How often do you feel stuck due to fear, self-doubt, or perfectionism?
In this episode, Samantha talks with Chad Hufford, a financial expert who navigated the 2008 financial crisis and came out stronger and more optimistic.
They dive into mindset shifts that turn failures into lessons, quiet impostor syndrome, build meaningful influence, and focus on what you can control rather than the outcome.
If you’re looking to live intentionally and have more momentum in your business, this episode offers practical strategies to tackle uncertainty, embrace growth, and create a lasting impact.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- How Chad survived launching his business right before the ’08 financial storm (00:46)
- Finding hope when all seems lost (06:15)
- The secret sauce for creativity and resilience (08:51)
- Do you want to accomplish more with less effort? Do this! (11:04)
- The way to achieve your distinct balance (12:27)
- Imposter syndrome unmasked (15:15)
- How self-coaching helps you shape your future (20:41)
- How to redefine your failures and turn “oops” into “ahas!” (22:55)
- Silencing the doubting demons (27:06)
- How to move through failures using experiments and data collection (28:16)
- Procrastination thinly veiled as perfectionism (29:58)
- The input infinity loop (31:46)
QUOTES
“A lot of people that start businesses in really abundant times don’t end up with the same lessons. I find that they don’t move through as well as people that start in lean times.” – Samantha Riley
“I’ve realised that the more I put into work is not necessarily the more that I get out of it. And there’s definitely a certain point of diminishing returns. So having time outside to refresh and recharge allows me to be at my best when I’m inside my business.” – Chad Hufford
“Certain parts of our life need to be sacred. And if you don’t, especially as entrepreneurs, if we don’t tell our work this is where you stop, then it will infiltrate every area of our life.” – Chad Hufford
“Always striving to reach higher and higher is a great thing. But it’s also something that shouldn’t hold you back.” – Samantha Riley
“A failure is more of a learning. It’s a feedback loop that tells you that you need to try something in a different way.” – Samantha Riley
“When you view a setback as failure, the tendency is to dwell on that. And what ends up happening is you end up dragging your past into your present, and it steals from your future.” – Chad Hufford
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
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ABOUT CHAD HUFFORD
Born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska, Chad quickly developed a strong background in athletics, nutrition and performance psychology. For the last 16 years however, Chad’s focus has shifted to include financial planning and investment coaching. As Dave Ramsey’s SmartVestor Pro, Chad owns a boutique financial planning firm – Veritas Wealth Management, that manages $500 million dollars and serves several hundred families across the US. In addition to finance, he regularly teaches and speaks on fitness and faith, seeing these as all important aspects of a purposeful and abundant life.
WHERE TO FIND CHAD HUFFORD
- Website: https://www.veritasalaska.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-hufford-066208100/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/veritas.alaska/
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/VeritasWealthManagement
CONNECT WITH SAMANTHA RILEY
Facebook: Samantha Riley
Instagram: @thesamriley
LinkedIn: Samantha Riley
Twitter: @thesamriley
TRANSCRIPTION
Samantha Riley 0:02
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence By Design. I’m your host for today, Samantha Riley, and we’re going to go into what I think is the most important conversation to have as entrepreneurs. And I’m going to be speaking with Chad Hufford, who is a financial planner. I believe in Alaska. Is that right?
Chad Hufford 0:21
That’s right. Other end of the world.
Samantha Riley 0:24
Love it. So welcome to the show, Chad. You’ve been a financial planner, or you started your financial planning business in 2007. Right before what we all know happened in 2008. What was it that had you keep moving forward during that time?
Chad Hufford 0:46
Honestly, Samantha, maybe stubbornness. I know, nobody knew how bad it was going to get. And I’m glad that I didn’t. Because I actually at the time, was running a very successful personal training business. But I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I knew that wasn’t my career, wasn’t my calling. But I enjoyed it. And I made good money. And I came home with money every day. And that paycheck every week, you know, it was, it was very stable. And starting a business, starting any business, is hard. But starting a financial practice in the wake of, or in the middle of a global financial meltdown, was incredibly scary. I would never want to go through that again. But I’m so grateful that I did. And the relationships I was able to foster, the lessons I learned have been invaluable. But it was an uncertain time. And it just learned so many lessons from it. But it was, it was a trial for sure.
