say again, you started to recognize some of those signs in yourself, as you were telling that story, there's somebody out there going yeah, check check, that's me right now. What are some of the things that we can actually do to help prevent or avoid or move past burnout into, resetting and gaining control of what we do in a way that's more healthy and more productive?

[00:21:46] Stephen Box: Yeah first, if someone is noticing they're checking off some of those boxes. And by the way, one other one I would add to that is if you are really getting irritable and snapping at people for pretty much like no reason, that's also a huge one. [00:22:00] But if you find yourself doing those things, and you haven't actually reached the point of full burnout yet, now is a good time for you to stop, get aware of what's happening.

[00:22:12] Look for what are the opportunities that you have to cut back on stuff and also look at where are you out of alignment? Because for me, that was the biggest thing and that was what allowed me to get things turned around. I mentioned earlier that I don't think I'd be where I was had I not had that thought pop in my head in 2015.

[00:22:31] And part of that is because When I had the opportunity to lead my church group, it gave me a sense of purpose and it helped me feel more aligned with what I was supposed to be doing and what was important to me. And had I not had that to fall back on, I don't know that I would have been able to pull myself out of that.

[00:22:53] That really helped me to reestablish myself and even with that, it wasn't a quick process. I [00:23:00] took this pause in late November. I started my group, we started our new semester in January, and it took me until July to really feel like I wanted to even do the podcast again, right? It was a process.

[00:23:13] I don't want to give people the idea here that this is something you just pop out of in 48 hours, right? It's not the flu. It's one of those things where you just, you have to get yourself in alignment, you have to give your body the time to recover physically and mentally, and you have to make sure that you are not adding to the stress load.

[00:23:32] Just to, I'll throw this in as a side note if you want to dive into it, we can, but there's something called the stress sweet spot. And the idea here is, if your stress levels are too low, You'll be nice and relaxed, but you'll have no motivation to do anything. On the other hand, if you're, if your stress levels are too high, then you're also going to lack motivation to do anything because you're overwhelmed.

[00:23:57] But in the middle, there's what's called the [00:24:00] stress sweet spot where you have just enough stress to keep you motivated, but not so much that you're overwhelmed. And finding that sweet spot is super important to being able to be productive without going into burnout. Do you think everybody's sweet spot is the same?

[00:24:17] No, everyone's definitely got a different level of a sweet spot. So one thing I will point out here is that a lot of times things that are even positive stressors can become too much because you have what's called your allostatic load and that's just basically all your stressors combined. So say for example, exercise is a great stress reliever.

[00:24:38] A lot of people use exercise to relieve stress. It's fantastic for your body has all these benefits, but if you're working 80 hours a week and you're sleeping five hours a night and you're already running on fumes and you're eating fast food every day, which means you're basically getting no nutrients into your body whatsoever, [00:25:00] then.

[00:25:00] You go and do a hour long, super hard, intense workout, that workout is not benefiting you, it's hurting you, right? Because now that's too much. You are already overloaded to begin with and you've added another stressor onto it. So you do have to look at the individual person, where they are, and then also, Depending on your outlook, like me, I have a growth mindset already.

[00:25:27] It's just, that's who I am. I'm always the optimist. I'm always looking on the bright side of things, finding the silver lining. So for me, my sweet spot is a little further in, right? I can handle a higher load of stress before it starts to get to me, which will tell you just how stressed out I must have been to reach burnout rate.

[00:25:47] Oh. But other people they, maybe they're more pessimistic. They don't have that optimism. They have more of a fixed mindset because they haven't been able to develop that growth mindset yet. So for them, [00:26:00] that load is a lot low, right? If they put the same amount of work on themselves that I put on myself, they're going to burn out a lot faster than I will, because their load is lower.

[00:26:09] And then there's other people, man, that they can handle more stuff than me, right? They put so much stuff on their plate that even to the point that I burned out and they're just like humming along, right? That's why like a lot of times I see people, they'll criticize like hustle culture. I'm like, I don't like the idea of hustle culture.

[00:26:26] As putting it out there as something that everyone should be doing, but for some people is perfectly fine. And if that's your thing, cool. It's not my thing. I'm not going to do it. It doesn't work for me, but if it works for you, cool. I don't believe in just going, Oh, this doesn't work or this does work because.

