Erik + Emily Orton (00:01.47)
If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough. I didn't make that up, Bono did. The new single, it's a little furry, out of focus, Atomic City, the new single, and it's a cool song. I'm an unabashed YouTube, sorry, not YouTube, but YouTube fan, and so, but I could not agree more with that line. Welcome to the What Could Go Right podcast where we talk about personal growth, family connections, and...
parenting adult kids. My name's Emily Orton. I'm Eric Orton. And we just got off a coaching call. We were talking to some of our clients about their audacious dreams. And we wanted to talk to you about the difference between big dreams and medium dreams and why we advocate for big dreams. Yeah, okay. So we're kind of on the home stretch with this amazing couple and they...
I've had some breakthroughs, some really fun, cool breakthroughs. And a lot of momentum connections. Yeah. Things are happening. Oh my goodness. It's so cool and so fun to watch. And they just said, one of the responses that we keep getting is good for you for dreaming big, and they have a really big goal. I don't want to get into it, but it's like multifaceted multi-year. Big. It's huge. And they're talking to all kinds of different people, different
you know, organizations are involved and professionals and, and with a steadiness, they're told good for you for dreaming big. And, and this is kind of where I went on my little rant with them. And I said, look, it's so important to have huge audacious goals. And here's why, because when you have a massive big audacious goal, there's room in that dream. There's room for everybody.
They can hear your vision and they know there's no way that this person's gonna pull it off on their own. They're gonna need some help or they need some support. And all of a sudden they start feeling like, how can I be involved? How can I encourage this? How can I help make it happen? When you have a medium-sized goal or what I'll call a small dream or a medium-sized dream, people will listen to you and they'll think, that's so cool.
Erik + Emily Orton (02:27.758)
good for you, I hope you do that. But there's no space in it for them. All they can do is just say, go, I hope it happens. But when you present in a massive audacious goal, they just think, whoa, this is gonna take a village. You know, or some version of that. And I just wanna be, Emily said something,
has said something for years, when she's talked about our living on a sailboat for a year, she said it was a dream that was big enough for all of us. Do you wanna say anything about that? Yeah, well, the dream was not, it was big enough for the whole family. It started with Eric and it spread, and it was really good to have it be big enough for our whole family or big enough for a larger community because...
on the journey towards your big goals or your big ideas that you want to bring to fruition, there will inevitably be moments of discouragement or doubt and times when you'll want to turn back and just go back to what was comfortable and familiar instead of moving forward. And when there's more people in your dream with you, then you can kind of take turns being in those moments of doubt and being in those moments of
enthusiasm and confidence. And that's how it was with our family. Sometimes both of us were thinking, we can't really make this happen. This feels beyond us. Who are we to have this kind of idea? And then our kids would show up with their enthusiasm and they wanted to talk about it or share what they were excited about it or be like, oh, boost us up and tell us that they believed in us and that we could.
you know, do these things that we were more capable than we thought. And we all just kind of took turns sharing that with each other. And that gave us, um, you know, the, the ability to get that across the finish line, which was really a starting line. And it was, it was amazing for our whole family. So yeah, it has to be big enough for the whole family. Anyway, I love, I love this idea of like a big, hairy audacious goal that you can really get excited about. Um, are.
Erik + Emily Orton (04:50.106)
when we were coaching our friend said, let me pull out this quote, he was quoting Daniel Hudson Burnham, he's talking on courage, and it says, make no little plans, they have no magic to stir man's blood. But when you have a big idea, you become a moving train, you're moving in that direction. Other people wanna hop on with it too, because they say, I like where this is going, and I wanna be part of it.
This speaks to me and I'm excited about the same thing and there's something I can do here. Maybe you can help me remember this, Emily, but I love Tim Ferriss' four-hour work week. And he talks about the difference. He says it in another way, but it's the same concept of a moderate goal or a moderate dream versus a crazy dream. And how he said, the one line that I remember, he says, I won't even change my breakfast cereal for
a moderate dream, but I'll like basically move heaven and earth if it's a big enough vision. And so just that like there is power in choosing something that feels audacious. I feel like I want to go. The other word, okay, I want to come up with another word and this is the word. Pick something mega. If you pick something mega, then all of a sudden your brain starts to work differently and you feel differently about it. People are going to look at you a little bit weird.
But then they're gonna be secretly a little bit jealous, and then they're gonna come around, and they're gonna wanna be on board. I don't know if all those things will happen. There is some tension here in between what we're saying now and what we've said on other podcasts about not worrying about what other people think or having a friendly disregard, because you do, you wanna have a confidence in your own vision. But as you keep moving forward, certainly there will be plenty of people who are not here for it.
naysayers. But they'll do their own thing. They'll do things that are comfortable to them. But you will find those people who are like, wow, all caps, double exclamation points. I want to be involved with this or this is a big dream or yeah, we want to make something like that work. Let's team up on this. So, you know, hold that in balance that like not worrying too much about what anybody
Erik + Emily Orton (07:18.198)
There are other people out there who feel like me and will wanna bring their expertise and their enthusiasm and their love to this project as well. And I'll just say something about that. And you and I talk about the current often. And when you dream big, they're gonna keep people that are gonna try and drag you down. They're gonna say, that's a stupid idea. That's a crazy risk. That's reckless, whatever. They're gonna say the thing that's gonna, because you are making them feel very unfair.
