Scaling Success, w/ Business Coach Cayla Horey: Ep63

In this No Limits Leadership Podcast episode, host Sean Patton interviews life and leadership coach Cayla Horey. They discuss Cayla's journey into leadership coaching, the challenges small business owners face, the importance of delegation, and the role of self-leadership in achieving success. Cayla emphasizes the need for awareness and mindset shifts to improve leadership effectiveness and shares practical strategies for effective delegation and utilizing contractors. The conversation highlights the transformative power of coaching and the impact of self-leadership on personal and professional growth.

Cayla Horey's links:
https://caylahorey.com/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cayla-horey-a4ab661b1/

Takeaways

• Cayla has a long history in leadership and coaching.
• Many entrepreneurs struggle with the transition from solopreneur to CEO.
• Delegation is a critical skill for business growth.
• Effective delegation involves empowering others, not just offloading tasks.
• Self-leadership is essential for personal and business success.
• Mindset and awareness are key to overcoming limiting beliefs.
• Coaching provides valuable perspective and accountability.
• Shifting thoughts can lead to better outcomes in leadership.
• Building trust with your team is crucial for effective delegation.
• Investing in coaching can accelerate personal and professional growth.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Leadership Coaching

02:57 Cayla's Journey into Leadership Coaching

05:27 Challenges Faced by Entrepreneurs

08:36 The Importance of Delegation

11:17 Tactical Steps for Effective Delegation

15:19 Utilizing Fractional Leadership

19:28 The Role of Self-Leadership

21:41 The Importance of Self-Leadership

25:22 Mindset and Thought Patterns

26:56 The Role of Coaching in Self-Improvement

33:32 Challenging Limiting Beliefs

41:12 The Ripple Effect of Leadership on Life

Transcript

Sean Patton (00:15)
Welcome to the No Limits Leadership Podcast. I am your host, Sean Patton, and I am so excited today to be joined by Cayla Horey who is a life and leadership coach with over 20 years of experience. And we met weeks ago, hit it off immediately, had multiple calls, and you know, I just had to have you on. So I'm so excited you're on today to talk shop and talk leadership and get your perspective.

Cayla (00:38)
Totally, well thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited to be here and excited to chat.

Sean Patton (00:42)
I'm newer to this coaching thing, I had a background in military. I, had entrepreneurial experience for years. What was it like to get into leadership coaching for you?

Cayla (00:51)
well, I honestly have been in leadership my whole life, all the way back to school and being an ASB and being in college and being an RA. Like I just have always sought out ways to lead, to serve my communities that I'm in, to work with my peers, to work with others around me. And so when I graduated from college,

I joined staff with a nonprofit organization that works with college students, with leaders on college campuses. And that was my career straight out of college. And I spent three years working with student leaders at UCLA. And then after that, I transitioned to our regional leadership team for this nonprofit organization. And on that regional leadership team.

one of my roles was to develop and run a program for coaching and care for our leaders and their teams. And I ran that program for 12 years. And so, that's a lot of my background of where I got into coaching, how I got into coaching. Being, again, in leadership has just kind of been something that's just always been a part of me and always a part of my heart and how I think and who I wanted to be.

And then as I've had those different experiences, I've grown a lot as a leader. I've experienced a lot of leaders, right? I've sat under many different leaders and I've just learned a lot and had the opportunity to coach and work with many leaders of many different personality types, different ethnicities, different countries, know, all kinds of different experiences that kind of roll up into that past.

So yeah, I've had a heart for leadership and a history with leadership development, leadership coaching for a very long time. And then when my kids were a little bit older and I felt like I was ready to start my own business and run my own practice, I took that whole history of leadership development, leadership coaching and brought it to the entrepreneur, the small business owner, because it was my heart and because I had seen.

the significant progress of the leaders that I'd worked with previously and I wanted to bring those results to the entrepreneur, to the small business owner. Many of the clients that I work with haven't had a lot of history of leadership development. And so getting to take that history that I've had and bring it to those people to help them achieve their highest success, to help them get out of their own way and really achieve what they're called to, it just creates impact, which is something that I'm passionate about.

So it's been really cool to kind of see that evolution.

Sean Patton (03:29)
And you also, homeschool your kids, your work, your entrepreneur coach and, take care of your kids at home. That's awesome. That's, I, we were just talking schedules before we even turned on the record button and I don't know if I can keep up with that. It sounds like a lot, but you're doing awesome with it.

