The Success Model: Followed by the Top 5% | 3
[00:00:00] So where you are today in your life, in your business, in your career, in your health, and any aspect of your life. It is based on how you see yourself and what you believe about yourself. So if you want something to change, if you want something to be different, this is where we have to start.
Imagine if you were invited to a room filled with a collection of the most diverse, interesting, authentic women in business leadership and entrepreneurship today, sharing their stories of growth, courage, risk, and change. Women who've declared enough is enough. These rules of success I've been asked to follow no longer work for me and frankly, who made them up anyway?
Well, there is such a room and my friend, you're here in it right now. Welcome to “According To Who?”, the go-to podcast for successful women who are ready to question the current status quo, do things [00:01:00] differently and rewrite her next chapter.
I'm your host, Julie Cober, former C-Suite corporate executive turned founder, CEO and peak performance mindset coach to the female founder on a mission to build, grow, and scale on her own terms. If you're craving more freedom, wellbeing, and true fulfillment both in your work and your life, guess what? You're going to love being in this room.
Welcome to the “According To Who?” podcast, where we dig into the business strategies and the mindset growth required to boldly go after both your personal and your professional dreams. I'm your host, Julie Cober, and today we're diving into a foundational topic for anyone who's in a position of leadership.
And I don't mean just leading a team today, I'm gonna share with you a leadership model that the top 5% of the world's most successful leaders [00:02:00] follow. So that includes female founders, executives, CEOs, and alike. These leaders understand live by and embody this model on a daily basis. So before I dive into the model, I wanna set this up a little bit for you.
So the very first step in creating any change, any breakthrough, any growth that you want in your business, in your health, in your leadership, any aspect of your life is to craft a detailed vision for yourself. Right? We need to know where we're going. To manifest success, to manifest growth, to manifest more money in your business, to manifest happiness, fulfillment, alignment, whatever it is you're looking for.
You first have to know what this big picture is. We can't get [00:03:00] to where we wanna go if we're not sure what that is. So the question you're gonna hear today in today's podcast, a lot of really relevant questions, and the first one that you need to ask yourself is, what do I actually want to have? What do I want to have in my business, in my career, in my leadership, in my life, right?
A question that I always, always, always work with. The very first question I ask my clients, we always start on vision, vision casting. I always say to them, if you could wave your magic wand and you could have, you had all the time, all the money, all the personal resources you needed, what would you love?
What would you love? That's one of the most important questions you need to ask yourself, right? When you ask yourself, what would I love? You're starting with the end in mind, always, right? This is what our friend Stephen Covey, coveted in the Seven [00:04:00] Habits of Highly Effective People. That's one of the seven, right?
Start with the end in mind. What's your vision, right? What do you want to have? What would you love? So most of you are here listening to “According To Who?”, this podcast, because you want some sort of growth. You want growth in your business. You want maybe growth in your money, growth in your revenue growth in your compensation package.
You want some sort of change. Maybe it's in your career, right? Your leadership, something, there's something you want different, right? There's some sort of growth that you want. Some of you are here because you want more balance, right? You want more alignment, you want more fulfillment. You want peace of mind.
You want what I would call freedom. Right. Time freedom, personal freedom. Financial freedom. Right? That's a big one, especially for entrepreneurs. All of these, whether it was in the growth bucket that I just mentioned, or the [00:05:00] freedom bucket, all of these are end states. All of these are a part, uh, outcome of a vision.
This is all part of vision casting. So before I dive into this model that I'm gonna share with you today, you're going to hear me say, you're gonna hear me say this all through this podcast. This is kind of what I'm known for when I'm doing any kind of coaching, or I'm doing any kind of free masterclass, all the things I'm known to say.
This is a writer downer. Okay? So when I say that, if you, whether you're listening or you're watching here on YouTube. That means I want you to write it down. That means it's something that I really want you to listen to. I want you to really embody, take in. It's an important point of what we're, what I'm talking about right now.
