Suffering Leads to Larger Wins: Don Williams

Summary

In this episode, Christian Brim interviews Don Williams, a seasoned entrepreneur with 38 years of experience. They discuss Don's journey, the importance of resilience, faith, and the lessons learned from personal struggles. Don emphasizes the significance of asking for help, the role of relationships in success, and the necessity of defining what you want in life and business. The conversation also touches on the comfort zone, the importance of gratitude, and the next steps for personal and professional growth.

Takeaways

• Helping people is more effective than traditional selling.
• Faith plays a crucial role in resilience during tough times.
• Personal struggles can lead to significant life lessons.
• Asking for help is essential for growth and success.
• Relationships are foundational to both personal and business success.
• Life runs in seasons, and perseverance is key.
• Defining what you want is critical for achieving goals.
• Gratitude can transform your perspective on life.
• All progress is a series of next steps.

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https://calendly.com/cbrim/30min

Transcript

Christian Brim (00:00.162)
ask questions. Welcome to another episode of The Chris Project. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me is the infamous Don Williams. Don, welcome to the show.

Don Williams (00:11.99)
Christian, thank you so much for having me. I it as a high honor to be a guest on your show.

Christian Brim (00:18.149)
Oh, OK. All right. I like it. Let's start. I know your background. Most people in the audience are not going to know who you are. So give us the short CV on who Don Williams is.

Don Williams (00:32.394)
So, I'm a, and a lot of people say they're a serial entrepreneur, but I've been an entrepreneur for 38 years now and started a dozen companies, spent about 20 years helping Fortune 500 companies. And then the last 10, I've kind of concentrated on entrepreneurs. And most of what I help people with is under the area of influence. So selling more, making more money and leading better. And...

and I'm based out of side of Fort Worth, Texas, which you may have heard of Dallas. That's a little suburb about 30 miles east here. Yeah. I give that for my friends in Dallas. They love it when I say that.

Christian Brim (01:05.214)
little suburb, okay.

Christian Brim (01:10.114)
Yeah, well that's what they think. you know, okay, so currently, well, no, I'm gonna back up and ask this question. So you help people with marketing and leadership. I'm assuming that that comes from a practical experience of trying things and learning what worked and what didn't work.

Did you have any formal training in either of those subjects?

Don Williams (01:43.637)
I don't know that I had formal training. I know as a young man or as an adolescent, I was going into high school and my dad, much to my chagrin, enrolled me in the debate class, which was not, you know, I played football and all that, but debate was not cool. And I desperately, like most high schoolers, wanted to be cool.

Christian Brim (01:59.598)
Nice. Cool.

Don Williams (02:10.292)
But I was very good debater and runner-up state champion behind my partner one year. I took a sales job as I was a freshman in college. I only went for a minute because I made so much money selling. And people would ask me,

Cause they had about 40 or 45 offices and I was the top salesman in the country at 19. And they were like, how do you do that? And I'm like, I don't really know. I know people like to buy from me. And so I just let them, I'm not making anybody do anything. I'm kind of letting them do it.

Christian Brim (02:44.631)
Wow.

Christian Brim (02:56.173)
Yeah.

Don Williams (02:59.222)
And I didn't know that that would be like a foundational cornerstone of my framework today. I would tell anybody in the audience, if you're not doing the amount of business that you want to do, stop selling. Quit reading the sales books. Hang that up.

Okay. Start helping people, start seeing everything from their point of view and delivering a solution that benefits them because people are always going to act in their best interest. And so just ...

Christian Brim (03:36.769)
Yes. And you can't really sell them something they don't want. mean, some people are weak and they'll just capitulate, but most people are not going to buy something they don't want.

Don Williams (03:43.639)
If

Don Williams (03:51.072)
But they're not, and if they do, they're going to have buyers from more. It's going to be a problem. help people achieve the outcomes they want, and you will never, ever struggle for new business. It's just, I have a client in Austin. He's like, you're the no game gamer. I'm like, what's that mean? And he's like,

Christian Brim (03:57.432)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (04:20.438)
You have this great sales game, but there's no game to it. It's not so much as what you do, it's just how you are. And I believe that. I believe that in selling and I believe that in leadership has a lot less to do with what you do and a whole lot more to do with less about doing, more about being.

