Pod Insights Vision Pros Live Podcast Your Credentials Are a Cage. Here's How to Break Free Ft. Dr. Maureen Gibbons About this episode You did everything right. You got the degrees. You put in the years. You earned every title on your résumé. And somehow… you're trapped. Dr. Maureen Gibbons, physician, athletic trainer, triathlon coach, sports nutritionist, and author of Freedom to SHIFT, did the same thing. She spent 30+ years building credentials that became the very walls of her prison. Then she broke out. Without burning it all down. In this live conversation with Jackson Calame, Dr. Moe unpacks why being dangerously overeducated can be the biggest risk to your freedom, and what high-capacity professionals can do to stop grinding and start building systems that work when they don't.🔑 What we cover:→ Why credentials become cages (and how to recognize yours)→ The freedom framework Dr. Moe built after replacing her full-time income in 6 months→ How Jackson's systems-thinking connects to Dr. Moe's story→ What "high capacity" really means and why most people use it to stay stuck→ The first step out, without starting over#VisionProsLive #FreedomToShift #HighAchiever #ProfessionalFreedom #Burnout #CareerChange #Overeducated #DrMoeGibbons #JacksonCalame #LivePodcast #MidlifeShift #BusinessFreedom #SystemsThinking #FirstClassBusiness
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 00 Got Dr. Mo Gibbons or Dr. Marine Gibbons in the house and one of my, one of my team members like Jackson, she could be your twin. She's as controversial as you. You guys look like siblings. This is gonna be a photo. Like, oh my gosh, this is gonna be, sure enough, we dove in right away and Mo, you and I were like, going at it in a good way on all things entrepreneur and burnout and shifting. And you got a great book. You studied with Dan Martel as well. You get it. You really, really understand us. As we talk about credentials being a cage and how to break free. We've got two different angles we're going to talk about from that, but where do you want to start?
0:38 Speaker 01 Well, it's funny because you said, oh, you, you, you've, you've done these things. I'm like, yes, and I'm still falling on my face. Why? Because I am like the president of the dangerously overeducated club over here.
0:52 Speaker 00 That's fair. And I want to love this because we're diving into humility on the level of confidence, my friends. Humility is a full appreciation for oneself and everything else in the world too. And so, thank you for being, being able and willing to own the fact that you've studied your butt off throughout life. Right? You've been educated, educating. So, you know, what, what, what does the danger look like though? Cause some of us may be in that danger zone, but our blinds, blinders may be keeping us from seeing what we're doing to ourselves.
1:23 Speaker 01 So it's funny. I've learned that the blinders actually have layers that get peeled off.
1:27 Speaker 00 Oh, nice. Well said.
1:29 Speaker 01 As we're, as we're going, they're like, oh, look, I can see. Oh, no, I didn't see. Oh, crap. Okay. Here we go again. Because literally what the blinders look like is being with a very high level coach, having tremendous access to a coach. And not being coachable.
1:51 Speaker 00 Tell us more.
1:53 Speaker 01 There's a, there's a phrase, you know, in entrepreneurial life, you know, model then modify, right? Do what works. Even from the standpoint of I ran my practice differently from my standpoint, right? I had a super leaky bucket, but I was running it really well from my standpoint two years ago. So what did I do? I stopped doing it that way.
2:16 Speaker 01 Why? Oh, no, I know better. Hold on. I, I, I think I can do this better. No, how about you just do what works? Model then modify. Do what your coach tells you. Do what the people who are winning tell you.
2:30 Speaker 00 I wanna, I wanna hit this coaching topic though, kinda hard because I feel like there's so many underqualified and, and not great coaches in the world. And look, if you follow the Sacramento Kings game plan for winning the NBA championship, you're never going to win. Um, and so there are levels to this coaching thing. Again, I, you, I mentioned Dan Martel, you've coached with him. He's one of the best. How, do you, are you just saying just like Sabi, yes, man, to all coaches who come your way? Or let's break down the nuances of recognizing a great coach and knowing where your education protects you versus where your education may be throwing you off and putting you back in that cage?
3:08 Speaker 01 You know, that's a, that's a really good point because I had actually someone tell me, oh, I don't think, and this is specifically about Dan because I, like where he comes from resonates with where I come from. I think that's your first, well, one of the, one of the items, because I had coaches before Dan that were good. They didn't come from the same place, but they did give me very good information. But once I understood Dan's origin story and his vision to where he's going, it is so much larger than I can even fathom. So I fit within that container.
3:43 Speaker 01 So that to me, my, like my prior coaches that were really good, they got me started, right? Got a nice little springboard or not. Some of them taught me exactly how not to be. Those were a couple of five figure mistakes there. Let's just roll with that.
3:59 Speaker 01 But it really, a good coach is different and a good coach will change throughout your journey as well.
4:06 Speaker 00 Sure. Well, and I'm going to play devil's advocate of my own thoughts on that because I don't think Michael Jordan's shooting coach ever won a championship. But it didn't make him a bad shooting coach either. And so we've got to be able to recognize the qualities that are there. I recently wrote an article on this called, Why Most Business Coaches Are Underqualified to Guide the People That They Serve. And to your point, I love the way you put that, that you fit within the container of what Dan is building. And that's one of the greatest challenges is most coaches have never built a business before. And so let's use a mindset coach, for instance, it's like, okay, I could, I could coach a basketball player on mindset. And help him become the most resilient loser in the league.