It's all important, but when I say it's a writer downer, it's really important. So here's the first writer downer of today. You don't have to see it to believe it. So we know, right? We've been told, this is one [00:06:00] of the sayings you hear all the time. Uh, you have to see it to believe it. Actually, you don't. So you have to see it to believe it.
That comes from, and this thought, you have to see it to believe it is what stops. Most people in entrepreneurship, it what? It's what keeps people stuck. It's what keeps people fearful from taking that, that next step, right? Because you don't have to see it. You don't have to see it in your current circumstances.
You don't have to see it in your environment right now for it to be your truth, for you to believe that you can have the success in your business or the success in your career, the success in this growth that you're going after, you don't have to see it out here. Yet, you have to see it in your imagination first, right?
So look, look around you right now. Wherever you are, you could be listening to this in the car. You might be are walking in nature. You might be sitting in an office like look around your surroundings right now. [00:07:00] Everything that you can see was first created in someone's mind. They saw it in their imagination first and then they worked to bring it to their environment, fruition how, however you wanna say that.
Their current reality, right? I always use the example of the iPhone. I love this one. This hasn't been around that long. And look at this powerful little machine does today, right? That was an image in Steve Jobs’ mind. And he brought it into fruition. You don't have to see it to believe it. Okay? So that's the first writer downer.
So where you are today in your life, in your business, in your career, in your health, and any aspect of your life, it is based on how you see yourself and what you believe about yourself. So how you see yourself and what you believe about yourself. If you want something to change, if you want something to be different, [00:08:00] this is where we have to start.
How do you see yourself, right? What do you believe about yourself? What assumptions are you making? What are you thinking about yourself? All within you? This is where we start. So let's dive into this model. Now, I wanna start with a really powerful quote or statement that I heard years and years and years ago from Tony Robbins.
Okay? And he said, and I 100%. 1000, 1000000%. Agree with him on this, the quality of your life depends on the quality of your questions, so that, I don't think he coined that phrase. I actually think it might be from the founder of, uh, NLP, Neurolinguistic Programming, but that doesn't matter. I heard it from him, from Tony and the, he said again, the quality of your life depends on the quality of your questions.
So when it comes to your success, your leadership, your business, your career, your growth, what questions are you asking [00:09:00] yourself? If you feel stuck right now, if you're a female founder who is trying to scale, who has left your executive position, and then now either you're still in it or you've left it and you're now running, you've launched and you're building, and you're growing and you're scaling a business, and you might feel a little bit stuck right now, are you asking yourself questions and if so, what are they?
And these questions, if you are asking questions, are they centered within you? Are they questions about you and how you're showing up, or are they focused on things outside of you that are out of your control? That's really, really important, that distinction, and that really comes when you see that distinction and you can realistically say, right, which ones you're doing, whether you're asking questions about yourself or things outside of you, that really comes to the quality of the questions.
Right. So think about that. [00:10:00] The types of questions, are they within or external as I walk you through this model. Okay. So to start though, 'cause remember I said this is the model that the most 5% of the most successful leaders in the world use, they embody, they live it every day. I need to start though, before I explain that to you, what the other 95% are doing.
Okay. It's like the opposite. Yeah. The, the other side of the coins. Right. So I'm gonna start with the 95% and the model that they follow and the 95%, I call this the herd. Okay? That's my word. It's society. It's the majority, it's the mass, the masses. And this model that the mass follow is what we've been conditioned.
To believe are the rules that we need to follow to be successful. Okay? So that's really, really important. We have been conditioned. So when you hear this and you go, oh my gosh, I'm in the 95% know that [00:11:00] like society has put us there, right? We've been conditioned to believe that this is how we have to succeed.
These are the rules that we need to follow. Okay? So this model is, I call it, and you've maybe have heard this before, the do have be model. So this is a model where people ask themselves these questions in this order. What do I need to do to have what I wanna have? And then I will be. Okay, and you, you can fill in the blank.
