STP 91 | How to Develop a Winning Mindset for Business Growth with Debra Russell
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[00:00:00] Debra Russell: You're the only person who will break through for them. She said, you don't have to do something different. You don't have to do something completely revolutionary. You do not need to be Einstein. You being you communicating about it the way you uniquely communicate about it. There will be one person in the room for whom this is the perfect time.
[00:00:30] Debra Russell: Yours is the perfect voice and perspective, and they will hear you in a way that they've never heard anyone else before.
[00:00:40] Speaker: Welcome to The Scaling Therapy Practice, the show where you don't need a huge audience, complex tech, or fancy platforms to grow. It's really about doing what you do best, building genuine therapeutic relationships, and solving problems. Join me, your host, James Marland, as we turn your experience into digital products that scale your income, giving you freedom, flexibility, and more fulfillment without the burnout.
[00:01:14] James Marland: Hey therapists, are you tired of. Of feeling chained to your chair, believing that the only way for you to earn. Income is through One on one sessions. Imagine. If you could increase your freedom, your flexibility. And. Your income. Without sacrificing what you love.
[00:01:36] James Marland: I have a solution for you. It. Begins with joining the course creator hub. This is a free community where you. Can interact with other course creators. Other experts learn from each. Other support each other, build some accountability and have access to me. And some of my handouts that I make. Frequently. So I'm inviting. Letting you to join me in the course creator hub.
[00:01:58] James Marland: I've. I'd love to interact with you. And support you on your mission. Go to courses. That course creator. studio.com backslash store for your. Free access today. I can't wait to meet you inside. Join Hello and welcome to the scaling therapy practice. This is your host, James Marland. This is the show where we empower mission driven leaders to launch life changing online courses. Today. I have a special guest with me, Debra Russell. She's an NBA and an elite certified business coach. She is a keynote speaker and a professional development trainer. Uh, I have met her in my, in, in the journeys of doing online courses. And I thought she had a wonderful story to share about her journey, where she's going and where she wants to take people. So I brought her on the show, Debra. Thanks for joining us,
[00:02:54] Debra Russell: Glad to be here. Thanks for having me.
[00:02:58] James Marland Podcaster: but Debra, uh, tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into the, into how you started doing courses,
[00:03:05] Debra Russell: Oh, I have had James a long and winding and bizarre road. Um, I started actually in theater, um, and television and film as an actress first, and then in production. Um, I have a BFA in theater in addition to my more recent MBA. And I was working my way up to being a producer director, which was my ultimate goal.
[00:03:36] Debra Russell: And I got sick and I was very, very sick for a very long time. I was bedridden for three years, housebound for about 10.
[00:03:45] Debra Russell: So, um, I knew I could never go back to film. Because working as a producer, director, working in film production is a 17 hour a day, 7 day a week job.
[00:04:00] James Marland Podcaster: Uh, it sounds like it, it was a, it was a grind and there was an event in your life that happened that kind of brought it to a standstill.
[00:04:11] Debra Russell: yeah, I actually had a producer who was ready to produce my first feature as a director. Um, I'd worked my way up, you know, I'd paid my dues and, um, I got sick, literally got sick while we were filming. looking at scripts and making a decision about which script we would go with. Um, and he called me, God bless him.
[00:04:36] Debra Russell: He called me the first Monday of every month for two years. First Monday. I know it was on his calendar. Call Debra. First Monday of every month for two years. And I finally said to him, Mark, it's not going to happen. I'm never coming back. And that, that broke my heart. My heart. It's all I wanted
[00:05:04] James Marland Podcaster: your dreams. Yeah.
[00:05:07] Debra Russell: Yeah, it was all I wanted from the time. I was 12. So Coming out of that, as I started to find things that helped me physically, as I started to rejoin the world and become able to, you know, be out of bed and not be completely bedridden. Um, I, you know, I did a lot of different stuff.