Cayla (03:44)
Yeah,

one of the things that I love about being an entrepreneur is we can design our schedule. We can design our hours, right? We're able to do it all. But I'm personally very passionate that the way that we're able to do all the things that matter to us is by figuring out a system for truly flourishing as we lead. Right. I always say we have to flourish as we lead in order to be able to flourish as a mom, flourish as a business owner, flourish as a dance mom.

homeschool mom, like the different hats that I wear, that really flourishing and being a healthy human and a healthy leader is key to being able to navigate those different roles.

Sean Patton (04:24)
Yeah, because I see that too, especially, you as you work with lot of entrepreneurs and small business owners and scaling business owners, there's just so many new responsibilities and new challenges that come with, you know, scaling a company along with all the other roles in life. And, you know, so what is unique in terms of the challenges that you see with these small business owners, these fast growing entrepreneurs, as they start to scale their companies,

What changes in terms of their life to be able to flourish with new challenges? What is that transition? What are their challenges that you see that they have to address that they struggle with?

Cayla (05:00)
I think so many entrepreneurs and small business owners, the people that I interact with, they are deeply passionate. They're hard workers. They're visionaries. They're gifted, smart people who are really good at their product or their service. Many of them get to a stage where they want to be their own boss. They don't want to listen to someone else, you know, and they want to create and they want to step into that vision.

and take their talent and take the things that they excel at and create business with them. So they step into business ownership. Many of them have quick success and are able to, again, take their talent, take their intelligence and really build something amazing quickly. And then they quickly realize they wanted out of the nine to five grind. They didn't want to work for someone else. Well, now they work 24 seven, 365. They can't turn their phone off. They can't turn their email off.

And there are so many different skills required in business ownership and leading other humans than just being in charge of the fulfillment. Right? So just being good, being even like very skilled and gifted at your product or your service does not necessarily make you a great business owner. And so I think when people step into that role now of owning and running a business, many of them again,

find some fast success, their revenue grows, they quickly realize they need help, they need a team. So they hire three or four or five people, they have a little team now. This is a whole other conversation, but in many cases, it's their friends and family that they've hired, which again, whole other conversation. But now, right, they're still trying to deliver the product or the service.

And also they're having to navigate all of the different roles of being a CEO and leading others. And so now they're navigating challenges that come up between people. They're navigating, do I do when two of my staff aren't getting along? Or what do I do when someone who's on my team has a different vision than I do as the leader? Like trying to navigate some of those people problems that come up that really impact.

really impact what we're able to create in business and even relationship with self. Our own limiting beliefs get tapped into on a whole other level, right? As our business grows and our team grows and now we're navigating all of these different challenges, we may feel really good at our product or our service because we've done it for someone else for a long time. But as we step into ownership to the CEO role,

There's just so much more to navigate and we have to grow in those skills. We have to really develop those pieces of us so that we can have the success so that we can create the results that we desire. I often say that our businesses will never grow beyond our capacity to lead them. And I think that's very true. Now, once in a while we can kind of muscle our way to some some growth, but but it's not sustainable. Right. Or we muscle our way to some growth, but then

We're dead and drying out and feeling exhausted and overwhelmed and having some of those emotions that lack flourishing, right? That hold us back from true flourishing. And so that's why I think it's so important that as we grow business and as we lead others, that we increase our skill sets to be able to lead well so that we can be healthy humans going to the next level, ready to be the leader.

that we need to be to take our business to the next level.

Sean Patton (08:39)
So if I'm a young business leader and or a business owner, an entrepreneur, and I'm starting to build that small team and now I've got, I went from me and my brother to now we've got eight, 10, 12 people. What are those first challenges that you see them encounter? Like what are the first roadblocks and obstacles that you see them run into?

