15: Finding Your Inner Voice in Relationships and Beyond

Welcome to Make More Love, the show for the entrepreneurial man who wants a hot and healthy marriage as well as a successful business. I'm your host Ellen Dorian, and this is your place for straight up judgment-free conversations about merging the demands of business with the needs of a fulfilling relationship. We're all about supporting you to be extraordinary in your personal and your professional life, living fully in every way that counts. If you're new to the show, please don't forget to like follow, subscribe, whatever your favorite podcast platform calls it, so you don't miss anything. And it would be great if you could share with a friend too. Before we jump in just a reminder that the Make More Love show is for information and entertainment purposes only. It is not a substitute for the guidance of a qualified mental health or medical professional. In our last episode, we talked with Justin Wiseman, who's a mindset and business coach in Australia, and he had some huge insights on business, mindset, relationships, male stereotypes, and authenticity. Justin didn't hold back ...about anything, from his personal struggles, to his own relationship with his wife, Sarah, to tearing down stereotypes, even his best date night ideas. It was a blast and there was so much. So today's episode goes into some detail about some topics we didn't get into last time. So welcome to part two of my interview with Justin Wiseman. Justin, I have so many things I want to ask you, but I want to start with your story about what you learned during your time in the hospitality industry. You shared some really great insights you got from working in a family-owned pizza business.

So how I got into hospitality was actually, I was 17, and I worked in a pizza shop and I wasn't allowed to touch the pizza. So, it was an old school Italian style pizza shop where the family had built this business for the last 40 plus years. And you literally had to work your way up through the process to be allowed to actually make the pizzas or touch the dough or do any of that stuff. So, started out as a delivery driver, but then as I did my apprenticeship I also I guess you could say leveled up, but had the privilege of being able to move my way through to making the pizzas, cooking the pizzas, all that sort of stuff. And Yeah, and so that's how I got my start in hospitality. But I feel like I learned a lot about business and how to run a business and how to show up in a workplace and how to just learn the basic things like reliability, work your way up in regards to ...put more demand on yourself to become better in order to get the opportunity to do the next thing. And so I feel like just through that experience in that pizza business, I learned a lot about business, but also how to show up in life. It was a very pivotal experience for me to start working for them. And also having the pride in your work and the pride in the delivery of the product as well, which I think spans across all business. If you don't have pride in the product that you're delivering, then there's obviously something there that needs to be worked upon.

Interesting. What you took away from your experience was as much about how your inner self affects your approach to business than about the actual business practices you learned. How did these lessons influence the work you do now with your clients?

So my thing is like mindset and human performance. It's more about the person than it is about the strategy and tactics of the business building, although there is tiny elements of that obviously that come in. But if I look at what I do, that's what it is.

And I think this is a good time for me to mention something I'm offering for my listeners. A lot of you've been reaching out with questions about your own relationships, and I want to help. So I'm offering my listeners a free Relationship Reset Call. It's a quick 15 minutes with just you and me. We'll figure out what problem to tackle first. Then we'll lay out a plan with one or two steps to get you moving in the right direction. And after that, if you'd like more help I'll let you know how to get it. If you let your relationship go to shite, the cost to your financial, social and emotional wellbeing is enormous. It will truly put a dent in your armor. So let's not let that happen. Head over to relationshipresetcall.com to grab your spot. Let's get you on a trajectory to Make More Love... in Your Life and With Your Wife. And now Justin, we're back talking about mindset. You know that expression, "eating your own cooking," that's what comes to mind as we're talking. How you relied on your mindset during some really tough times you went through not all that long ago. We touched on this in part one, but can we talk a little bit more about that?

So we've had some big ups and downs. You do get caught up in the excitement of starting something new. All the opportunities ...you look at all the upsides, which sometimes can be pretty unwise ...to just be looking at the benefits and upsides of things. Yeah. And We ended up homeless in 2022.

Wow. That's really not that long ago.

So interestingly enough, we ended up homeless, made my first seven figures in the next six months.

Oh my gosh!

Sorry. No, that's incorrect. Did my first six figure weeks within the next six months.

Six figure weeks?

Yeah.

Within six months! Six. We did seven figure business in that time.

Yeah. We hit seven figures in October of that following year.

So just for the frame of reference, I think when we're running a coaching business to get to seven figures is practically unheard of. It's like tiny percentages.

