Some of the most useful business lessons right now are coming from the car industry. Carmakers have realized that shipping a product is no longer the finish line. The winners are building vehicles that keep observing, learning and improving long after they leave the factory, and the dealer lot, for that matter. Entrepreneurs can learn from that and put it to work in their own companies.

The shift is being driven by the vehicle AI platform – software that enables manufacturers to collect the right data from their vehicles, work out why problems happen and act on what they learn at every stage of a vehicle’s life, from testing to service. According to automotive software company Sonatus, software-defined vehicles were never the destination. They are the foundation for something bigger: vehicles that take part in a continuous cycle of observation, analysis, action and improvement.

That cycle is just as useful for a founder with a five-person team as it is for an automaker with millions of cars on the road.

The Problem: Reactive and labor-intensive

Sonatus points out that, despite advances in connectivity and software, vehicle development, validation and service remain largely reactive and labor-intensive. Engineers spend significant time gathering data, investigating issues and deploying fixes after problems occur.

If that sounds familiar, it should. Many small businesses run the same way. A customer complains, so someone digs through emails to find out what happened. A product fails, so the team scrambles to patch it. Cash runs short, so the founder starts pulling reports. Every fire gets put out, but little is learned, and the same fires keep returning.

The stakes are real. Sonatus notes that warranty and recall costs run into the billions of dollars each year for automakers, and that poor service experiences damage loyalty and retention. Your numbers are smaller, but the principle holds: problems caught late cost far more than problems caught early.

Step One: Observe the right things

The first part of the cycle is collecting the right data at the right time. In the automotive world, that means capturing the signals and context that explain what happened and what led up to it, rather than hoarding everything. Sonatus says this precision cuts transmission, storage and processing costs while improving diagnostic accuracy. The company reports that its data collection technology has been in production since 2020 and now supports more than 8 million vehicles across several global manufacturers.

For a business owner, the takeaway is to resist the urge to track everything. Pick a short list of signals that genuinely predict trouble or growth, such as refund rates, response times, repeat purchase rates and customer effort scores. A dashboard with five meaningful numbers beats one with 50 that no one reads.

Step Two: Analyze across silos

Raw data is only useful when someone connects the dots. The automotive approach combines vehicle data with engineering knowledge and details like service history, then looks across domains to find root causes that traditional analysis often misses.

Businesses have the same blind spot. Sales data sits in one system, support tickets in another and product usage in a third. Each team sees just one part of the picture. Try putting them side by side. When refunds spike, what do support tickets say? Which customers were affected, and what did they have in common? Asking “why” across departments is where the real insight lives.

Step Three: Act where the action is

The third stage is acting on what you learn, and this is where edge AI comes in. By running intelligence in the vehicle itself, where the data is generated, cars can respond in real time. Sonatus says this reduces latency and cloud dependency while protecting data privacy.

The business parallel is decision rights. If every small issue has to travel up to the founder before anything happens, your response time is limited by your inbox. Give frontline employees clear guidelines and the authority to fix problems on the spot, whether that is issuing a refund, expediting a shipment or flagging a defect. Decisions made close to the customer are faster and usually better.

Step Four: Close the loop

The final piece is what turns a process into a system. In the automotive model, learning from the entire fleet is fed back into the vehicles, so each one improves over time. Insights gathered on a test track or through everyday driving can flow into future models and higher quality.

For your business, closing the loop means making sure lessons stick. After every incident or major win, write down what happened, what you changed and what you will do differently. Update your playbooks, checklists and onboarding materials. Otherwise, the knowledge walks out the door with the person who learned it.

Where to start this week

You don’t need an AI budget to begin. Try this:

• Choose five signals that tell you early when something is going wrong.
• Review them weekly with one person from each team.
• Trace one recurring problem back to its root cause across departments.
• Empower your team to resolve a defined category of issues without approval.
• Document one lesson each week and update a playbook with it.