Christian Brim (04:42.157)
Yes, yes, that's a a that is a rabbit hole we could go down and we may. But let me ask this question first. So it doesn't sound like you you you are good at what you do from any formal education. Is there anything in your experience, even going back to childhood that you think made you who you are that that

is naturally good at these things.

Don Williams (05:14.23)
Well, I come from a long line of Kansas wheat farmers, Kansas North Dakota wheat farmers. And so I learned how to work at a very early age. Back then, you drove the tractor at age 11 and nobody thought anything about it. Nobody called OSHA. And you drove the pickup nine miles to the farm to get on the tractor. And so I learned how to really work. And then in my faith,

Christian Brim (05:33.037)
Right.

Don Williams (05:41.43)
I became a Christian as a very young boy. And so I've always believed that God has a plan and that it's a plan for good and that it's going to work out. And that if you want to achieve big things, ask for big things. This is not going to be exact, but you have not because you ask not. so ask away.

Christian Brim (06:07.863)
Hmm? Yes.

Yes. Okay. So I will pivot back to the, well, no, I'm going to wait to pivot. I'll ask this question. Is there any point in your career where there was doubt around those beliefs that, you know, this fundamental optimism around God has a plan and it is for good.

I'm assuming there is, but...

Don Williams (06:43.369)
Yeah, there is. And so the big, I'll share the biggest one. So I was about 40 when my marriage to my son's mother disintegrated and my business was flat on its back. It was doing horrible. My oldest son had been in a life threatening accident that did leave him blind in one eye, but

but should have killed him and if it didn't kill him, it should have scrambled his brain. So it was a good accident. Took a little while to come to that realization, but it was a good accident. And so for a couple of years, and I didn't know this then, but I probably was clinically depressed to where really all I was doing was

Christian Brim (07:34.743)
Sure. Yeah.

Don Williams (07:40.476)
not anything I wanted. I'm barely doing what I think I have to do. I'm just putting one foot in front of the other. I mean, the boys lived with me and we had this big house outside of Fort Worth, Dallas, little suburb to the east. And literally we didn't have anything in the house. All the furniture, every towel, every fork, everything left.

Christian Brim (08:04.284)
Mmm.

Don Williams (08:09.929)
And it took a while to get that back. And through that, I found that, you know, I have family members ahead of me that had suffered mental health issues that I just never, you know, we were Kansas farmers. You don't talk about things that are bad. You just get up at...

Christian Brim (08:33.815)
No, you just work.

Don Williams (08:37.705)
Five o'clock in the morning, you're in the field at six and you're home at six or seven. That's just the deal. But that was a really tough time. And I said that verse a zillion times. And what I know about my journey in faith is this, is that God's always going to show up. In my life, He typically shows up at the 11th hour. And one day I'm going to ask Him,

Like, what was wrong with the sixth hour? You know, it would have saved me some gray hairs and some stress. I also think this, that certainly in entrepreneurship, in any arena where you perform or where performance is measured, is that people who suffer great losses

are the most likely to experience great wins. And people who suffer little losses kind of experience smaller wins. And that's not scientific, but I certainly believe that to be true.

Christian Brim (09:41.133)
Hmm, yes.

Christian Brim (09:45.303)
Yes.

Christian Brim (09:53.848)
Yeah, I think it is probably a factor of how much they're swinging for the fences, right? Like, I mean, and if you don't ever swing for the fence, you're never going to have that huge loss, right? You're not as likely to strike out. Okay. So was there something through that experience? You your marriage is over, your business is not performing the way you want.

You're depressed. What changed? What did you learn about yourself through that experience?

Don Williams (10:38.165)
So it was really, Christian, kind of the first time in my life I'd ever lost at anything. pretty much, I wasn't Midas. Everything I touched didn't turn to cold, but it turned to silver or bronze or something. And so the problem about never losing significantly until you're 40 is like you are ill-prepared for loss. I mean, I hadn't lost to any of my grandparents. I mean, just hadn't lost anything.

Christian Brim (10:44.226)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (11:07.835)
And so I really think that the great healer, what changed was time. And, you know, as you put distance between yourself and a negative event, it doesn't get smaller, but your perception of it seems smaller. And so...

