Ep. 211 Gary Acevedo - Your Business Is Stuck Where You Are

Gary Acevedo can look at a room and tell you what is about to go wrong in it. Not the strategy, the thing underneath. He has spent forty years on this, starting from a first year of college where he was brilliant, capable, and a week from a nervous breakdown. What pulled him out became the work. He founded Rise Leadership Group and The Awakening Retreat around a claim most founders resist on instinct. The business is stuck exactly where the founder is stuck, and effort does not fix that. The résumé is real. AT&T hired him on the spot after forty five minutes. He has taken a client from a million a year to seven. But the useful part is what he learned along the way, which is that everyone runs one of two theaters in their head and most people live almost entirely in the one built from fear. That is where the ego lives, and the defensiveness, and the procrastination you cannot explain to yourself. Jennifer pushes on it from the brand side, since Bright Marketing renamed their whole system to brand therapy after realizing the blocker was never strategy. It was leaders too afraid to pick one. Gary gives the tools away here. Three of them stuck with us. 1️⃣ You get scared, you get busy, and it makes everything worse When pressure hits, the instinct is to push. More effort, more hours, more grinding. Gary spent decades watching that reflex tank people's productivity instead of saving it. His fix sounds soft until you try it. Three breaks a day where you do something that actually lights you up, because you come back to the problem as a different person. Skip it and you keep solving today's problem with yesterday's exhausted brain. 2️⃣ You are not afraid of failing. You are afraid of what success would prove. Everybody says rejection is the big fear. Gary says that one is nothing compared to the fear of success. Push hard enough and you start pressing against the story you made up as a kid about what is wrong with you, and some part of you does not want to find out it is true. That is why smart people stall out right before the thing they say they want. If you keep almost getting there, look at what you would have to believe about yourself if you actually did. 3️⃣ Criticism does not fix anyone, including you There is a parent and a child in your head. When the parent is critical, the child does one of three things. Caves, rebels, or freezes. Jennifer named the version she sees in companies every week and called it functional freezing. Teams stuck in analysis, leaders who cannot commit, everyone waiting for permission. The move is turning that critical voice into a compassionate coach, because all pain is just asking for a correction. Keep criticizing and you will keep wondering why nothing changes. Timestamps: 00:00 Welcome to Hello Chaos 01:18 The breakdown that started everything 04:46 Flyers around town and no idea what he was doing 05:30 Why selling feels gross and enrollment does not 07:09 The coaching that took a client from 250k to 70k a month 09:07 The invisible thing every room has and most leaders ignore 12:17 The two theaters running inside your head 13:23 Working harder is why your numbers are down 14:44 Three recesses a day, even for the busiest people 15:02 The answer is never in your circumstances 16:36 Build the ending first, then everything else 19:39 How to melt your favorite jerk 20:37 The stranger he refused to let off the hook 25:35 The exercise that changes a sales floor in five minutes 29:38 The workshop nobody would leave 33:57 Why Jennifer started calling it brand therapy 35:37 The fear that is bigger than rejection 36:37 The parent and the child living in your head 39:01 Criticism is the fastest way to keep yourself down 41:35 Five to one, and seven to one at home 42:31 The teenage nightmare who got into seven PhD programs 45:06 How to hang up the phone on a bad thought 48:57 The one skill that moves you up in any company 52:11 What still moves him after all these years 56:53 One word for the whole journey Gary has spent forty years helping people get out of their own way, and this is where you go if that sounds like something you need. WebsiteLinkedInInstagram Thank you for tuning in! If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite podcast platform and share it with your network. We encourage you to join our community HERE and connect with us on social media for the latest updates and more great content.Connect With Us:LinkedIn Instagram YouTube