4:50 Speaker 00 Because if I don't teach him how to dribble and how to play defense and how to rebound. And how, if I don't know those things, then I really shouldn't be calling myself a basketball coach. I see a lot of business coaches who don't know what infrastructure looks like, who don't know what team members are supposed to be involved. And somehow they're coaching a business owner for years, having never helped the person escape the solopreneur or wantrepreneur reality. And it's like, what are you doing? How are you coaching them on business if you don't know how a business actually runs? It's crazy. That's a cage of its own.
5:24 Speaker 01 It is. And I'm going to play devil's advocate just a bit because I don't think they're malicious.
5:28 Speaker 00 Correct.
5:30 Speaker 01 I think they truly.
5:32 Speaker 00 Good intentions, isn't it?
5:33 Speaker 01 All right, right. It's golden, man. And, but really, they're not malicious. And like my prior coaches, they truly thought they could get me where I wanted to go.
5:43 Speaker 00 Yes.
5:45 Speaker 01 They could not. Think about this. I'm with a very good coach and finally, I'm coming up on exactly two years this month. I have 10 days left. Put my money up, not my funny up, as my kid says. But I've, I've coming up on two years and it has taken me this long to swing three different, like not just literally, the pendulum had to swing to find the barriers of that cage you're talking about.
6:12 Speaker 01 Because I didn't know, and now I'm settled. I'm like, oh, this is the way I do this. But it took me hitting those walls. It literally, it's like bumper cars took me hitting the walls and figuring out, well, this doesn't feel good. This is really what I want to do. You do, but not in that way. This is what you really want to do. And that's how we get to like the zone of genius versus zone of excellence. Right? We keep meandering until we hit those pain points.
6:39 Speaker 00 Yeah.
6:41 Speaker 01 Here I am.
6:42 Speaker 00 Well, I'm really happy that you said that. We had another guest come on the show who's been in minor league baseball as a professional and got a bunch of kids as well. Great guy. He was talking about, maybe some of you guys can delineate down to who it is. But he was talking about how he doesn't want to expand the size of his cage, you know, his golden cage that he has. Oh, man, right? And that's again.
7:03 Speaker 01 Every doctor.
7:05 Speaker 00 Right? If we, absolutely. First, we have to be able to see it. So we've, we've talked a little bit about ways to break free by making sure that we're educating ourselves and make sure that we have a coach. I want to talk about the other side of breaking free from this cage, though. I see so many professions, it boggles my mind how many professionals that have very, very good credentials accidentally posture as a means to showcase their value. And I think that's a very different set of handcuffs or cage. And what I mean by that, my friends, is the doctors who have a tendency to say, trust me, I'm a doctor. No, I'm not trusting you just because you have a piece of paper on your wall. Like, that's not happening. And that's, that's not good leadership. And so, you know, or, oh, I have a million views in my TED Talk.
7:49 Speaker 00 And so what I said must be important. You know, that's not substance. And so I see a lot of people, they get to this point of where they have these credentials that they hide behind or position in front of themselves. And maybe they think, well, I didn't mean it like, it doesn't matter. It's what the audience heard. We all heard you. Just use your credentials to try to make yourself important or make what your point is important, rather than learning that you gotta, you gotta create clarity around what it is that you talk about. If you don't want that to become a new type of chain for yourself. Thoughts on that, Dr. Mo?
8:23 Speaker 01 You know, I agree a hundred percent. And what you're, we do it innately, I think, because. We are broken as physicians by design. They break us down and then they build us up in the image of a physician. Now, what that looks like today versus what it looked like 100 years ago, those are in conflict and we're having trouble with that right now, with the reconciliation of that. But as you're speaking, I realized that I am not an authority in this space because I am Maureen Gibbons, M.D. I'm an authority in this space because I'm Dr. Mo and I get what you're going through.
9:00 Speaker 00 Talk to me more about that.
9:03 Speaker 01 It's not the degree on the wall. It's not the biochemistry classes. It's not the 30-hour shifts in residency. Yes, there's 30. It's legal. But it's not those. Those did break me down to be the person I am. Broke you down, build you up, because you have to do that. I talked about it today on a live, actually, on a public live, you know, that you have to be the kind of person who walks in, pronounces someone dead, and then treats the person who killed them. That's reality. When they say, "Trust me, I'm a doctor," it's because they have to. It's the way they stand up. Now, on the other hand, when you look at a good leader, "Trust me because I worked out this morning and
9:44 Speaker 01 I have the knowledge to help you." There's a difference. Do you, I mean, that feeling that's...
9:50 Speaker 00 Correct.
9:51 Speaker 01 "Trust you. Trust me because I trust myself." That's a leader.
9:56 Speaker 00 That's huge. And that leans into Ali Abdaal.
10:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, I love him.
10:01 Speaker 00 He's a very famous, you know, 6.6 million followers on YouTube. And when he was training us at a Kajabi event, he said that, you know, he just speaks from his own personal experience. He never, he never, the military does this too. It's called pulling rank. They don't, it doesn't help you with those who you're leading. It does work.