After the be, what do I need to do to have what I wanna have? And then I'll be happy, and then I'll be healthy, and then I'll be wealthy, and then I'll be enough, and then I'll feel worthy finally. And then I'll be skinny, and then I'll be beautiful. I'm just using examples right? Then I'll feel calm, then I'll get excited.
Then I'll have, I'll figure out my passion. Like whatever it is, fill in the blank. Right? This order of questions is [00:12:00] what keeps people stuck, spinning, overwhelmed, stressed on the hamster wheel. I call it the hamster wheel of life. There's spinning and spinning and spinning and don't know how to get off.
They keep figuring, what do I need to do? What do I need to do to have what I wanna have? To have what I wanna have? And then once I figure that out, all out, then I'll finally feel the way I wanna feel. Right? That mode is what I call being in a continual prove it mode. I need to prove it right? That is not sustainable.
So if you wanna move out of this 95% out of the herd, out of the way society has told us we need to succeed, you will have to think about this. You're gonna have to come at this from a different perspective. You're gonna have to look at success from a different perspective, from a different way of thinking, right?
You are going to have to decide whether you can create new rule rules around [00:13:00] this, because this other model is different. It's not followed by many, it's different rules, right? It's bold and brave thinking, and it's the same questions just in a different order. You're gonna have to change the order of your questions.
Remember, Tony said the quality of your life depends on the quality of your questions. Well, I would add to that, that the quality of your life also depends on the order of the questions you ask, the quality of the questions and the order they're in. Okay. That's, that's the Julie Cober version of the Tony Robbins quote or statement.
Okay. So what order, so to move to your next chapter, to move to, into that growth that you want, that next chapter of success, you know, growth, fulfillment, abundant, what, whatever all of that means to you. Right? It's, how do I do this is not your first question. What do I need to do is the same as how do I do this?
And that is not the [00:14:00] first question you should be asking if you wanna be in that 5% leadership bucket, right? The order of your questions needs to be, who do I need to be and same equal importance. What do I need to do to have what I wanna have. Be do have. Now some people will say the be is more important. I think it is a smidge higher, but the be and do are equally important.
The be and do are feminine and masculine energy. Doing is action being is being right. So we talked earlier about current circumstances, right? You want your current circumstances to be different. You don't say, I want my current circumstances to do different. So that's really, really important when you hear yourself say the word be, I want this to be this way.
I want my current circumstances to be this way. I want my bank account to be this way. That's being, who do I need to be? [00:15:00] And what do I need to do to have what I wanna have, right? Everybody wants to go to the how. First, it's the way we've been trained. It's the rules that they've said. Action, action, action.
And don't get me wrong, action is hugely, hugely important. We need to take action and we need to take it quick. But being, being, is just as important because action is really important and you need to take it and you need to take it quickly. But what version of you is doing that? Right? What version of you is doing that?
Because here's the thing, here's a writer downer. It's the being doing the doing that makes the difference. When it comes to success, it's the being doing the doing that moves you into the top 5% of success. How are you being? How are you showing up in your doing? Right. There's two sides to a success [00:16:00] coin.
It's a two-sided coin. One side is being, the other side is doing, and that gives you your outcome, that gives you the end result, that gives you the have what you want to have, right? Together. Being and doing creates aligned, purposeful, abundant, having. And that's a really important distinction because you can have massive success.
The way society defines by all external measures. The way society tells us we need to be successful, the wealth we have, the material things we own, the trips we take, the work we do, all of that, the, the titles we have, the positions we hold. You can have all of that without being, with just doing. Trust me.
So if you wanna hear more about that, and the reason I know that is, 'cause that was me. You can go back to episode one and listen to my story and that that's where I share how I [00:17:00] got to the top of a very steep, very high mountain, the top of my absolute game. Right without having a clue who I was being all based on doing.
