Going Long Podcast_SOLO Episode 472_Billy Keels

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

empathy vs sympathy, Billy Keels advisory, corporate life, real estate investing, resiliency plan, setbacks to success, big hairy audacious goals, mentorship importance, coaching relationship, emotional fortitude, corporate challenges, decision making, professional goals, empathy impact, sympathize vs empathize

SPEAKERS

Billy Keels

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Billy Keels  00:00

Can't tell sympathy from empathy. Here's my really simple approach. Today's conversation is sponsored by the Billy Keels advisory program. If you want to learn more about how to make your nine to five optional, just go to Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising. Once again, that's Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising. Can't tell sympathy from empathy. Well, here's my really simple approach. It's one that I want to share with you, because when you are out and you want to make the right selection, or the best selection for yourself, given the context that you are in life, like you want to understand and feel the difference between empathy and sympathy. And by the time I'm finished with this very brief episode, you're going to understand crystal clear why. Because I got to a point in my early on I was looking for to be able to have someone to help guide me through this new world that I was entering into, this new world that I had already was having curiosity about this was outside of my normal nine to nine job. This was a a like, just this kind of feeling in my gut that I could do something different, that I could take more control over my time, but it was unexplored territory. Was a place where I knew that I wanted, I didn't need, but I knew that I wanted, and there's a big difference between that as well. I wanted help. I wanted someone to help guide me and get me into the path, and I realized that this whole concept of empathy and sympathy played out during the relationship, the coaching relationship that I had, but it's something that I'm sure I'm going to use this as an example, but I'm sure you will be able to draw other parallels in your life, especially when you are exploring new territories, new ventures and Things like that, because I knew that this was a new place for me. And this is I'd started to, you know, I'm at this point, I'm probably in the corporate life. Almost 20 years I'd been investing in real estate specifically, and I started investing in other people's opportunities as well. I started moving into this new world, which is about decoupling my income from my time that I was investing, and that's a that's something that was a really important at that, at that point moment in my time. And so I started looking for someone that could help me, because I knew that I had kind of at the time early on, had really early success in investing in real estate and and I was having happy years until I had this really negative experience where one of the properties that I purchased, I didn't recognize something and ended up losing about $25,000 but I won't digress, but I wanted to minimize those happy years. So it was about, what could I put in place? What could I do to move away from my happy years start to have even clear diligence and really making even more informed decisions? So I sat down on a mission to find someone who had more experience, who had more successes, and also that had more setbacks than me, and I didn't really understand the importance of the setbacks at the time, like I'd heard it and I'd seen it, and people talked about how they lost all This money, or how they lost certain different opportunities, and then they realized that it was those setbacks that really set them up for future success. And so the importance of having, like, a resiliency plan, and that's something that I know that I've talked about before, and you can even go back as far as episode 453, where I talk about why it's important to have a resiliency plan, but it comes back to this whole concept of setbacks, and what happens when you run into a setback, what? How are you already prepared to be able to bounce back and bounce back sooner? Because the thing is, is when I was building this side business outside of my normal corporate nine to nine, I wanted to be able to get to my goals and do that perfectly, like that was my ideal state. Like everybody else does it this way, has setbacks, has drama, etc, but I'm going to be the first person that gets to the goal perfectly. That's what I wanted to do. And but I realized that the most important thing was, is to be able to make product progress and gain experience, like, internally, like, that's what I really knew was the thing that was important for me. And so as I even missed out on on the goal of getting there perfectly. And I know I've talked about that in an episode of 409, you can miss goals sometimes, and I've talked about retirement goals, but you miss, you miss those goals. But what happens it's not the end of the world. You realize what you learn from that. How do you improve? And how do you how do you move forward? And so I started recognizing that as I put these goals together, I came up with the with the B hags, the B, H, A, G, the big, hairy, audacious goals. At least that's the way that I felt when I got started. And I recognized that each time I was making progress, I was moving a little bit further, a little bit faster, and at the same time, I realized that I couldn't do this on my own, that I knew that there were the people that I saw that were having the most success. They were learning from the successes and the setbacks or the failures or the mistakes or the learning opportunities of other people like they weren't doing it in. Themselves. And I thought, wow, if this seems to be the path, is to say, Okay, well, I need to go find somebody that can help me in my decision making process so that I can get as many wins as possible, minimize the probability of having mistakes, learning opportunities, failure events along the way. Then that's what I wanted to be able to do and so. And it's one of those things that helps you to recognize, like, where are the ways that you can make your in them, specifically talking about whatever, if you have a side business, that you can make it as successful as possible, right? I even talked about that in episode 440, episode 440 but, but, like I always do, I came up with an idea, and I said, Okay, well, like, how can I actually operationalize this? How can I make this work? And it was about, how could I look for people that were mentors, that I could ask questions of, maybe we're in similar kind of groups, and they were a couple steps ahead of me? How could I go out and find them? How could I invest in my own coaches, advisors that would help me, but