The bottom line

The cars of the future will keep getting better because their makers built a loop: observe, analyze, act, improve. Your business can do the same, with spreadsheets and weekly meetings if that’s what you have today. The goal is to stop reacting to problems and start building a business that learns from each one.

As a social media influencer, nothing feels more natural than constantly putting yourself out there. Audiences can tell when someone is genuine, and your personality is why they’ll follow you in the first place. Sharing tends to happen without a second thought, and the more you do it, the more unique your personal brand becomes.

That said, visibility also comes with security risks and responsibilities toward yourself and your community. Here’s why data security is important not just for keeping some information private as a public person, but also for protecting the reputation of what you’ve painstakingly built.

It Prevents Account Takeovers

Your socials are your bread and butter, so losing access to them is definitely the worst-case scenario. You’re effectively cut off from the channels you do business through, but the reputation damage you might suffer is even more damning. Even getting your accounts back and explaining what happened may not be enough to fix the damage if your account and name were misused to push scams onto or trick your followers.

Securing account access is thankfully a straightforward top priority. Each of your social channels, your business email account, your SMM, etc., needs a strong, unique password. A password manager will help streamline this. And if you’re weighing your options, user sentiment like you’ll find in this NordPass review can help you decide.

Also, protect your passwords all with multi-factor authentication and be suspicious of unknown login attempts. After you’ve secured your accounts, end unfamiliar sessions on key accounts to kick out attackers who might be biding their time.

You’re Reducing the Likelihood of Doxxing and Unwanted Interactions

Sharing what you’re up to and what you’re into is a natural way of keeping followers engaged. A detail here and there doesn’t look like much, but it can add up and expose far more than you’re comfortable with. Fans might use such tidbits to figure out your home address or phone number and give you their unwanted attention. Haters and stalkers may not be as harmless.

Take control of what information you share. Be mindful of publishing your real-time location or posts that could reveal personal info about yourself. You’ll also want to set up business contacts separate from personal ones and use those for professional interactions.

Since you’re a public persona, plenty of information is already out there that you don’t know about or consent to. Incogni data removal tool, for example, will let you request that such information be removed from data broker and people-search sites. This will reduce your unwanted digital footprint and give you greater peace of mind.

You’re Strengthening Business Relationships

Working with agencies and negotiating with sponsors is vital to growing your brand. It also inevitably involves exchanges that contain sensitive information like briefs for campaigns that are about to launch, not to mention contracts and payment details. If this information leaks, you risk being seen as unprofessional and may get fewer collaboration opportunities in the future.

Always have a separate email address for professional correspondence and make sure it has a unique password and MFA. Send confidential documents only through secure channels. Even then, make sure to use individual links that expire after your business is done.

You’re Protecting Followers’ Personal Info and Trust

Don’t forget that you also likely manage followers’ data alongside your own. Every survey, newsletter signup, community membership, or giveaway encourages people to provide info that can be misused if not handled carefully. You don’t want to be responsible for followers’ brimming spam folders, and you definitely don’t want to experience the backlash.

The best approach is to collect as little information as possible to still allow a promotion or event to go smoothly. Restrict access to the information you do collect and delete followers’ personal information once there’s no more need to keep it.

Conclusion

It takes time and effort to build up a personal brand, while a single misstep is enough to undermine it. You have to be visible to thrive, yet that doesn’t mean that you can’t take control of your online presence. Securing the accounts you depend on, as well as being mindful of what you expose and who you trust, goes a long way.

How to turn pain into purpose starts with a decision you make before you feel ready: whatever this is, it’s going to be used for something. Coach Nash Mackey, who lost his eldest brother and then his younger sister to suicide within months of each other, calls it turning the mess in your life into the mission. You still grieve. You talk it out, focus on what you can control and link the loss to something bigger than yourself.

