In this episode of Inside Strategic Coach, Shannon Waller interviews Colleen Bowler, a Strategic Coach Associate Coach with over 20 years of experience. Colleen shares her journey from an early entrepreneurial mindset, influenced by her family, to becoming a leader in the financial planning industry. They discuss Colleen's current company, C&J Innovations, and her leadership in the industry, as well as her passion project, Generous Kids. Tune in to learn how Colleen's early entrepreneurial mindset shaped her career and the impact of Strategic Coach on her journey.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

The power of collaboration and identifying individual strengths in an entrepreneurial journey.

Strategies for personal and professional growth, emphasizing continuous learning and development.

Insight into building successful firms and the impact of empowering others.

Practical examples and applications of concepts such as Unique Ability® and strategic growth.

The importance of quick assessments in empowering individuals and advisors for success.

Show Notes:

• Colleen shares her journey and early exposure to an entrepreneurial mindset, emphasizing the value of hard work, earning opportunities, and the importance of translating this mindset two her own parenting.
• She also highlights the importance of systematizing the predictable to focus on connecting with clients—a key strength for entrepreneurs.
• Colleen explains how she built a top financial planning firm by empowering her team and avoiding the "I" mentality, instead using "we" to serve clients.
• Colleen talks about how Strategic Coach® helped her achieve real work-life balance, going from not taking any time off to taking a week's vacation within two years.
• Colleen referred 10 people to Strategic Coach before even qualifying herself because she saw how the Program helped people achieve an extraordinary quality of life.
• One thing that makes Strategic Coach workshops so valuable is that they’re led by other entrepreneurs who understand firsthand the challenges members face.
• Colleen highlights the value of being around like-minded people and getting her "butt in the chair" every quarter for creativity and growth.
• Colleen talks about selling her firm and starting her new venture, C&J Innovations, where she creates assessments for financial advisors.
• These assessments help advisors align with clients' future goals and mindsets for better relationships and growth.
• She also promotes her passion project Generous Kids, teaching the habit of giving to children.

Resources

The Experience Transformer®

More about Colleen

C&J Innovations

Unique Ability®

For 35 years now, The Strategic Coach® Program has been helping entrepreneurs to achieve business success and business growth while living happy lives. But Dan Sullivan didn’t set out to create a program for entrepreneurs. He set out to create a thinking program, and entrepreneurs are the ones who took to it the most. In this episode, Dan talks with fellow business coach Shannon Waller about the genesis of Strategic Coach® and why it works so well for entrepreneurs.

Here’s some of what you’ll learn in this episode:

• The learning experience created by others that’s had the most influence on Dan’s thinking today.
• The ways of thinking on which Dan based The Strategic Coach Program.
• How constantly growing in capability and confidence protects you from worrying about the future.
• What lets Dan know he’s created a timeless thinking tool.
• Where all Strategic Coach thinking tools come from.

Show Notes:

The entrepreneurial game will continue for as long as you’re up to it.

Each person can take the actual experiences of their daily life and develop them into knowledge.

The challenges you face each day are sufficient to create a lifetime learning program.

It's easier to get things created and produced these days than it was in the old days.

Entrepreneurs have to be learning on a daily basis, while many non-entrepreneurs don’t have to do much learning after they get the job.

Some non-entrepreneurs view having to learn new things as a chore, while entrepreneurs see it as an advantage.

The bigger the problem and the faster the solution, the bigger the check for the entrepreneur.

Strategic Coach clients are never told what they should learn from using a Coach thinking tool.

It’s dangerous for an entrepreneur to get bored.

Entrepreneurs get punished most heavily for not changing their minds.

Entrepreneurs can make greater progress from thinking than people in most other lines of work.

As a group, Strategic Coach clients are uniquely confident and feel a unique sense of capability and confidence about the future.

Strategic Coach clients make more money and take more free time than a comparable group of entrepreneurs.

Entrepreneurs are the only people whose success depends upon being transformative.

Strategic Coach clients have a shared language thanks to the Program’s thinking tools.

The cause of most entrepreneurial problems is loneliness.

Resources:

The 4 Freedoms That Motivate Successful Entrepreneurs [Article]

Unique Ability®

Who Not How by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy

The Entrepreneurial Time System®—The Entrepreneur’s Guide To Time Management

The Experience Transformer®—Transforming Experiences Into Multipliers [Article]

The Impact Filter™