Christian Brim (11:34.637)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (11:38.023)
I really think it was that. And I just got to the point where it's like, I'm just not willing to do this anymore. And so, you know, I'm going to ask somebody on a date. I'm going to try something new in my business. going to, you know, I think I was a great dad. I don't think I was a good mom. I kind of was.

Christian Brim (12:04.959)
It would that be awkward to be a, you know.

Don Williams (12:06.9)
It just wasn't my thing, but I was kind of the mom there for a while. But I literally think in my case, I did try meds and I couldn't tell. I can remember calling my doc and saying, how would I know if it's working? He's like, you'd know. And I'm like, then I'm done because I don't know anything.

But I just think that as time, and I kind of think that even about success as an entrepreneur Christian, I think some people work really, really hard for 20 years and then they're the overnight success, even though nobody knows, hey, they did it for 20 years. And I ate beans and cornbread, but bless you. But I think that...

Christian Brim (12:57.929)
Woo!

Don Williams (13:05.652)
think it's our responsibility to do the best job that we can every day. And then I think...

Sometimes God says, okay, now it's time to harvest. And then you ought to stack it like firewood.

Christian Brim (13:17.933)
Yes.

Christian Brim (13:23.917)
So I'm going to paraphrase what you said that really there wasn't a foundation or a fundamental change in it was just time that healed. Is that accurate? Okay. The second part of that question was there anything you learned about yourself through that experience?

Don Williams (13:40.488)
think so.

Don Williams (13:49.505)
I learned that, you know, everybody didn't think I'm as special as I do. The voice mom, she certainly didn't. And so, you know, I maybe for the first time, you know, saw that, you know, everybody doesn't love Dawn. Everybody doesn't think Dawn's great. And that was an epiphany.

And then the other thing I learned was that, you know, for, most of my life, um, I was an entrepreneur at 26 and, literally after four or five years, I didn't ask anybody anything about anything. I felt like I was the smartest person in the room. felt like I knew better than anybody else. And truthfully, but I want to say this with humility.

I was in fact the smartest person in many rooms, not every room, but many rooms. And what I learned in that time, that season of my life was that, hey, I don't know everything and ask other people, it's okay to tell somebody, man, I am struggling here. You know, would you listen to me?

Or would you listen and comment? Or do you know, could you help? Or do you know someone who could help? And I had not been, up until that point, I'd not only not been good at that, I mean, I'd never done that on anything. Because when you're on the farm, you just go fix it and...

You got some bailing wire and some Elmer's glue and some duct tape and you know, we're going to fix it and move on. you know, there's, I think we're meant to be connected to other humans and other humans know things, have been places, have done things that, that, and man, there's some really great people out there that are willing to help even complete strangers.

Christian Brim (15:55.927)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (16:13.67)
and want nothing in return. And so, but you kind of got to ask.

Christian Brim (16:19.137)
Yeah, and you speak of something that I think is insidious. I think the enemy tries to isolate us, especially as men, because we're predisposed to it. Women connect better, and they do it naturally. Men, on the other hand, I think, as are hardwiring and culturally...

were taught to be self-reliant and so not to ask for help. frankly, I think that's why there's more men that commit suicide than women, because they don't reach out, they don't connect. But I think you are 100 % right, we're designed to be in community. And I think in my life,

It has been critical to have those male relationships that, you know, I could speak about what was going on in my life. And, you know, not that they were going to solve it, but like just that I knew that someone heard me and and in whatever way they could, they would support me.

Because you get wrapped around the axle of shame where you start to say, well, I failed at this, I failed at that. And you don't want to share that. And that's when you're most vulnerable. That's when you need it most. The success, to your point, you really don't learn a lot from success.

Don Williams (18:13.159)
Hmm.

Christian Brim (18:14.25)
you learn from when you get your dick knocked in the dirt. Pardon the expression, but that's...

Don Williams (18:17.555)
No doubt about it. so that period, and I do think life runs in seasons. And I think you'll have seasons of...