[00:26:42] We're all different. We're all different levels.

[00:26:45] Scott Maderer: And it's also for me, at least it's less of the it's less of the, what you're doing and more of the, why you're doing it. That creates some of that, so hustle for hustle sake, because you think that, if I don't hustle 24, 7, I'm never going to succeed.

[00:26:59] I'm not good [00:27:00] enough. I'm, all of those sorts of internal statements that drive you to, Give up sleep and, I'll sleep when I die, all of those wonderful things that you hear out there. If that's somehow, because you think that's, what's going to give you worth, guess what you can't work enough, it's not going to happen.

[00:27:16] But on the other hand, if it's hustle for a period of time or with a point in mind, or, to achieve a certain goal and you've got some structure and some balance and when that's going to end and all of that sort of thing. Thank you. Oh, okay. That's different. So it's less the, what you're doing and more the, why are you doing it?

[00:27:33] That sometimes creates that, that differential.

[00:27:36] Stephen Box: It's also about the support system too, right? Sure. Yeah. If you're taking care of yourself physically, you're eating, healthy, let's say at least 70, 80 percent of the time you're exercising. You have a social life, you have a good support system of people around you and you're doing something that you're super passionate about.

[00:27:56] Then yeah. you're going to be able to handle more of that. [00:28:00] If you're not getting good sleep, you're not taking care of yourself. You don't have a support system. You don't have those things. It's going to be a lot harder for you to handle it, even if it's something you're really passionate about.

[00:28:12] Scott Maderer: Yeah. So when you think about some of the habits that, that in the online coaches that you work with that.

[00:28:21] We can do both sides of the coin, right? What are some of the habits or mindsets that coaches have that hold them back? And then what are some of the habits and mindsets that they have that make them more able to kind of balance that personal well being and business growth and all of the other things that are driving on our time?

[00:28:40] Yeah, I would say like the biggest one that holds people back

[00:28:43] Stephen Box: is. What we just talked about, right? This idea that I have to work so hard. I have to do all the things and especially early on in your business when it's just you don't have an assistant or you don't have anything else. And you're wearing [00:29:00] all the hats.

[00:29:01] It's, it can be overwhelming because now you're like, man, I gotta do the marketing. I gotta do the content creation. I gotta. Do the coaching. I got to do the sales. I got to do everything in my business. And a lot of that stuff is not things that coaches are good at, because, you got into it because you're good at coaching people or because you have a desire to coach people.

[00:29:22] So some people might not even have the coaching skills yet. And. you want to get results for people, but you're stressing yourself out because you're trying to do everything. And you think that everything has to be done right now. And then perfectionism is another big one, right? And that creeps, it's, head into this conversation because not only are you trying to do everything and be everywhere and be on all the time, but you're trying to do it all perfectly.

[00:29:51] And that's just a recipe for disaster all around. So that's the biggest thing I see, right? In terms of the habits [00:30:00] or mindsets that actually help people. It's that growth mindset. It's people understanding that everything is a process. I don't have to get everything right the first time. It's okay to make mistakes.

[00:30:14] I can learn from them. It's not going to be the end of the world. I don't have to do everything at once. It's being able to figure out what this next important thing is and lock in on that. When people can do those things and They're taking care of themselves. They're making sure that they have a life outside of their business.

[00:30:34] I think it's also another huge one, which I know sounds counterintuitive to a lot of people because they're like, man, I've got to work so hard on my business. And we've been told over and over everywhere. You turn this advice is given so many places. When you first start your business, you have to work so hard because it's so hard to get your business off the ground.

[00:30:55] Here's a new scratch. If you have a good network already, and not everyone [00:31:00] has this benefit, but if you do have that luxury of having a lot of friends, a lot of contacts, starting your business is as simple as going on Facebook and saying, Hey, I decided I'm going to start coaching. Here's what I'm helping people with.

[00:31:13] Would anyone like to get coached? And you're going to probably get a couple of clients, right? So does that sound hard? That because it's not right. It's not. It's the growth process is hard, but you don't have to do everything at once. You don't have to get everything perfect from day one. And I think that's really where it comes down to is the biggest difference between the people who find success and happiness and the people who don't is the assumption of how hard you have to work and how perfect you have to be.