Yeah, it's really interesting because our numbers are different in Australia to the US, obviously, so I'm pretty sure it's like only 8 percent of businesses in Australia will get past that number. So it's a small percent ...and then past 2 million, which I think it's like even lower again. But if you're in the coaching space to do consistent 10k months, that means you're in the top 8%, I think, ...I could be off, but I'm pretty sure that's right, so...

When I started in coaching 18 years ago, I joined the International Coach Federation and at that time, if you made $24,000 a year, $2,000 a month, you were in the top 10 percent of all coaches. I think it's different now, but I don't think it's that different.

Yeah.

So I just wanted to to give a little context because ...to understand what that means to go from being homeless to having a seven figure business within a year after that is an extraordinary, like unheard of miraculous kind of growth.

You think about what we're talking about as provider and all of a sudden you don't even have a roof over your family's head. And then when that occurred, like that came with a deep level of shame, huge level of shame because now it wasn't being a provider. It was like, "As a man, aren't you meant to be the protector?" So it's I ran into all these challenges in this short period of time to shatter these conceived ideas around who I'm meant to be. And so I was like, that was the final, almost like the final chip. So, I have a a goal this year around ...wanting to put us in our own home. Obviously a big void since all the things happened, so it's the goal again this year.

I can only imagine how great that must feel for you to be able to do that for your family, and I'm really rooting for you to get there. I would really like to see us transform this, um, narrative around the provider role for men that's still so ingrained. My last episode was just on this topic about these roles of protector, provider, pursuer. And it's hard to overcome that to get to the place where you can do something new.

I went through a huge transformation around my value as a man being the provider back in 2021. I was with a different coaching company back then, and basically I was building a life on a foundation that wasn't actually aligned with my vision ...for money. So it was for the money. But that's, that wasn't the life that I wanted. I was going through six week burnout cycles at the time, which I knew as a coach, I was like, "this is feedback, dude, you're totally unaligned with what you're doing," but I just kept pushing through it because of the idea of what society had said success was meant to be, which was the money, the cars, the status, the "look at me, I've made it." And so I was putting myself through the wringer, and I look back on photos from 2021 ...I'm like, "Dude, you look 20 years older than what you do now."

That really resonates with what I've seen in my work. I'd like to get your take on two types of clients I work with on the construction side: I've got clients that are in their mid thirties and these guys are really hard on themselves. They're like, "I should have this all figured out by now. I should be able to provide everything for my wife." A couple of them are holding off getting married because they're saying, "I'm not ready because my business isn't doing well enough." And there's just so much pressure. And then I've got another group of clients that are guys in their fifties, and they don't quite see each others' point of view. So the guys in their 50s say, "Oh, those guys in their 30s they just want to have it all without having to do the work, pay the dues," Right ...because they're only in their 30s. They can't possibly understand sacrifice yet. And the guys in their 30s are like, "Yeah, but you waste your whole life and deprive your kids of you. You deprive your wife of you, deprive yourself of a life." And there's just that so much conflict between, and I'm really curious, what do you think? Cause you seem to have a little bit of both.

I went through a huge transformation around that ...on how I thought, "Oh my god, like I'm like 37 or 36 I don't have these multi million dollar businesses, I'm not driving this car." I'm like I'm a failure, basically. "I'm not successful. I'm not providing, like, why does my wife actually love me? Why does she want to be with me?" All this stuff started gurgling up inside of me. And it was about my value as a man. And it was about being a provider because there was income coming in but I felt like I wasn't doing

What about your family history? You mentioned to me before that your dad was in construction. What were his views about men's roles and what did he model when you were a kid?