Christian Brim (18:28.877)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (18:33.235)
I'll stick with the farming metaphor. You'll have seasons of drought and then you'll have seasons of plenty. you know, anybody can run a business, anybody, you know, when everything's going great, anybody can do that. Okay. Can you stay in business when times are tough? Okay. That takes some, you know, panache and some skill and some persistence and maybe some stupidity. You know, maybe, I don't know. You know, I think some...

Christian Brim (19:00.843)
Delusion, we'll say delusion. Yes.

Don Williams (19:02.739)
That's a better word. Yeah. So I have friends, some friends, and they've been married like 35 years and I heard somebody ask them, so what's the secret? And they're like, we thought about going to the courthouse and filing a divorce, but we never went. And so, you know, there's something to just, I made a decision. I'm going to figure it out. There's certainly something to that. And

And I totally agree with you. I guys as a general rule are more hesitant to reach out to people. Guys are more hesitant to share. And certainly in my generation, I think I'm a little older than you, but you know, the big screen hero was John Wayne. Well, John Wayne didn't cry and John Wayne didn't ask for help.

And when people gave John Wayne problem, he punched him in the nose or shot him or something.

Christian Brim (20:01.238)
It's like that country and western song, he never hung his head at Kitty's place, right?

Don Williams (20:05.788)
Yeah. And so, and so, you know, that's kind of the mindset that, that I had. so it was a, now looking back, okay. And we're 25 years removed, 1999 took a couple of years, good or worse, a couple of years, couple hundred thousand bucks. You know, no big deal. Um, but, uh, but.

Today, I would tell you this, and you know this about me, I'm a big gratitude practitioner, and it's one of my missions is to influence people to begin an intentional daily gratitude practice. looking back on that event, other than the births of my two sons,

probably the most significant event of my adult life. The end of that marriage. And I think we both went into it with the right heart and you know, who knows? I have to ask God what happened there. I'm not 100 % sure, but for sure, like the second or third most significant event of my adult life.

Christian Brim (20:57.623)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (21:01.645)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (21:23.219)
without that marriage, without that relationship ending, I don't meet my wife, Lita, which would, my life would only be half full, okay, without her. And I went nothing but the best for my former wife, my boy's mom. But today, 25 years later,

you know, I can see how it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Christian Brim (22:01.517)
I went through a similar period four or five years ago where I was struggling mostly in my marriage, but some in the business. And it was at that point, you know, four years ago that I, I, God dropped my business coach into my lap. I did not hire him. I it's a strange thing, but

He came to me and he was an orthodox rabbi before he was a business coach, which is odd in and of itself. But he and his wife had done marriage counseling before when he was a rabbi. And so we spent, you

He's supposed to be coaching me on the business. spent the first six months every week talking about my marriage. And what was revelatory to me after working with him for about two years, I realized that the commonality between the problems I was having at home and the problems I had in my business

with me, right? Obviously the symptoms are not the same. And on the surface, they don't look like they're related at all. But it was the work that I had to do on myself that ended up making those two things work again, right? I think one of the most powerful questions my coach asked then and continues to ask me is, what do you want?

I remember he first asked that in the context of marriage and I'm like, well, I don't know. I haven't really thought about that. And you know, a lot of it is, well, you you're supposed to think of the other person first, right? You know, it's a sacrificial thing. But I came to realize that it's very important in relationships and by consequence business to ask that question.

Christian Brim (24:26.397)
What do you want? That's not a selfish question to ask. You need to know what it is that you want. And at the end of the day, it was like, well, I want to know, I want to feel connected to my wife. Like, I want to be able to have that intimate connection and communication and conversation, right? And he said, okay, go tell her. And I'm like, okay. And so I did. And she was like, okay.

And then I said, what do you want? And it was like deer in the headlights. Like that had never crossed her mind either. And it took me a couple of months of asking that question before she had a real answer. I mean, initially it was like, I don't know. And, you know, I agree, marriage is...

Marriage and entrepreneurship are the ultimate crucibles, right? I mean, because they're designed, well, maybe they're not designed to do it, but the structure of it is going to cause stress and it will refine out those impurities. anybody thinking that you're gonna be married for a period of time and not have

those questions of like, why in the hell am I married to this person? You're fooling yourself. mean, like you absolutely are going to and so were they. They're gonna be like, why in the hell am I married to this idiot, right? But you know, people ask that question like, okay, how have you been married for 32 years? And the answer is 100 % grace. It starts and ends at grace. If my wife had not had grace for me and I had not had grace for her,

wouldn't have survived. That's the simple truth.

