Episode 936: Invest in Yourself - Interview with Serial Entrepreneur and Coach James Pyle - Part 1

[00:00:00] Scott Maderer: Thanks for joining us on episode 936 of the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:00:07] James Pyle: I'm James Pyle. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence and impact the world by using your time, your talent and your treasures to live out your call. Having the ability to master self awareness and transcend your limits are keys.

[00:00:31] And one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the inspired stewardship podcast with my friend, Scott

[00:00:41] It's great to be an entrepreneur. It's great to generate revenues and make an impact to be able to provide jobs for other people to feed their families all. That's good and well, but at the end of the day, if it's actually bankrupting us in terms of our energy and our drive and our spirituality, it can actually lead down a very dark pathway that actually separates them.[00:01:00]

[00:01:00] From our relationship with our creator.

[00:01:03] Scott Maderer: 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 and the inspired stewardship podcast.

[00:01:20] We'll learn to invest in yourself, invest in others and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

[00:01:29] in today's interview with James Pyle. I asked James to share with you some of his journey and how doing things wrong has led to him doing things different today. I also asked James to share with you what step zero is and what it means to an entrepreneur. And I asked James to share the power of self-awareness as an entree.

[00:01:52] One reason I like to bring you great interviews. Like the one you're going to hear today is because of the power in learning from [00:02:00] others. Another great way to learn from others is through reading books. But if you're like most people today, you find it hard to find the time to sit down and read. And that's why today's podcast is brought to you by audible.

[00:02:13] Go to inspired stewardship.com/audible to sign up and you can get a 30 day free trial. There's over 180,000 titles to choose from. And instead of reading, you can listen your way to learn from some of the greatest minds out there. That's inspired stewardship.com/audible to get your free trial and listen to great books the same way you're listening to this podcast.

[00:02:41] James pile is a dynamic and energetic serial entrepreneur. He specializes in lean startups, transformational turnarounds, and rapidly scaled exits. James has a tenacious work ethic and a track record of being a self-motivated top 1% producer and [00:03:00] leader in any environment he's considered uncommon among the uncommon, because he's been able to break through barriers that others cannot surpass no matter what it takes.

[00:03:10] James is an accomplished speaker, coach, executive leadership and management professional start-ups specialist, business development and sales guru, strategic planner, and ex executer extraordinary. Now James can be found incubating startups, speaking, coaching high performance entrepreneurs investing in real estate and volunteering his time.

[00:03:31] Performing service work with community outreach organizations. Welcome to the show, Jay.

[00:03:37] James Pyle: Awesome. Thanks for having me, Scott,

[00:03:40] Scott Maderer: we're looking forward to hearing all the great stuff that you have to share with the listeners. James, we talked a little bit in the intro about how you've had this kind of history of doing some startups.

[00:03:52] You've had some good experiences there and some not so great ones. Can you talk a little bit more about your journey to what you're doing [00:04:00] today and what did you learn on that journey that brought you to the point you're here today?

[00:04:05] James Pyle: Yeah, most definitely. I actually was very fortunate to have the experience to get into entrepreneurship at a very early age.

[00:04:12] I grew up actually with my parents running a small little family owned pharmacy in the small town I grew up in and I actually started out when I was about eight years old. I would grab a garden rake and a leaf rake and put them across the handlebars, my bicycle, and go peddling around town, knocking on people's doors to rake the leaves in there.

[00:04:30] And so of course that ended up leading to being able to get into a really good school here in Los Angeles, Loyola, Marymount, and founding my first business at 21 years of age. And I was always enjoyed selling. I was loved sales. I loved persuasion. I loved speaking. And that was where I really Excel.

[00:04:47] And in my early career, I was not as aligned as I am currently in my faith and my spirituality. And that led me down a path of a lot of carnal and fleshly pursuits status, [00:05:00] possessions those sorts of things. And it led me actually to a place where I had lost everything about four years. And it was through that experience of actually losing everything that I received the revelations from the Lord that I was focusing in the wrong places and doing business in the wrong ways.

