Slaying Your Next Dragon
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Losing the Passion and the Fire
How to keep the fire and passion burning to grow one's self, business, and team, even when it's hard.
He advises entrepreneurs, CEOs, business leaders, and owners to keep the fire burning in their bellies, especially when business is hard, and to always look for the next big scary thing that will cause them to stretch and grow.
The Next Dragon to Slay
What's the next big scary thing for you that could cause you to stretch, struggle, and grow?
Have you recently slayed any big dragons, and if so, how did that experience make you feel?
Are you currently feeling bored or stagnant in your life or career, and if so, what could be the next big challenge for you to pursue?
Have you considered pursuing something outside of your comfort zones, such as public speaking or stand-up comedy?
Are you driven more by inspiration or perspiration in finding your next dragon to slay?
What are some specific goals or milestones you could set for yourself in pursuing your next big challenge?
What steps can you take to overcome any fears or doubts that may be holding you back from pursuing your next dragon?
8 Questions to Successfully Find and Slay the Next Dragon
What's something you've always been afraid to do?
What's something you've always wanted to learn?
What's a dream you have that you've never moved forward on?
What's the next level in your business or career?
What's the next level in your life, bigger than just business and career?
Who do you want to meet?
Who do you want to build a stronger relationship with?
Who do you want to become?
The Support system
Once you figure out your next dragon, you need a support group to help you slay it. You don't have to do it alone.
Having the right support system is crucial for success.
The supportive voices you need to gather are family, friends, coaches, mastermind groups, and different organizations.
Identify the unsupportive voices and let go of them.
Personal experience shows the importance of having a supportive spouse during tough times.
CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs, and leaders often lack support at home.
Joining groups like the National Speakers Association and coaching organizations can provide support, mentorship, and advice.
Having a crew that kicks you in the butt, pats you on the back, and supports you is crucial.
Join mastermind groups and get coaches.
Find the next dragon to slay and keep the fire burning in your belly.
Slay the dragon with the right team around you.
Thanks for listening!
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Mike Goldman: In this episode, I wanna talk about a concept I like to call slaying your next dragon. It's all about how you keep that passion, that fire burning in your belly to grow yourself, grow your business, grow your team, even when it's hard. And I want to start by talking about my grandfather.
[00:00:29] My Grandfather Pop
Mike Goldman: Pop was born in 1907 and he was born on Hester Street, lower Manhattan and back then it was all Jews and Italians. These days I think it's part of Chinatown, but Pop was the best man I ever knew. He was the strongest man I ever knew. He had incredible pride in his family.
And that's not because he was super successful. He was a blue-collar guy. He didn't have a prestigious job. He didn't win a lot of awards; he didn't make a lot of money. He didn't have a big house, but he always had this fire in his belly and this gleam in his eye. In fact, there's a story that I heard from him only after he retired that he was spent a lot of his life driving a truck delivering newspapers and magazines, and what I didn't know was he was held up at gunpoint many times in that truck.
Never told us he didn't want my grandmother to worry about him. His family was so important to him. He was in the car with my mother. My mother was driving, and Pop was in the passenger seat. This was years ago, I think it was when he was teaching her how to drive and somebody had cut my mom off and they stopped at a red light and the person who had cut her off was in front of her and Pop without saying anything, just got out of the car, walked up to the driver's side of the car, signaled to the guy, "roll down your window.” And those were the days when you actually did roll down your window. Guy rolled down his window, Pop punched him in the face and walked away. You didn't screw with Pop's family. He was a tough guy on the outside, but soft and squishy on the inside.
And on a day, I'll never forget, pop worked till he was 83 years old and when he was 83, he was driving a cab. Now, he had no business driving a cab. He couldn't see very well. He had a few accidents, and on this day, I'll never forget, he was fired from the cab company. Now, he had too much pride to even tell us that my grandmother told us at the time we lived in an apartment building in the Bronx.
We lived on the sixth floor. They lived on the fifth floor. So, we were together all the time. And I remember that day so clearly because that was the last day, I ever really saw Pop. I ever really saw my grandfather.
Now, he lived three more years, but the life went out of him on the day he was forced to retire. That gleam in his eye was no longer there. The fire in his belly had gone out. I remember my grandparents would be with us every night. Have dinner and watch TV with us, watch the Yankee game after dinner, whatever we were doing. And Pop had his chair he sat in and we just, his hearing had started to go and the realized the TV was low and I remember saying, Hey Pop, could you hear the tv? And he said, no but don't worry about it.