Right. So here's another quote from Tony Robbins, and this is a writer downer as well. He says, the definition of failure is getting to the top of your game and not being fulfilled. That resonated so much with me, and that's why I'm saying it again because it's my story. It's episode one.
I got to the top of this huge mountain, top talent I was considered, my whole career. Chief HR officer, you know, S-V-P, E-V-P chiefs times six, six different organizations. And I didn't know who I was being. And then when I did get to the the tippy, tippy top, I knew I wasn't being me. I wasn't fulfilled. Right. So what's the point? That's another really important question to ask yourself.
If you're [00:18:00] resonating with this, what's the point? What is the point of getting to the top of your game, quote unquote game, having all this material success and being unfulfilled, being unhappy, being stressed, being overwhelmed, being on that hamster wheel, knowing you're not filling your purpose. What's the point?
Like that's a question you should ask yourself, right? Yes, you have wealth. Yes, you have material things. Yes, you have external validation and recognition, and that can feel so good, but are you being who you are meant to be? Are you fulfilling your purpose? So if you're sitting there going, gosh, I know I'm meant for more.
This does not feel like my path. I am not aligned. This was me, you guys. But then I was like, yeah, but what am I supposed to do? I had this big salary that we lived around, right? So then I ignored it. We don't wanna ignore it. [00:19:00] Are you being who you're meant to be? Do you genuinely love your life? And have your work support that, have that supported by work that you enjoy.
That's the point, right? That's the point. To genuinely love all aspects of your life and have that supported by work that you enjoy not consumed by your work. That's the point. These are all more quality questions you can ask yourself. Right? So what do I even mean by be, I get asked this all the time, many women that I work with or know me say like, what do you mean be I don't understand?
We get do, right? High achieving women understand how to do, they can act, they have to-do lists, right? They know how to get things done. But what do you mean by be Julie? Who do I need to be, right? So it's a deep question, but today we'll dive into identity. Okay, being is your self image. I said how you see yourself and what you believe about [00:20:00] yourself is what your current circumstances are based on. How you see yourself and what you believe about yourself is your identity.
So do you see yourself, I'm gonna ask you some questions here. You can, you can write these down. You can stop this, you can write these down. Do you see yourself as a CEO or a business owner? Okay. For my entrepreneurs, for my female founders, do you run a company or do you have a side hustle? Are you showing up in your business as an employee or are you showing up in your business as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, as a leader?
As a visionary, as an influencer, if I asked you today. A question about your profitability and your current P and L statement. Could you answer me immediately? And none of these questions are to make you feel bad. If the answer is no, it's to bring you into a level of awareness of how you're seeing yourself right now, how [00:21:00] you're showing up, who you're being in your business.
Are you consistent with your daily actions, the daily things that you need to do in your business every day? Are you consistently showing up and doing those? Do you have systems and structure? What does calendar integrity mean to you? Do you have boundaries? These are the questions you have to ask yourself.
Here's the thing. The biggest mistake I see new or newish female founders make that I work with is they are operating in their businesses as an employee, not as an entrepreneur, not as a CEO. They do not hold the identity of a CEO, right? Which is what you need to be in that top 5%, right? That's a way of being.
And a, you know, an employee and an entrepreneur have very different identities. Okay? So an employee identity, nine to five. And I know we don't work nine to five, no executive that I ever knew ever worked nine to five, but you [00:22:00] know what I mean. We have hours in the day, weekends off, sometimes paychecks every two weeks or whatever, benefits, 401k, pension plans, bonuses, stock options, right?
Car allowances, you're taking vacation, you're trading time for money. As an employee and so many new female founders realize they get in in the first year and they're like, oh gosh, I'm doing the same thing. You can't scale a business from zero to a million trading time for money. You'll never exit it and sell it for some huge amount of money and value trading time for money.
