Going Long Podcast_SOLO Episode 468_Billy Keels

Wed, Nov 06, 2024 10:14AM • 15:04

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

inner voice, corporate frustration, early success, real estate investment, personal confidence, proof of concept, social media, thought leadership, promotion path, inner strength, financial freedom, corporate executive, entrepreneurial journey, advisory program, practical application

SPEAKERS

Billy Keels

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Billy Keels  00:01

How to harness the power of your inner voice. 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, how to harness the power of your inner voice and becoming much more comfortable in your skin inside of corporate and outside of corporate at home is one of the things that I frequently speak to when I am either speaking with people on or chatting with people on LinkedIn or having a strategy call, and it's one of the things that I know can really, really, really keep you up at night. Why do I know that? Because it happened to me. How am I getting confirmation that it's happening? Because as I speak to people more and more, I realize that this is something that is just continuing to linger in the corporate machine. It's something that is is there. It's something that is stifling your growth, and until you actually get to find and then harness the power of your inner voice, it's one of the things that can really keep you frustrated, angry, sometimes, especially when you when it comes to corporate so, you know, when I when I take a step back and I start realizing, like, there's a lot of different stories that I could tell, either with clients or with people that I'm speaking to that want to become a part of our program in the idea is, what is happening. So typically this is, this is the way that it plays out. You get into the corporate because you wanted to get there. You've been, you know, you were sold that. And in college, the thing that you need to do to make the positive difference is to get a job with a big brand. So you get the job with the big brand, whether you got there on that was your first choice. It was your second choice. It was your third choice. You had to go like me. You got rejected from your dream job. So you end up finding something else that led you to this amazing life, one way or the other. You get the job. You're in the big company, you got the benefits, you got the car, and you're you're 567, years in. You're doing all the parties, you're there, you're rising. You want to build all the right alliances. You want to have everything in your favor. Because the promotion path is the thing that you should be doing. You should be going up that path. Right? If you want to know more about that, the sensational path, you can check out the previous episode. I think it is 467, and you can find out more about that, but, but the idea is, early on in your career, you're having so much success, you've got all this energy, you see so many of the different things that the big corporate machine produces that are fantastic, and it gives you opportunity. You have the benefits, and you're moving forward. Well, I was no different, right? And I'll even tell you I was even later in my journey, right? This is, if I go back even to 20, I don't know the after the early years of success. This is my software career, right before I started buying my first rental properties back in 2013 so I'm not probably a year into to my corporate role. I had just done this amazing, massive deal. Maybe two years later, this big deal was about $25 million worth of software on one shot, and I did that in Spanish, in Catalan language. So there was, like, this big feeling of personal accomplishment, because I'm a guy from Columbus, Ohio, I never thought I'd sell $25 million of anything, much less do it in a foreign language, in Spanish and Catalan. It was Catalan. It was just kind of like, Wow. I tried some of my Yorking as well. So if you're listening to to my my European friends, you know what I'm talking about. But anyway, let me not digress. That happens all the time. But the thing is, is I am in this point where I am in the corporate role, but I'm also having the success that's happening outside of the corporate role, and this is really where I want to focus, because I had a lot of trepidation, a lot of doubt, but I finally, you know, I put together a five year plan that five year or 60 months. Was like, I remember one of my coaches, and this is one of the powers of having coach. Was like, Well, why? Why? Why would it take you five years? And I thought, dude, because you don't understand the things that I have to do, and blah, blah. Well, just at a really quick glance, he was able to see that it wouldn't, it wasn't going to take me that long. So it took me 18 months for something that I had planned 60 months, and that was operating extremely inefficiently. Had I been more focused? Had I been, you know, had I not had I done this with had a had a coach, had an advisor, I would have been able to do that much faster, because they see things differently. But anyway, what was happening is I had the the early success 18 months, instead of 60 months, started realizing that I was operating these, these properties, these doors, inefficiently. And even so, at about three years time, I had enough money in my bank account to pay off the loan of all of the of the entire property. Maybe I'll go into that. And I'll tell you a little bit more. I also