Samantha Riley 1:49
I started my first business when interest rates in Australia were at 18 and 18 and a half percent. I think, like it was crazy, there was so many people losing their homes, there was so many people that couldn’t afford to put food on the table. So I’ve been through something similar to what you’re talking about. And what I found personally, is that the people that started businesses in those hard times generally had to bunker down, get really clear on what it was that they did, create systems to do things really in a lean way. And I’ve actually found that a lot of people that start businesses in really abundant times, let’s say, don’t end up with the same lessons. I find that they don’t move through as well as people that start in lean times. Have you found that to be true?
Chad Hufford 2:46
I agree, I think you have to be much more purposeful and intentional. I love even the title of your podcast, Influence By Design, it’s about intentionality. When the winds are blowing in your favour, everything seems to be working, and the tendency is not to scrutinise things as much. When the money is flowing, and revenues coming in, we’re not as careful about how we spend our marketing dollars or how we hire and the tendency is to throw money at problems, rather than really focusing on what is the root, not just not just fixing symptoms. I also think it’s a differentiator. So when the, let’s just use real estate, when real estate is hot, everybody can be a realtor. But when nobody’s selling houses, only the best realtors are gonna be able to sell your house, and it separates the true professionals, the people who are excellent at their craft, from the pretenders, from the people that are just showing up. I also think it teaches people for me, I’ll just give my own experience. It taught me how to deal with ambiguity, to be able to step into an uncertain time and not necessarily have all the answers to not know how things were going to turn out. And to not have a clear path, but to still figure it out and iterate as I go. And a lot of people, it’s human nature, we want certainty, but certainty has a great cost. And a lot of times that cost is never moving forward. It’s never finding the best version of yourself. And what 2008, 2009 told me is nothing is for certain. And we cannot wait for good weather. We have to be willing to move forward in the storms.
Samantha Riley 4:26
Totally. Couldn’t agree more. Obviously, moving through or having a new company going through 2008, you would have had to deal with a lot of fear moving forward. In those early days, how did you deal with that fear of keeping on, putting one foot in front of the other when there was so much uncertainty, even though, and I want to back this up. We’re never fully certain, right? There’s always uncertainty but there are some times where it feels more overwhelming than others. So how did you deal with that in the early days?
Chad Hufford 5:07
A lot of it was, and this is, back to your point about sometimes starting in lean times can be better in the long run. It really forced me to dig deeper to what my why was like, why am I doing this because there are easier ways. I was just trying to earn a living, and just pay my bills, there’s easier ways to do that. And I had a daughter on the way, our first daughter, first of six, we didn’t know that we were gonna have five after her.
Samantha Riley 5:32
Wow, Congratulations!
Chad Hufford 5:34
Thank you, thank you. She actually works for me now. And she’s six feet tall, beautiful. Anyways, get us off track. But I had a baby girl on the way. And I had a family that I needed to take care of. And there was, the fear I felt was not the only fears floating around there. As you already alluded to, people were losing their homes. People were losing their jobs, people were afraid of losing their retirement, everything they had saved for. So I wasn’t the only one afraid. And I thought I have to be a source of courage and hope for people that don’t feel any hope, that can’t see any optimism. And I think optimism is like vitamin C, the body can’t store it. So Samantha, people like you and I sometimes have to be the source of optimism for other people. So it really forced me to dig deep, and a sense of duty and honour, I think is what drove me when I didn’t know what was coming next and every day seemed to be a little bit scarier than the day before.
Samantha Riley 6:36
I love that you said that we’re here to give certainty, to give you, didn’t use that word, by the way. You said to give optimism but, you know, it’s to give certainty, to give clarity. These are the things that we do for our clients. How do you fill your cup so that you can continue to stay optimistic, to stay confident because there’s only so much of it that goes around before we start to get a hit too.