Don Williams (26:28.732)
And that's probably foundational to all relationships. My second book is a book called Romancing Your Customer. And I see the customer journey, which in our businesses, everything is a rat, should center on the customer. And if it doesn't, you're doing it wrong. Trust me. Everything we should see through the glasses of how does this affect my customer. And that customer journey,

Christian Brim (26:32.545)
Yes.

Christian Brim (26:37.805)
Mmm.

Christian Brim (26:50.145)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Don Williams (26:58.246)
to me is very parallel to the typical romantic journey. And there is a piece of, you know, seeing things from the other person's point of view and delivering exceptional experiences, experiences that leave them saying, wow, it doesn't have to be every experience and every second of every day, but there has to be some of that. And in my coaching practice,

Christian Brim (27:02.701)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (27:09.516)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (27:26.64)
Most people come to me and they want to elevate their two million. They want to go to five million or their five, they want to get eight or whatever. And I'm like, yeah, we're going to do that. No problem. And then they said, well, you keep working with me on leadership. And I'm like, because leadership is the number one thing you can work on that will, will elevate every area of your life, your business, your family, and yourself. And, and so, you know, you and I have some shared history.

Christian Brim (27:49.462)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (27:55.857)
in a business group where they talk about business, family, and self. And I've always taken exception to that. I'm always like, it should have been self, family, and business. And I've argued it with all the sacred cows. And they're like, no, it's not. And I'm like, yeah, it is. And here's why. Give somebody in your family cancer and tell me your business is your top priority. It's not. Okay. It's going to be them. And then the reason that that personal should supersede that,

Christian Brim (28:16.525)
Correct.

Don Williams (28:24.922)
is because if I'm empty, I can't fill others. Okay, so I have to take care of me before I can try and take care of anybody else. And that goes back to what I said early on in our chat about it's less about doing and more about being. And as you're being who you're really supposed to be, which is not me and not Christian, it's like there is a you that you are supposed to be.

Christian Brim (28:27.767)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (28:52.218)
As you are being that person more purely, more truly, you will find you'll be better with you. You'll be better with your spouse and your kids and your siblings and your parents and whatever your family makeup is. And families are made up of weird people, mine too. And I know some in your family. And well, the ones I know, no, I joke.

Christian Brim (29:09.761)
Yes.

Christian Brim (29:13.237)
Yes, they're very weird.

Christian Brim (29:19.679)
Nate, we're talking about you.

Don Williams (29:20.946)
Yeah, Nate. Love you, brother. And then your business will also benefit from the new you. And so many people come to me and they're wanting to be better leaders. They're like, what can I do to these people to where I'm a better leader? And the answer is, well, there's really nothing you can do to those people. There's an awful lot you can do to you. Okay.

Christian Brim (29:40.686)
Nothing. You need right. Right. Exactly. No, 100%. And that's that is the universal truth that I don't think anybody I didn't want to know. I didn't want to admit. I didn't want to understand that you talked about like, okay, we're going to take this business for five million to eight million. We're going to do that. But we have to start with you because the owner

is the limiting factor in the business. And if you don't grow, the business does not grow. Hard stop.

Don Williams (30:16.485)
Yeah, you'd already be at 8 million if you were the right you. You'd already be there. Okay.

Christian Brim (30:20.407)
Correct. Correct. And that's a hard pill to swallow.

Don Williams (30:26.225)
It's a tough one. so my theory over 38 years and a couple hundred, four to 500 clients and however many entrepreneurs is this, is that all progress is just a series of next steps. And so all I ever talk with a client about is here's the next step. And when we take that we'll...

take the next step and we'll take the next step. so Zig used to have a saying,

The old farmer didn't want all the land. He just wanted what was next to his. And when you think about that minute, you're like, he was pretty crafty old farmer. Well, progress is kind of the same thing. Just take the next step. And there's always a next step. There's next steps. I got a lot of next steps in my future. Mark Cuban has next steps. Jeff Bezos has next steps. know, Warren Buffett has next steps. There's, there's nobody's ever.