had the positive cash flow that was happening, because without the positive cash flow, I wouldn't have had enough money in the bank to pay off the doors. I chose to do something else because I understood the power of leverage and debt and things like that. But, but the idea was, I. I knew that I wanted to make more money because I wanted to be on the promotion track. It's something that I talked about before, but inside, what I was really wanting to do is just gain more confidence in myself, help myself understand because I didn't have a lot of support initially. Right to say that this thing that I'm doing that's putting my all of my benefits, my my paycheck, all these things at risk is this dream, this pipe dream, at the time of investing in real estate, I just wanted to show that that they that you could be confident in the decision that I made. And I wanted to gain confidence in myself. I wanted to gain more inner strength. And so as I was going through that the what I realized is having that early success, even though I was having some of this trepidation, was getting to a point where the internal or the external success that I was having and experiencing at my corporate and now starting to have this internal success, because things were going well on the on the number of doors and the in the profitability, I realized that if I kept going on this path, at a certain point, The corporate machine was going to see me, and that made me really nervous. It made me really uncomfortable. And so I got to a point that I didn't know what to do. I felt a bit trapped. I felt really trapped. But then I started seeing these kind of proof points. What I always say is the POC, this comes from my software days, which is a proof of concept, because the more people that I spoke to, because, remember, I'm starting to get outside of the corporate life. I'm starting to realize that there is a world. Because when you're in this corporate, high paid, you know, luxury car, flying in group one, flying in group two, all that kind of stuff. Maybe I'll do an episode on that too, you start to believe that that anything is possible. And I start to tap into conversations with other people. And then I start realizing that people outside of my enterprise software bubble are doing other things. And then that gives me a little bit more confidence to start to talk about some of the things inside of the four walls of the company. And then I start realizing, why Hang on a second? There are actually people that work for the same company, like me, that are also buying real estate, they're just keeping it super hush hush, or they didn't ever have the opportunity to talk about it. I also started realizing there were people that had really small online businesses. And I was like, Whoa, hang on a second. I thought you were just doing like me, but it was real hush hush, right? Kind of, like, nobody really talked about it. But then when I also started realizing that there were people that also had, like, I remember having this one conversation, this guy was like, Yeah, I've got a rental boats company. I was like, what, how do you have, how do you have time to have a rental boats company? And you're like, this super like, I don't want to say too much, but, like, a massively a, like, high title ranking executive in our company. And I thought, wow, you know what? This is a proof of concept that you can be successful in the enterprise software sales space being a corporate executive and start to build your things on the side. So what I realized was it was okay, right? And so. And I also started realizing that this, this confidence, that I had, this inner voice that I had that I wanted to start using, like I was, I was nervous, I was afraid, like I didn't want to start, but I had to come up with a really clear plan. And I start to myself, I said, look to be able to get like, the momentum that is starting outside of the company. To build that even more, I need to put together a little little plan. I start light. I'm going to start to contribute. I wanted to get out there on social media at this point in time, I had, I had a coach, and my coach was saying, hey, look, you really need to start building this thought leadership platform. You need to get out there. You need to start talking about more of the things that you are, that you're doing. So okay, I'll start light, and I'll just get out there. And I remember I wanted to start to formalize things, and then put after I got things formalized, and I said, Okay, then I'll be able to put this business on full throttle, but start light, get things in order, and then take off, right? And do that over a period of time. But the reality was, I was scared. Scared. Scared. Was scared as hell, to be honest with you, super scared because I realized that I was gonna start putting everything that I had in jeopardy. I was going to put it at jeopardy, right? Because I didn't think that I could do it. But I then started clinging on to the inner voice like it was okay, because I was doing things under the radar. I was still performing. I was doing over 200 almost 300% of my quota in the job. I was achieving the goals and 30% of the time that I planned outside of the job. So there was this level of confidence in being able to trust myself and trust the decisions that I was making, because they were moving me closer to my goals, that I didn't have to put the muzzle on, especially when I was in the nine to five. Now I'm calling it the