10:22 Speaker 00 In its essence, temporarily, but it also completely disrupts and erodes the the brand and the integrity of the authority that exists there. And so it's super helpful. And I saw all of you who don't have the letters doctor in front of your name. I don't have it either. I don't have a degree myself. I also strive really hard not to pull the founder card in situations where, you know, I'm I'm trying to influence or inspire my team. I'm guilty of doing it. But I can tell you, every single time I've done it, it has slowed us to a screeching halt. It has caused the challenger a problem. And then I'm trying to back out of that.
11:04 Speaker 00 And the sooner I just own what I did wrong as a leader and help them see like, okay, no, we are all on the same page here. We are all trying to build this. Well, guess what? Now I have to earn that trust back too. And so it is, it is a very, very bad thing to do to use our credentials to try to get our point across. And it doesn't mean our credentials don't matter. It's just learning how to be responsible and intentional with how we choose to lead. We're going to be diving in quite a bit further into other aspects of these angles and also a freedom framework that the Dr. Mo built for herself and that helped her get to full time income in six months. We'll talk more about the details on that, too. Mo, is there any, is there any other piece of wisdom that you want to share before we take a quick break? Anything that just comes to
11:49 Speaker 00 your mind about what we're talking about?
11:52 Speaker 01 I just think it's really important, like you said, to sit in who you are before the letters, beyond the letters, beyond the piece of paper, beyond that cage. Who you are is not constrained. You're an elephant tied to a stick.
12:11 Speaker 00 Oh, interesting. And that goes into one of my favorite TED Talks by JP Sears gave a talk on being authentically ourself. It is one of the most liberating aspects that we can dive into is how to, how to unlock, tap into our inner genius, our inner realism, who we really are. I love that you led with that. Thank you, Dr. Mo. We'll be right back. All right. Welcome in to Vision Pros Live with Jackson Callum. I'm your show host. We'll be doing interviews for visionary entrepreneurs and guest leaders who are building fantastic visions out there.
12:54 Speaker 00 Hey my friends. Today's talk is super raw and real, not incredibly cerebral, which I'm really excited about because most doctors come on, they just want to talk stats. And they just want to dive into frameworks only. But with Mo, Dr. Mo Gibbons, we're actually going to be talking a lot about some very real emotional intelligence factors for leaders and aspects of leadership that every single visionary needs to really understand if you're going to scale and become relevant on a, on a level where you've got thousands of people, millions of people or billions of people following you. It's so important to know as you, as you gain those levels of authority, how to balance the art of still being relatable and working with people on a, and appreciating people on an individual
13:38 Speaker 00 level while not allowing your credentials to create different types of cages for you. Because there are lots of traps that you can fall in. As a leader for this, I've fallen into many myself. Before I bring Mo back on, I also want to provide you guys another couple of resources. One is AI Mavericks. In fact, we had Scott Simpson, one of the founders of AI Mavericks on the show yesterday, and Austin Armstrong is his business partner. Yes, I have the AI marketplace. That's my community as well, but I'm also involved in other AI marketplaces. I would consider this like continued education. You want to learn from as many sources as you can. We all stand on the shoulders of giants. These are the two, the giants, the, whose shoulders I stand on. And I've seen them for the last year dive into advanced AI with an integrity that I don't see happen too often in the
14:23 Speaker 00 market. And so definitely check out joining Austin and Scott Simpson and seeing their posts. The AI marketplace is something that I designed to help professionals and business owners understand how to implement AI today. It may not be the most advanced of technical solutions, but ironically, Boston College University said that 70% of our time needs to be focused on training the people and the processes for AI, not the actual technology itself. So there's a lot of, of really crappy stuff that's being built by AI right now. And look no further than giant companies like Ring Central who have awful customer support systems because They've put AI in between their people and the people they serve. Not a good thing, Ring Central, by the way.
15:04 Speaker 00 Um, anyway, let me move on from my, my hate of their current customer service. My friends, you gotta find out what are the bottlenecks that you have that are truly addressable? And what are you gonna build that's productive and profitable? And I don't see too many AI trainings out there based on that. I see a lot of people building really funny things with bananas. I don't, I don't totally get it, but I really like it. Like it's neat and it's helpful. From a, from a personal standpoint, I guess, but business owners need profitability. If you can reposition yourself with the knowledge you already have and learn how to train AI as a true leader. AI needs you to step up as a leader. So professionals, you can do that. Business owners, you can also come in and benefit to see how are we using this for our own brands?
15:45 Speaker 00 And we're building an ecosystem of people to come together so that the rising tide lifts all ships. We have a program for founding members right now, fifty dollars a month for founding members or five hundred dollars for lifetime access. More importantly, for those of you who don't have the financial means to commit to this, there's a button on there that says get the free grant. You can come in for free. I don't want anybody left behind in the world of AI. I want everybody to be able to come in here and benefit from this. So just apply for the grant, see what the rules are for the grant process. They're quite simple. Uh, if you're one who is willing to give, you are also one who is willing to get in the process. Now moving to the water project, the water project is something that when I first saw it, I didn't get it. I've never been thirsty in my life. That's probably why I didn't get it.
16:28 Speaker 00 A team member really, God, didn't force me to look at it, but she really pushed on the idea that I should pay attention to it. And, and so I'm glad I did because I saw that these kids, they have to leave school just to find water for their community and their parents often have to leave work to find water. And you can imagine how excited our employers would be if we said, hey, I gotta leave to go get some essential resource for my family. We'd probably get fired just for that. Well, we've got millions of people in Africa who don't have access to one of the most essential resources on the planet. And I love that the water project shows us exactly what they're doing. And the kids who celebrate water, they celebrate water like my kids celebrate Christmas Day. We have the ability to make that type of generational impact. And what's really neat about the water project?