Like he was just, didn't care enough even to ask us to raise the volume on the TV. The life just went out of him, and he lived three more years but there was no life in those years. And the impression that left on me was that for me retirement became a dirty word.
[00:04:20] Losing the Passion and the Fire
Mike Goldman: I saw what happened to my grandfather after he was forced to retire and felt like the best parts of his life were behind him. Felt like he wasn't useful anymore. I see too many people lose that fire in their belly, they retire, think oh I'm gonna travel the world and play golf. And then the fire goes out and they don't last much longer.
And if they do, it's not a life that's a passionate life and an energetic life. There's no life in their life. So, I wanna talk to you about this idea of keeping that fire burning in your belly. Now, I don't only mean if you're getting older and it's time to retire. For entrepreneurs, CEO, business leaders, business owners, we lose that fire all the time if we're not careful.
Business is hard and it gets to us. Or maybe business is too easy, and it just becomes habit. It's not hard anymore. We just go through the routine every day and we could lose that fire and then everything else starts to fall apart. So, the way I like to picture it and the way I think of it in my own life is I'm always looking for that next dragon to slay.
[00:05:43] The Next Dragon to Slay
Mike Goldman: What's that next big scary thing for me that's gonna cause me to maybe with some pain, maybe with some struggle, but cause me to stretch, caused me to get better, caused me to grow. I'm always better for that after I do that. And some of the big dragons that I have slain over the year, you know, over the years, not too long ago it was, writing my first book and then it was writing my second book a few years ago my coaching business, I was doing really well and frankly started to say, this isn't that hard anymore. It's not that much of a struggle.
Some people would say, oh, that's great, but for me I knew the boredom would set in and then things may start to fall apart. So, I had to look for that next big dragon to slay and for me it was starting a public speaking business. These days, I'm talking to you in front of a webcam and a microphone and doing the podcast thing, which is new for me. That was my dragon. It doesn't even always have to be business related.
I remember when I was about to turn 50. I had read in a book, and I wish I remembered what book I could attribute this to, but I had read in a book that we always need to find things that scare us. And I thought about it at the time as I was reading the book and I said, what's that thing that's a little scary? and when I came up with had nothing to do with business. I was always the guy sitting around the table with family of friends and people would say tongue in cheek, they would say, hey you should be a standup comic, cause I was the funny guy around the table.
So, I decided at that point my next dragon was gonna be getting on stage at the Comedy Cellar in the Village, which is a very famous comedy club in the village. I took a 10-week comedy course and on week eight and week 10, I was actually in front of the room doing a, I think it was a seven-minute comedy routine. Made some people laugh, but I was not quitting my day job. So, what is that next dragon for you? What's that next big thing that scares you? And sometimes finding that next big thing is based on inspiration. Sometimes it's perspiration. When I quit my job many years ago, oh, back in 2004 and started my first business. It was more perspiration that caused the next dragon, caused me to find that next dragon to slay.
I had to find a way to pay the mortgage back then. Building my speaking career and starting this podcast and writing a book was more based on inspiration. Me thinking, well, what is it that I want to do next? That next that scares me a little bit.
So, I wanna throw some questions at you. I'm gonna do a few things on finding your next dragon. I wanna help you think about what your next dragon might be by throwing some questions at you, and if you are driving you may want to listen to this and then re-listen in a place where you could write some things down. If you're not driving, you may wanna listen to a question and then stop the audio or the video and write a little bit and then start it up again.
[00:09:05] Questions to Successfully Find and Slay the Next Dragon
Mike Goldman: But what I wanna do is share some questions with you and then share some other things that you need to do to make sure you are successfully finding and slaying that next dragon. So, let me hit you with a bunch of questions. I think there are eight questions.
Question number one, what's something you've always been afraid to do? And again, stop the audio or the video if you wanna stop and write, cause I'm just gonna go through the questions. So, number one, what's something you've always been afraid to do?
Number two, what's something you've always wanted to learn. Could be a new language. It could be, standup comedy. It could be improv, it could be carpentry, it could be anything. What's something you've always wanted to learn? What's a dream you have that you've never moved forward on? And that may be something about your career or your business or your life could be anything.
