Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everybody,
and welcome to another episode
of the NeverPeak Project Podcast.
My name's Coach Ranger.
I walked across America in 2024,
but now I'm on a new adventure of self-employment.
And I've done one update so far
about what being self-employed is like,
a little bit about what I was doing that very first week.
And I haven't done an update since then.
I went on vacation for a little bit.
I went on a cruise with my fiance and her family,
and then I went to my dad's for a week up in the mountains,
the San Diego Reno, and I am finally back.
And I don't know, I always told my life coach,
my friends that were kinda asking me
what I was gonna do after the walk,
what I was gonna do when I get back.
And what I kept telling them was,
once I finished the walk, I wanna hit the ground running.
And what am I running to?
What am I running from?
Ooh, maybe that's more of a question of which one it is.
But I would really say what I'm running to
is being full-time self-employed.
And I kinda want to just talk a little bit
about the challenges that I faced,
the wins that I've had recently,
and a little bit about what's going on
in the world of within-range coaching.
So over the last few weeks,
I have been extremely focused on building connections
in San Carlos area.
I started building my business in Modesto, California.
I joined a referral network.
I was part of a couple little local groups.
And I was still in that first year of business
when you're really kind of taking kicks to the throat
is what I've been calling it.
It's kinda like that Rocky cut scene
where he is training constantly.
He is getting kicked in the face,
punched in the face, running, punching,
training, et cetera, et cetera.
And at the very end of it, he's in the ring.
And I think he loses in the first one.
I haven't seen that movie in forever.
But the idea is that there's that training montage.
And I felt like I was very much still
in that training montage.
I was part of Gold Star Referral Clubs.
And a lot of what I was doing every week
was going to the meeting and pitching my business.
I'd go to, I don't know, between one to two,
maybe three meetings a week on average
to meet new people, pitch my business.
And I would say that that elevator pitch
was kind of the bane of my existence for a while.
Really trying to break what you do
down into a 30 to 60 second snip is incredibly hard,
especially when you're in a group of other entrepreneurs
that are way more experienced than you,
no more than you do, no more people than you do.
And it just feels very intimidating.
It was always such an incredibly supportive chapter
and organization, but there's still that little bit of you
that says, this is scary.
Public speaking can be a little bit spooky.
But what I'm getting at with that is
now that I'm in San Carlos,
I kind of have to start all over again.
I was going to those meetings every single week,
one to three of them a week.
And then I left for six months
and I kind of just focused on making content
about my walk, focusing on day to day survival
rather than building my business.
I did plenty of work during the walk
in terms of a few presentations.
Like I did one called Pathfinder,
where I talked a little bit about how I decided
certain things and aspects about my walk.
I did one called Enrolling in the Deep
with Piper Hightower of 45 Degree Coaching.
And I recorded a couple of recorded coaching sessions
with a client.
And really a lot of that was just to keep me
in the idea of coaching, keep me sharp,
keep me talking about it, keep me engaged with the,
I don't know, what I was gonna be doing when I get back.
And in terms of what I've been focusing
on the last couple of weeks, I have,
let me write this down.
Or not write this down, look at my notes.
I joined a couple local chamber of commerce,
a couple local chambers of commerce.
I am a full member of the Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber.
So I've been involved with them for about a week and a half
and I've loved it.
They are incredibly supportive.
Krystle is the CEO or the C,
Chief Excitement Officer.
She has a cute title,
but she's been incredibly supportive
and incredibly welcoming to the whole chamber,
the whole system, how everything works.
And she's been dealing with my million questions
about understanding how everything works for sure.
They have great facilities too.
They have a classroom, a meeting room,
and a couple other setups that I'm gonna be using
quite a bit.
And being able to join a chat chamber,
join a group like that has just been great
in terms of me meeting a few new people
and not just getting my name out there,
but just learning about the cool people that are in the area.
My entire walk was focused around finding the good people
in the country.
And now it really much,
and now it very much feels like I'm finding the good people
in my neighborhood.
So I've loved that aspect so far.
I am joining the San Mateo area Chamber of Commerce as well.
Half Moon Bay is about 20, 25, 30 minutes away
from where I live and I'm in San Mateo County.
So it's, I don't know,
being kind of double dipping in the chambers,
but they offer very different things.
Like the business referral network that I'm joining
is a part of the San Mateo area chamber,
whereas the Half Moon Bay chamber
doesn't have any kind of referral network.
So being able to join those different chapters
or different chambers, see what's going on,
the different activities that they do,
the different people from this side of the hill
to the other has been really cool so far.