Cayla (08:59)
I think trusting delegation, trusting others to do the things that they feel the best at, right? When we are a solopreneur, we have our systems, we have our methods, we think the way we think, we think our way is the right way. And so I think one of the first challenges is really figuring out how do I delegate well and not just delegate to get things off my plate, but really empower and build leaders underneath me, which I think is a really important part of

I joke with my clients often about like, how do we get your business to a place that you can be on the beach with the beverage and person of your choice, knowing that your business is okay and that it's going to continue to thrive while you're gone, right? And such an important part of that is being able to develop leaders underneath you. And so I think that's one of the first challenges is how do I really delegate well? As the CEO, I have to be freed up to think

on the business, not just in the business, which means I need people in the business running the fulfillment, running the day to day. And the only way that's going to happen is if I know how to effectively delegate, train, speak belief into them and build them up so that I don't have to do that part. And I'm freed up to put my CEO hat on and to think and to

have vision and to dream and to evaluate and ask what's working and what's not working, right? There's that whole CEO role we have to be freed up for, but the only way we can do that is if we're entrusting leadership to those around us and training them well, communicating really well with them. It's all those skills that go around delegation, communication, training, developing others, helping others to develop into leaders, speaking belief into them.

And then ultimately that frees us up to wear that CEO hat. And I just think that's hard. I think that's a hard transition, especially if you're not experienced in it, you're running a business for the first time. Again, you've found some success, your numbers are coming in. I have heard several entrepreneurs that say like, my business is going well, but I feel like I can't keep up with it because I don't have those skills yet. And so developing those I think are critical.

Sean Patton (11:17)
Yeah. I love the fact you identified delegation. Cause I think then that flows to everything else you're talking about, right? Like training, developing leader, eventually, you know, have training them to be leaders of other people, It just keeps, it keeps cascading. But you know, if we want to get really tactical with, with leaders that maybe are struggling with delegating what to delegate and how to, what do you, what would you tell them?

Cayla (11:38)
Yeah, what I tell my clients is I tell them to get a piece of paper and a pen and to make a list of every single thing they do. Just list them out. Write it on paper. I'm a pen and paper, pen and paper gal. I love being able to see a list. So I tell you, yep, a hundred percent. So I tell them, make a list, get a pen and paper and make a list of every single thing you do. The next thing that I want them to do is I want them to identify what are the things that they have to keep.

What are the things that are their wheelhouse? What are the things that only they know how to do? Identify those. And we might still be able to train somebody else to do those at some point. But at the beginning, if we're working on the first steps of delegation, I want them to keep the things that they feel really good at or that they feel like nobody else knows how to do this the way I do. Great. Keep that. But identify every other thing that someone else could take. OK. The other thing that I encourage them to do is to identify

the things that give them life, the things that they really enjoy. Because even if someone else can do it, but it's something that's really life-giving to them, they may want to hang on to it for a little bit, right? It's like there's some decisions to make in there, which decision-making is a whole other piece of this that I think is as we grow in our skills of decision-making, it impacts all of this, right? But I think, so I would say make a list of every single thing you do.

On that list, identify what are the things that you have to keep that there isn't someone else that knows how to do them. Also identify the things that are super life giving for you, your favorite things that you don't want to delegate, that you want to keep. Okay. And then start with that and then look at the rest of the list. Look, separate it out. What's everything else that you do, that you carry in your business that you don't have to be the one to do it. You don't have to be the one to post on social. You don't have to be the one to take out the trash.

You don't have to be the one right to do these different things. Once we can identify what those are, then we can look at who do we have on our team that could take these things over or do we need to hire someone to step in and take these rules? Right. So again, every every business is going to be different depending on the industry, depending on the leader, what the lists are. But that's really what I have them do first is to make a list, to separate it out.

And then the next thing that I have them do, which I think can be really valuable for your listeners also, is when they identify the list of, these are the things that I don't have to do. These are the things that ultimately I want to offload out of my to-do list, is I have them take that list and I have them use crayons or pens or whatever and identify it like green, yellow and red. Green is I can easily offload this to somebody quickly and then identify who it's going to.

Yellow is, I can offload this, but it's going to take a little bit of training or a little bit of tweaking or, you know, there's a couple of steps that need to happen or some communication, or I need to write out the process, then someone can take it. Like if there's a little bit of work that needs to be done, identify it as yellow. And then if it's something on the list that feels like, you know, the stuff that I have to keep or that this person, I don't have anybody that can take this over right now, or I would need to hire for that role or whatever, make it red.

And then what I tell them to do is take the greens and get rid of them right away. It's the fastest way to make progress is to get rid of the greens. Sometimes what we do is we try to figure out how to make the reds become yellow, but it slows us down from getting things off our plate, right? So when we can take the greens and delegate them, and then we can look at the yellows and figure out which yellows can I make green? How quick can I make them green, you know? And we get some of the yellows to be green and we get those off our plate.