Chad Hufford 7:06
I love that you asked that. A few years ago, somebody told me, they said you can’t fill anybody else’s cup if your pitcher’s empty. And I believe, I believe I have a duty to my family, to my staff, my team, and my clients to be at my best. So that’s one thing I love about this business is it’s a personal business, relationship business, yes, we’re managing money. But really, we’re, we’re managing expectations and behaviour. And there’s always a chance to get better. And too many times in life, we meet people that may be claimed to have 25 years of experience in their field. And you get to talk with them like no, it sounds like you have one year of experience 25 times, like they’ve just been doing the same thing over and over again. So the way I fill my cup is always trying to learn. And one of the biggest mistakes in my 20s was the assumption that because I was no longer in school, that I wasn’t a student anymore. And it’s something I’ve tried to instil in my kids that we are lifelong students, we can always improve, we can always get better, there’s a better version of us just on the horizon. So that you know, personal growth, personal education is a big part of it. My fitness and health is a big part of that too, making sure that I get good sleep, that I eat healthy. You had a guest on recently, Liam talking about fear, and how people drink the psychological equivalent of hydrochloric acid. And then wonder why things aren’t going well, you know, and that’s, I think, very important for our mental standpoint, if we’re taking in negativity, and in fear and anger and all these different things, and you know, you pick up your phone in the morning, and you hear about all the terrible things that happened while you were sleeping, like it’s a horrible way to start the day. So we have to be very careful what we feed our minds, we also have to be very careful what we feed our bodies. So for my mind to operate at its best, it needs to be using good fuel, my body needs good fuel, too. So my diet, my exercise routine are very important. And also my work life balance. I’ve realised that the more I put into work is not necessarily the more that I get out of it. And there’s definitely a certain point of diminishing returns. So having time outside to refresh and recharge allows me to be at my best when I’m inside my business.
Samantha Riley 9:24
I can’t stress the importance of that enough. I was just chatting to one of my coaches yesterday. I’ve got a big project coming up in the next couple of weeks. And he was asking, you know, how’s the pre-work going? And I said, Do you know what? I said, I feel like I don’t want to even talk about this right now. I said I feel like what I need to do is get out in nature for the weekend and go camping and switch off all devices. Just absolutely switch off, sit in the dark, campfire, and just see what drops in and if it drops in and he just, he sat back. Oh my goodness. So perfect. So get this, because I just was at a point where I was like, I can’t force this, it’s not working. So I need to do the opposite. I need to completely switch off. And, you know, really being intuitive about what you need and tapping into that and not thinking it’s always go, go go. Because sometimes it is, right? Sometimes we do need to hustle. I’m certainly not fully anti hustle culture, because there are times in our business where we have to hustle. But there’s also the opposite times where it’s got to be like, absolutely switch off, train, you know, get out in nature, do whatever it is.
Chad Hufford 10:34
Now, what you said, you didn’t use this word, but what you said, I think was stillness. Like you have to find stillness. And in today’s world, we’re distracted. Even when we’re off, we’re thinking about work, or we’re watching something mindless on Netflix, like there’s just always input. And I think, when, especially when we’re doing creative work, when we’re trying to solve a client’s problems or building. For me, it’s building a financial planner, trying to figure out how to communicate an idea on a podcast or at a speaking event. Like, I need stillness, and to be able to listen to my own thoughts. And I just want to use a metaphor that you might appreciate. Because it is a balance. We can’t just rest all the time. But we can’t just hustle all the time, either. And the metaphor, the metaphor I’ve used is kind of like, going up to somebody who’s chopping firewood, and saying, Hey, like, why don’t you take a little rest for a minute, let’s sharpen your axe? And he’s like, I don’t have time to sharpen my axe. Look at all this firewood I have to chop. And I think a lot of people have that idea that they’re having to work so much harder, because they’re chopping firewood with a dull axe. If they would stop and sharpen their axe for a few minutes, they could go back to that same job and get much more accomplished with less effort. But in our culture, where we’re celebrating 100-hour work weeks and sacrificing family time, sacrificing health, everybody wants to be chopping firewood all the time. We’ve learned to worship and idolise the hustle. But there’s a lot of people out there, Samantha, with very dull axes that need to refresh, recharge, find a way to sharpen their axe. For you it might be different than for me. But to be really mindful of how do we get sharper? Is that taking a walk in the woods? Is it sitting on a dock and fishing? Is it running up a mountain? I don’t know what your thing is. But we have to sharpen our axe because we will, it doesn’t matter how tough you are, our axes get dull after time. And we’ve got to find a way to stay sharp.