[00:05:30] Debra Russell: I was like, what am I supposed to do now? Because I, that was all I ever wanted to do. I thought I would be doing that until I retired in my 70s. So, um, and then one day coaching found me and that is its own long story. So I, I, I won't go too deeply into that, but coaching really found me. And what I discovered in coaching was that it brought together all of my skills in a lot of different areas.
[00:06:00] Debra Russell: Um, I did personal growth workshops. In my late teens, early 20s, and I led personal growth workshops in live in front of a room in my mid 20s to late 20s, then I got a BFA. I mean, being in front of a room of people, that's completely natural to me.
[00:06:22] Debra Russell: So when I became a coach, shifting from just being a one to one coach to doing trainings, and doing workshops and speaking engagements. I started speaking four years after I got certified as a coach. I mean, it was just such a natural evolution. Um, I've been a teacher really in one way or another my whole life.
[00:06:47] Debra Russell: So that, you know, going from that, I started a membership in 2008, which I was leading, of course, you know, because of technology, I was doing on the free conference call. com
[00:07:04] James Marland Podcaster: Yeah.
[00:07:04] Debra Russell: in the aughts. And, um, and I did that for eight years. Um, so I've developed hundreds of hours of curriculum. Because I had to come up with a new 1 hour court class every month for my membership.
[00:07:21] Debra Russell: So I, you know, course creation is just a completely natural evolution out of all of this. And, um. Thinking about the different ways, you can deliver that course, those kinds of things that to me is just technology. That's just kind of figuring out what's the What's the method, what's the medium in which you're going to deliver?
[00:07:51] Debra Russell: The content is what lives inside of you that you want to share with the world.
[00:07:59] James Marland Podcaster: It sounded like you had a lot, like, uh, 1 of the things you said in the beginning, or just a few minutes ago was like, you were building on your strengths. You were building on things. That you are already good at naturally good at and also you are getting results on it. But a lot of times, and I don't know if you would articulate this back, you know, 10 years ago or whatever. But a lot of times there are things that we're good at. We can't make a career or a money money out of them. I like, uh. You know, I like watching movies, but nobody's going to listen to me talk about movies or play my video games or collect.
[00:08:34] James Marland Podcaster: I have a collection of collectible cards. I can't make money on that because that's just a hobby. So how did you turn something you like to do and something that you were good at from, from just something that people say, Oh, how do you do this to like a career? Like, how did that, how did you make that leap?
[00:08:53] Debra Russell: That's an interesting question because I am a business coach. That's kind of, that's my focus as a coach. And my specialty is. Working with people who are pursuing their passion as a business. You might call it a hobby and you could absolutely make a living out of talking about movies.
[00:09:24] James Marland Podcaster: Yeah, many people
[00:09:25] James Marland Podcaster: do.
[00:09:26] Debra Russell: do it, right?
[00:09:27] Debra Russell: Talking about movies, writing about movies, teaching about movies, right? Many universities have courses about, you know, the history of film. And so, and how, or how does film affect culture and how does culture affect film? Right. That's a sociology course at a university. So that's my specialty is working with people who are so passionate about something that that's really, they do it for free.
[00:10:04] Debra Russell: How do you turn it into a business?
[00:10:08] Debra Russell: So I did it for myself. I mean, you know, really from day one as a coach, I thought about it as a business. I got training the way the, uh, training that was laid out was that you were not allowed to take money as a coach until you'd reached a certain phase in the course. Um, and literally the day I reached that phase, I had four clients.
[00:10:39] Debra Russell: I was, I was thinking about how do I launch this as a business? I was getting certified as a coach because my whole life I've run businesses. This is, you know, as an actress, as a producer, as a, you know, theater manager, as a, whatever I was doing, it was always my business. I was not an employee even when I was.
[00:11:05] James Marland Podcaster: think one of the things you just said there is you got a coach.