Then we're freed up to think through the reds and some of the yellows and to think through what steps do we need to take? Again, do we need to write out a process? Do we need to do training? Do I need to hire someone new? And then we can fill in the gaps to figure out how to solve for some of those reds. But we're more freed up to do that because the greens and half the yellows are gone.

Sean Patton (15:41)
Yeah, creating immediate capacity. I love the idea of momentum. I love the idea of creating those early, you know, easy wins to get confidence and time and space to do other, you know, deeper things. I think that's really important. What,

Cayla (15:48)
Yes.

I think it's a way to build trust too with yourself as the leader that you can trust yourself to delegate and to build trust with your people that when you give them something to do that they can do it too. as you get those quick wins and that helps to build trust, which helps you and helps them.

Sean Patton (16:14)
What role do you see being played, you know, especially now with more and more people are, you know, specialists and other small boutique entrepreneurs are setting up shop as, fractional leaders it's not just.

social media marketing agency work now there's fractional COOs, right? They can come in and set up ops. I know every situation is different, but like, where do you see some of that subcontracted vendor work come in to scaling a company versus bringing someone in that you want to develop for a longer term hire?

Cayla (16:47)
well, I think it's a brilliant way to grow because oftentimes when you bring someone on like that, you're able to get them with a lower investment than bringing on a full-time employee, You bring on a full-time employee, you've got to figure out how to fill all their hours, and then you're looking at the realities of benefits and, know, it just becomes more complicated. When you bring on a contractor who does 20 hours for you,

but then they're doing 20 hours for someone else or 10 hours for you and they're split serving a bunch of people. A lot of times that's a great way to get somebody who's highly skilled to take a portion of the business without it meaning, you know, a huge investment for you. Now, the catch with that is I think it requires you to communicate really well. It requires you to train really well and it requires you to track really well as the leader.

And so we have to figure out, we can't just hire someone to come in and do something for us and think they're gonna know how to do it. I see this with my clients a lot with lead generation. I have clients who tell me, like, found somebody who will do my lead generation for me. Should I hire them to do my lead generation? Well, first of all, again, every business is different, every leader is different. The stage of the business, that's not just a yes or no answer. But with something like that, just that...

that example popped up for me, because it's something that I talk with my clients about a lot, is you can't just hire someone for lead generation and think that you're just going to start getting leads, you know, 20 leads a month. It's one thing for someone to say, I'll do your lead generation, I'll get you 20 leads a month. And it's another thing for the leader to know how to communicate with that person, how to set up their messaging.

who their audience is, right? There are so many factors that go into the success of that. It's totally possible, it's totally doable, but you have to be able to lead well through that, especially if you have a fractional CFO, if you have someone doing your lead generation, you have someone else writing your social media, you have a web designer doing your website. Like when you get into having all these different contractors doing contract work, it's just really important for you to communicate well.

you to have clear expectations, clear communication, really good training, and then be able to track to see your ROI. When we invest in these different roles for our business, we want to be able to see the ROI and know that it's a wise business decision, that we're getting out of it what we want to be getting out of it. And all of that is true too with hiring an employee. We hire an employee, we need to be able to communicate well, we need to be able to train them, we want to be able to track.

with them, how it's going, and we want to be getting ROI from the employees that we hire. So those things are true either way. I think when we're bringing on fractional experts, it's easier to kind of slip into a mentality that they've got this part and they're going to figure it out. And that's where I see it becoming a challenge for entrepreneurs and business owners. doesn't change. It lowers our investment, right? We don't have to hire someone full time.

but it doesn't change our need to lead well for the sake of the company.

Sean Patton (20:00)
Yeah, that's so true. it's like, it's also, think a great test and opportunity to sort of, to practice those leadership skills, right? To practice your communication or practice your delegation, to test your processes, with, someone who, you know, maybe has a, maybe has a little more background than an initial hire in, the role. and you're not risking as much money, and you can.

let them go a lot easier if you need to move on or transition. But to your point, you still have to put that time, energy and effort to develop them. you just mentioned all of those, you just mentioned someone, and this is something I can relate to in my coaching business, not in my other business, like where I'm basically a solopreneur as a coach and a podcast host and a speaker and all that stuff. And I had a small staff.