This article talks about suicide and grief. If you’re struggling, please reach out now. In the US, call or text 988 to reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. In Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

Nash and I have worked together for many years and coached hundreds of people together. I initially started out coaching him, and then I’ve seen him become somebody who coaches others. Every time I brought Nash in to coach the coaches I was training and certifying, they loved him. He doesn’t just theoretically understand things. He lives it and applies it. And if you really want to grow in personal development, that’s the point: you must implement.

Where his question came from

Nash trained as a combat medic at 17 and worked in emergency departments and operating theatres. He saw how real the consequences are of the decisions we make, the habits we form and the beliefs we hold. That work got heavy, and for a while he turned to alcohol and what he calls low-grade habits.

Out of that came the question that still drives him: what makes humans come alive? That question really becomes your compass. When I asked what coming alive looks like day to day, he said he measures it by two things, fulfillment and purpose. “Purpose for me is, it has to have an impact on other people’s lives,” he said. “If it’s just for myself, I know it won’t sustain.”

Decide to use it before you know how it ends

When Nash got the call from his dad that his brother might have ended his life, he made a decision in the car on the way there. “I made an internal commitment that I was already going to use this for impact,” he said. “Regardless of how this goes… I am going to use this.”

He calls finding his brother the most intense situation he’s ever been in. A few months later, his younger sister ended her life too. “Burying my brother and then a few months later burying my sister,” he said. “It felt like we were in a movie.”

The commitment didn’t stop the grief. It gave the grief somewhere to go. “I could be crushed by this because it felt big,” he said. “So I was like, how can I use this? What can I do with this?”

Don’t carry it alone

I asked Nash what tools he’d suggest for anyone going through grief, loss or a heavy season that’s challenged their identity. This is the nerdy coach stuff we love.

He started with a military saying: two is one, one is none. You don’t go it alone. Nash called me during that time, and I jumped on a call with him. “I want to talk it out,” he said of why he picked up the phone. “I can’t hold this in.” He says he processes by talking in real time.

He also did something most people won’t try. The first thing he did when he got home was get into an ice bath, because for him it “brings everything to the surface.” He’s clear that’s his experience, not a rule for everyone. His bigger point is about stress. When you’re in a heightened state, he finds people often try to calm down too soon. Sometimes he’ll meet that energy with a bit of deliberate stress, then breathe and bring himself back down. That’s the heart of nervous system regulation: you don’t skip the stress, you learn to come back from it. If you’re thinking about cold exposure, check with your doctor first.

Breathwork is a big part of Nash’s work, and it’s something he helped me go through when I was feeling overloaded. I had an unexplainable symptom. I was overloading my system with supplements and had other stresses compounding. He gave me access to an audio, and the breathwork really helped.

Focus on the controllables and see life beyond it

Nash has a young family. “You’ve got little mouths to feed,” he said. “I’m like, okay, my primary role here is to be here for my family.” “What are the controllables here? I’ve got to focus on those because it is pointless spiraling.”

He also pointed to Viktor Frankl, who held on to a vision of life beyond the concentration camps. “It’s not about not feeling through what needs to be felt through,” Nash said. “It’s like, what’s on the other side of this that I’m going to hold on to?” When his sister died, he went back to the same practices that got him through his brother’s death, even though he didn’t want to.

I said to Nash that personal development sometimes teaches us we control every single aspect of our life, and that’s not always the case. What we can control is our perceptions, our decisions and our actions. Sometimes things just catch us on the blind side. He couldn’t control what happened to his brother or his sister. Accepting that is close to the Stoic idea of amor fati: say yes to what already happened, then get to work on what you can still shape.

Turn the mess into the mission

Three days after his brother’s death, Nash kept a promise to a client who was attempting a Guinness World Record for a cause. Watching her carry a message through a physical challenge planted an idea. He had a deep value on health and fitness. Could he do something like that?

He did. He set the Guinness World Record for the most T-rotation push-ups in 24 hours, with 6,181. He says they weren’t doing it for money. The point was the message: check in with yourself, be courageous if you’re struggling, reach out to someone who can genuinely support you, then make a change.