17:10 Speaker 00 If you pick a specific project and you donate to it, they'll send you an update so you can see what's happening with the community, what is it they're building and you get to see it come to fruition. So I love the level of transparency they've created in that. My friends, we've got eight billion people to help in this world. If you know of another cause that you'd like to see us support, please do us all a favor. Drop the link to the cause in the comments. I'll personally take a look at every single one of those. We might throw it on the show as well and talk about it. You never know how far the ripple effect of good will go when you just share with others. So let's get back to helping every single one of you with your visions. I'm going to bring Dr. Mo Gibbons back on and we're going to dive into this process, these credentials and these cages that they create. So again, welcome and thank you for being here, Mo.
17:51 Speaker 01 Thank you so much.
17:52 Speaker 00 Absolutely. So, you know, we're going to explore this to get two different angles, but as I mentioned, every visionary is going to eventually face this type of obstacle. Before we dive back into the obstacles themselves, though, I'd love to hear your version of your story, Dr. Mo. What, tell us about your path and your journey to where you're at today.
18:13 Speaker 01 Well, I think the most important shift that I've had, pun intended with the book, it's called Freedom to Shift is the book. So, but I use the word shift often because I think the most important thing that I've done is the identity shift that took me about a year and a half. I worked in, I've been a doctor for almost 20 years, traditionally trained in emergency medicine. Of course, did some things before that. And when the shoes started to feel too small, I started asking for improvements in the department. I started to not fit any longer. And any visionary out there who, who works for someone
18:58 Speaker 01 else, works in a system that is designed, it's, it's working as designed, right? Taking care of the people. You'll feel this where I, oh, can we do this? Can we do that? And natural leaders sort of gravitate into trying to make things better. So it wasn't working. And I've been trying for 45 years or so to get my own health in check, honestly, and I'm not exaggerating. I was 48 at the time. I went on my first diet at age one. This is not a new concept for me. But I didn't know it was a biological thing at the time. I just thought it was willpower because that's what I was told for many, many years. And
19:37 Speaker 01 When I started, I hit a point, July 4th, 2022, I hired my first business coach, my first new business coach, because I said, I'm never hiring another business coach. I've never pee any more money down the drain. This is not doing it. I buy a book, but I'm not hiring a coach. I hired a coach that day, and I started on a different aspect of my health journey. And within two weeks, my business started to take off. And I ended up, I was talking to a woman and online. So what I was doing is, as I was going through my journey, I started hopping on Reddit, Discord, you know, all the places, helping other people navigate their journeys. And I had a woman say to me, wait a minute, you're a doctor? And I said, yeah. She said, can you be my doctor?
20:22 Speaker 01 I said, I don't know, maybe. And she was my first patient. So I literally created a multimillion dollar telehealth practice by accident.
20:32 Speaker 00 Wow. Okay, so you created that telehealth practice, was that in 2022?
20:38 Speaker 01 That was July 15th, 2022.
20:40 Speaker 00 Okay. After the emergency room trainings and all the things you've done, I love what you said about how the shoes started to fit too small. You could feel that it wasn't, that's that's such a relevant reality for the entrepreneurs and the visionaries who are building out there. You're going to face those realities, sometimes within your own brand. And sometimes, if you're like I was, I was playing the role of the integrator for a lot of brands and a lot of visionaries. And so I was building other people's visions, incubating in preparation to one day launch mine, when I finally realized like, okay, I'm ready for this. I probably destroyed a few shoes with my foot size before deciding like, okay, yeah, no, I should probably move on and do this. So the Freedom Framework that you built after replacing your full-time
21:25 Speaker 00 income in that six months, walk us through the replacement process of six months. Was it a magic fairy dust path that was so easy to bring to fruition? And then we'll go into the framework.
21:36 Speaker 01 I wish. It was rainbows, unicorns, the whole deal. No, it was not. It was not. I was still working full-time. I still worked full-time for about another year. Actually, about, I didn't even drop, I asked to drop a shift about nine months in, because I was making two-thirds of my income. And I finally asked my boss, can I, I want to drop a couple shifts, because I had told them three years before, hey, listen, as soon as I can decompress, I know I can be a better doctor, if I had a bit more bandwidth. So this is what I, you know, I asked and I promptly got removed from my job.
22:12 Speaker 00 Oh.
22:14 Speaker 01 So this, this wasn't where, oh, I graduated and all had all this nobility where I'm ready to strike out on my own. It was a, I mean, I was making two thirds of my income. I, I still had a full-time job, but they put me in a small emergency department. I was, I was put out to pasture, so to speak. And I've been in this career a long time. I lasted much longer than most women and most men as well, but men stick it out longer because they have to in today's society and for, take that for what it is. And it's reality. I mean, let, it's reality. And
22:54 Speaker 00 Talk to us about that. Why is that?
22:56 Speaker 01 Um, women, especially with what has happened in the past seven or eight years, six years or so, uh, women, I believe have, we're not going to take any more time away from our children.
23:16 Speaker 01 Like there's a pull that we now, I also understand from the male perspective, they have to provide for said children as well.
23:23 Speaker 00 Sure.