I struggled to fill their time with things as I did the work. And so I scaled down and now have to your point, Like these contractors and other people that work. you know, as you, as you do that, even though you maybe don't, maybe you are a solopreneur in terms of, you don't have any W two employees, but this, I think that's a great opportunity in terms of. You still have to learn and to lead yourself to manage your time.

You're still managing multiple tasks and multiple people. and that takes a level of self leadership. That's a lot different than if you were just a great, you know, sales person, a great marketing person or a great, whatever you were at your last business before you started your own. So that really brings me to that intentional self leadership, that people need to do. So what does that look like for you when you work with clients, not just those, talked about great technical skills with the company, but like, what is self leadership?

look like for you and when you talk to clients about that topic.

Cayla (21:45)
Totally. Yeah, it's such a good question. You know, as a leadership coach, I often have people ask me, does the work that you do, would it benefit me? Because I don't have a team, you know, my business is at XYZ point that it's at, and it's just me, I'm a solopreneur. But some of my clients are solopreneurs and we've made incredible progress because as a business owner, it starts with self leadership.

It starts with the way we think and the actions that we take and the ways that we get in our own way and hold ourselves back, And it's critical for us to get to where we wanna go to become really skilled in that self leadership piece. And I think so much of that comes down to, again, the way we think and the way that our thoughts impact our actions.

And as we increase awareness around that, it's so easy for us to default to just believing our own thoughts and thinking it's just the way of the universe. And as we increase our awareness to what's happening with our thoughts and what our thoughts are creating for us, I think we get our power back, right? We get to figure out like, and decide intentionally, what do I want to think and how can I create?

literally starting with my thinking, how can I create the actions that are gonna get me to the results that I want? And that's all critical self leadership that helps us take our business where we wanna go. And as we get good at that, we're better at communicating with our contractors, communicating with our VAs, right? Doing the work that we need to do to help our team be successful always comes back to...

self leadership and how we do with that piece of it. And I think that's easy for people to skip over for new entrepreneurs, business owners, when again, they think, I don't have a team yet. So I don't have to worry about leadership stuff. I think it's critical. And then things like decision making, intentional culture creation. We are creating a culture with our businesses, even if we're the only staff, right? What does it look like to create intentional culture?

What does it look like to be highly skilled in decision-making, in goal-setting and result-creating? All of those things are a part of what I would consider leadership frameworks. You don't have to have 10 people on your team to figure that out. And the better we are at self-leadership, the better we're going to be at leading a team. When we can really navigate well...

decision-making and conflict resolution and having difficult conversations, right? Some of my clients are solopreneurs, but they all work with clients and customers. And sometimes the client or the customer doesn't like the results of the product or the service. So how do we navigate those conversations? And honestly, it's a lot easier to learn those skills when you don't have a team of 10 that you're also trying to lead and guide and train. And so the more we can work on those self leadership pieces early,

before we have a big team, the easier it's gonna be for us to lead the team, but also to continue to lead ourselves while we have a team. Because again, I deeply believe our businesses will never grow beyond our capacity to lead them. We have to self lead always. We have to self lead well in order to lead a team well. And it starts early. It starts with, you know, the...

being a solopreneur and being alone or having a very small team, figuring out, navigating those aspects of leadership deeply impact the results we create through our businesses.

Sean Patton (25:22)
couldn't agree more. And, you know, it's my current keynote talk that I'm giving right now is literally called lead yourself first unlocking the greatness within. it's, and so I'm a firm believer, it sounds like just like you are that the path to becoming a leader that you're capable of is the path to becoming the greatest version of yourself, regardless of position and guard, because, you know, even if

Cayla (25:42)
100%.

Sean Patton (25:47)
Maybe you're like, I'm going to be a solopreneur forever, but your point, you're leading your clients. How do you lead yourself? How do you grow in capacity? Because I'm sure you do. know people that make seven figures as a solopreneur and all they have is contractors and staff, but that person requires a lot, has developed a lot of self leadership skills that allows them to be a seven figure earner.

with, without a staff, like you're not doing that if you don't know how to do all the things you mentioned. And one of those, think is really powerful is that mindset and thinking piece. So I kind of wanted to come back to that a bit because I do think that's one of those things mindset, especially that I 100 % pull, you know, is. It's sort of the limiting variable, right? Your thoughts and your mindset is living variable for your own, for your own development and own, you know, own outcomes, but the how of it, right? It's one thing it's like easy to say.

hard to do. So, you know, when you talk to people and you're starting off with that, you know, the, do we, how do we start to be in control and be more intentional with our thoughts? you know, where do you, where do you start with that? What sort of your, your approach to, mastering our own thought patterns and mindset.