“Whatever the biggest mess is, that becomes the mission,” he said. “The mess needs to be cleaned up by someone. Who’s going to grab the mop and start mopping?”

I told Nash he’s a living, breathing, walking example of diving into life and coming alive. He’s since carried the same message into more endurance challenges. “There’s power in knowing your values, linking your values and committing to causes bigger than yourself,” he said. “We can sit around, we can be crushed or we can say, how am I going to use this?”

Grief comes in waves

My heart goes out to Nash. I know the feeling of loss. There’s a lot of grief that comes with losing a brother and a sister so close together, and grief comes in waves. Sometimes you feel like you’re drowning in it. I told him I’d imagine he learned a lot about capacity, and that I applaud him for moving through it and coming out even stronger.

Loss like that also makes us face our own mortality. How long am I going to be here? What do I want to do with my life while I’m here? Nash said he’s always felt the fragility of life. His youngest daughter needed major heart surgery right after she was born. Those experiences, he said, gave him empathy. “When I have a client who shows up and they’ve been through an extreme thing, while it’s different, I know what it’s like to have been in huge adversity.”

Someone who mentored both of us used to say that when you continue to live in a fantasy, it slowly and surely becomes a nightmare. Exploring both sides, the grief of life and the joy of life, keeps you balanced in the center.

Check what’s driving you

I’ve had a lot of guests on Addicted2Success. Sometimes it’s great to hear the motivational pump-up, but it’s also good to hear the technical side: what’s actually happening in my body and my brain, and what can I do about it? So I asked Nash what he does with high achievers burning the candle at both ends.

“Look at the driver of success. That’s always where I start,” he said. He’s seen pro athletes driven by a need to impress a parent or a coach since they were six, and founders holding huge companies because they feel deeply lonely or not good enough. “Don’t lie to yourself,” he said, “because it will erode in the background.”

He also shared a line from Robyn Moore, the Australian voice of Blinky Bill. When he asked what keeps her so driven, she told him: “I’m not driven. I’m drawn.” Purpose that pulls you is healthier than pain that pushes you.

We talked about the Superman complex too: trying to manage everything because no one else can do it perfectly like you. Then Nash turned the question on me. I told him that asking what success looks like when it can’t just be about achievement opens a box a lot of people haven’t looked in. That was a big thing for me. I was in a very insecure stage, dating a woman and giving away so much, without much coming back. My friend Ben finally asked me, “Why do you think I’m friends with you?” Then he listed probably about 50 things for five minutes. The more he said, the more I realized I wasn’t accepting those things. I started tearing up. How does he see that, but I don’t? I’d just been in this performance. You’ve got to find something deeper than accolades.

The biggest thing for me was forgiveness. I realized I wanted to be chosen. I didn’t feel I had that reciprocal love from my father, and I had to achieve things for him to pay attention. It wasn’t until I had a forgiveness conversation with him, and sealed it with what I’m grateful for, that it transformed our relationship. I redefined what it meant to actually love and be loved.

Don’t build your identity around the wound

I asked Nash something controversial. Have we gone too far into validating people’s trauma and not far enough into teaching them how to become strong again? Don’t be a feather in the wind. Build your house on rock, not on sand.

He pointed to The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, which draws on Alfred Adler’s psychology. Nash was careful. He acknowledges trauma is real, and he has a lot of compassion for people who are in it. His concern is identity. “When people start forming an identity around ‘I’m a traumatized person,'” he said, “I see that as, well, a pretty unproductive way to live.”

I like how he said we should challenge our beliefs. Just because you’re told something for a long time doesn’t mean you should adopt it. And we can’t over-identify with the trauma, which can be limiting. None of that means skipping professional help. It means not letting the worst thing that happened become the only thing you are.

Build capacity before you ask for more

When I asked about the biggest lie in personal development, Nash said it’s that you can reap a harvest without planting seeds.