Christian Brim (31:18.327)
Yes.

Don Williams (31:30.383)
you time out, you don't actually reach the end. The clock runs out, but there's still something left to do. so...

Christian Brim (31:33.943)
That's correct. The clock runs to zero. Yeah, but you don't stop playing.

Christian Brim (31:41.666)
Yes. Well, and with that, I want to pivot back to what you said about doing versus being. in the last couple of years, I adopted this saying, and I don't know if I picked it up from somebody else or I invented it, but it was, is this. We are human beings, not human doings. Right? And one of the guests on the show,

Doctor of psychology. She talked about the research that was done back in the 50s and I don't remember the the guy's name is an American psychologist, but he did this global study thousands of participants around Content happiness And like what is the common denominator like is there some common denominator that that shows up and what he found was this correlation between

doing. So like you do good things, therefore you feel good. If you do bad things, you feel bad, right? And getting past, and this is something that I have struggled with as a person and in my faith is that it's not about what I do or don't do. It's about, like you said, who you are, right? And

That's a real hard thing to get your brain around because we're taught and wired that especially as entrepreneurs that your worth is based upon your performance, right? And so when that performance is absent, therefore you have no worth. But the flip side of it can be true too, where you have success and you think that your worth is tied up in that and neither are true. Thoughts?

Don Williams (33:40.901)
very, very, very common, know, successful entrepreneurs have a big exit, have more money than they're gonna be able to spend the rest of their lives, their kids' lives, maybe their grandkids' lives. And they almost all look in the mirror and say, is that all there is? Was that the end of the game? And there's a great book on that titled The Second Mountain, and a great book.

Christian Brim (34:04.929)
Yes. Great book.

Don Williams (34:09.828)
I would tell you, I climbed my second mountain before I had climbed my first mountain in that I knew who I wanted to be and I knew who I was. that's continually grown, but I've never, I've never, even though I help people make more money, that's, it's never been a primary.

Christian Brim (34:16.781)
Hmm.

Don Williams (34:39.521)
indicator for me, okay, the primary indicator for me is am I helping other people and specifically people who help other people. And so my personal mission is help others help others. And when I concentrate on my mission, the revenue and the income, all that stuff kind of takes care of itself. And so

Christian Brim (34:48.353)
Hmm.

Don Williams (35:08.529)
And I'm not saying everybody should be that way. Remember, I said, got to be who you're supposed to be. Don't be me. There's already, some people would tell you one too many of me in the world anyway. Don't be Christian. If your name's Robert Smith, be Robert. Be the best Robert you can be. And that'll make a huge difference.

Christian Brim (35:21.089)
Brent. No, God no.

Don Williams (35:33.777)
I think he's a psychiatrist, Dr. Amen out of California. And I forget the name of his book, but he has this miracle worksheet and it's specifically designed for people who have ADHD. But like in the entrepreneurial world, that's maybe 40%. I mean, it's pretty significant. And it's just like 10 questions. It's like, what do you want in your physical life?

And then why do you want it? And what do you want in your family life? And why do you want it? And what do you want in your financial life? And why do you want it? So it's about just about 10 questions. And it's very effective for people with ADHD and probably other people too, though I have ADHD. I don't know how to look at it from the non ADHD brain.

But it gives you that clarity of what do you want, kind of like your coach started you there, what do you want Christian? And then if you're married, because I sometimes encourage my clients to do that if they're married, like first we work it through with you. And it sounds pretty simple, 10 questions, but sometimes it takes a month to get them answered because it takes some thought because most people are kind of like you, I don't know what I want, you know?

Christian Brim (36:58.101)
Yeah, absolutely.

Don Williams (37:03.855)
First you do it and then you share it with your spouse. Okay. And you give them some time to do it. And then you do a third. Once we have the hers and the his or whatever your flavors are, I don't care. Okay. Once you have that, then the two sit down together and say, okay, tell me what you want. Cause I want to help you.