Well, they are making themselves feel uncomfortable, but they're uncomfortable because you are doing something that they feel is... Beyond them. And it's pushing them. You're not trying to push them, but you are. You're pushing them and it's making them uncomfortable. And so they're pushing back by trying to bring you back down. I have very little experience with that actually happening. Mostly people don't say anything if they...
don't have anything nice to say. In my world, that might just be my well-curated group of friends. And it's tricky because oftentimes the people that will say these things are the people that are closest to you, your mom and your dad, or your sibling, or people that feel like they can say whatever they want to you and get away with it. Or they're really invested and they think worry is love. So it looks bad. So yeah, and this might sound a little bit harsh. Be careful.
about spending time with those people. I'm not saying cut people off, but I'm just saying, maybe not bring up that topic when you're with them, because you know that they're gonna be, there's a lady that I grew up with, and I know that anything that I say, she'll find a way to bring it down a peg. And so- I just say like, I don't go to that person for guidance in this area. So, and what I wanna say about the current is this, as you move into your audacious goal, your mega goal, and you start to-
make actual progress and headway. You're going to meet real, legitimate people who are gonna be, first of all, they're gonna be taken back by your vision, and then they're gonna take you seriously, and then they're gonna become your colleagues. And all of a sudden, you're gonna be talking with people that are speaking about possibilities, dollar values, strategies.
Erik + Emily Orton (09:43.262)
ways forward that you had never thought of before, and they are taking you seriously, and you are finding your current. The people that you can be around and talk about things with that are not gonna, they're gonna make you feel normal. And this new level of you is gonna become normalized, which is what you want. You want your new mega goal to feel very doable.
So how we like to talk about this is expanding your comfort zone. Every time you move out of your comfort zone, then you get comfortable in that new place that used to be unfamiliar. And now your comfort zone is bigger. And you just keep moving like that in expanding concentric circles until your goal seems inevitable. And you know in your heart that if you just keep moving forward, this will happen. And then one day you arrive.
So that's just a simple way of saying, you become the person who is capable of the dreams you have as you move towards them. I wanna say something here about coaching for a second, because we don't always talk directly about the coaching work that we do. We talk about discovery calls, we talk about sailing, we talk about all these other things. But when we coach with people, it's a deeply satisfying experience and it's all mega transforming, transformers.
And here's why because we will work with people for maybe this is a little bit of an infomercial Here's what we do. We work with people for four months ten sessions and over the course of those ten sessions what we do is It's not necessarily about giving people across the finish line with whatever they choose their adventure They're what we call an island and we have a framework that we teach the navigator framework and we talk about items The goal is not necessarily to get you across the finish line that may happen
The goal is to move the needle from impossible, feeling impossible, to feeling inevitable. Because once we get you there, you're on your own. And the thing that you want to do might take six months, it might take a year, it might take many years. But the goal is to swing the pendulum, get you off of that impossible, get you out of that impossibility rut and on the road to momentum.
Erik + Emily Orton (12:09.678)
I like it. I'm not a bicyclist, but today when we were speaking with our clients, one of them said, you know, for the first time this week, and it's our second to last session, that they feel like they can move forward and they don't need this accountability in their life as much as they have up to now. And so they were worried about getting to this point. They were worried about getting to this point, but now they're at this point at the perfect time.
And they've developed the habits. We've talked about the habits that are going to help keep the momentum going forward and, uh, And they're like, it's working, right. It's working. And before we thought, Oh, we've been talking about this idea for years. And the more we talk about it without taking action, the less credible we feel, the less we trust ourselves, the more bad we feel, the less capable we feel. So they hired us.
to move forward to say like, we are taking action and we are gonna hold ourselves accountable. And when they say they're gonna send a text or an email or look into something, they know we're gonna be asking about it at our next visit and they do it. And I'm so proud of them. But now they've come to the point where they've done it enough, they've built up their own confidence, their own stamina, their vision is super clear. And they're building the team that's gonna make it happen. And we just feel so honored to have them.
that part of the journey to move them across the threshold of actually moving it from just talking about it to taking action, big action and having great momentum. And so I'm thinking about this metaphor of when you learn how to ride a bicycle, you get the bicycle, you think the bicycle is so cool, you imagine being able to ride it, but you get on the bicycle and it's awkward. And maybe you don't know how to ride it and you can't keep it up and you don't know what all the gears are for.
And so someone is there walking alongside you saying, oh yeah, you're gonna wanna shift down or shift up or do this or here's how you get the chain back on or like I'll hold the seat while you balance. And then you get to the point where you're off and you're able to ride on your own. Now you know how to ride a bicycle. This doesn't mean you're now in the Tour de France.