Samantha Riley 12:27
100%. I also find that absolutely hilarious that just yesterday in a training I gave to my clients, I used exactly the same metaphor. So if my clients are listening, they’ll know exactly when I’m recording this, because I just said that yesterday, but it’s so important. And something that I have recently come to understand, you’ve used the word work-life balance or, you’ve talked about balance a couple of times. And I happen to, fairly recently, it was like there is no work life balance. But what I’ve understood just recently is that there is balance, it’s just different for all of us. And we need to understand what our own personal balance is. And the reason I didn’t believe in it previously is because I work a lot of hours, I absolutely love the work that I do. So for a lot of people, they would actually get burned out if they worked the amount of hours I work. But because I love it so much it actually fills my cup. So all I’ve come to understand is that my balance is different to your balance, to someone else’s balance. But it’s still balance.
Chad Hufford 13:31
No, I love that you made that distinction. Because too often, we are trying to dance to somebody else’s music. We’re taking somebody else’s playbook. Somebody else’s directions, it’s saying it’s working for them. How is it not working for me? It’s where we define individually, what that balance is, and maybe a better way to even say that is not work life balance, but work life boundaries. Knowing where to draw that line. And you’re right, that line is gonna be different for you. It’s different for me. Now then, probably five years from now. I mean, right now we still have a four year old, we’ve got almost 16, 13, 12, 10, six, and four. So it looks different right now than it did 10 years ago. It looks different. It will look different in 10 years, but having those boundaries, because certain parts of our life need to be sacred. And if you don’t, especially as entrepreneurs, if we don’t tell our work, like this is where you stop, then it will infiltrate every area of our life.
Samantha Riley 14:32
Oh my goodness, yes. Let’s talk about imposter syndrome because imposter syndrome, I feel like is its own bucket of fear that for the people that I work with, the people that I work with are experts in their field. They’re really good at what they do. And it absolutely astounds me that the more someone knows, the more they have impostor syndrome. How has that, how have you dealt with impostor syndrome in your life? Because before we started recording, you know, it was a conversation that we had, I’d love to dive into this topic a little bit.
Chad Hufford 15:15
First of all, I think the certain amount of impostor syndrome is healthy. It reminds you that you still got work to do, it reminds you that there’s still areas you could improve. So I think it can get our attention. It just can’t overwhelm us. And it can’t drive us. It can maybe make you point us in a direction, but we just can’t let that rule over us. Because then fear can kind of take over. But I think impostor syndrome is healthy to a certain degree, because it keeps us humble. If I ever came to work, and I was like, I got it all figured out, then I’m not growing, I’m not improving, I’m not going to be a better version tomorrow, or next month or next year. So I need that little voice in the back of my head saying, do you, you know, who are you really, like you’re kind of acting like you’re the guy. But you know, you could learn more here, you could learn more there. But when it comes to, here’s where impostor syndrome, I think is, we have to be careful with it. Because if we are, if we’re focused too much on our position, we can ignore our trajectory. And here’s what I mean by that. If we’re looking at our position only, we’re comparing ourselves to everybody around us. Our trajectory compares us to where we used to be and where we’re going. And that should be the focus. I think a lot of times our trajectory is more important than our position. Because if we’re in an elevated position, our sales numbers, our company revenue, whatever, it can make us feel comfortable. I think complacency then sets in, and after we feel complacent, eventually we start to compromise. And if we’re focused on trajectory, our sales might be great. But if our sales were down from the previous quarter, like, Okay, we should probably look into that, that’s the trajectory issue. But also, on the flip side of that, maybe I’m overwhelmed in my job, maybe I’m overwhelmed by the learning curve in a new product that I’m launching or something like that. But am I a little bit better than I was last month? Am I more knowledgeable than I was six months ago? So my position might be, Oh, my gosh, I have so much more to learn. But my trajectory is showing I’m still improving. I may not be where I want to be, but I’m at least heading in the right direction. And heading in the right direction at any speed is better than heading in the wrong direction slowly. And whether it’s building a business, building financial independence, it’s a slow, steady progress, it’s a slow, steady journey. And, again, trajectory is sometimes more important than position.