I've also joined the local Toastmasters, Promasters,
and I'll be focusing on my own keynote speeches
that I wanna be working on, workshops,
and really just being able to take the tornado of ideas
I feel I have at times in my head
and put it on paper and put it into written word,
I think is gonna be insanely impactful and useful for me.
And I was a member of a Toastmasters in Davis, California,
Davis Town and Gown Toastmasters for about a year and a half,
maybe two years.
And I also love that.
Again, everybody's just so supportive.
We all wanna see each other grow
so we're willing to offer productive feedback
that, hey, could've done this better, could've done this
better, this was great, good job, let's work on this.
I really like that structure.
They call it the sandwich method,
where you give a compliment, something to work on,
something good, right?
And the other thing that I'm working on joining
is the local Lions Club in Half Moon Bay,
or really just any service organization.
But I went to the Half Moon Bay Lions Club last night
for the very first time, and I don't know,
I just feel like I loved it.
Everybody there was super nice, super supportive.
You know, they kinda roused each other.
They messed with one another, making jokes,
and kinda, you know, screwing around.
But when they compliment or when they acknowledge someone,
you can just tell it's so genuine
that they really are there to support each other
and support the community,
and they raise a ton of money for local organizations,
and it sounds like they have something going on
multiple times a month.
And that's the kind of stuff that I love.
And the other thing I noticed that I thought
was really cool is a lot of the members
have been there for decades.
And what I like about that is it shows that,
you know, it's not just, there's a lot of members,
but there's a lot of members that have stuck around
for a long time.
And there was one member yesterday,
I didn't catch his name,
but he said that yesterday was his 40th anniversary
of being a Lion.
And he said something that did really resonate with me,
which I wrote it down,
and I wanna make sure I say it correctly.
There we go.
He said that really the main reason
that he has stayed a Lion for so long,
despite, he said that he's been involved
in a lot of other service organizations
and a lot of other clubs,
but Lions is the one that he stick with,
but Lions is the one that he stuck with the longest.
And he said that is because it really embodies the fact
that serving your community is not what you do,
it's who you are.
And I just really resonated with that message.
And I thought that that was such a great way to put it.
And that's kind of the community
that I've always been looking for,
that I'm always kind of seeking out.
So I am more than likely going to join the Lions
and be an official Lion, I guess, at some point.
I don't really know how their membership process works,
but yeah, right now I'd say that this chapter
is really about finding connections
and really just expanding my network.
I feel like that's something
that I've always been pretty good at
is seeking out organizations.
So now that I'm in a new area,
that's really what the focus is.
And the other thing that I'm really focused on right now
is starting to get into doing workshops,
doing a couple of workshops,
oh gosh, presentations, workshops, et cetera,
just this month.
I'm doing a workshop presentation
with something called the Enrollment Team,
which is just a group of about 10 to 15 different coaches
that I'm a part of,
where all of us talk about enrollment,
we talk about sales,
really just finding new ways to advertise, get leads,
and let people know about the stuff that we do.
And it's going to be about lessons in enrollment
from my walk across the country,
where I'm going to be talking about
how I structured my walk to be in a way
that resonated with others,
that they could relate to my message,
that they would join my Facebook page,
that they would join my lives,
that they would be invested in the journey.
And I just want to share with them,
I don't know, just the few things that I've learned
or what I think I've learned from that adventure.
And then the other two that I'm going to do this month,
I haven't quite decided at the time of recording this,
I haven't quite decided what the topics are going to be.
And I'm letting my following,
the people that are on my social media and stuff,
decide which one.
But right now there's five options.
They're going to happen on October 21st,
from three to 4 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.
And again, on October 28th,
from nine to 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time.
And there are five different options right now.
The first one is step one, turning vision into action.
Number two, mindset on the move,
how to silence the sabotaging voice.
Three, the power of purpose,
staying the course when the road gets tough.
Four, lily pads and leaps,
breaking big goals into manageable steps.
And five, no one is coming to save you,
extreme accountability for success.
And what I'm doing right now is I sent to my email list,
I posted it on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook,
and I'm letting my followers pick
which two I'm going to focus on.
It's going to end tomorrow, my birthday, October 9th,
and I'm going to take the two highest ones right now.
How to silence the sabotaging voice
and the power of purpose are in the lead.
So we'll see what happens over the next few hours,
see if anybody else comes up on top
when people get off of work and can't respond.
But yeah, that's really what I have going on right now.
And those are going to be free workshops.
So I'm going to try to get this episode uploaded today.