Erik + Emily Orton (14:30.698)
Right, but you know, but you know that you can get there. Right, you have the core skill. The big dream is like, I now know how to ride a bike and I can set up my own schedule if you want. And anyway, that's the part of the process that we just get so much satisfaction out of seeing that transformation. We've seen it over and over and over again. And I mean, it's fun for us and it's great for our clients because they say...
That's what they say. They say before I thought this was impossible and now I know it's inevitable. And they just do things that they had never imagined that they would be doing and their confidence is so high and they are having a huge impact in their families and in their communities. So. I wanna riff on your bicycle. We're just back here encouraging and loving and letting you know, yeah, we've done it and you can do it too. So I wanna riff on what you're saying about riding a bicycle and how it kind of.
gives you that launch point to do everything else. Because once you know how to learn to ride a bike, you can ride around your neighborhood, you can ride across town, you can get a speed bike, you can get a road bike, you can get a mountain bike, you can ride across the country, you can become, you can ride in the Olympics. You know, you could do all kinds of stuff, but you have to have that core skill, that core skill of balancing and having momentum enough to stay balanced, to move forward. And once you have that, thousands of opportunities open up to you.
as a bicycle rider. And this is how I like to think about what we do as coaching, is that we have a system, a framework that teaches you, for those of you who are watching on YouTube, Emily's gonna flash the cover. This is it, the navigator framework, because you don't control the circumstances, but you control your decisions as you navigate. And so we use these strategies and this framework over and over again, fit your dream to these.
fit these strategies to your dream, not the other way around. So what I'll say is this, is that you might come in to our coaching sessions with one or two really great ideas. And you might come in with 10. We're gonna help you out with one or two of them. But what you do is that you say, oh, okay, now that I've done this once, twice, maybe three times, okay, now I'm on a bicycle and I can pedal and I can keep my momentum.
Erik + Emily Orton (16:55.262)
everything else that I want to do, I can now just apply. And so we might help you pull off one amazing family adventure or one cool business idea or whatever it is the thing that you are really craving to do. And then you do a second one. And then after that, you're like, you know what? I got this. And then you can go and so many opportunities are gonna open up to you. And all of a sudden,
As you, your confidence and your credibility rises, the size of your dreams get bigger and you just start to think about all the things that you could do. You don't need us at that point. You've got it. You've got the skills. I mean, we'll always be there to cheer for and root on our clients because we love seeing it happen. We love the long payout of how this goes in terms of just how it ripples forward into your life and into your children's lives and into the...
the next generation, it's really the most satisfying thing about it. But just this.
The goal is to unlock an infinite number of things that you want to do, an infinite number of adventures, islands, whatever that is, and we'll help you get the first one or two and then you're off on your own. And so I love the unendingness of it. And what you were saying about rippling out into your families, I think one of my favorite stories that we heard from these clients was that several months ago when they started, they asked their kids to answer some of the...
the blue sky questions, which you can go back. We have a previous episode and maybe we'll link below to that episode as well, where we give three of the questions and like, what are your big ideas and what would you wanna do in life? And these are young kids and they didn't have anything. I don't know. And now after a few months of seeing their parents being persistent, taking action, having conversations, just moving forward in various ways on their own dreams, she came back.
Erik + Emily Orton (18:58.734)
and she did the exercise with them again. And this time they each had several ideas that they would be excited about, things that they're curious about, interested in, and would love to try and do. And that is a generational gift that you give by setting the example of doing it yourself. You give your kids this, not only a growth mindset, but a growth model. And so they think, oh yeah, we can do this. And I recognize there will be pushback.
but there's also persistence. And there are these payoffs that come, and it's so cool just trying to see what we're capable of. So that was probably my favorite, favorite thing, because I thought, oh, well, this dream you're doing could last for many years, maybe even decades. But this seed that you're planting with your family will have an effect for generations. So really awesome. Yeah, so I'm gonna end with this, if that's all right. That's what we want for you. And look, if you coach with us,
Great. Whether it's a match for you or not, here's what we'd love for you to do. Get on a Discovery call. We would love to chat with you and just help you have an inkling of what this can feel like. 20, 30 minutes, totally free. Theawesomefactory.nyc forward slash Discovery. Link below. Link below, pick a time, let's get on. If it works out to do something more together, great. We'd love to be with you for the medium term.
and get you going for the long term. And if not, we'd love to help you get out of the gates and on your own, just like sampling what it feels like to ride that bike. For you and for your kids. Yes, it's a giving thing to do it. Maybe. Yeah. Yeah, that's how I feel about it. Is that it's a, we call it double return parenting. You're gonna benefit and then your kids will benefit. So that's all I got. Anything from you, Emily? What could go right?
Thanks for listening.
Erik + Emily Orton (21:06.894)
Thanks for being here. And what happened?