[00:31:44] Scott Maderer: 1 of the traps too, that I've seen folks fall into business owners of all types but especially online coaches, I think is, they may be doing the business and they've got certain goals for the business. They've got certain things that they want to achieve and all of that. And then. [00:32:00] They usually have, one of the reasons a lot of people, especially online coaches go into that is because they want some time flexibility.

[00:32:08] They want some freedom around location, those sorts of things. And then, maybe it's because they want to spend more time with their kids or more time with their family, but then they've got this guilt thing where when they're working on the business. They feel guilty because they're not spending time with the family when they were, and then when there was the family, now they're feeling guilty that they're not working on the business.

[00:32:28] When folks fall into that guilt without, no matter what they're doing, there's that bad feeling or that guilt feeling of that frustration. What are some of the things that you tell them or work with them on to help them see that a different way? Yeah. So

[00:32:43] Stephen Box: the first thing that we always look at is we figure out what your VIPs are.

[00:32:47] So that's your values, your identities, your priorities. So your values, I always tell people are, these are the things that are important to you, regardless of what the external factors are, [00:33:00] right? So if we take success out the window, we take other people's opinion out the window, we take all of it and do away with it.

[00:33:05] What's important to you, right? Not what society tells you should be doing, not the expectations other people put on you, not what's going to get a result. But at your core, what feels good to you? What feels right? What's aligned with you? Then you have your identities. Identities are the different roles that you play in your life.

[00:33:26] So that could be spouse, that could be parent, it could be business owner, coach, volunteer, church leader, whatever, right? Those are all the different identities you have. How do you want to show up in those roles? And what values are in alignment with those identities? And once you know those things, you can figure out your priorities, right?

[00:33:51] You can't figure out your priorities until you know those things. And that's the mistake a lot of people make is they set their priorities without having a clear understanding of their identities [00:34:00] and their values. And so once I help people get clear on what their values and their identities are and how they want to show up, their priorities become more clear, and then you don't have the guilt because now you understand why you're doing the things you're doing.

[00:34:16] When you understand why you're doing something, and it's all in an alignment with your true values and the identities and the way you want to show up for people. There is no guilt because you feel good about what you're doing. The reason most of us feel guilt is because we are just doing what we think we're supposed to do, and we're essentially living the life other people have told us to live.

[00:34:40] instead of the life that we know we're supposed to live. And I personally am of the belief that when you realize what your values are, those do not come from you. Those come from God.

[00:34:50] Scott Maderer: So when you think about all of this and yet, folks still struggle with that, right? It's something that you [00:35:00] get your values, right?

[00:35:00] You get your idea, you've identified all of those things, but then sometimes it's slippery, either because something changes in your business or something changes in your life or there's external factors. How do you help folks make that sticky, so to speak?

[00:35:16] Stephen Box: It's something that honestly you can't just do one time.

[00:35:19] It's not like a, you just put them on a piece of paper and that's it. It's a daily struggle because we're all human. We judge by other people and things like social media nowadays. Everyone posts their highlight reel on social media, right? We only see the good stuff. Hardly anyone shares their struggles on social media.

[00:35:39] And just to show you how powerful this can be, I made a video last year and I wasn't, I even said in the video, like I'm not doing this for likes or comments or anything else. And I was just talking about how I was going to cut back on my social media because it didn't feel like it [00:36:00] was an alignment and I was really just getting burnt out on that specific task.

[00:36:04] Not overall burnt out, just on that

[00:36:07] Scott Maderer: specific thing.

[00:36:08] Stephen Box: And. That was a like there was no sales pitch on it. There was no nothing that video. I just happened to look at this last night That video has over 1500 views on and, now some people might go 1500 is not that much,

[00:36:26] Scott Maderer: Go stand in a room with 1500 people and tell me that's not a lot of people, but,

[00:36:31] Stephen Box: but for a video that I literally put out with no intention, there was no engaging hook.