And if not, I mean, you'll have plenty of time
to still RSVP, but again,
whatever two workshops I decide to go with,
they're going to be completely free.
They're going to be on Zoom.
So all you got to do is go to the link in the description.
It's going to be the first link at the very, very top
where you can register for this free Zoom event.
And two notes on that.
One, if you cannot make it, but you want to RSVP still,
go ahead and just do it.
Because I'm going to record each session
and send it out to everybody that RSVPed.
So you're still going to have the replay.
You can still go back and watch it.
And if you were there live, you're also going to get it.
So there's that.
And then two, if you are there live,
then you'll be entered into a mini raffle
that I'm going to be doing
at the very end of the presentation.
I haven't quite decided what the reward is.
It's going to be something like an Amazon gift card
or Starbucks gift card, something along those lines.
But I really just want to, you know,
do something for the community and reward those
that were able to make the time to come
and hang out with me on a Zoom call.
So again, the two presentations are going to be
October 21st from three to 4 p.m.
And on October 28th from nine to 10 a.m.
be sure to register in the link in the description
in the show notes.
And if you have any questions, feel free to ask.
And if there's still time to vote,
go ahead and shoot me an email.
But if not, then just shoot me an email anyway
of the ones that you would like to see next.
Because again, there's five of them right now.
These are just the first two that I'm going to focus on
for the month of October.
But other than that,
that's really all I've got going on right now.
A lot of networking, a lot of shaking hands,
a lot of kissing babies and putting together workshops
and writing out, oh, something else I forgot.
Man, I'm really bad at this ending the episode thing.
As far as the books go,
I think I might have three ideas for books now.
The first one is going to be the journal
where I am just doing a 175 day series
of every single day of my walk across the country
where I'm just writing out everything I can remember,
adding to it, et cetera, et cetera.
The second one is more of a self-help,
a self-help life coachee version of that
where I'm going to be talking about the different metaphor,
it's a different lifestyle,
lessons that I learned while I was on the walk.
So for example, the thistle episode that I did a while back,
that's going to be something that's in the book
once I flush that out.
If you want to know about the fields, Ask the Cows,
and plenty of other metaphors and lessons
that I learned during the walk.
So if you want to sign up to be notified
when those books come out,
go ahead and sign up for my email list,
which is going to also be in the show notes.
All I need is your first name and your email,
and I'll add you to that list.
And the third one is, I'm still thinking about it.
It's one of those things that I've always wanted to do,
but it kind of combines two things I've always wanted to do.
When I was little, I wanted to be a veterinarian.
And when I say little, I mean from age in the womb
to about 18 until I didn't do great in college.
But I wanted to be a veterinarian for cats specifically.
And when I was maybe 10 or 11,
I actually started writing a book about cats,
about cat care, nutrition, et cetera,
just based off of all the other cat books and magazines
and videos that I watched.
And I obviously never wrote it because I don't,
I wasn't an expert in cats or anything.
Pause.
And the other thing is during COVID,
I kind of came up with the idea of doing a children's book
about my reptiles, you know, just different lessons
or I don't know, shenanigans that they would get up into
that would teach life lessons, right?
It was like the bearded dragon, leopard gecko, snake,
spiders, whatever.
But then it really happened.
I couldn't really figure out how to do the art.
Couldn't find someone that was able to do it, whatever.
But the third book, what I'm thinking of doing
is kind of combining those two things that I wanted to do
but never happened.
And that is doing a children's book where it is Walker,
the cat that I found while I was walking across the country.
But he is the one walking across the country.
And it's more so about teaching these lessons
that I'm going to be doing my workshops on,
that I'm gonna be writing the book about
and putting it in a format that younger kids can understand.
I'm not quite sure the age range.
I'm thinking maybe like six to 10 years old
because I like the idea of it being more of a narrative
with pictures throughout as opposed to a picture book.
I haven't quite nailed it down yet, obviously.
But I think that could be something that is, you know,
again, beneficial, it can help people
and really just spread the message of the walk even further.
So again, if you wanna be notified about those,
sign up for the email list.
And I'm gonna keep talking about it on the podcast
and on social media.
But I think that's it.
I'm gonna call it it for now.
So again, a lot of networking, a lot of shaking hands,
a lot of kissing babies, and a lot of writing.
Not as much writing as I should be doing,
but still a good amount and a lot of things on the horizon.
So I'm gonna call it quits right there.
Thank you for listening to me ramble
about what I got going on for the last 20 minutes.
I super appreciate it.
And as always, remember to have fun, stay safe,
be yourself, and make the decision to never quit.
I'll see you guys next week.