knowing that there was a paid relationship that they were going to give, they were going to dedicate time, energy, resource to me, and it wasn't just going to be like a mentorship, where it's like, okay, if I have time, I'll get to you like this was a an engagement where I knew that we were going to be in sync. And so I finally found someone, I contracted that person, and then signed up for a program that was a very hefty, almost six figures of investment on an annual basis for me, which scared the living daylights out of me like I'd never thought of doing anything like that ever but the fact that I made that commitment to myself, to my goal, to my priority. Guess what? I did every single session, I came prepared. I was ready to go. I was invested, financially, emotionally, spiritually, all of it. And the thing is, in this, as I started thinking about it, like in it, because it comes back to like, you can't tell the difference between empathy and sympathy. Well, I realized this, and I have a very simple approach that's going to help you to understand the difference between the two and how they can impact you. Because when I think about the the coaching relationship that that I had with my coach that I invested a significant amount of money in, I realized that he really helped me to move forward in terms of my thinking, and he could help me to understand or view things from a different way, that gave me the the emotional fortitude to make decisions in a different way that I hadn't thought about some of it I had previously thought about. I just it was great to have somebody else say something similar. That wasn't a part of my nine to nine, and that helped me. And there were certain moments when we would have conversations where I understood that my that my coach could literally empathize with where I wanted to be because I was having these feelings of of inadequacy, this feeling of I could, no matter how much I was working, I could never get ahead, because he had gone through the exact same feelings. He was ahead of household. He really thought it was important for him to be reliable, to be there, and so he had been in my shoes. He literally had the same feelings as I'd had, right? So he could empathize, because he had literally been where I had been. Had those same feelings, those same thoughts, those same challenges, and then there were moments when we would have conversation, because he didn't come from a corporate world, and although I was explaining to him the importance of preparing for the meeting that I had with my n plus two, because it was going to put me in the right position for the next promotion, or have the right alliances like it sounded. He could understand it, but he could sympathize as much as possible, because he knew that it was going to be a time commitment for me, or was going to take me away from my goal. But he'd never been in a corporate role, so he didn't know what that meant. So he could never, he'd never been in my shoes. So he couldn't literally feel. He couldn't go back to his gut and be like, I remember when it was like that, like he could on the feeling inadequate, not using my time properly, to wanting to be reliable. He could relate to that. He could empathize, empathize there. But when I started talking about life as a corporate high rise or a corporate top talent couldn't relate to that. He'd never been there. He could sympathize, because he could see how it was affecting me and it was keeping me from the goal that he and I had set out to do, and he would give me as much input as he could, but he couldn't quite help me resonate, or help his message resonate with me on certain things. So he could sympathize, but he couldn't empathize. And so the way that my really simple approach is because even when I had this coaching relationship, we set out on the goal to accomplish something in a year, we didn't get to the goal. We didn't get to the goal. So I didn't get to the goal. It took me two times longer to get to the goal that we'd established together two times two years, not a year, but along the way. What I did realize is that through understanding where he could empathize and sympathize, and where he was able to shine a light or put a mirror in front of me and help me see the things that were important to me, or at least that what I told him, then he helped me. Make progress, I started making progress. I gained experience, and most importantly, much more confidence in the way that I was making decisions. That was paramount. It was absolutely critical. And so as I share with you, this difference between empathy, being in someone's shoes, having been there, having had the same feelings, the same, understanding either because of experience, well, because of experience, you've you've been in someone's shoes, or being able to stand outside someone's shoes and seeing it from the outside, and understanding where do you want to go, but where are you, and how are the decisions that you're making? How are those impacting your ability to get to the final goal that's sympathizing, but you never stood in my shoes. And so the simple approach is to recognize, have you stood in someone's shoes? Has someone stood in your shoes when you're looking to have someone that can help guide you to get to a goal, to help you shorten the amount of time that it takes to get you to where you want to be, someone that can stretch you so that you can get to the goal even sooner. It's something that's important to take in. It's what some of the questions that you want to ask. Have you done this? Have you been there? Have you had the goals? Did you get there perfectly? Have you had setbacks? Did you have failure events? So that you can understand through that, through that professional relationship, is that person going to be able to empathize with your situation, or will they merely sympathize? So no right answer. You just need to know, going into whatever the empathy or sympathy kind of situation is. So with that, I want you to share this episode once again, because I want you to go from theory to practice, understand what is the importance of being able to empathize, being able to sympathize, especially when you are engaging in a professional relationship, to be able to get you to your goal faster, right? Share it, talk with family, talk with friends. And I'll be right here preparing for the next episode, you know what? And until then, I want you to go out and make it a great day. And I want to say thank you very, very much. You. Freedom. Today's conversation was sponsored by the Billy Keels advisory program. If you're looking to make your nine to five optional and need some help, just go to Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising. Once again, that's Billy keels.com. Forward slash advising. Freedom,

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