Cayla (26:56)
well, this is where I do a shameless plug for working with coaches because I just, right? I just really, the bottom line is where we start is increasing awareness. That's the answer, right? We have to increase our awareness to what we're thinking and what our thoughts are creating for us. And the easiest way, the fastest way, the least expensive way.

Sean Patton (27:00)
Amen. I'll second that motion.

Cayla (27:24)
to identify and understand increasing our awareness is to have someone else with a mirror, a metaphorical mirror, helping us see what our brain is doing for us, right? I often compare coaching to a movie set. Think of a movie set, think of your favorite, the best actor, actress that you know, whoever your most skilled person is. When they're on scene,

They're the superstar, right? When they're on scene, they can only see what they can see from where they're standing. They can't see the facial expression of the person behind them. They can't see what's happening over on the other side of the set. So even though they are the superstar, they are as good as it gets, in order to create the best movie, you have to have them in their spot, but you also have to have the role of a director because a director sits off scene, Off camera, they see a different vantage point. They see from a different angle.

So, and the same thing is true with think about professional sports and coaches, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, I mean, the best of the best all works with coaches because the coach has a different viewpoint. They can see things that even the most highly skilled musicians, business people, athletes in any category, know, our perspective is limited when we're in our own story.

And so I think there is so much value to allowing someone else to speak into. This is why I will work with coaches every day for the rest of my life, because they're able to see things that I can't see, right? They're able to call me out when my thoughts are what is holding me back. And I could give you story after story after story of where, as I've worked with clients, I mean, I could give you a story after story of my own life as well, where shifting our thinking.

increasing our awareness to understand what's going on with our thinking and how it's holding us back, how it's keeping us stuck, where we believe our own story and just the value of when someone else can reflect that back to us and we can see, gosh, that story really isn't serving me. It's what is keeping me stuck. We're able to then take action to move forward. And that is the work. I've had people ask me for years, how do you get good at this? How do you get good at this?

My answer is, how do you get good at anything? How do you get good at playing the piano? How do you get good at lifting weights? How do you get good at playing a sport? You have to practice. You just have to do it. You have to do it. You have to practice. It's putting in the reps. It's putting in the reps of really increasing that awareness, understanding what's happening in our brains. I think, again, we can try to do it on our own, just like if I wanted to...

have biceps that cut through my shirt, I could go to the gym and I could lift some weights and I could try to do it on my own. And if I stay really committed and I follow the right meal plan and I do all the things, I'll see some progress. But if I go hire a personal trainer who has the expertise, who has the understanding of how to isolate those muscles and what weights to use and what combination of machines versus cardio, et cetera, right? If they tell me based on their expertise, here's your plan.

this is the plan that you wanna follow. I'm just gonna get those results faster. And that's why I say having that outside set of eyes and ears and that expertise gets us faster, better, cheaper results than trying to fumble through it and figure it out on our own.

Sean Patton (30:49)
I'm always amazed when I talk with, anyone who's trying to be a high performer in anything, but, especially in business, because, know, it's interesting. You don't see it other places, right? Like I don't see, someone who's, I don't know, trying to, you know, make an Olympic team be like, I don't need a coach. Like you would be like, what? Like that's not a thing, you know? or, or, or a singer or anyone else, right? Like that you're going to hire to get there faster and better. And it's like,

I told him, well, Tom, I have four coaches in my life that I work with for different areas of my life. And to your point, I always will. And I would much rather pay them to save the time, energy, and effort rather than to just learn the hard way. My personal story is I did that. I started a company with no business experience straight out of the military and just thought I could just work harder because in the military, that's one of the things that you get rewarded for.

Cayla (31:22)
same goal.

Sean Patton (31:43)
and it always sort of does work out if you just don't quit, eventually. Right. The mission ends, you redeploy, you come home. And what I didn't have an appreciation for was that while I was doing that, what allowed me to do that was I had the, I had the senior commander, right? had someone else say, look, you've been, you've been gone for six months. Like take 30 days. I don't want to see you, you know, go to a beach somewhere and rest and take care of yourself. And here's counselors to talk to about your experiences. And here's all these other support systems in place that.