[00:36:36] There was no movement. There was no, it was literally me holding a phone up on selfie mode and just talking. And I looked like I was tired in the video. So it's not like I, it's not like anyone was caught by my contagious energetic energy in this video either. I think that this is something that a lot of people are dealing with where we allow the expectations that others have for us.

[00:36:59] [00:37:00] Or we allow ourselves to what I call should all over ourselves based on what we're seeing other people do. Oh, I should be this successful. I should have this. I should have that. Based on what? How do you what are you basing your should on? Because that's assuming that there is a standard way to have success, that there is a set formula that if we just all follow it, we're going to be the same level of success.

[00:37:26] And if that was true, then we'd all be successful because someone would have already put the formula out there. We would all bought it. We would all be equally successful, right? That formula doesn't exist. It's like asking me what the best diet is. Here's a newsflash. It doesn't matter if you go low carb, low fat, high protein, keto, whatever.

[00:37:47] Guess what they all have in common? They all get results. How can that be? How can diets that differ in what the thing that's supposed to help you lose weight is, they're all different in that aspect, but yet they all get [00:38:00] results. Why is that? It's not what makes them different that makes them special, it's what makes them the same.

[00:38:06] It's commonalities between the diets that is actually what makes them work, not the marketable thing that everybody puts out. And I think that's such an important reminder that as you're looking at things, don't pay attention to what people are marketing, because the marketing is what sells. It's not necessarily what works.

[00:38:23] Scott Maderer: So I've got a few questions that I like to ask all of my guests, but before I go there and ask those, is there anything else about the work you do or this journey that you've been on that you'd like to share with the listener?

[00:38:34] Stephen Box: I would just say that for people, the biggest thing. If you're finding yourself in this situation where you feel like you're about to get burnt out, the biggest thing that I would want you to really do is get alignment, figure out what those VIPs are, and get in alignment and review it every single day, look at your actions at the end of each day and ask yourself [00:39:00] that very simple question.

[00:39:02] Did the things I do today move before towards what I'm trying to accomplish? And were they in alignment with the person that I want to be? If the answer is no, Then you need to fix the path that you're on. Otherwise, it is going to lead to problems. And it's not something that you check in on when you're tired.

[00:39:23] It's not something you check in on when you're stressed. It's not something you check in on when you're on the verge of burnout. It's something you check in on a daily basis and make sure that you are keeping yourself in alignment.

[00:39:35] Scott Maderer: So my brand is Inspired Stewardship and I run things through that lens of stewardship. And yet that's one of those words that I've discovered over the years means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So when you hear the word stewardship, what does that word mean to you?

[00:39:49] And what is the impact of that had been on your life?

[00:39:54] Stephen Box: Yeah, it's something, honestly, I never gave a lot of thought to until recently. So I [00:40:00] can't necessarily say this had a huge impact on my life in that way. But what I can say is, as it's something that I've become more aware of, I've accepted, I'm going to say because I was a little stubborn about it at first.

[00:40:14] And so I've now accepted that. If I wake up one day and I go, you know what? I don't really feel like doing this today. I'm not really super motivated or whatever. I'm just going to skip recording my podcast this week. I'm just going to skip putting out this video or whatever it is, right? What I'm really saying is, God, you have given me a talent and a skill and a voice and you have put certain things in my heart.

[00:40:47] to share with the world. And if I'm not sharing those things, I'm not honoring that gift. I'm not using what I was given, right? And so for [00:41:00] me, I know a lot of people when they think of it, it's like they think of it just financially, right? And financial is definitely, a huge part of stewardship.

[00:41:08] But I believe that even the gifts that we are given, the natural talents that we have an obligation to use those talents. So that God can use us. I think so often we look at this from the standpoint of God is going to use us in some very super specific way. Like we were used here to like to go solve a problem.

[00:41:32] They were, like God's going to put us like an action hero mode and solve some big huge worldly problem. And a lot of times I think the way that God actually uses us, we miss it because it's the small little interactions. It's when I'm having a conversation with somebody and I just had that feeling of something I was supposed to share with that person and I don't know why.

[00:41:55] And I tell it to them and they go, I don't know how you knew I needed to hear that but I [00:42:00] did. It's those little moments. So for me, stewardship is all about using the gifts that I've been given. So that guy can use me in the way he wants.