[00:11:11] James Marland Podcaster: Why do people think they can do it without a coach? Like the highest paid people in the world have coaches, you know, the sports people that I admire. You know, Michael Jordan and, uh, uh, LeBron James and all those other basketball players, Stephen Curry, they have, they have coaches, like they have people that, that they listen to, who might not have the, the great success that they have, but they know how to do the things that they want to do. And I don't know why I resisted getting, paying for, for coaching for so long, because I feel like. I have, I accelerate when I have the coach and uh, it's just something, I don't know, I don't know why I thought I could do it on my own. Do you have any comments about coaching? Because I think that is a key element of turning your, whatever you're doing, into accelerating it, is getting the right coaching.
[00:12:07] Debra Russell: oh, I completely agree. And one of the things that I will say is I'm not the right coach for everybody. Everybody isn't the right coach for me. Um, and there are a lot of coaches out there. So finding someone that you really click with and create that rapport is so, so important. Finding someone who actually knows about what you're trying to do.
[00:12:34] Debra Russell: Um, I, I, Talked to a lot of clients who hired a business coach to coach them in their artist career, but the coach doesn't know anything about what it takes to be successful in the arts, which is different than what it takes to be successful in tech, from what it takes to be successful as an attorney.
[00:12:58] Debra Russell: What it takes, right? It's different. There are certain commonalities. Because fundamentally business is business is business. But there are also things that are very unique to a particular industry or a particular media. So, um, so finding someone who you really click with, who you feel like has knowledge that you're lacking, feels like Has a perspective that's going to help and shift and advance yours critically important.
[00:13:33] Debra Russell: And you're right. Even, you know, the best of the best will have athletic coaches, right? Tom Brady had a quarterback coach until he retired. Of course he did.
[00:13:50] James Marland Podcaster: Yeah,
[00:13:51] Debra Russell: you can't see what you can't see. But in our society, there's shame around needing help that I think slows the progress of our society. It slows the progress of our individuals, like the, like each individual, but it also slows the progress of our culture, of our society, of, you know.
[00:14:23] Debra Russell: Becoming really the best it could be because people don't want to ask for help.
[00:14:31] James Marland Podcaster: very, very individualistic. And I, I heard somewhere that there is, um, it starts really young, like elementary school, you get graded on your, your own test on your knowledge on what you know, and you get penalized for asking for help or getting extra resources or asking your neighbor, Hey, You know how to answer this question. And so it's, it's built into us. And then I think you, you get into, especially entrepreneurship. That is not the way you get ahead.
[00:15:08] Debra Russell: The difference between, you know, person A who has the same amount of talent as person B. And person A is successful and person B is not. And the only difference is that person A has access to resources.
[00:15:24] James Marland Podcaster: Yeah, who not how is the book Benjamin Hardy and it's from strategic coach Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy.
[00:15:32] James Marland Podcaster: Um, like, who's the best person to do this? And once you figure that out and you you. You figure out what you're really good at and you do that and you delegate as much as you can and eliminate the other stuff. You're much further ahead, but it's not always you. It's not always, it's not always the CEO or the owner. You're not always the best person to do things. We, we've, we don't like to delegate. We don't like to give up control. But once we get over that, I think our businesses get a lot easier to manage.
[00:16:05] Debra Russell: Building out a team is critically important and your team needs to be people that are not only doing the things you can't do, but even more importantly, doing the things that are not the best use of your time that are not your core competency. Um, there is a chapter in Jack Canfield's The Success Principles, which I highly recommend, by the way.
[00:16:33] Debra Russell: There are like a handful of books that all my clients must read. One of them is The E Myth Revisited. And the second one is Jack Canfield's Success Principles. Um, he talks about the 80 20 rule. You know about Pareto Principle? That 20 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your efforts. But the Pareto principle, that 80 20 rule applies to a ton of different things.