Chad Hufford 19:23
And I think we need to learn to celebrate what we’ve already accomplished, as we plan and prepare to continue to grow and it has to be balanced. Because if imposter syndrome gets, if it gets too noisy, then all we focus on is all the work we have to do. And we forget how far we’ve come and we risk not enjoying the journey. But if that voice gets too quiet, we can think, kind of rest on our accolades a little bit and look at Oh, you know, I’ve done all this and and start getting complacent. So I do believe it’s balanced and it, again just like boundaries, is gonna be different for every person. But I also, I don’t think imposter syndrome ever quite goes away. And I used to think like, once I hit this number, or once I get this many clients or once XYZ happens, then I won’t feel that way. And I’ve just learned to live with it and listen to it to suddenly be like, Okay, maybe, maybe there are things I need to work on. And sometimes I just have to ignore that voice like know what? Nope, nope, I do belong here. This is what I’m supposed to be doing. So it’s just, I think it’s just like any fear is having a healthy relationship with it. We don’t want to ignore it and stuff it, but we also can’t let it dictate our life.
Samantha Riley 20:41
It’s like when, I don’t know about you, but I coach myself all the time, you know, because you’re feeling fear, and you’re feeling impostor syndrome. And you’re feeling all these things as you go through every day. And there’s going to be some days where you feel really great, and on top of the world, and there’s going to be sometimes where you just don’t. And you know, when those imposter syndrome thoughts come in, I’ll actually say to myself, do you really believe that? And no, I’m actually really good at what I do. And it’s so funny that some that like, just asking myself that question, it will have me at two opposite ends of the spectrum at exactly the same time. So it’s being aware of that and just coaching myself through. Exactly like you were saying, just always putting that next step forward.
Chad Hufford 21:23
You just reminded me of a fantastic book called Soundtracks by Jon Acuff, I don’t know if you’re familiar with him. But the idea of a soundtrack is, those are the stories that we tell ourselves. Those are the soundtracks, the music that plays inside of our head, and it can be beneficial, it can be really negative, but be aware of it. Because a lot of people I don’t think were even aware of the negative thoughts that they harbour inside their head at a constant basis. So the book is called Soundtracks by Jon Acuff, is exactly what you were saying, Samantha, is that self coaching. And it’s to cue yourself with little reminders. Like, is this thought helping me or harming me? Like, how is this thought shaping or serving my future?
Samantha Riley 22:06
I love that. Let’s talk about failures. And this is one of the most interesting topics I think that we can talk about. Because I think in society or, you know, when we’re at school, we’re taught that a failure is something that’s really, really bad. And it means that there’s an absolute zero point of have, you’ve gone from you were doing it to now you’re not, you’ve failed. Yet I think that in real life, it’s not like that. A failure is more of a learning. And it’s a feedback loop that tells you that you need to try something in a different way. What’s your experience been with failure? Because in business that happens daily.