His fix is to own where your feet are. Bring order to what you already have: the messy shed, the chaotic room. “Why would you expect more when you’re not looking after what you have?” And if you’re overwhelmed, he said, you’re literally declaring you’re at capacity. Daily habits should build mental, emotional, physical and spiritual capacity, so you can hold more.

Even after a world record, he told me he feels like he’s playing at a level three out of 10. I said, “Man, I don’t know what level I’m playing at if you’re at a level three, breaking records.” For him, the next level isn’t doing more. It’s depth.

When I asked what makes a life well lived, he talked about the day people stand up to say a few words about you. “If there’s more people than not who feel a little bit of love within their systems when they reflect on you as an individual, I think that’s a life well lived.”

How to turn pain into purpose: 7 steps

1. Decide, as early as you can, that this will be used for something.
2. Don’t carry it alone. Call someone you trust and talk it out.
3. Feel what needs to be felt, then come back down with breath, movement or rest.
4. List what you can control today and put your energy there.
5. Picture the life on the other side of this and hold on to it.
6. Pick one cause or message bigger than yourself and take one action for it.
7. Build capacity with daily habits before you ask life for more.

FAQ

How do you turn pain into purpose?

Decide the pain will be used for something, get support, focus on what you can control and connect the loss to a cause bigger than you. Nash Mackey calls it turning your mess into your mission.

Can you find purpose while you’re still grieving?

Yes. Nash Mackey says purpose doesn’t replace grief. You still feel what needs to be felt. Purpose gives the grief somewhere to go and something on the other side to hold on to.

What does “turn your mess into your mission” mean?

It means taking the hardest thing in your life and using it to help others. For Nash Mackey, that meant a Guinness World Record to encourage people to check in and reach out.

Is it unhealthy to build your identity around trauma?

Nash Mackey says trauma is real but forming your whole identity around it can keep you stuck. Acknowledge it, get professional help when you need it and don’t let it become all you are.

Where can I get help if I’m struggling right now?

In the US, call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. In Australia, call Lifeline on 13 11 14. Elsewhere, contact your local emergency number or crisis line.

How to master your inner game comes down to one shift: stop fighting the effect and go find the cause. Strategy and mindset coach Jeffrey Combs puts it bluntly. Procrastination is an effect, not a cause, and if you keep telling yourself you don’t know why you do what you do, you’ve got no ability to respond. Find the cause, simplify how you work and put your energy into skills instead of chasing success.

The first time I ever saw Jeffrey speak was out in San Diego. One thing that really stood out to me was that he was standing at the door, greeting each and every person who walked into the room before he jumped on stage. I highly respect that.

By his own count, Jeffrey has coached more than 9,000 clients and has been an entrepreneur for over 30 years. I remember that back in the late 90s he was a successful network marketer. He moved into speaking and then found his niche in coaching. He once said his real skill is helping people find the cause behind their effect, so I asked him how he pinpointed that.

Procrastination is an effect, not a cause

His answer started with his own life. “First of all, I’m a recovering addict and alcoholic,” he said. When we spoke, he had more than 26 years of sobriety with no relapses, after spending 14 years addicted to alcohol and drugs that, in his words, “allowed me to dull the pain.”

Getting clean didn’t fix everything. Jeffrey said he spent the first several years of his sobriety as “an angry, dry drunk, not really understanding why I couldn’t succeed.” He’d experience success, then sabotage it, or something would happen and it would all go away. That was the effect, and it kept leading him to the same disappointment.

What changed things was learning how cause and effect works in the brain. “If anyone listening has tendencies of procrastination, procrastination is an effect, it’s not a cause,” he said. “The causes that create our feelings are based on a series of events and, most importantly, how we perceive them.”

Once you understand the cause, he said, you can let go of the effects. “But if you continue to live in the effect and live in denial and tell yourself you don’t know why you do what you do, then there’s no ability to respond.”