[00:05:17] This is one of the things we had talked about before and that, I had the awareness. I had never gone intentionally out to try to scam people or to mislead people or lie, and now conduct business in a unethical or immoral way. However, that's what I had been doing. And basically my experience was that all of the things that I had done throughout my life, my career, I had gotten basically, pressed down and served up all back to me in one big, huge docent.

[00:05:42] And I just really did not like the taste of that medicine, so I realized in those moments that. I never wanted to feel the way that I felt. And I also, even more importantly, I never wanted to be a reason why other people could feel anything like what I was feeling. And so where this led me to is to be [00:06:00] able to encourage others and actually aligning themselves in their faith and their spirituality.

[00:06:05] Cornerstone of not only their life, but also their business pursuits and where I'm at now is actually encouraging and raising up and equipping the next generation of kingdom, entrepreneurs, and kingdom coaches with the types of principles to be able to actually make the world a better place. And to actually create sustainable, wholesome businesses and business models that actually contribute more to the world.

[00:06:28] And, oftentimes I'm interviewed on podcasts and such, and I do speaking events and a lot of people they love to hear about the successes. However, quite frankly, I love to talk more about the failures. It's our failures and our mistakes that actually are, can be some of the greatest things that we learn in this.

[00:06:45] And everybody's aware of the sayings of, experience is a dear teacher. It's controversially. Some people say it is the best teacher. Some people say it's not. I was actually at this kingdom business summit at Kara's Bible college last week in Colorado Springs. And [00:07:00] I had the pleasure of hearing John Maxwell speak as the keynote speaker and a gentleman by the name of Dr.

[00:07:04] Dean Ray. And one of the things Dr. Radke talked about is that, learn from mistakes of others because you'll never live long enough to make all of them yourself. I always love to share my mistakes and my wrong turns with people and share my testimony. And and also at the same time, I'm grateful for all of my failures.

[00:07:20] I learned very early on when I was studying at university, that failure is success. And that failure is actually the path. For us to be able to learn things and try new things and keep going. The only way to actually truly lose is to quit or give up. And so just pressing into the fact that failure is success and, whenever we're making mistakes, it's a good indication that we're actually taking action and that we're doing things and that we should keep doing them.

[00:07:45] And so that's really the big part of my journey is being able to share with people how I had success. But also I had many failures, which I viewed as success and that have actually led me down. Halfway to the place that I'm in today to coach kingdom, entrepreneurs and kingdom coach.[00:08:00]

[00:08:00] Scott Maderer: John Maxwell is one of my mentors at, of course, one of his great books is actually called failing forward.

[00:08:05] He talks about using your failures to launch you forward to success. That's doesn't surprise me. That he was there and talking on some of those topics as well. So when you think about a person and an entrepreneur an individual, we often talk about, developing ourselves and that's one of the topics and the theme for this week is about developing ourselves.

[00:08:29] But I know one of the terms that you use is talking about step zero, before you start down that journey towards self-develop. So what is step zero to you and why is that important to entrepreneurs and individually? Yeah.

[00:08:44] James Pyle: Excellent question, Scott. So we actually term step zero as self awareness, it's something that actually you and I had connected on previously when we spoke and it's something that is absolutely essential in order for us to begin any sort of improvement or any sort of [00:09:00] development or any sort of progress.

[00:09:02] Most people that are into improving themselves, becoming the best version of themselves. We know and understand that this is a lifelong pursuit and that there's not really a finish line. And, step zero was actually the place where we have to begin before we can begin any pro. And the key here is to actually know where we are at on the map.

[00:09:21] When we're we go to the mall or we go to places and it says you are here that's step zero. And that's what we view it as is we view step zero as you are here. So we can know where we are. The journey. And then we also have an idea of the end point. So that is reverse engineered. One of the things that we always talk about with entrepreneurs when making business plans is to start with the end in mind, right?

[00:09:42] So many people, they, again they're excited to get going and get started. However, the fact of the matter is that if we're not clear on what our end point is, and we don't know where we're starting out, we're never going to be able to. Create a pathway to get from point a to point B in a successful manner.

[00:09:58] And so this is something that we [00:10:00] always encourage everyone in is to just, pause for the cause. If you will, before going and jumping into a program and getting into the five or seven or 10 steps for this is to take a moment and just elevate our self-awareness. And begin with step zero so that we can know where our true starting point is.