nine to nine, as you know, because nobody that is in the world that I was living in making the amount of money with the benefits that that we had and have nobody works nine to five nobody, it's nine to nine or more, and it's not five days a week, it's more. But the thing is, is so I got to this point, and even though I was afraid, I started realizing it's okay to start talking about the things that I'm doing, and actually, you know what the things that I was doing outside of the office, it helped me to make a bit help. To make me a better employee, a better individual contributor at the office, because I brought different thoughts, different concepts, different ideas, and brought them into my world. Gave me a higher level of confidence. It gave me a different perception from my managers, from my from my coworkers. And guess what? I actually even had to start to turn down promotions because of the stances that I was taking inside of the company and feeling confident. You know why? Because my my business, my life outside of the company, was so strong that it gave me this extra sense of of of strength, and it helped to make my voice even stronger, more confident, more profound. And so the thing that I would say is, as I started to go out on social media, right? And I'll use this kind of what my what my coach told me about the thought leadership platform and this plan that I put together, and the first part was start light and get out there. I started going on social media. This was the way to test right? My voice was initially not strong, but I was out there. I was talking like I mentioned before, like, if you go back and you see me on LinkedIn, there was these videos and pictures of me in airports, talking about the things that I was doing, taking, you know, having a clear stance on the things that I was doing around investing, what I thought about investing, things that I thought about living abroad, the things that I thought about as it related to to travel. These are the things that were important to me, and it gave me the opportunity to actually get out there and get started. But where I started to see the real strength was I realized that it was okay to share. I could have an opinion. I could voice that opinion and and when I did it in the right way, not in an arrogant way, but in a way that my inner voice really came out and shared what I thought. I wasn't afraid of the consequences anymore, because I realized that a lot of the skill set that I learned that I could actually use that skill set, not just inside the corporate walls, inside the walls of the corporate machine, but actually outside to be able to give me more control over my life, over the things that I knew were important to me and to my family, helped me to wane off some of the scars that I knew that I was going to see in the promotion path, like I said. And check out episode 467, you can find out more about that there. And then also to being able to have my voice, being able to utilize my voice. And feeling that strength helped me along the way. It helped me to be a better employee, one that was on the fast track and and whether you call that top talent or catalyst, the place that I was, I started seeing that so I so having my and being able to demonstrate and utilize my inner voice, the strength of my inner voice in the right moment, in the right time, in the right place, was also receiving a welcome, especially from my colleagues, from my managers, their managers, so much to the point that I had to decide that it was not the promotion path was no longer for me. So what I would suggest to you is, as you look for your inner voice, find the things that are going to give you more and more momentum, allow you to build that a little bit more momentum, starting with whatever it is like I you know, I would give the example I started I put together a plan. After I put together a plan, the first step was to actually get out there and start the promotion path and start to talk about the things that I felt passionate about after I did that, to build a stronger plan, to increase the number of assets that I had outside of the nine to five, because that confidence, that influx of capital, helped me to have more confidence in the role. And got to the point that even at a very advanced level, I realized that I was going into my role every day because I wanted to, not because I needed to that nine to nine was there on the last four years, it was pretty much on cruise control, right? And I was still going to Hawaii. So in Hawaii, was for the to recognize the top achievers in the in the old 150,000 person organization. So to be a part of that, when my inner voice was maximizing its strength, and being able to be recognized is something that these are similar kind of steps that I want you to be able to take. So listen, get to your inner voice. Get to the strength of your inner voice. Hopefully this episode has helped you to recognize the benefits that you can gain from that. So what I want you to do is take today's episode, share it with friends. Share it with family, as I always do, get on the phone, talk to them about what you've learned and take it the theory and put it into practical terms for you and your life. While you're doing that, I'll be right here preparing for another episode, so until they go out and make it a great day. Thank you very, very much. 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. You.

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