That’s the inner game in one line. Most people attack the symptom. They download another productivity app, set another alarm and promise themselves Monday will be different. Jeffrey’s point is that the behavior is downstream. If the way you perceive events hasn’t changed, the effect keeps coming back. John Demartini comes at a related question from a different direction, on values, in why you’re not sabotaging yourself.

Where his cause-and-effect lens came from

I asked Jeffrey who put him on to neuroscience. Did he read a book, or did somebody coach him on it?

Nobody coached him. He started reading voraciously in the 80s as he got clean and sober. He also shared stages with Dr. Joe Dispenza early in Joe’s speaking career and booked him to speak at his own events, so he watched what Joe was doing and kept reading. Over time he pieced together the basics of what happens in the brain chemistry “that creates an emotional addiction that leads to an identity.”

We actually had Joe Dispenza on the Addicted2Success podcast and he was incredible. The knowledge he shared with us about the brain and the mindset showed what an unlimited world there is for us to discover.

Get off the practice shelf

We have a lot of entrepreneur listeners, and there’s so much information out there: podcasts, blogs, live events, video lessons. The biggest thing is finding the right information, so I asked Jeffrey how entrepreneurs cut through that noise.

He started with what people get wrong. “What many people do is they practice shelf,” he said, meaning their shelves are full of self-help books, podcast downloads and seminar notes. “They become seminar goers, but not active producers.”

He’s blunt about the money side, too. People rack up credit card debt on seminars and coaching and call it an asset. “It’s an asset when it’s applied. It’s a liability when it’s procrastinated on.”

Then he described the trap most people live in without noticing. “If you keep getting ready to get ready, waiting for that perfect mythical magical moment, you’ll never live your dreams,” he said. “You’ll just live in a wish, tiptoeing quietly through life, arriving at your grave safely, living the greatest pain, the pain of regret.”

His fix isn’t another book. It’s a business model you can run. If you’re not systemized, organized, methodical and detail conscious, he said, there’s a high probability you’ll be overwhelmed, procrastinate and end up disappointed. That’s the chain to break.

Inner knowing beats more know-how

To Jeffrey, the deeper problem is where people look for answers. “They never apply what they learn,” he said. “They keep looking for more technical know-how.”

He argued that school trains us to answer tests analytically and logically, and doesn’t reward creativity. Yet ideas, branding, intellectual property and the vision for a business don’t come from technical know-how. “It comes from your inner knowing, your being,” he said. “And that’s where so many people miss the mark.”

How to train your inner ear

I was listening to one of Jeffrey’s podcasts where he said people need to start focusing more on what’s meant and not said. So I asked him the best way to train your inner ear.

“You have to get out of your head,” he said. You have to stop living in the analytical, egoic mind, which is what he calls a human doing. “You have to learn to do less and be more.”

That doesn’t mean you stop setting goals. He wants you to learn how to “goal get”: how to achieve, produce, create results and live in the solution. The person still hunting for the next seminar speaker, the next event, the next rally is living in the problem. “It’s never out in front of you. It’s always within you.”

He also talked about attachment. When you’re attached to the outcome and overwhelmed by anxiety, he said, you’re separate from the result instead of one with it. I told him he was right. It’s good to separate yourself from the outcome and keep that anxiety out of your life.

Simplify or live in fight or flight

In one of his podcasts, Jeffrey talked about the power of simplicity. I think as entrepreneurs we tend to overcomplicate everything that comes our way, so I asked him for the steps every aspiring entrepreneur needs to take to simplify.

He laid it out as a chain. “If you’re complicated, you’re going to be unorganized. If you’re unorganized, you’re going to be overwhelmed. If you’re overwhelmed, your body’s in a constant state of fight or flight. There’s no joy. There’s no peace.”

The other side is simple work you can repeat. “If what you do is simple, you can duplicate it,” he said. Through repetition and experience, it becomes what you do and who you are. You build a reflex where you respond instead of react.