23:23 Speaker 01 And I, I believe it's innate. I don't, and I'm not saying every man and every woman, but I'm saying as a, as a whole, what I see, right? And I, uh, when my son was born, for example, I worked half time for two years, which was a gift that my husband gave me, right? By allowing, not allowing, but you know, it was a family decision.
23:44 Speaker 00 You guys worked together on it.
23:46 Speaker 01 Yes. And especially when we had to homeschool our children for a while, a lot of doctors just said, I'm not going to do this. My kids come first. I can't do it. I'm staying home. And because the level of stress, like I said, the stress is no joke. Uh, because you literally have lives in your hand, but it's just a really interesting dichotomy. I actually have a friend who said, I can't work fewer shifts because I have an expensive wife style.
24:22 Speaker 01 And I had never heard that said before. And I thought,
24:25 Speaker 00 You say I have an expensive wife style?
24:27 Speaker 01 Wife style.
24:28 Speaker 00 Yeah.
24:30 Speaker 01 And because doctors make good money. I'm not gonna, we make good money.
24:36 Speaker 00 Sure.
24:37 Speaker 01 Except we make just enough to stop us from wanting to make more.
24:45 Speaker 00 Just an, oh, okay, gotcha. So there's, there's some complacency that it sounds like creeps in.
24:52 Speaker 01 Complacency and the elephant tied to the stick. We think we can't go anywhere. Oh, I'm trained as a doctor. What else do I know how to do? I'm sorry, if you can run a trauma at three in the morning, you can do a lot of things in business. I hate to tell you.
25:08 Speaker 00 Right. I'll say the same thing with professional athletes.
25:10 Speaker 01 Hundred percent.
25:11 Speaker 00 It makes me sad. How many athletes think that there's just a dumb jock? Um, when in reality, holy crap, the amount of lessons they've learned on operations and teamwork and leadership. And you can just keep going through that list.
25:24 Speaker 01 Yes.
25:25 Speaker 00 They are well prepared and suited for entrepreneurship.
25:28 Speaker 01 A hundred percent. Yeah, I have a lot of professional triathletes that stay with me. Say in our home, in our home throughout the year and we watch them. And it's, it's kind of fun sometimes watching them when their careers do end, not fun for some. But a lot of them, watching them shift into their new, their second part of life, because that's what we think, right? We think, oh, of course, an athlete's going to retire. And I heard it once said, every job has an expiration date.
25:59 Speaker 01 And I thought, oh, doctors don't think that. And the public doesn't think doctors should.
26:05 Speaker 00 Right. As well. And there's a lot, and I wouldn't worry too much if you're a doctor, when we're about public opinion. Just saying, um, you know, general pop is not going to guide you on a, on a lesson on a path that is not general pop. You've got, uh, you've got a different lifestyle that you need to live. And so with that though, I think that for, I'm speculating here, but if I were a doctor and I had studied hard, pretty much by myself for the Seven years and I go through residency and all that. I've done everything me, me, me. Um, right. And then getting involved in the system where I am, I still refer somebody as a boss. Um, and so I've got this mentality of employee. Now it's time for me to consider going off on my own.
26:47 Speaker 00 I could see myself accidentally staying in my cage, especially as a man. Why men are from Mars, women are from Venus. As men, we love to go into our little caves and build things by ourselves. We're not going to go ask for help. We don't want help from others, but you're going to create a train wreck of a business by yourself. In that reality versus, look, if you got to stay in the cage, that's fine, but expand your cage to the size where at least a couple of executives can come in. And guide you on that. And that's where I would say back to credentials being a cage. That's one of the most common mistakes I see of entrepreneurs, whether they're a doctor. Or whether they ended up getting five to 10 years of experience in another field. They then feel they have to go do it and have to figure it out alone.
27:31 Speaker 00 How do we help them overcome that and realize you want to get into? A mastermind or into the, into shape where you've got people who can help you?
27:42 Speaker 01 I honestly am not sure how to convince people. That you cannot do it alone.
27:51 Speaker 00 Cause they're like, well, so and so's nephew did. It's like, you don't want to prepare to be the anomaly. Like, good, like, why do you want to try to beat the, the odds, you know, that are super scary and risky like, no, get, get people. So I'm, I'm glad you said that, um, that, uh, we don't quite know exactly how to help people see past themselves. My hope is that these types of interviews though.
28:11 Speaker 01 Yeah.
28:12 Speaker 00 Will lead people to say, you know what? Dr. Mo is honest. She's open about her path and maybe, and she's, you know, while you, you kind of judge yourself, but I think you'd do it with love. Um, and so I could see you doing the same thing with those individuals like, hey, I'm not here to, to paint you as, as wrong or as a failure. But guys, those who listen in, visionaries. Lean into leaders like this that are helping to see around the corners that you have not yet been through, because there are lots of them. That can trip you up as you, as you move along. So let's hear about this freedom framework.