So the entrepreneurial identity, they're risk takers, right? Goal oriented, numbers driven, sales oriented, marketing mastery. Right. Customer service is above and beyond. They're always thinking about their customers. The entrepreneur knows they don't have to see it to believe it, right? They feel the fear and they do it anyway.
Huge on personal growth. [00:23:00] Huge entrepreneurship is personal growth, right? It's not work to them, right? They have these strong intuitions, right? They take radical responsibility. They have habits, right? Habits. They show up in integrity. They show up and they do it even when they don't feel like doing it, especially when they don't feel like doing it.
That's the definition of integrity, by the way. And here's the thing, imagination. It's your superpower. It isn't any situation, but for an entrepreneur, it's the number one tool you have in your business, and that's a way of being. Right. Entrepreneurs understand the difference between feminine and masculine energy, and they balance both.
Feminine is being, masculine is doing right, so you can have some of these characteristics as ways of being as an employee, but you must have all of them as a successful female founder, as the CEO of running a successful business. And all of them are ways of being. [00:24:00] Okay, so I wanna leave you with a tool, okay?
This is one of my, one of my goals in this podcast is to give you tips and tactics and tools to scale your businesses. Now I know all these ambitious type a, high achieving, high performing women that are listening to this right now have mile long to-do lists. Mile long to-do list, right? So by the way, your to-do list is never gonna get done.
So just be okay with that. Just keep chipping away at it. But do you have a to be list? That's what I want you to ask yourself as a, a leader in the top 5%, a female founder, an executive, a CEO, do you have a to be list? Have you sat down and created who you want to be? So if you haven't, I would highly recommend you create one.
And here's some questions. Here's some more quality questions to ask yourself. Who am I right now? [00:25:00] Okay. How am I showing up? How am I showing up really in my business? I gave you a whole bunch of examples there. Who am I right now? Am I an employee? Am I an entrepreneur? Am I a business owner? Am I a CEO?
They're all different. Am I a female founder? Okay, so I want you to write that down. Who am I right now? Who do I want to be? In detail, do this in detail. The more detail you put into this, the faster you're gonna be her. Okay. Who do I want to be? How do I want to show up? Right? What type of leader do I wanna be?
What type of team do I wanna have? What type of, you know, do I wanna be someone who knows her numbers? Just like that, right? And then ask yourself, who do I know I can be? So, who am I right now? Who do I wanna be? And the reason I ask the third one, who do I know I can be, that's gonna take you to a whole nother level of imagination, right?
Because you [00:26:00] can easily write out who you wanna be. You can probably get that down pretty quickly. But who do I know I can be is gonna take you to dig a little deeper. This is gonna take you to growth. This is gonna take you to what you can't see right now. Right, and remember, you don't have to see it to believe it.
I want you to believe that you can be her. I want you to dream big. I want you to wave your magic wand here and just go deep. Who do I know I can be? Right? So here's some examples. Most people in the world wanna be happy, right? Like that should be on your list. Consistent, disciplined, driven, excited, purposeful, aligned, calm.
I wanna be a thought leader, right? I wanna have high energy. I wanna jump outta bed every day and love what I do. I wanna love my life. I'm meant to love my life. I want wealth. I want wealth and wellbeing. I want success and [00:27:00] satisfaction. I want self-love and leadership, right? Those are key pillars we talk about in, in my work, you're meant to have all of that, right?
You wanna have high standards. What are those standards and how do you show up every day consistently honoring yourself in those standards? Right. These are all ways of who you wanna be, right? What's your mindset like? Write this down as well. How is it? What are your dominant thoughts? Are they negative?
Are they positive? Are they growth? Are they scarcity? Right? Are you continually doubting yourself? Are you not believing in yourself because you can't see it? It's not here. You can't touch it and feel it, and it's not in your current circumstance, so there's no way it's coming. What is it? What, how, how are you thinking?