[00:10:16] And we can be accurate in the ability to actually guide ourselves and provide ourselves with the action plan to get to the place where we are.

[00:10:23] Scott Maderer: And, it's, again, whether you think about it from the point of view of. Counseling and therapy or treatment programs or whether you think about it from a self-development standpoint, it's the old, before you can work on it, you got to know that there's a problem.

[00:10:39] And that's that level of self-awareness. So you talk a lot about this idea of self-awareness and how is it? How can someone actually become more? Self-aware let's just talk about it in practical terms or in, in tips, what are some of the practices that we need to be doing or routines that we need to be doing to bring [00:11:00] about that?

[00:11:00] Self-awareness.

[00:11:02] James Pyle: Yeah, sure. So this is another great question in here. So what we've actually found is that the most powerful way for any individual to elevate their self-awareness is actually self-assessment is when we can actually take a step back, we can take an assessment of ourselves and what we've been doing.

[00:11:18] Sometimes people would call this like the accountability mirror or the awareness mirror, because each individual we know more about ourselves than anyone else can or ever. And also us as humans, we have this thing, especially in Western cultures, I think it's, around the world, but here, especially in Western cultures, we have this thing called pride and ego.

[00:11:37] That really stands in the way of our awareness a lot of times. And what we find is that, and I'm just as guilty as an expert on this in the past as well. When we would try to share something with someone that we observed about them to help increase their awareness.

[00:11:51] Unfortunately, even with the. Framing and the softest serve to give this information to someone. People usually get defensive because human beings want to be [00:12:00] right. And so one of the best ways to disarm this is actually to do some self-assessment. One of the ways that we encourage people in self-assessing is just journaling to sit down and journal things, to take a look at what was our thought process.

[00:12:12] When we were doing something, what were the decisions that we made? What was the course that we chose based on the variables we were presented with. And then what was the outcome from that experience? And so th the first part of it is self-awareness is a self assessment. The next step is self-discovery.

[00:12:27] And the reason why we say self discovery is. When we've actually had the opportunity to create that assessment of ourselves, we then need to dig into that assessment and further discover things behind why we did what we did to actually elevate our awareness. And then the third step that we always recommend is to work with a coach or a mentor or a trusted confidant to be able to help increase our awareness.

[00:12:50] And the reason why that this is the third step is because it's always good to come to this person, whether it be a coach or a business partner or a mentor or whoever it's good to come to them with [00:13:00] actually some context and some background with what you want to speak to them about and what you want them to help elevate awareness around.

[00:13:06] And when we can provide actually the self-assessment and the self-discovery. It actually helps arm them with the tools that they need to be able to help extract more awareness out of us. So it's a very simple thing, but at the same time, a lot of people miss the boat on this, because even though a lot of times we have the greatest intentions when we want to share awarenesses with people, it just is not received that well.

[00:13:27] So the best thing here is to take a step back, take a look in the mirror and take a look at ourselves and actually be able to elevate our awareness in that way.

[00:13:36] Scott Maderer: So now it's keep traveling down this path. Let's we've done some work now. We've got some level of self-awareness. We've got some level of awareness of what's going on.

[00:13:46] Maybe we've even reached out and started working with a coach. Somebody else, a mentor a competent to help us further. One of the things that I hear a lot from entrepreneurs, especially, but honestly, nowadays [00:14:00] everybody is the overwhelm, the constant overwhelm, the feeling of, there's so many different things coming at me on a daily basis.

[00:14:08] How am I going to do this? On top of everything else that I've got to do, and actually make some sort of forward progress. So what are some of the secrets that we can put in place to help do that development? Do that work that we need to do, and yet, still not feel like we're adding to the overwhelm, but we're, instead of using it to help us overcome.

[00:14:31] James Pyle: Yeah, totally. For me, in this regard, a lot of this actually goes into our daily habits. I like to refer to them as rituals, daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual rituals. And another thing to do is to actually take a step back and remember that, our creator created us as human beings.