[00:42:12] Scott Maderer: So this is my favorite question that I like to ask everybody. Imagine for a minute I was able to invent this magic machine.

[00:42:20] And with this machine, I was able to pluck you from where you are today and transport you into the future. Maybe 250 years. And yet with the power of this machine, you were able to look back and you were able to see your entire life. And see all of the connections all of the ripples, all of the impacts you've left behind, what impact do you hope you left in the world?

[00:42:46] Stephen Box: So I will answer this from the perspective of, like I said, I like to look at things from those identities and really figure out where you want to have that impact within those identities. So as a husband. I hope that my [00:43:00] wife would say that I was always caring and understanding that she felt safe and protected and that she felt like I was supportive of the things that she wanted to do as a friend.

[00:43:14] I hope that people would say that I'm dependable and that they always felt like I was that one person they could come to, they would on, they would be honest with them and tell them what they needed to hear, even when it wasn't what they wanted to hear, but that they would always know that it was from a place of caring about them and wanting to see them be their best, not from a place of trying to tear them down as a business owner.

[00:43:44] I made the decision a long time ago that I don't want my business to just be about money. I just want to know that I'm making a difference for people. And even if I can just have one person, which [00:44:00] I've already had more than one person, so I've already won, just having at least that one person who will come to me and say, something you said, something you posted, something you shared with me, something we've talked about in the coaching session.

[00:44:13] really made this huge change in my life. And I thank you for that, right? That's the legacy I want to live. I just want to know that I had a positive impact on people's lives, like net positive impact. And as a Christian, I want to be able to say one day that. I did something to help someone else find their faith and to find their way into Jesus and become saved and be in heaven.

[00:44:44] That would be just so awesome just to know that I was able to be used in that way to help that person, right? And I will even add to that one, one of the greatest compliments. That I've ever received [00:45:00] was from a friend of mine who is an atheist, and he told me that out of all of the people that he knows who say that they're a Christian, that I am the one person that he knows that he feels like if all Christians were more like me, the world would be a better place.

[00:45:18] And that really meant a lot for someone who has a lot of issues with Christians. Thank you.

[00:45:25] Scott Maderer: And one of my favorite compliments I ever got from one of my past clients who was Muslim was, Scott, I know you're Christian, but at least you're not annoying about it. I'm like I understand what you mean.

[00:45:40] I deal with some of those Christians too. I understand, so what's coming next? What's on the roadmap as you can continue on this journey?

[00:45:48] Stephen Box: So yeah we just relaunched the podcast a little over a month ago and, really excited about the future of that helping online coaches to develop those [00:46:00] coaching skills, those business systems, as well as being able to make time for their personal life and keep that work life harmony going.

[00:46:08] Also, like I said come January, going to be leading doing some. some type of leadership in our men's small group in our church. So very excited about that. Not really sure where that's going to go to or what that's going to lead to, but that's something that I feel really good about right now.

[00:46:28] And, outside of that, honestly, for me, it's, I'm at a point in my life at 46 where I just want to look for little ways to grow every day where I just want, whether that's spiritually, physically, mentally, I just want to push myself to make the most of what God has given me and be present in the moment and just enjoy the process.

[00:46:53] Scott Maderer: So you can find out more about Steven over at his website, unshakablehabits. com. Of [00:47:00] course, I'll have a link to that over in the show notes as well. Steven, anything else you'd like to share with the listeners?

[00:47:06] Stephen Box: I think we pretty much covered most of what we'd really talk about today, but I would just once again, just highlight that every single one of us are on our own journey, and so I would just encourage people, if you take nothing else from today.

[00:47:25] It's going back to that alignment piece and making sure that you are in alignment with what is important to you and to live the life that you're meant to live, not the life that other people expect you to live.

[00:47:42] Scott Maderer: Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen. But act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this [00:48:00] episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.

[00:48:05] com slash iTunes rate. All one word. iTunes rate. It'll take you through how to leave a rating and review and how to make sure you're subscribed to the podcast so that you can get every episode as it comes out in your feed. Until next time, invest your time, your talent, and your treasures, develop your influence, and impact the world.