So my dad, my dad was not really a talker. But, I got to witness a lot around hard work, doing the things for the family that the family needs, like sacrifice because he ran his own bricklaying business, so he was a builder. He was up at five o'clock, home at seven PM, like that real I guess blue collar but also running his own business type mentality. And so I learned a lot from watching him. And so some of those imprints as well had also been on me. And, maybe social media had an impact on how I thought as well, because if you look on social media, there's a lot of specific coaches or people or educators ...they're putting men in a box of, "Your only value is a provider." And so when I made the decision to move away from that, it was a huge reflective period of where all that stuff gurgled up about my social conditioning. And what I had to overcome was that I was worthy of my partner's love. I was worthy of receiving things. I was worthy of experiencing life beyond the idea of success. And the idea of success also meant that I had to be a provider to get that thing. And, I realized I was actually blocking the love from my kids and I was blocking the love from Sarah. And I was also not experiencing life in regards to everything else that's available to me other than just business and work, because of this idea of who I had to be as a provider. And it didn't matter how much money I made. It didn't matter what we accumulated. It didn't matter. I was just ever there. And so there was this like perpetual feeling of unhappiness that then I had to work through. I think there's a ...a social psychological construct that most men have to work through. I think men are consistently running into it, but I think it ...you eventually realize, and whether that's through an experience of mine, or whether it's at 50 years old, or whatever, "Oh my god there's, ...this isn't actually true." And so then it becomes rather than you being dragged through life by that thing, you get to make a decision on whether that's who you want to be. And I think that's the difference. It's, do you want to be seen as the provider and is that your decision? Or are you unconsciously being driven by that in some way that you're not even aware of, that's causing you destruction within your own life, in your psychology? ...Causing you not to make these decisions like you mentioned before, "I don't want to get married because I'm not at this level of success." Hold on a minute! Like how much of your life or how much of the experience of life are you limiting just because you haven't got the seven figure business? It's insane! And look, I thought all these things about myself.

And how would you say your thinking on this has changed? And what's your advice for listeners out there who are having a similar experience? Because this is exactly what we mean when we talk about authenticity.

Today I would say I have an intrinsic drive and I have a vision for what I want for my family, but I'm not here looking on the outside thinking that I need to be a specific way in order to be a man, and to be a provider, and to be a lover. I see it now as a journey. And so my journey is about learning rather than having to be this one thing. It's like, "What's your vision of success?" Not what society says, not what you've watched on social media, not what the big entrepreneurs are saying that you should be doing and who you need to be, and all that sort of stuff, and then getting caught up ...with their voices in your head, and so, their voices have silenced your own inner voice.

Yes!

So the real question is, What's your version? What does that sound like to you?" And once you start to listen to that voice, you're quieting down the outside voices. And when you can connect into that and then listen to what that version of success is for you, and then you start to build a life based on who you truly are as an individual, not what everyone else says that's when you have choice. And that's when you can actually start to make decisions to build the thing that you love, rather than to build the thing that everybody else says is success.

So, for you personally, how did you know when your own voice started to come through? What was revelatory to you?

The key thing for me that was really the breakthrough was realizing that there was my own voice. And it was a feeling inside of me that felt uncomfortable, but felt right. I guess the way I would explain it personally was like a, "Fuck yeah, I know this is right, but I also intrinsically feel this is going to be really uncomfortable. But I still want to do it. It's still the thing for me." But, to get to that point, I had to listen to what the whispers were, so not listening to the head voice, so like the fears and the infatuations, "Oh, this would be great. This looks exciting. Oh, what happens if this goes wrong?" All those voices rather than, what was my heart saying? And I feel like your heart directs you and it whispers to you louder and louder the more you listen to it it's, "This is a fuck yes, but I know it's going to be uncomfortable." It's a balanced feeling. I just had to go inward and block out all the noise and just listen to what I wanted, and then what was true for me.

As you said earlier, you kind of get swept along on your path, but it doesn't really feel right inside, but it's such a hard decision to let go and choose a different path. Some of my clients have faced these huge decisions. They come into a business in a middle management role and the business has say $5 million, and now they've been with it for years and it's grown to $50 million. And they have an opportunity to buy out the business, and they have to make a decision whether it makes sense to buy that business, which is expensive and high stakes, when maybe they could buy a more affordable business with less overhead and put just as much money in their pocket without all the stress. So there's this pride of, "shall I own this business that I worked so hard to help grow? Should I have my turn at the helm then?" I've been doing this business now for 18 years and I love that every day I get to talk to a client and we have those kinds of strategic thinking conversations.

that's really inspiring.

