Ep 07 - Jim Coyle

"Thank God That's Not Me": Jim Coyle on why a bigger session count isn't the win

27 minutes | Host: Chris Beer Guest: Jim Coyle

Key takeaways

For years Jim's answer to almost everything was to work harder, 120-hour weeks chasing what he calls the busy badge, until he hit a session ceiling somewhere around 300 to 400 and something broke. He got bored, the work slid from transformation into transaction, and a few clients felt it and left.
His reframe is the whole episode: he doesn't see that ceiling as a wall to break through, he sees it as a line to stay under. In his words: "It's not a ceiling to get past. It's one to realize you don't want to go past it."
He's honest that this is hard for a striver to hear, because more is the whole religion. When a friend was thrilled to hit 145 sessions, Jim meant both halves of his reaction: he was happy for him, and "Thank God that's not me." The session count was never the scoreboard.
What actually fixed his practice was smaller and less heroic. He did fewer sessions and cared more, "I loved my clients more," and he named the part strivers avoid: "strivers are really bad at putting the oxygen mask on first."
His point for Implementers: taking care of yourself is not a break from the work, it is the thing that lets you be good at it. He's a better Implementer, dad and husband when he goes first, which is why he's building Next Us inside Nexus for those standing at the top of the mountain asking "now what."

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The Idea

Strivers skip themselves.

For years, Jim's answer to almost everything was to work harder. 120-hour weeks, several in a row. He has a name for the reward he was chasing: the busy badge. The trouble, he says, is that hard workers are efficient without being effective. "it's always better to be effective than efficient."

Then he hit his session ceiling, somewhere around 300 to 400 sessions, and something broke. He got bored. The work slid from transformation into transaction. "I no longer was transforming lives. I was ultimately just in a transaction." Clients felt it. A few left.

Jim doesn't see that ceiling as a wall to break through. He sees it as a line to stay under.

"It's not a ceiling to get past. It's one to realize you don't want to go past it."

That's a hard thing for a striver to hear, because more is the whole religion. Jim is careful about it. He talks about a friend who was thrilled to hit 145 sessions, and he means it when he says he's happy for him. "Thank God that's not me." That's not a judgment, it's just not his number. The session count was never the scoreboard.

What actually fixed his practice was smaller and less heroic. He did fewer sessions and cared more. "I doubled down and I loved them more. I loved my clients more." And he got honest about the part strivers avoid: "strivers are really bad at putting the oxygen mask on first."

Taking care of yourself is not a break from the work. It is the thing that lets you be good at it. Jim believes he's a better Implementer, a better dad and a better husband when he goes first, and worse at all three when he doesn't.

It's also why he's building Next Us inside Nexus, for implementers standing at the top of the mountain asking "now what," instead of reaching for another hundred sessions because it's the only move they know.

The Steal

The Steal: Run an alignment check

Use your next Clarity Break for one job: find where you're out of alignment before it costs you. Jim walks through the parts of his life, friends, immediate family, finances, spirituality, and asks two plain questions of each: where am I misaligned, and who am I out of balance with?

He's honest that most of us don't notice the drift until it's already done damage, so the whole value is catching it early. Resist fixing anything in the room, especially the urge to solve someone else's problem. Just name the gap. The repair is a different day's work.