You know, I am your help mate through this life. I want to help you get what you want. And then I want to do a third cheat. I want to do, what do we want? And so my wife and I love to travel and far and near short trips near long trips far and

Christian Brim (37:39.447)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (37:51.385)
And so we were walking through that the other day and said, well, okay. So like how many, and like long trip, like we would go to China for a month. We would go to Europe for a month, that type of thing. And we're fortunate and blessed. Everybody can't do that, but we can. And I'm like, well, I want to do one of those a year. Okay. And we like going places we don't, we've never been. We never really go back anywhere.

Christian Brim (37:59.832)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (38:16.868)
And I've told people that they're like, why not? I'm like, when we've seen everything, we'll start the repeats. But we're on the new, it's a big world. my gosh. And so, you know, one of those and then, and then like maybe three, I don't want to call medium trips. Okay. Go spend a week in Maine, you know, during the color change or, you know, that type of thing. And then.

Christian Brim (38:22.219)
Right. It's a big world.

Don Williams (38:46.512)
And then maybe three or four, we went to Austin. I live north of Fort Worth. I've been to Austin a lot. Texas is big, it's like, almost, it's actually farther away than Oklahoma City is from where I'm at. It's about another hour. But we just had a ball. We have friends there and just had a ball. so, you do your what I want.

Christian Brim (38:56.397)
It's like a whole other country, they tell me.

Christian Brim (39:03.852)
Yes?

Don Williams (39:16.196)
Okay, and if you don't know where that worksheet is, you can reach out to Christian or me and, you know, we can send it to you. But you do what you want. You get what, in my case, my wife wants. And then spend some time doing what we want. Because that is your relationship. You're a man, she's a woman, you're two individuals. Remember, it's personal, family, then business. So take care of the personal, then go to the family, and you'll find...

Christian Brim (39:30.347)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (39:44.4)
Improving your business is so, like on what I do, it's so simple. Clients, they're like, I don't know why this works, it just works. And I'm like, don't overthink it, okay? Just stick with the program.

Christian Brim (40:02.603)
Yeah, business on its surface is very simple. It's I don't remember the founder of Boston Market. Spoke at an EO event and he's he's Italian immigrant and from Boston so you could barely understand the poor man. But he said two profound things. He said no business. He said more business, more problems, no business, no problems.

That was profound. And the second thing is he said, you know, business is simple. It's either getting the business or doing the work, getting the work, doing the work. And I'm like, hmm, yeah, doesn't mean it's easy. And, and I think to your point, the limiter is again yourself. And I know from my own experience and all of the entrepreneurs that I have had as colleagues and friends.

Don Williams (40:33.668)
true.

Christian Brim (41:03.101)
It's so much easier to look outside yourself to solve the problem, right? And it's like, well, it's, the customers, it's the industry, it's the economy, it's the employees, it's the finances, it, whatever. It doesn't matter, right? it's much easier to say the problem is out there and I need to fix it rather than look inside and say, what, what, what am I doing that's contributing to this situation? Yeah.

I mean, that's a harder conversation.

Don Williams (41:33.776)
much, much tougher. And, you know, it's the acid test of reality and that's always, you know, where it's, where it's hard. But, I'll share this thought. So, you know, all of us spend most of our time in our comfort zone. And, and the reason we do that is because it's comfortable. We like it there. Okay. I like, you know, I got a chair I sit in most of the time in the den.

Christian Brim (41:54.027)
Mm-hmm.

Don Williams (42:02.543)
I got a pillow on my bed out of the 15 pillows that are there that's my pillow. And I've met a million strange pillows in my travels, but my favorite is that one pillow. so we kind of camp in our comfort zones, but here's comfort zone physics real quick. When you step out of your comfort zone, your comfort zone expands. You step out of your comfort zone, it expands again.

Christian Brim (42:26.87)
Yes.

Don Williams (42:29.7)
Okay, every time you step out, it gets bigger and bigger. So, the truth is, is all the good stuff for you in your life, in your personal life, your family life, in your business life, is outside of your comfort zone.

Christian Brim (42:30.017)
Yes.

Christian Brim (42:44.237)
100%.