[00:17:02] Debra Russell: Um, and what he talks about is time management so that 80 percent of your time should be spent in your core competency in what you uniquely are good at and what makes your business be its unique excellence. Like what is the core of your business? And that only you can do.
[00:17:30] James Marland Podcaster: So good, good stuff here. Um, getting back to your story. Um, you, so you, you have courses, you have a membership. What were some of the, um, challenges that you overcame as you were developing your, your course or your course offering or your membership? What were some of the, the, the, the barriers and how did you overcome some of them?
[00:17:56] James Marland Podcaster: If you can pick out one or two
[00:17:59] Debra Russell: Early in my career. Um, maybe I've been a coach for two or three years. I started really thinking about speaking because nothing from a marketing perspective, nothing beats standing in front of a room as an expert in your business. And speaking to a room of your target market, there is no better way to establish credibility.
[00:18:31] Debra Russell: If you're standing in front of the room and you're not completely horrible, like reading the PowerPoint and hiding your eyes, like, you know, really horrible. If you're even halfway decent as a speaker, you have instant credibility because you're in front of the room. Thank you. And I knew that, and I'm, you know, I was an actress for years, and I have no problem being in front of the room, but here's where my imposter syndrome kicked in.
[00:19:01] Debra Russell: What do I have to say that is different than all the other experts on my core competency? Like, how do I, like, who am I to stand in front of the room and say what I have to say when, you know, I stand on the shoulder of giants,
[00:19:20] James Marland Podcaster: right? Yeah. Yeah.
[00:19:45] Debra Russell: that's the only way they can hear it.
[00:19:49] Debra Russell: You're the only person who will break through for them. She said, you don't have to do something different. You don't have to do something completely revolutionary. You do not need to be Einstein. You being you communicating about it the way you uniquely communicate about it. There will be one person in the room for whom this is the perfect time.
[00:20:19] Debra Russell: Yours is the perfect voice and perspective, and they will hear you in a way that they've never heard anyone else before. And to me, that was magic. I just had to be me. I just had to communicate the way I uniquely communicate about the issues that are important to me, about what I've discovered from my own unique perspective.
[00:20:52] Debra Russell: And there will be someone, and I have found this to be true. Years and years of speaking in front of groups, large and small. I have found this to be absolutely true. So getting over that imposter syndrome was huge. I would say the membership, the biggest obstacle was coming up with something new for eight years.
[00:21:16] Debra Russell: Years times 12,
[00:21:21] James Marland Podcaster: Why
[00:21:21] James Marland Podcaster: did you do that to yourself?
[00:21:22] Debra Russell: new topics, something new to teach. And, um, and when I ended the membership, I was taking care of my father who had Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I had literally moved across country and moved in with my parents to be the primary caregiver for my dad while running a full time business.
[00:21:47] Debra Russell: And I was done. I was burnt out. I could not come up with another class if my life depended on it at that moment. Like I just, I was done. And so I closed the membership. I really, I made it evergreen, but without any marketing, it ended up basically shutting down. And, um,
[00:22:10] James Marland Podcaster: Silence.
[00:22:24] Debra Russell: myself and take care of my dad and take care of my mom, that that was enough. Um, and that, that, that was very hard for me,
[00:22:35] Debra Russell: um, because I love my members and I wanted to be there for them and they got a lot of value out of it. So I, you know, that was important to me. Um, but it was just more than I could do.
[00:22:47] Debra Russell: And it's one of the things actually that stops me from being a podcast host. Cause it's the
[00:22:54] Debra Russell: same. You have to show up every week or every month or twice a month or however many times you've committed to produce this thing that you're producing. You have to show up and sometimes, you know, life gets in the way.
[00:23:11] Debra Russell: So I like being a podcast guest. I like just showing up and talking.
[00:23:16] James Marland Podcaster: Well, you're you got great stories. So, uh, yeah, keep at it. All right. So those were very good. Uh, good, um, tips. Um, so what are you? So what are you doing now? Like, you're a business coach. So what do you what are you doing?