Chad Hufford 22:55
Well, I love what you just said that failure is more about feedback. And I’ve told my kids that it’s only failure if you neglect to learn anything from the experience. And what I haven’t shared yet on this show, but my background actually was in biochemistry, my degree is in biochemistry, my plan was to go into medicine. But one of the huge lessons that, a priceless lesson that I learned in biochemistry, was this idea of experimentation. And what I mean by that is learning from failure. And here’s what’s different. Some people, they fail all the time, they’re just there trying things, but there really isn’t a lot of thought and intention out there just kind of willy nilly. They’re just, they’re just kind of happening by accident. There isn’t any design. When I was designing experiments as a biochemistry student, there was a lot of design, there’s a lot of intentionality. We prepared, we studied, but at some point, we still had to run the experiment. And a lot of times these experiments did not go the way that we thought. But our focus wasn’t so much on the outcome, it was on the result. It’s what we could learn in the process. So even when the experiments went sideways, and we had unexpected things that we didn’t account for, or we measured wrong, or we just didn’t realise that some reaction was happening in the background, there was always an opportunity to learn. So even when the outcome was not what we intended, there was still a lesson and we could improve, we could learn from it. But a lot of times we’re so tied, as entrepreneurs, we’re so tied to the outcome that, number one, we don’t celebrate the input, we don’t celebrate the intentionality, the actions on the front end, but we also miss the lessons in the learning experience in between.
Samantha Riley 24:50
Love that so much. Love it. What is it that you tell yourself or what is some sort of practice that you use, when you have these feelings of I failed to be able to get through to that next, to get up and go again?
Chad Hufford 25:13
I focus on inputs and outcomes. And I’ll give you a so I kind of already said it, but I’ll give you more specific examples. So as as a financial planner, a lot of what we do is reaching out to people and essentially saying, Samantha, I know we just met. Maybe we were introduced, maybe you were referred to me, but how would you like to entrust me, who’s basically a stranger to you, your family’s financial future, and your lifetime savings up to this point? We get a lot of nos, we get a lot of people who don’t want to help or don’t want to commit, or they don’t want their future as bad as we do, they don’t actually want to do the work. And we just end up not working together, it’s really easy to take that as a personal rejection. So what I’ve taught myself, which I teach my team is, we don’t focus on the outcome of the conversation. When you put yourself in front of an individual or part of a family, and you offer them what you can do, and the opportunity for them to potentially change, not just their financial check trajectory, but the trajectory of their life, and they tell you, No, that was a win, because you put yourself in front of another person, and you gave them an opportunity to utilise what you can offer. So the win is not whether the person answered the phone, whether they said yes, whether they make an appointment, whether you make a sale, what we celebrate is how many times we reach out. So the attempts, that’s the input, we can’t control the outcome. But we can control the number of attempts. You think about somebody working on a weight loss goal, somebody who wants to lose 10 pounds next three months, they don’t have complete control of that outcome, but where they can control is that am I going to go to the gym three times a week, am I going to skip desserts? Am I going to, maybe I stopped eating by 6pm, whatever the thing is, maybe I drink an extra two glasses of water a day, those are all inputs. They don’t, they don’t directly change the outcome, but they do influence it. So as entrepreneurs, and just for myself, I really try to focus on the inputs. And if I get stuck, then I have to remind myself, you, you have to shift back to the inputs, I recently finished a book actually just was released a few weeks ago, and I felt stuck a lot of times, I was so overwhelmed by this project, and like, Okay, we got to break this down. Your win today is writing for an hour, your editor might throw all of it out, doesn’t matter, you’re gonna sit, you’re gonna sit at the computer, you’re gonna write for an hour, it might be gibberish, it might be garbage, but your input is an hour in a quiet room, writing. You’re gonna, you’re gonna do your best. And whatever the outcome is, whatever it is, and it just gave me, it gave me the freedom to experiment a little bit. I wasn’t concerned about writing perfectly, I wasn’t concerned about did I use the right word? Is my punctuation correct? Is my editor gonna like this? Are people gonna ever read it? My concern was I’m putting myself in front of the computer, I’m putting myself in the place to succeed. And I can’t control what happens after that. But I’m going to show up where I need to show up. And I’ll let things take care of themselves after that.