[00:14:47] Not as. Doing right. And so a lot of it has to do with our initial intention. That's behind what we're wanting to accomplish. And just as you mentioned, we work all the time with entrepreneurs that the last thing they need is another [00:15:00] program. The last thing they need is another few steps to do this or that or the other thing.

[00:15:04] And for the most part, people don't want education, people want results. And one of the best habits that we've seen actually, that I've experienced impacts. The most. And we've seen in entrepreneurs that we work with is seeking clarity because when we actually seek clarity and we're totally clear on exactly what we're wanting to achieve and also the intention behind why we want to achieve that thing, we can actually set ourselves on the.

[00:15:30] Pathway for success. And there's a gentleman that you and your listeners may be familiar with by the name of Brendan Burchard. And he's actually like the world's number one high-performance coach. And he wrote a book called the high-performance habits and entity detailed six habits that all high performers practice and the number one habit of all high performers that they've measured is seeking clarity.

[00:15:52] This is the key in here is to be aware of what are habits. And the intention behind what we're looking to achieve and accomplish. [00:16:00] The other thing is getting organized. This is something where a lot of people try to be organized, but a lot of people are falling short. And if somebody feels like they're overwhelmed or they feel like they're not able to get the things done, that they want to get done.

[00:16:11] One of the first places that we look is this show us your last 90 days of your calendar. Get that thing open. Let's take a look. And, especially specifically in that regard is, as we're looking at some of the self care routine things that are actually should be scheduled into our daily rituals here, it's great to be an entrepreneur.

[00:16:30] It's great to, generate revenues and make an impact and be able to provide jobs for other people to feed their families all. That's good and well, but at the end of the day, if it's actually bankrupting us in terms of our energy and our drive and our spirituality, it can actually lead down a very dark pathway that actually separates us.

[00:16:47] From our relationship with our creator. And that's really at the core of the message of kingdom entrepreneurship, and what we coach people in is that, business was created by our creator to honor him and to bring honor and [00:17:00] glory here on earth. It wasn't created as a method to swindle people out of their money or get people to trade their assets.

[00:17:07] Or their lives for the things that we want to attain and achieve in this carnal world. And so we really encourage people in these methods, and these are the types of things that we like to encourage people to help whenever somebody is feeling overwhelmed. And lastly, on this point here, one of the things that's most helpful to me as I actually, I love to journal, I love to just rewrite journal.

[00:17:27] There's all kinds of different practices out there. Morning pages, all these different sorts of things. Specific journaling type questions. Whenever I'm feeling totally overwhelmed. I actually just do a brain dump journal. I literally grabbed my notebook and I just start writing down anything and everything I think I need to accomplish and what I need to have it done by and the things that I need to have in lined up in order to get that thing accomplished.

[00:17:46] And that's actually one of the best de-stressing exercises I have to actually lower. The overwhelm is just putting it all out on paper and getting it out of my head and getting it organized. I can actually clearly see the pathway to. What I need to get done and how [00:18:00] I'm willing to get it done. And then that usually decreases the stress and the overwhelm that I'm experiencing.

[00:18:04] And this is something that we've seen a lot of success within our clients as well.

[00:18:08] Scott Maderer: You can follow James on Twitter as James F pile or find him on his website@awarenesselevation.com. He's also on LinkedIn as James F pile and on Instagram, under awareness underscore elevation. Of course I'll have links to all of this over in the show notes as well.

[00:18:26] James, is there anything else that you'd like to share with us?

[00:18:28] James Pyle: Yeah, just encourage people to come follow us on social media. I'm most active on LinkedIn and Instagram. We're constantly putting out content in that regard and we're also developing our YouTube channels currently. And I also just encourage people to come and connect with us on the web.

[00:18:44] We're developing a lot of resources to be able to offer for free to people that come on to understand more of what kingdom entrepreneurship is and to be equipped with that. So that's awareness, elevation.com. And I just wanted to thank you, Scott, for having me on the show here and giving me the opportunity to speak with [00:19:00] you and your audience and just share this awesome message.

[00:19:03] Scott Maderer: Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been great to have you a lot of great stuff today, and I look forward to hearing more about your journey as we go.

[00:19:12] 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 enjoy this episode. Please do us a favor. Go over to inspired stewardship.com/itunes rate.

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