Question number four. What's the next level in your business or career? Do you need to raise the bar and set a scarier goal for yourself? Question number five, what's the next level in your life? Bigger than just business and career? Question number six, who do you wanna meet? Is it a future spouse or mentor or friend or colleague or peer or someone famous, who do you wanna meet?
Question number seven, who do you wanna build a stronger relationship with? Maybe it's your significant other, maybe it's one of your parents. Maybe it's one of your kids. Again, maybe it's a colleague, a peer, or a friend. And then question number eight, who do you wanna become?
Now, from the answers to those questions, I hope you've identified a number of things that could be your next dragon. You've gotta get out of the mundane of the day-to-day, just doing the things you feel like you need to do and focus on those things you wanna do or that person you could become.
So, those are great questions to ask yourself from time to time when you're feeling like things are just going along, but maybe the passion in your life or your business is starting to wane a little bit. Now, once you figure out what that next dragon is, the coaching I want to give you is now you need a crew. You need a support group to help you go and slay that next dragon. You don't have to do it by yourself. The whole idea of the Better Leadership Team show is to find ways to surround yourself with the right people. And whether that next dragon you wanna slay is, doing standup comedy at a club in the Village in New York City, or whether it's starting a podcast or writing a book, or starting your first business, or selling your first business, or starting your third business, whatever it is.
[00:12:34] The Support system
Mike Goldman: You need the right support around you, family, friends, a coach, a mastermind, different organizations. Who's gonna support you? Who are those folks? Who are the supportive voices that you need to gather and make sure are part of your journey and by the way, who are the unsupportive voices? That you need to let go of.
I could remember when I had started my first business. 2004 through 2007, my first business was a staffing and recruiting business. It was a miserable failure. Hundreds of thousands of dollars out the window. That three year business, I should have ended after a year. but it was a great learning experience for me.
But it also resulted in seven years of financial hell. I had dug a deep hole for me and my family and I could remember being fearful of telling my wife, Angela about the mess we were in. She knew things were tough, but she didn't know that the most stressful part of the week for me was sitting down and paying the bills cause I had to figure out what I could pay and what I could push off. And we were at the point that I was worried we weren't gonna be able to pay the mortgage and Angela my wife, who is more conservative than I am, little less entrepreneurial. I just knew if I told her what was going on she was gonna tell me to cut the crap and go get a real job. And man, that's not what I wanted to do. I wanted to keep trying and they were, I could remember the first time with tears in my eyes.
I sat down and told her how tough things were. Again, expecting she was gonna tell me to stop playing around and go get a real job. And she looked at me and she said, you're doing all the right things. Keep doing it. Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna have, we're gonna fire the landscaper and our son is gonna do the lawn we're gonna stop doing this. We're gonna save here, we're gonna do that. She had 10 different ideas on how we were gonna cobble the money together.
But what was really important was her incredible support for me, and over our seven years of financial hell that conversation happened at least two or three times. If I didn't have that amazing wife at my side. I wouldn't be talking to you here today. I'd probably be working a job and being miserable working that job. So, my wife has been, and always will be an incredible part of my support system.
Now, I talk to CEOs, business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders every day, and it saddens me that more often than not, those folks don't have that kind of support at home. So, who's your crew? Another part of my crew is when I decided about three years ago that I was gonna get serious about building my professional speaking business. I joined the National Speakers Association and joined the board of the New York City Chapter. Was asked to join the board of the New York City Chapter.
And the reason I joined that group, and I could remember wow, 15, 16 years ago, joining my first coaching organization and whether it was the National Speakers Association or that coaching organization, I remember each one the first day walking in to one of my first meetings and just being in awe of all the people around me and having my ego squashed cause I looked around me and I said, I don't think I could ever do what these folks do.
But being part of that group and making some of my best friends in the world in both of those groups, in the coaching organizations I have been part of, the National Speakers Association, having people that kick me in the butt when I need it, pat me on the back when I need it, give me advice and coaching and mentorship has meant everything to me.
I'm part of three different mastermind groups right now. I've got two different coaches. Who is that crew that you're surrounding yourself with so you're not alone when you go to slay that dragon?
So my challenge to you is number one, find that next dragon to slay. Find that next scary thing to keep that fire burning in your belly, and make sure you have the right team around you. Gather those supportive voices. Let go of the unsupportive voices. Go find that next dragon to slay and slay that dragon. And then go find the next one. And maybe I'll see you on one of those dragon slain journeys. Maybe I could even be a part of it, but good luck.