28:48 Speaker 01 So I've come to call it a little bit even past the book because I'm writing the second book in the series now. It's the shift operating system. You know, shift stands for success happens in focused transitions. And the reason it stands for that is because I don't like being blindsided. So when I have something and it happens every day. I mean, those of you in business, like, what do you mean? Like, I don't like being blindsided, but I put myself in a level two trauma center overnight for 13 years because I like predictable, which doesn't sound at all like what I'm saying. I put myself in that situation because it's exposure therapy. It helped me learn to handle the blind side, right? You don't
29:32 Speaker 01 know what's walking in your door. You don't know what somebody's going to dump on your doorstep. So what that does is I, and I didn't even realize this at the time, but that's taking that transition and making it yours. How do you create an environment such that you can create your success? And the four anchors in that system are worst day system, which is the minimum amount you can do to make your success inevitable. And you are defining your success. You are painting that goalpost. You are planting it. It does not move unless you move it. So stop moving it. And so, and then there's the biology of better. You cannot ignore your health. It's just, if you, if you have your health, you
30:15 Speaker 01 have 99 problems. If you don't have your health, you have one. The clarity process, which is finding a direction. It's not finding the perfect direction. It's just finding the next step, right? You don't need to see the whole path. You just need to see the next step. I get it. It sounds trite, but it's God's honest truth. And then the freedom filter. That's an easy one. That's, does it get me health, time, or money? If it doesn't get me those things, I don't do it.
30:46 Speaker 00 Does it give you time?
30:48 Speaker 01 Health.
30:48 Speaker 00 Health. Or money?
30:53 Speaker 00 Good.
30:55 Speaker 00 I'm writing notes, my friends. I hope you guys are too. These are amazing opportunities. I want to play devil's advocate a little bit on the clarity process. I agree and I disagree. Novel concept. These are, these are normal realities, visionaries, because you know, if, if somebody's not taking their vitamins, they probably need to take their vitamins daily from here on. If somebody's taking their vitamins, but they're not drinking water, they probably need to drink water. And so there's, there's different realities on this. So clarity process goes hand in hand with what I've heard from Dr. Todd Snyder, who's one of my favorite coaches as well and, and P performance trainers. And he talks about the speed of certainty and speed of certainty, meaning I use the analogy of like, if we're going to run a race
31:37 Speaker 00 and somebody turns the lights out and you can't see where you're going, it's the fastest way to like, stop people, even if there were no obstacles, you just start to imagine them. And if you turn the lights on and people can see where they're going, people can run at their full capacity. So the clarity process goes hand in hand with speed of certainty. And I do agree, it's so important to be able to focus on that next step. All right. The, the, the little milestones along the way. But I do think that we've got to have the guide or the existing knowledge of knowing where the end goal is as well.
32:13 Speaker 01 Agreed.
32:13 Speaker 00 What are your thoughts on that, Dr. Mo?
32:15 Speaker 01 No, I do agree. I have a, I have a framework called the VGA framework, which is it's vision, goals and actions.
32:22 Speaker 01 It's really easy though, especially as visionaries to get stuck in that, oh, I've got this pie in the sky vision. I mean, I did it for the last six months. I screwed up a lot of things, you know? I learned a lot of lessons. Let me rephrase. Because I have a vision for what I want to build. I have a mission. My mission in life is to create safe spaces for people to be and grow. Well, as Dan does say, Dan Martel will say sequencing equals success. Not common to him, but it's where I hear it the most. And I found out that I was doing it out of order.
32:56 Speaker 01 I need to create that in a space where I do it effortlessly now, and it will grow into that other space. So yes, you absolutely have to have a big vision.
33:09 Speaker 01 Because otherwise, there's no pull. It's kind of boring. You're like, okay, fine. So like, say, for example, sometimes I'll tell people, just make enough money on the side to replace one shift, you know. So for that $2,000, make that $2,000 so you can drop a shift. I can guarantee they're not going to drop the shift. I didn't. I stayed way too long at the party. Like I said, I was making two thirds of my income before I even asked to drop a shift. Because as my husband says, my backup plans have backup plans.
33:39 Speaker 01 So that's it's, there's a balance between creating security and just going and screwing up.
33:46 Speaker 00 Absolutely. And in a market that's full of hustle and grind culture, right? How do we stop the grind? And, and how do we start building systems that work? That's one of the theories and concepts is to start building the systems that work. But how do we do that?
34:02 Speaker 01 Honestly, the first thing I have clients do is look at their calendar.
34:08 Speaker 01 Because, and it gets away from me. I do a calendar audit every three to four weeks. Why? Because that's about when I hit the pain point. That's how fast I'm moving. That is, it's just, that's when I hit the pain point of why am I so I have this level of anxiety. It's like I can feel it. It's like water. And it's, it's okay, I'm about to be underwater. What am I doing? And I'll look and I'll say, all right, you're packing way too much in. Could you please put lunch in your day?
34:38 Speaker 01 Silly things. It's, it's, but it's not. They're critical.
34:41 Speaker 00 Critical.
34:43 Speaker 01 They are critical times in your day. It's like when I ask my husband, how long? We have a standing joke. How long is it going to take to get there? And it's like 20 minutes? Could be a two hour trip. You know, it's in the calendar. Because we always joke, we always think things are going to take so much less time than they do.
35:00 Speaker 00 Yep, absolutely. So I'll play upgrade advocate on this one. And so AMS, how many team members do you have?
35:11 Speaker 01 Right now, four. It got smaller.