Samantha Riley 28:16
You mentioned experiments there. And this is something that someone mentioned to me years ago that we do in our business now, is I think that there’s a lot of fear around, if I do this thing, whatever this thing is, that I need to make sure that it’s right. And there’s some shame that gets wrapped up in that when it doesn’t go the way you think it is, you know, that it was going to go. So now in our business, we conduct everything like an experiment. It’s like, alright, well, let’s see, let’s see what’s going to happen. And let’s take note of what does happen so that we can use those learnings to do something else. And just taking away that fear of getting things right. And rather, doing experiments, is not just great for me and my business, my husband, my business partner, but for our team as well. Because what I realised is our team wanted to get things right as well, because they were afraid that they were going to get in trouble. We’re now it’s like, well, let’s conduct an experiment. Let’s try it this way. But it’s not, let’s just try it. And that’s the end. It’s, well, let’s try it this way. And then what data do we need to back this up so we can make the next decision? And now that we do that, now we’ve brought that in in a massive way, we’re just trying all sorts of different things to see what sticks and what doesn’t. So there’s no failures ever, because all we’re doing is collecting data.
Chad Hufford 29:37
And you’re also taking the pressure off yourself, which I think opens up our creative mind because we’re not worried about how’s this thing gonna end up. We were just reading the moment more, you know, we get more into that flow state. And I think that’s tremendous. It is exactly what I learned in biochemistry, which I’ve implemented and what we’re doing here. I think for a lot of people, perfectionism. Well, actually, it’s procrastination, that shows up thinly veiled as perfectionism. Like, a lot of times we can. Does that make sense? Like we can make progress, like, I can’t, I can’t put this project forward, or I can’t put this product out there until it’s perfect. We procrastinate. And over time, perfectionism just becomes an excuse for procrastination.
Samantha Riley 30:32
100%, 100%. I want to go back to inputs for just a little minute, because I loved the idea of what you’re talking about here. For people that are listening that were like, Yes, I love this idea. What are some different inputs in your business? You talked specifically about the sales calls or reaching out to people. What are some different inputs that you, I guess, what’s the word I’m trying to think of? Follow? Take note of, in your business?
Chad Hufford 31:05
Can you help me, give me an example of some goals that your business is going after? And let’s, let’s see if we can come up with some inputs together just on the fly real quick. So can you give me an example of a couple goals?
Samantha Riley 31:18
So it could be, you were talking specifically about lead generation, it could be sales calls.
Chad Hufford 31:27
Okay. Give me a goal that like your team has like something you guys are trying to accomplish. Maybe a project that you guys, think of some inputs …
Samantha Riley 31:36
So one of our big major projects at the minute is growing our audience through this podcast.
Chad Hufford 31:46
Okay, so an input could be how many attempts I have every week to reach out to invite guests on my podcast. Another input could be how many other podcast hosts do I reach out to to ask to be a guest on their podcast. And those are, those are things that are completely in your control, you can’t control the outcome. But you can absolutely control the input, the number of attempts you make to bring in a guest or, or to guest on somebody else’s show. It could be something as simple as, you know, spending 15 minutes writing out how you want the interview to go, it might not go the way that you want. But that adds influence and design into it, right? Where people get caught is they want to have a better podcast. So they spent four hours researching microphones on Amazon. Instead of spending those four hours emailing people saying, Hey, I’ve heard you on such and such podcast, I think you’d be a fantastic guest for our show, would you come join us? Because that’s how we might feel we might get some rejection that way, you know, and we don’t want that. So we end up wasting our time doing things we don’t really do. Yes, a good microphone helps. But spending four hours is not going to get you the right people on your show. And nobody’s going to really hear the difference, the difference between those two different mics anyways, as long as you buy a decent one. So that’s just an example. Another one that we use here is we document attempts at client engagement. So for example, you know, we went up to people in our regular basis to review their financial plan to talk about goals and what has changed your life. And we can’t force people to come into the office, I’m not gonna go kidnap them out of their house. But how many, how many attempts, whether through email or phone calls, do I make to attempt that meeting? We have a lot of group events, we’re going to be actually doing a big dinner here in a couple of weeks. And we have a lot of inputs on the quality of the food and some of those things that we have a little bit more control. We can’t control who shows up. But we can control a lot of the inputs around it. So we’ve learned to celebrate that as a team. Like even if an event doesn’t go the way that we want it to, do all the things that we plan to promote it? Did we do all the things that we wanted to, to make it special to make it memorable? And if we did, then great. Let’s learn from what didn’t go the right way. But we won as a team, we won because we hit our goals for the inputs, even though the outcome didn’t necessarily go the way we want it to.