Don Williams (42:46.008)
And if you, so if you, if you're perfectly comfortable with everything that's going on, you're not doing everything that you could be doing. Okay. And I don't care. Okay. But when you look in the mirror, you got to ask yourself, do I care? And if you don't, you don't. But if you do, do something you haven't done before, do something differently. And one of the things I see with entrepreneurs is this. They all or most.

have that, I'm the smartest person in the room, whether they are or not, but they're blessed with healthy self images for the most part. And so the average entrepreneur had a superpower. They had something they did really well, and I'll make it real simple. So Joe was a great plumber and Joe worked for Bob's Plumbing. And one day he said, I think I could do this work.

I see what we're billing. know what he's paying me. There's a pretty big difference there. I think I'll go do Bob's plumbing instead of Joe's plumbing." And so he becomes an entrepreneur. his skillset is plumbing. He understands that things run downhill and how to put pipes together and all that jazz. And I'm not making fun of plumbers. I'm a horrible self-plumber. I'll break it and then I have to get somebody and pay them double to fix it.

So, the best companies, the best teams, okay, have people with different skill sets. So Christian, when he's not doing this cool podcast, you know, he owns a company that does, provides financial services to businesses. If that's not your skill set, like, like if you're listening to the show and you know that

bookkeeping, accounting, taxation. If that's not your skill set, you got to pick up the phone and you ought to call Christian's company and just have a conversation. It won't cost you anything. You might learn something. You might find a new best in class asset to put to work. If you look at your sales and you're like, well, you know, we could probably do better. I mean, we've been doing 2 million. This is our third year to do, we did 1.8, we did 2.1, we did 1.95, but

Don Williams (45:07.843)
But if that's your deal, and if you want to stay there, great. But if you want to take that to three or four in a year, okay, you should call me or call somebody like me. You should get people that have different superpowers on your team. And then you can apply that to your, you know, I think the scriptural family is a father and a mother. And hey, if you haven't figured this out, men and women are pretty different.

Christian Brim (45:22.733)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (45:37.312)
I had noticed.

Don Williams (45:37.485)
Okay. Yeah. In case that's, if I'm shocking you, I'm sorry, but there was a book, Venus and Mars and like the opening sentences, women and men are different. And when I think that's right. And when I read that, I was like, this is pure genius because that's true. And nobody's ever said that in writing. Okay. But the reason for that is because they have different complimentary skill sets for the health of the family. And so companies are no different.

Christian Brim (45:44.343)
Yes.

Don Williams (46:06.106)
get people with different skill sets, different superpowers. And today you can get the best people in the world. Okay. It's not just the best people in Oklahoma city. It's not just the best people, you know, who are Dallas's 30 miles suburb away. Okay. You can get the best people on the planet. And, and when I tell people that they're like, man, I bet they're going to be expensive. And I'm like, well, if they're the best, they probably are. But here's the thing.

Christian Brim (46:12.535)
Yes?

Don Williams (46:36.309)
When you work with the best, they'll ensure that you have ROI. Their performance, their integrity, they're going to see that, yeah, they got a dollar and you got 12. And so, in one way, maybe they're expensive, but if you look at it a different way, they were free.

Christian Brim (46:42.731)
Yes. The reason why they charge that is because they're worth it.

Christian Brim (47:02.893)
100%. Yes.

Don Williams (47:04.139)
And it just depends on how you look at it.

Christian Brim (47:09.175)
So if people want to learn more about what you do, the coaching and the consulting, how would they do that?

Don Williams (47:16.057)
You could go to DonWilliamsGlobal.com. You could email me at Don at DonWilliamsGlobal.com. I'm all over social media. You can reach out there. A teammate will see it and engage with you initially, but you can get to me. But Don at DonWilliamsGlobal.com. I handle that personally. And so I'd love to hear from you and happy to give a free consult to anybody.

And if you look at my reviews on Google, you can see people that I've given free consoles that are like, wow, 15 minutes and I learned something that took my top lineup 8 % this year. So there's a lot of things I'm not good at. I'm pretty good at what I do though.

Christian Brim (48:05.069)
I love that. We'll have those notes, links in the show notes if I can talk. Don, thank you very much for your time and your candor. I very much appreciate your experience. Sure. Listeners, if you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. And until next time, remember you are not alone.

Don Williams (48:30.704)
Christian, thank you.