Why thank you! It's amazing getting to talk to a mindset expert like you about these concepts, because it's such a big part of it, especially when it comes to relationships. You know, I got into relationship coaching because a lot of times my clients were so consumed by the demands of the business that they were getting into serious problems at home, especially with the resentments building up and feeling burdened with that provider role. They would get into a very closed mindset. And, sometimes the clients didn't want to bring their wives into a conversation about how to handle both the business and the relationship, because they weren't open to hearing certain things. And I get it. You want to really know what you want and you want to feel comfortable that you can express yourself in a way that isn't going to create a lot of misunderstanding and then cause an unnecessary blow up. So, I've worked on─ mindset shifts and behavioral shifts that ease people into different ways of thinking. So for instance, we talk about this provider protector role, and I'm promoting a mindset shift from the provider role to an investor role. So, you're not a provider for your family and for everything. You're an investor in ...your business, your family, your ...your enterprise, your life. And just that one shift in mindset can be so freeing because if you're an investor, you are not going to be the whole business. You're not grinding yourself into the ground trying to do this. And with the protector role, a lot of times it's the same thing is that we talked about vulnerability, right? And, what ends up happening when there's no bears and no vikings to protect everybody from ...what ends up happening is we tend to protect our families from our own fears and our own vulnerabilities, and not sharing, and closing ourselves off. That protector instinct gets mischanneled.

Yeah, I love that. I love what you said about the channeling, the protector role into our own fears and insecurities from our kids and our partners as well. But, I think a really cool evolution, which I realized when I had this experience around losing the house was that my, that the protector role, because if you look at the world we live in now, the main threat really is those things that you spoke about. Your fears, your insecurity, your shadow. The ultimate version of the protector role is to make sure that you're ...this is what I'd come to realise, was that making sure that my shadow isn't the thing that attacks my family. So my insecurities, my fears, the things that have happened in my past ...protecting them from that so they can have their own experiences, but also so that I don't become the threat. Yeah. Because the reality is that's when you semi become the threat, is when you're trying to protect everyone from the things that aren't truly a threat.

Yes. And then we're making up enemies so we can prove our worth. And if necessary, we'll actually become the bear. Sorry, I think I cut you off.

No, I was just going to say, I think the work that you're doing ...I'm not sure what it's like in America, but I know statistically here in Australia, like ...high suicide rates, really mentally and emotionally challenging, you're putting in a lot of work for minimal return, a lot of sacrifice in that. Then the relationship part of their life, obviously faces challenges. And all that sort of stuff.

Yes, we have similar issues with suicide drug use and of course, divorce. And I think as coaches, we provide a lifeline that helps folks avoid going down that road. Because I know that many men won't seek out traditional therapy, because it really isn't well suited to them. So as coaches, we offer an alternative method that's more familiar to them. And that's why having you in the show has been so valuable, both from your perspective as a guy who owns a business and as an expert who can help.

For me, it's about impact. The way I look at it we're helping people elevate their life, whether that's through business, ...there's healing through business coaching, there's healing through relationship coaching, healing through mindset coaching. That's it and so I get it now.

You know, I don't want to, but I think we should probably start to wind this up. But I want to say it's been such a fantastically fun and enlightening conversation, and you've set a really high bar for future guests. I know there's a lot more we could talk about and I'd love to have you come back on again sometime soon. Also, if you're there listening and you truly resonate with Justin and you think you might like to talk with him some more, I've included all of his contact information in the show notes.

I was just happy to come on to have, yeah, happy to come on and have a conversation. Yeah no, this was fun. And I also feel like I have a lot to give in this space. Just ...we could have gone down a thousand different tracks.

This was so great. It was a great interview, and thank you so much for all your time and your great ideas.

Thank you for having me on. Perfect.

I'll look forward to doing it again soon. Alright. I hope today's episode added value to your life. If you'd like more support, brainstorming or ideas, here's three ways to get that: You can join our private and free Passionate Partners Insider Community on Facebook for exclusive content and resources. Or you can check out our website and social channels to get the scoop on all of our programs, workshops, and coaching. And three, if you'd like to explore your specific situation, book, a free Relationship Reset call with me. Whether it's a minor tune-up or a major overhaul, we'll make a plan to get you back on track. You can head over to relationshipresetcall.com to set that up. The Show Notes lists out everything you need to find me, including all the links to everything I've mentioned and my personal email, I'll be here whenever you're ready. And here are a few things you could do to support the show: If you haven't already please follow and subscribe. That is a win for both of us. Then, if you could leave a review that will help our community grow. And, if you know someone who is struggling in their own relationship, please share the show with them. It could be life-changing for them. Thanks for spreading the word. This is Ellen, and that's what I've got for you today. Until next time remember: What I want most in the world is for you to Make More Love... in Your Life and with Your Wife.