Samantha Riley 34:35
I love that. And oh superduper help. And on top of the example that you just used, the event that you ran recently, could be completely different to an event that you run in a year’s time even though you use the same inputs because the people are different, because all sorts of different things, because the weather’s different, because there’s something else going on around. So I think that the understanding that even when you have the same inputs, that things are different, helps you to be flexible and helps you to think things through and realise that you as much as or research and you can do things that you know that they’re going to get a great output, these things are still going to change.
Chad Hufford 35:31
And I love that you said weather because it’s made me think of a very specific event. We had a client barbecue, and here in Alaska, I mean, we get inclement weather, for sure. But we never get like thunderstorms. Well, we got a thunderstorm. And it rained it out. And when it wasn’t raining, it’s like the mosquitoes were there. So whether it was mosquitoes or rain, it was just, it didn’t go the way we want it to. And it felt a little bit like a failure. And but what we realised, like you know what, our clients really appreciate me to this and the ones that did come out. Like, we’ve been talking about it for years. Hey, you remember a few years ago when we did that barbecue, and this happened? And it actually bonded us so much closer. Yes, but also just for my team, Samantha, because we focused on hey, we did everything in our power to make this wonderful. And I mean, pizza, pizzas were like flying, literally flying away, the wind was so bad. And it was just, it was absolute mess. But we’re like, you know what, we did everything we could, the weather doesn’t cooperate. All of our clients know, that’s what happens if you plan anything outdoors in Alaska. And we’re just gonna, we’re gonna dust ourselves off and move on. Because I think when you view a setback as failure, the tendency is to dwell on that. And what ends up happening is you end up dragging your past into your present, and it steals from your future. But if you view a setback as a learning opportunity, we look at what can we learn from this? Well, maybe, you know, maybe we all moved from Alaska, I don’t know. But we didn’t view it. We didn’t view it quite the same way. And it was much easier to put that behind us and work towards the next thing and not dwell on what didn’t go right. Especially dwelling on the things that are outside of our control. I think that’s another thing that I’ve really tried to do is the beauty of inputs is I focus on what I can control. Outcomes, some of those elements I can control but the outcomes are outside of my control. And when I focus on outcomes that can be disempowering. When I focus on inputs, it reminds me of my sense of agency. I can’t control everything but here’s what I can control and this is what I’m going to focus on.
Samantha Riley 37:46
Love that so much. Chad, this has been such a fabulous conversation. Can you please share with the listeners how they can stay connected with you?
Chad Hufford 37:58
Well, I hope they follow us on Instagram, Veritas dot Alaska, try to always have encouraging and educational content on there. And they can also reach us at veritasalaska.com
Samantha Riley 38:10
And of course, all the links will be below for wherever you’re listening so that you can just click through and and stay connected. Chad, like I said, this has been such a fabulous conversation, you have a little bit of information that I hadn’t actually shared is that my husband and I got married in Alaska. And we cruised into Juneau and the day we got picked up by someone and taken to the place where we picked up our wedding certificate. And we met the florist and our marriage celebrant and photographer, all of these people we hadn’t met at all, organised online, we had the most brilliant day. Every single person that we met in Alaska was just so beautiful, and so caring, and you’ve just added to that just another person. So I’ve got a, I’m a big fan of Alaskans. I’ve never met anyone that’s not fabulous. So thanks so much for coming onto the show and sharing your heart and sharing your stories. It’s been wonderful.
Chad Hufford 39:08
It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
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