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I just got back from a trail run on the river, beautiful day. I actually had a client call me and just had a question. I replied to him and I just got off the phone, and I wanted to share with you the conversation, or at least the gist of the conversation. This is a very successful business owner. They run an eight figure business, do very, very well for themselves. But, they had a question. They had a problem around their business and their business finances.

The question really came about, they had an expense coming up, or an expense that they saw coming up, and they didn’t know how to bridge the gap, right? Bridge the gap from where they are right now, to where they want to be, because that gap was this expense. Now, I told them a story. I told them a story about an author, an author gets a phone call from the editor, right? Of his book. And it says, “Geeze, I love your book except for one part. I just don’t like the ending.”

The author says, “Wow, what’s the problem with the ending?” The editor replies, “I need the ending to be closer to the beginning.” Point being we want to condense and simplify things, and often times we make things ultra complex. What my client was doing is he had this gap in his business, and to him, this gap was gigantic, right? What he wanted to do is really get after a new market. This was going to cost a lot of money, right? To get after this market, because of marketing, and there’s some innovation issues that were coming by, as well as some legal issues.

When I asked him what was going on in that part of the business, he went on to list about 50 items. 50 items that had to be done in order for them to bridge the gap between where they are in their business to where they want to be in this new niche that they were going after. Now, it was a great idea, right? But he had this complex roadmap he was trying to navigate, and I asked him, I said, “Hey, how can you simplify? How can we simplify this? If we had to do two things, you could only do two things right now to get you to your goal, what would they be?”

He sat for a second, and then I told him the story about the author and the editor that I just shared with you, and he chuckled. He said, “You know what, Doug? All I have to do is close a current proposal I have.” I said, “Okay, well what do you have to do to close that proposal?” He paused for a second and thought, and said, “You know what? I’ve got to make one phone call.”

Now, he hung up the phone with me, and I got a call back maybe 10 minutes later and his view was totally different. He said, “Geeze, I was making this so complex. I made the phone call, and the customer had one question that needed to be answered. I just pushed him over the edge by answering that question.” Meanwhile, he had spent over a week stressing and making this dramatic plan, sophisticated plan of these items that had to be done to bridge the gap to where he wanted to go.

Now, it made me think about it, right? How often do I actually make things more complicated than they need to be? Way too often. I’m notorious for it. I’d love to do strategy, plans, roadmaps, and for my clients, I have roadmapped their whole year in their Five to Thrive, and including their fun, their wealth, and their growth. That’s eight different vehicles that I’m roadmapping for them.

I have all these areas for them to grow and grow in a major way, and it works. Sometimes it comes back to simplifying. How can we simplify it? So, for example, maybe you’re like a lot of people and you just want to drop a couple pounds, right? You just want to drop 10 pounds. Maybe you’re thinking, “Well, how much vitamin B should I be taking? Vitamin D? Well, vitamin D’s a fat soluble vitamin, so maybe I need to make sure I’m having that with fat, and what kind of fat should I be eating?”

What can you do to simplify it? The honest answer is really keep a food log and break a sweat every day. If you do those two things, you will hit your goal. You just will. I’ve seen it time and time again. What happens is human nature, is we make things overly complex, right? Make things overly complex and that puts more barriers in front of us to achieve our goal. That allows us to stay safe. It’s built withinside us, to stay where you are, ’cause we know we’re safe right now. Stay here, ’cause it’s scary outside of our comfort zone.

But when we simplify things, that allows us to jump outside of our comfort zone, and accelerate the process. I’m going to ask you today, like I asked my client. What can you do to simplify? What if you could only do two things? Grab your journal, write out your Five to Thrive. What I want you to do is mind, body, soul, relationships, and business. Now, when you look at those areas, the goals that you’re trying to achieve in your 90 day game, which I hope you’re doing, right? and if you haven’t done the 90 day game, go over to Author of Your Own Story and go ahead and sign up for the newsletter. You should get a link for the 90 day game, otherwise, shoot me a message on social media, I’d be happy to get back to you.

So what I want you to do is your Five to Thrive, write that out, write your goals, and then where are you making things too complex, right? Where can you simplify that process for yourself? Be your own coach. Yes, I encourage everybody to have a coach and a mentor to help you on your journey, but in this case, you can be your own coach in this moment, right? Do that and simplify it. If you can only do two things to reach your goal, what would those two things be? Now, pick one if you have to, right? Maybe you just want to pick one thing to focus on, like I mentioned body as an example, or my client, business.

But maybe for you it’s relationship, maybe it’s regaining intimacy with your spouse. It’s a very common thing for most people. What it is, what are those two things that you can do and simplify and focus on those two things? Be the author, shorten the ending to the beginning, shorten your book. I think it was Mark Twain that said, “Sorry for the long letter, I didn’t have enough time to write a short one.” Very simple, right? Simplify things and stop making them complex.

That’s it for me today. As always, go over to AuthorofYourOwnStory.com, get the latest tips, tricks, and techniques delivered write to your inbox each and every day. Always unsubscribe if you don’t like ’em, but when you do get ’em, I’m going to ask you two questions and reply and let me know. We can continue to dialogue. All right you guys. I’m done today. I’m going to go jump in the shower, it was a long run, and I look forward to talking to you tomorrow. See you then.

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