You know, even if you're out there, you know, you're the, you're the hardest MF on the planet and you're pushing. But then when you, you get, when I got into the civilian world and I started my company, like there was no, governor on my engine, right? There's no limiter. There's no one looking out for me, saying, you know, checking that. And so it was like, you know, of, of, Formula One race car without a, without a pit crew to tell them to come back in.

And I just ran to the ground. had to learn it the hard way. My God, you $500,000 later and a bankruptcy and everything else, I had to learn that way. And, know, if I would have hired a coach for a few grand a month, was saved so much, right? Like I had to learn it the hard way. And that's why I'm passionate about, other people, you know, learning it. And I do think that your point about perspective, I love your analogy of the movie set, because again, even in my own business, right, sometimes I'm trying to work on a new speech.

And I'm getting it and I write in it and I'm just like, God, it's not making sense. And then you have someone else listen to it and they're like, well, yeah, the problem is there. You're like, my God, you learn, you listen to it once. I've working this thing for five days, right? It's just that outside perspective is, is, so powerful. and it does just come down to, you know, that outside perspective and you know, someone who knows what they're looking for. But if you're too close to it, right, you're too close to it sometimes.

Cayla (33:19)
Totally.

Sean Patton (33:32)
and to see the bigger picture in all areas of life.

Cayla (33:36)
Yeah, yeah. Can I share a quick story? Example, so I have a client who is a naturopathic doctor. She's absolutely incredible. We've been working together for about a year and a half now. And this is probably, I don't know, six months ago or so. She came to session one day and she told me that there was an employee on her team who she knew it was time to let this person go. And she said, I know it's time to let this person go, but it was complicated. There were some...

Sean Patton (33:40)
Please.

Cayla (34:06)
She was concerned that person was friends with so-and-so and she was concerned about there being some fallout in her business. So we spend the session talking through a plan of what are the I's that you need to dot and what are the T's that you need to cross? What are the steps that you need to take to be intentional to do this well? So we came up with a plan. She went back. She did the plan. She came to session the next week and I could tell that she was visibly kind of stressed and anxious. Okay.

So she comes on our call, so this is the next week, she comes on our call and she says, you know, I did all the things we talked about, I gotta get this done, I gotta do this, I'm gonna meet with her on Thursday and it's time to let her go because these were the exact words she used, she said, I'm hemorrhaging $900 paying this girl this week when I know it's time to let her go. So I gotta get it done. Now, there's no surprise that she was thinking that.

Right? And probably all of her friends would have been like, yeah, you're hemorrhaging $900, get it done, go get that girl out of there. Right? But as a coach, I hear that and I can literally see with my eyes over zoom, I can see how that's impacting her. So I stopped her and I said, hold on a second. Let's just slow down a minute. I said, when you think I'm hemorrhaging $900, how does that feel?

She said, well, feel cheated. That was one of the words she used. I feel cheated. I feel anxious. I feel stressed. Like I gotta get this done. And I said, if you go into that meeting on Thursday, feeling cheated and stressed and anxious, how do think that meeting is gonna go? And I asked her, I said, what else is true? Like, let's challenge that thought. Let's challenge that I'm hemorrhaging $900. It's such a dramatic thought.

Now, when it's your own story, like you just said, when you're in it, feels so real. It feels so true. Right. Of course, our brain tells us that. But when I asked her, I slowed her down and I said, hold on, what else is true? And we ended up identifying the thought I am a leader who's willing to slow down, who's willing to invest nine hundred dollars in my business to do this well and do this right. Like, then what happens? Right. Well, I literally saw

her body calm. And it's like, what's actually true, because she came to me last week, she could have gone and done it right then. But what's actually true is she had come to session, she told me, I know that this is gonna be tricky, I wanna do it well, we made a plan, she followed the plan. So what's actually true is she is a leader who's willing to slow down and do it well and do it right, right? And this is a leader who's at...

beyond seven figures. $900 is not a big deal. This is not gonna keep her from being able to feed her children, right? Well, when we tell ourselves, I'm hemorrhaging $900, we move into feeling anxious, feeling cheated. And when we're there emotionally and we're in those thoughts, we take a specific action, right? She would have created, I don't know, maybe a stressful, more messiest situation for herself. But when we're able to...