How are you, what are you assuming? Assuming is big. I'm probably gonna do a whole podcast just on assuming. What stories are you telling yourself? Is it, are they even true? [00:28:00] What do you believe? Right? What do you believe? Ask yourself these questions. So why the be? Is that the beginning of the be, do, have model?
Why? Who do I need to be is the first question. Why that is? Is because the doing this is the key. I'm gonna give you the key to success right now. The doing does not matter if the being is not showing up the way she wants to, the way she knows she can. Doing doesn't matter. I know I get, I get in trouble for saying this 'cause and I don't want it to come across the wrong way.
Creating a strategy, a business plan, tactics, a financial plan, an exit plan, if you're looking to sell all of that action is so, so critical. But none of it matters. It's the easy part. It literally is the easy part. You might not have it and you might not know where to start and all those [00:29:00] things, so it doesn't feel easy right now, but trust me, out of the two, who am I?
Who do I need to be and what do I need to do? The doing is the easy part. I think that's why we go there first. We can get that together pretty quickly with some strategy and some planning and some goal setting and some vision casting and all of those things, figuring out. Who you are and whether that's working for you or not, and how to change that because it's all based on what you believe about yourself.
That's the much harder process in this. That's why most people don't go here, right? So in aligned and purposeful success, this is a life you love living, that is supported by your work. That's what aligned and purposeful success means. 'cause again, you can get to the top of your game. And have huge external success.
But what's the point if you're not aligned? If you don't love your life, if you don't love yourself, [00:30:00] right? If you, if you don't love what you're doing, what's the point? We need to start to ask ourself this. We need to be courageous enough to look in the mirror and admit it actually might be us that needs to change, not anything external to us.
It might not be the strategy. The strategy, what's most important is the thinking and the assumptions and the belief behind the strategy. That's what matters most. Okay. The strategy is important, but it's the being doing the doing. And so it might be that we have to look in the mirror and say, I have to go within, I have to look at me first to change any, first, right, to change, have any change that I want to have.
Right. So to transform or to change anything on the outside of you, you have to go within first and take this inventory, create this to be [00:31:00] list, right? This is key to all your success. So I'm gonna leave you with our last writer downer. Okay? When things change within you, things start to change around you.
When things change within you. Almost everything actually starts to change around you. It's pretty remarkable how this happens. So start to look at what you truly believe about yourself, right? As, as you know, who is it that, who, who you're being? How are you showing up? Why are you believing this? Right? And if you're not showing up how you want to.
Question your beliefs. Dig down to what it is you believe about yourself. 'cause that's what's holding you back. That's what's keeping you small. That's what's keeping you in fear. Something in there, what you're believing about yourself, right? So start [00:32:00] ask yourself, what am I believing about myself? Is it even true?
And of course, always ask yourself “according to who?”. All right, everyone. Thank you for joining me on today's episode. Until next time, start to plan who you want to be, right. Start to plan who you want to be, how you want to move yourself into that top 5% of exceptional leadership, and as an extraordinary female founder because you're already her, right?
Alright, I'll see you next time.
Thank you so much for choosing to spend your time with us. I hope today's insights have empowered you and given you ideas and tools to start to rewrite your rules of success. If you loved today's episode, please leave us a review and be sure to share it with a friend. And if you'd like to hear more from these trailblazing women, be sure to hit the subscribe button so you never miss out [00:33:00] on another powerful episode.
Don't forget to connect with me on LinkedIn or Instagram for daily doses of motivation behind the scenes insight and to keep the conversation going. For additional resources and strategies, visit juliecober.com. And subscribe to my newsletter where you'll receive life-changing content delivered right to your inbox.
And always remember you have the ability to create any change you want in your life at any time. You are 100% worthy of living a life that you genuinely love that's supported by work that you truly enjoy. Keep pushing the boundaries. Question your thoughts. Step into the elevated version of you, and until next time, always be asking yourself “According To Who?”.
According To Who?