If you’re complicated, overwhelmed and not systematic, you’ll be winging it, and your brain never really relaxes. Dwell on the problem long enough, he warned, and you’ll create more of them to feed the craving. “You become addicted to disappointment.”

That’s a bad addiction to have, that’s for sure.

It’s also why simplifying is an inner-game move, not just an operations tweak. One clear offer and one checklist for the work that matters will do more for your head than a perfect plan you never touch.

Successful people focus on skills, not success

When I interviewed Joe Dispenza, he mentioned that most of the thoughts we have are the same ones we had the day before, and that we run mostly on autopilot from the unconscious. That’s where our habits come from. So I asked Jeffrey about the most common habits he sees in the successful people he’s coached.

“They do the same thing over and over with very little fanfare,” he said. “They can produce without recognition. They’re not seeking approval. They become very skilled.”

Then he made the distinction at the heart of this whole conversation. If he writes the word success on a whiteboard, that’s what most people want. If he writes skills, very few people focus on it. “The most successful people are highly skilled and they have great habits.”

Most people, he said, want instant gratification. They hit a little dip, look at their credit card statements and tell themselves, “I’m not where I should be,” without realizing they haven’t paid the price yet. “If you don’t master, number one, your emotional state and master the skills of the vocation, you’ll always be average.”

I told him we were going to have to change the website address to addictedtoskills.com.

Be patient while you’re productive

I asked Jeffrey about the biggest life lesson he’s learned. “Be patient,” he said. He got clean and sober at 31 and wanted 10 years of sobriety right away. Even with the drugs and alcohol put down, he stayed in an overwhelmed, addictive state.

“Patience isn’t something you do. Patience is what you become,” he said. “But you also have to be patient while you’re productive.” It’s the production while you’re patient, he explained, that creates the compounding effect. Focus only on reaping and you won’t master the skills to sow.

When I asked about the best advice he’d ever received from a mentor or someone he’d shared a stage with, he said the best advice he’s had is his own: listen to what he means, trust what he feels and don’t go against his own intuition.

I love it. Listen to yourself.

I can actually vouch for Jeffrey. I know a number of my friends have had amazing turnarounds and breakthroughs in their business and their life. His work lives at goldenmastermind.com.

I closed by asking what his last 30-second speech to the world would sound like. “Master the skills. Stay in the game long enough to master the skills. Be patient and focus on being a tortoise, not a hare,” he said. “Let go of trying to be the best and be your best, one day at a time, over a long career.”

How to master your inner game: 7 steps

1. Name the effect you keep repeating, like procrastination, quitting or blowing up a good month.
2. Ask what event and what perception sit underneath it. That’s the cause.
3. Pick one book or course you’ve already bought and apply it this week before buying another.
4. Strip one process down until it’s simple enough to repeat on a bad day.
5. Write down a skill you’re building, not a result you’re chasing.
6. Do the work, then let go of the outcome. Watching the pot won’t make it boil.
7. Measure yourself against your best, not the best, one day at a time.

FAQ

What does it mean to master your inner game?

It means understanding the thoughts, perceptions and emotional patterns that drive your behavior, so you can change the cause instead of fighting the effects. Jeffrey Combs frames it as cause and effect.

Is procrastination a cause or an effect?

Jeffrey Combs calls procrastination an effect. He says the cause is a series of events and how you perceive them, often made worse by overwhelm and waiting for a perfect moment.

What is the practice shelf?

It’s Jeffrey Combs’ term for shelves full of self-help books, downloads and seminar notes that never get applied. He says knowledge is an asset when it’s applied and a liability when it’s procrastinated on.

How do you train your inner ear?

Get out of your head, do less and be more, and stay present. Jeffrey Combs says the answers aren’t in the next seminar. They come from your own inner knowing and trust.

Why focus on skills instead of success?

Because skills are what produce success. Jeffrey Combs says the most successful people are highly skilled, have great habits and do the same work over and over with very little fanfare.