when a coach, when an outside set of eyes and ears is able to say, hold on a second, what is that thought creating for you? And what's a different thought that will help you to show up the way that you wanna show up? Now, that thought has to be something that's very true and believable, right? It can't just be, woohoo, I'm so happy I'm paying this girl $900 this week. Like, that's not true, right? That's like toxic positivity. That's not what we're talking about. But what I'm talking about is to be able to say what's actually true here also.

is that I'm a leader who's willing to invest $900 in my business to do this well and do this right. And it was literally a visible calm that came over her. And I asked her, how does that feel going into this meeting? She goes, well, I feel confident. I feel clear. I said, doesn't that feel better to go into this meeting on Thursday, feeling confident and clear and purposeful and like an intentional leader? Doesn't that feel better than going in?

anxious and stressed and all of that. And so she went into that meeting on Thursday. It went really well. She came from that place of confidence and calm and intentionality. She let the girl go. There was no fallout. Business moved forward. Everything was fine. But it's situations like that where it's just like you said, when it's our story, when we're in the scene, it's so easy to just believe the thoughts that come up because they're really believable, right? It's easy to agree with that story.

but to be able to learn the skill of identifying what it's creating for you and to find how to choose thoughts and choose stories that allow us to move forward intentionally, carefully as the leaders that we wanna be, it completely changes the results we create in our business.

Sean Patton (39:00)
I, yes, I want to second everything you just said and how powerful that is and how mind explained that is. I also want to, you know, call it for everyone. It's like listening to check their own thoughts in terms of separating your thoughts from reality. So often we think what we're thinking and what we're seeing, what we're feeling like that is real. But then it's like, but I just, nothing, nothing changed in reality. You just thought about it differently.

And that also is real. That also is true. Right. So I love that. What else could be true? Could the opposite be true? Like those are powerful questions and, it's powerful questions. You know, to take this to like a meta level, as we sort of wrap here, like powerful for you in that moment, powerful for future circumstances, but also like powerful for our view on the world and how we treat other people, and how we approach life that, you know, what my

my truth in the way I'm seeing things, it's okay to question it. And it's okay that other people see things a different way. And that could also be true. And I'm always searching and questioning my own belief system because that's how I'm going to grow. And I think that also just makes us like kinder people and better friends and better partners and better parents and better citizens when we don't have this absolutist theory that

The way we're thinking about things is actually true.

Cayla (40:21)
Yeah, yeah, so true. And that's going back to the first thing I said, it's awareness, It's increasing our awareness. What happened for her that shifted, she became aware of what that story was creating for her. And she made an intentional decision that she didn't wanna stay there. And as she made that shift, it changes exactly as you said, how she shows up as a leader, how she shows up as a wife. I tell people all the time when they start working with me that their marriage is gonna get better.

Their parenting is going to get better. Their friendships are going to get better because when we shift and change, everything changes, right? It's how we show up, how we think it impacts all the areas of their life. Now, I'm not a marriage coach. I'm not a parenting coach. But again, as we shift and change, everything changes, including the success of our business. So it's all related.

Sean Patton (41:12)
percent. Well, and that goes back to your quote, right? That, your business is not, he's not going to outgrow your ability to lead it. Right. And I would also say then your family is not going to grow greater than your, your ability to lead it, right. Your, happiness, your relationships, all those things, just not going to grow above your own capabilities. And, and, so it's so important for anyone that wants to live their best life, have their best business to be committed to, to that. So,

Man, this has been awesome. feel like we could keep doing this for hours. Maybe we'll to have you back on sometime soon. But, Cayla, this was great. If someone's trying to find you and your coaching, cause I love what you said today, how do they find you and where do go?

Cayla (41:51)
Yeah, I'm on LinkedIn at Cayla Cayla Horey on LinkedIn. And then I'm on Instagram also at Cayla Horey coaching. And then my website is CalayHorey.com So any of those places, Cayla with a C, sold with a C. So.

Sean Patton (42:07)
Absolutely. And we'll put all those links in the show notes too. So, well, thank you so much for your time today. It was, it was been great to get to know you last few months and, great to learn more about you and your, in your coaching, your philosophy and, and, and talk about, you know, leadership. like, I always love to, nerd out with another, a leadership, guru on, on, on what they think. So.

Cayla (42:25)
Totally. Well, I feel the same. Thank you so much for having me.