35:15 Speaker 00 Oh, good. Well, ebbs and flows, refinements as well. There's lots of opportunities, but no matter how much you look at your own calendar, if you're not empowering other people's calendars, entrepreneurship is also one of those things that, you know, if, look, I could build a system using perplexity computer right now, AI, or I could build an agent chatbot. Not saying it would be the worst use of my time, but what's a far better use of my time right now is empowering Cindy Bernamal on my team to go play with perplexity computer. And when I say play, this is an individual who is well trained on AI,
35:55 Speaker 00 who understands the depths of AI, who has access to my strategic knowledge when she needs it, and I can always refine and audit what she does. But when I get to put things on her calendar, or ask her what she likes to put on her calendar, that allows me to create systems without me having to be the one who creates the systems. And we'll go back to Dan Martel's rule on this as well, the one, three, one.
36:17 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:17 Speaker 00 It's one of my favorites is what's the problem? Ask the team member, train the team member to go find three solutions and bring me back the one that they think is best, and they can self perpetuate and build amazing systems. So let's double down on, and by the way, my friends, I'll reveal truths. We've got a bias, Dr. Mo and I, Dr. Mo's not working with us. And so we've come in to start helping her brand as well in certain ways. And so building out the systems for that, too, we've keyed in on systems that may or may not have been on her focus, on what she's up to. But whatever we create in relation to those systems, frees her up probably from a challenge or an opportunity that she's not even aware of.
36:57 Speaker 00 And sometimes we might hit on things that like she is aware, and she's like, oh crap, I've been meaning to get to that for a while. And now she doesn't have to. So teams are a huge factor when it comes to systems. Mo, back to you.
37:09 Speaker 01 So funny that we're, we are actually replacing one team member with four.
37:15 Speaker 00 Wow.
37:16 Speaker 01 Because finally, finally, I have been coaching in a professional sense in this way, like truly dedicated coaching professionals, coaching, helping entrepreneurs. And when I say coaching clients as well, if you work for me, you become a high level client. That is one of the benefits. We have weekly coaching calls that you are involved in because again, empowering your people to grow, push, let's go. Because you know, I don't want to be out here by myself. And so we're replacing one with four. Because finally, it took me this long, and I won't even say five years, I won't, I won't belittle myself from that point, but two years since I knew how to do this. Never hire one person alone. Think about in a traditional medical environment or company
38:01 Speaker 01 environment, you have a job opening. Somebody leaves the job, the job sits open, you hire blah, blah, blah. Well, now we're actually bringing in four people to do the same job. We're splitting it up because I want that flexibility for my people. If somebody needs to take a week off.
38:16 Speaker 00 Exactly.
38:17 Speaker 01 Peace out. Have a good day. You know, we'll cover.
38:19 Speaker 00 Well, you're describing, you're describing with the one employee, what the E-Myth warns people about and how that person, they're burnt out, or they get hit by a bus, or they get recruited by a competitor. There's so many things that can, and like you said, or they stay and they don't have a work like balance. It's hurting their families. We as founders, we're contributing to that.
38:39 Speaker 01 Mm hmm. Yep.
38:42 Speaker 00 I'm all for what you're talking about. I love it. And it honors the rules of wealth, not the rules of, of common knowledge.
38:49 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:49 Speaker 00 Really, really wealthy people understand the value of the compound effect. And the sooner we learn to appreciate the compound effect, the better. I think the best CEO on the planet right now emulating it, um, not from his, I don't know anything about him personally, to be honest, but what, what he said recently, the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Huang, he said that they're going to be doubling their employment. And as they double their employment, and so everybody's talking about laying people off with AI. And he's like the creator of the AI checks and what's going on. And so he said that they're going to build their system out over the next 10 years
39:26 Speaker 00 or over the next decade, from 42,000 employees to 75,000 employees who work alongside 7.5 million AI agents.
39:38 Speaker 00 This guy understands the compound effect.
39:40 Speaker 01 Yeah.
39:41 Speaker 00 That the more hands you have, many hands make light work. And so we've got to learn how to get out of our scarcity mindsets, my friends, as visionaries, and think that we have to do everything, or to put everything on one person. I love that you brought in four people for the one thing, because if they're all able to focus on those different angles, and you're able to lean into productivity and profitability, then technically, every single one of those individuals should be contributing to even greater prosperity, revenue, growth, and profit. But of course, the nuance is how do we lean into profitability and productivity? And we can't answer that in the last 10 minutes of the show, but those are the exact types of elements we need to be thinking about as visionaries. So, we talked about stop grinding and building the systems at work.
40:27 Speaker 00 And the first step out, without starting over, was one of the other comments that I saw in this write-up that we had. So, stepping out, and maybe getting it without starting over, what does that mean to you? And how does that relate to systems and teams?
40:45 Speaker 01 Well, I think you're never starting over. And that's a fallacy, because you have all of your lived experience, you have all of your interests, you have all of your education, including every class you sat through. Everything contributed something. We're not starting over. You're, it's just every, it's life. It's, there's no road. It's just life. You know, it's like playing a video game. And I'm not a fan of open world video games. I'll admit that.
41:12 Speaker 00 Me either, actually.
41:13 Speaker 01 I want, can I have the next step? I mean, I love the Uncharted games. You know, I'm like, where's that white ledge? Can I have the white ledge?
41:21 Speaker 01 You know, because I like direction, which is, that's why I have a coach. Right? That's why I have people like you in my life, who I say, like, I don't know how to build me beyond where I am. How do I know? Because I'd be there.
41:37 Speaker 00 That's right. You are where you are. You're not going to be redundant. And so, those are, those are awesome, important realities. So, Dr. Mo, tell us, in summary, and really, we didn't talk about this yet, so it's also just, it's also just projecting it. What is your vision moving forward?