[00:23:34] Debra Russell: So I am in the midst of launching a big, probably it's going to end up being a year long program though. There's, you know, different stages of that year long program, which I am calling the ultimate productivity revolution.
[00:23:56] James Marland Podcaster: it sounds comprehensive. What does it include?
[00:23:59] Debra Russell: well, um, the first two pieces are all about mindset. And I did want to add back to your last question of what I overcame. I really thought, because this is where I came to it, That time management and productivity was about structure. That people were missing structure or their structure wasn't working for them.
[00:24:23] Debra Russell: And it was really about changing structure. And thanks actually to the course that we were both in, I did a ton of research. I interviewed a lot of people and what I discovered was that it was not about structure. Yes, do they need structure? Absolutely. But that wasn't the thing that was most problematic.
[00:24:48] Debra Russell: The thing that was most problematic was mindset. So issues like overwhelm, procrastination, perfectionism, prioritization, decision making, boundary setting, right? All of these kind of Mindset and how you engage with the world issues. And yes, imposter syndrome creeps in there. Um, overcoming fear creeps in there, all of those emotional intelligence things.
[00:25:22] James Marland Podcaster: Uh, so, uh, I'm just writing some things down. Um, because last I think the episode that released yesterday was about, um, uh, it was about, uh, demand narrative. I think that's what I called it. Uh, or creating a message that connects with people. And so, as you were talking, I was writing out, like, a demand narrative.
[00:26:04] James Marland Podcaster: You might think it's about productivity. You might think it's about structure and discipline, but it's really about having a, uh, a A belief system or a productive belief system or a. Or you said mindset. I'm just trying to like simplify the words, but it's really about having a system that supports,
[00:26:26] Debra Russell: Well, actually, I'd flip that on its head. It's really about having
[00:26:30] James Marland Podcaster: how would you say it?
[00:26:32] Debra Russell: It's about having a mindset that supports your system.
[00:26:36] James Marland Podcaster: A mindset that supports your system. And that is something that people can change because you know, the steps to change the mindset,
[00:26:43] James Marland Podcaster: I don't think I have enough willpower to put in a good system. Like it's not about willpower though. It's not about the structure and like following the structure.
[00:26:54] James Marland Podcaster: It's actually believing something different. Hey, I can teach you how to do that. This is what I do. Do you want to, you know, you want to come to a, do you want to come to my course or do you want to learn a little bit more about it? Click my video and I'll show you, you know, my structure. And then, Oh, you want to know more?
[00:27:13] James Marland Podcaster: Well, guess what? I have this next offer for you. It's either a web, whatever, whatever the next step in the
[00:27:18] James Marland Podcaster: demand narrative at the
[00:27:20] James Marland Podcaster: end of The demand narrative, you have one thing, an action step for them to do. So you're, you're, uh, I like how you are framing it. Cause it kind of follows that you might think it's about having willpower and having the right structure, but it's really about this mindset and I can teach you how to do that.
[00:27:39] James Marland Podcaster: And I love that. That flow of how it how it comes about. So,
[00:27:46] Debra Russell: Right. And so first, the first two pieces are mindset. The third piece is structure. Your, your calendar, your time management structure and your task. Okay. Management structure, because that's often the piece that gets left out when people talk about time management and productivity. It's also about what tasks, what's the best use of your time in the limited amount of time you have available.
[00:28:14] Debra Russell: then we implement the structure and create the habits that sustain it. And that gives you mastery over productivity. And that's, that's the ultimate goal of the ultimate productivity revolution is to create my clients, my, the people I work with privately, they come out with a level of mastery around productivity.
[00:28:42] Debra Russell: That they did not have walking in. The system you create works so that you trust yourself. And this goes back to what you were saying, James earlier, you trust that you have the willpower and discipline because willpower and discipline are important. They do matter, but willpower and discipline is our mindset issues. They're not structural issues.
[00:29:12] Debra Russell: They're about what you believe about yourself and how important. your goals are over what everybody else needs from you.
[00:29:27] Debra Russell: Cause we're great at doing what we have to do for other people. We're not great at doing what we have to do for ourselves.
[00:29:39] James Marland Podcaster: I'm going to sum up, um, a little bit of what I've learned from this episode, and then I'll give you a chance to tell people where they can find you.
[00:29:47] James Marland Podcaster: one of the things is we all run out of time, whether being too busy or a life crisis or something, time is just this scarce resource. And the sooner we realize we're going to run out of it, the easier it'll be. We'll get to prioritize things. The second thing is get a coach, you know, even the best people in the best. People at what they do have a coach. I loved your advice about be yourself because if you, you know, there's only, there's only one you and somebody needs you, somebody needs your message. And if you're trying to be somebody else, they're not going to connect with you and you're not going to connect with them.
[00:30:29] James Marland Podcaster: So be yourself and know that you're going to be the right person for somebody in that room. And then the last thing is we kind of talked around about it is, you know, have a business, have a life that runs your business, not a business that runs your life because that pain point you had, you were talking about it.
[00:30:51] James Marland Podcaster: But if you would have kept on trying to run your business at that point, it would have, I'm That's a hyperbole, but it would have killed you. You'd have been miserable and you had to, you had to find something that fit within your life that you ran it and not your business running you. I think that when your business, you're always chasing your business and you're, you're living your life for your business, then that's, that's where dissatisfaction comes in.
[00:31:18] James Marland Podcaster: Even if you kind of like what you're doing, if you just feel like you're a slave to the business, you're going to burn out. So those are some of the things that I learned as we, Uh, from you.
[00:31:29] Debra Russell: Those are some great highlights, James. I'm very excited about that. You really captured them very well. And that last thing, um, because of my own personal experience with illness, I very much, uh, it doesn't matter if I'm working with an elite athlete or an, um, executive C suite or, um, a startup entrepreneur, if you don't, if you lose your health, they're It makes, it starts making all your decisions for you.
[00:32:02] Debra Russell: You stop having choice and it's avoidable, right? You can choose self care even in the face of chaos. It's critical.
[00:32:18] James Marland Podcaster: All right. So, uh, Debra, where, where can people find you online?
[00:32:22] Debra Russell: Absolutely. So if you can spell my name, you can find me. Um, my website is Debra Russell coaching.com and I'm very petite. I know you can't tell from the camera, but I am very petite, so I don't need any O'S or H's on that. Debra, it's just D-E-B-R-A and Russell with two S's and two l's coaching.com. Um, and.
[00:32:49] Debra Russell: I'm in the process, of course, of writing a new ebook that really talks about the mindset of productivity. Um, and so that will be up, I, I believe before you publish this, this, and so we'll get that, I'll get you that, um, that link as soon as that's up. And, the, the course that I talked about. Is accessible through a different website, though, you can get to this website from the Debra Russell coaching website called rising star systems.
[00:33:25] Debra Russell: Dot com, because I specialize.
[00:33:28] James Marland Podcaster: com.
[00:33:29] Debra Russell: In working with people who are rising stars.
[00:33:34] James Marland Podcaster: Beautiful. I really appreciate you coming on the show and sharing your heart and your story and the life lessons that you've learned. I hope other course creators and people, um, who have a mission or who have, who have something that they want to teach, listen and visit your website. Um, Thanks. And I will put all the links in the show notes, of course, so that people can find them, even if they're like me and can't spell their way out of a paper bag.
[00:34:02] James Marland Podcaster: So, uh, Debra, Debra, thank you so much for being on the show.
[00:34:07] Debra Russell: You bet my pleasure.
[00:34:10] James Marland Podcaster: So this is James Marlin for the Scaling Therapy Practice. It's now time to go put your mission in motion. We'll see you next time.