41:59 Speaker 01 You want goals or the real, well, the vision, I mean, my, my vision when I'm eighty five years old is still be coaching. It will be walking to the sunset, walking to the beach for sunset every day. You know, ideally with my husband hand in hand. And we, we walk to the beach for sunset. I talk about my books. I send the elevator back down. The third book in my series will be Freedom to Shine. The, the second one is Freedom to Spend. How are you going to spend these precious days you've been given? This money, this time you've created?
42:40 Speaker 01 And then the Freedom to Shine is standing in your space and helping other people just by being a lighthouse.
42:49 Speaker 00 That's awesome. I love that. And I see you doing that. I see you doing that. You're, you're already in that process. And that's what's so exciting to me is you, you live it, you breathe it, you get to bring that to others too. How we spend our time, my friends, I think all of us know that time is more valuable than money. We can't get it back. And money often liberates our ability to use our time even better. And so to go full circle on this aspect of credentials being the cage, whether it's the amount of money that we've made that has created that cage for ourselves, or whether it's the, the educational pieces that have also put us in a type of cage, or it's our work environments that have done so.
43:34 Speaker 00 There are lots of cages that we can consistently learn how to become free from. Where those of us from North America, especially the United States, we are, and then we are people built on the concept of freedom. And yet I see so many of us not tapping into it and, and running from responsibility that that comes along with it or missing out. We can turn to AI and ask it to give ourselves a freedom exam. Ask it, give yourself an assessment. How am I maximizing my freedom or not? And see what it unlocks for yourself. And I'm going to go right back to this process you talked about earlier. You talked about being overeducated.
44:14 Speaker 00 In a world where it's called the information age that we're in.
44:21 Speaker 00 I think that we're moving into a new age, what I'll call the curation age.
44:27 Speaker 00 But still, knowledge can can be a hamper and it can also be something that's valuable. I'd love for you to just give us as visionaries, some some final counsel. Well, what? How do we? How do we walk that sacred? Line or ledge of continuing to educate ourselves, but also protecting ourselves from getting into that overeducated situation where we box ourselves in.
44:54 Speaker 01 It's scary. It's really scary. Those of us, especially with traditional educations, somebody has set the path for us. We walk the path. We check the boxes off. We get the job, we retire, and then we die. It sounds like my own version of personal hell. Thank you.
45:12 Speaker 01 Like, duh, that's not going to work for me. And it's scary, though, stepping off the path. Those people on the path, your mentors, your family. I mean, I've gone through some stuff with my family and going, what are you doing? And I'm talking the ones that live in my house. You know, what are you doing? I can't believe you're going to do this. Why did you lose this good job? Which I, you know, I get it, I didn't. I I get five job offers every day.
45:42 Speaker 01 The cage is there, but the door is open. It just takes courage to walk through. And I'll be honest, I needed the courage of a coach who could figuratively hold my hand and say, I will help you walk through.
46:01 Speaker 00 That is awesome. So we'll always have access, by the way, to the safety of that cage. I shouldn't say always, in most cases, as long as you don't do something malpractice or illegal, then you're gonna have that option to go back. Stay a good person. You know, at the end of the day, visionaries, I dropped two more links in the comments based on some of what Dr. Mo just shared. Earlier, we were talking about coaches. So one of these links is for an article we wrote called, "Why Most Business Coaches Are Underqualified," and of course, then what to do with them and how to move your own life forward and find the right coaches. The other one, though, is a really abstract study on somebody named Stanley Milgram.
46:42 Speaker 00 And Stanley Milgram came up with this theory and this idea that we, as a society, most of us are stuck in what's called an agentic state. It's the exact thing that Dr. Mo described, the people who get on this career path or this education path and then feel stuck and like they can't get off of it. One of the most important things that you can do, if you feel like you might be there, is dive into some self-awareness. And of course, like Dr. Mo said, ask somebody about coaching, especially somebody who relates to you. There aren't too many people on this planet, in my opinion, that are more relatable than Maureen Gibbons. So I do recommend leaning into her and what she's up to and how she's building things. That's also why I wanted to work with her. She said she's got five job offers per day.
47:24 Speaker 00 So do I. You guys see the thousands of people who come on the show and talk about leadership, and we love to build visions, but we can't build everybody's vision. So it's really fun to be able to come across people where I'm like, oh, my gosh, this person gets it. They got the essence of greatness. They're going places with this. And so, Mo, thank you for trusting us to start working together. And thank you for bringing this vision to life. I love, I didn't know about the two books. I hadn't heard about this, my friends. And so now that I see the series of books, I'm like, whoa, this vision just got that much more holistic. So, visionaries, if this is your, if you haven't come on the show before, in the top right corner of visionproslive.com, there's a button, this is "Be Our Guest." Click on that button, come and join us. You don't have to be a world-class coach,
48:07 Speaker 00 a doctor who's got ER experience and who has a telemedicine company as well. You can be getting started in your vision. We'd still love to hear from you and see how you're helping the world. I'm gonna go one more time back to Mo, though. Mo, fortune cookie style, last piece of wisdom for visionaries.
48:26 Speaker 01 Just take the step.
48:28 Speaker 00 Just take the step, my friends. We'll see you on the next episode. Thank you for being here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward. This is going to get more and more fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well. We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time and attention. Have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro.
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