2155 - Entrepreneurial Mindset Lessons with Coach Bob Regnerus

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

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1:05With us right now, it's Bob Regnerus, a.k.a. Coach Reg. Coach Reg, it's great to have you. By the way, your website is BobRegnerus.com. We've got the spelling for that to our friend that's listening to the podcast. Just click on your podcast app and you'll find a direct link, Bob, to your website. But it's great to have you, Coach Reg. So good to talk with you today, Josh. Let's have a lot of fun. Yeah. So on that note, tell me about what you are doing for fun lately. anything you're watching or listening to or into hobby wise or otherwise? Yeah. It's winter here in the Midwest and I'm trying to improve my golf game, just like any hack golfer.

1:45I got my handicap below 20 last season. So I'm proud of that. But so we're spending some time indoors while it's cold and rainy and then booking trips all over the country to play golf. So we're going down to Alabama this month at the end of the month. uh we're we're heading uh into georgia in april and then we're going to myrtle beach in in may so we always have something to look forward to my wife and i yeah um so when you and sorry this is such a dumb question i'm gonna obviously uh indicate my lack of i i live so funny i live on a golf course i think the last time i played on it was about five years ago so you're the guy that just collects golf balls and complains about i do i've got two giant buckets full of golf balls And trust me when I say that I have had many more that have ended up, you know, the kids will take them out, just, you know, all these nice new golf balls and just, you know, go out and just hit them out on.

2:40They'll sneak over, band it over to the driving range with their own golf balls and hit them from the other direction. We played on some courses, Josh, where there's some really friendly people like they realize, hey, we live on a golf course. And there's been a couple of enterprising people that have different buckets of balls with an honor system. like hey if you're having a rough day here's three balls for two bucks type of thing oh my gosh right how about that and then some people are like having a rough day take a ball on us type of thing so if you live on a golf course you got to kind of you got to go with the flow you know the drill you know i i would say my you know my only encounter with golfers is uh so you know going out of my neighborhood, there's where I'm running.

3:27So I'm, I do running. And so we, there's always golf carts that we have to contend with. So there's a shared path that we have to do for a certain stretch. And it's, I love it when they say thank you, when I get off the sidewalk for them and they don't always do that. So to fellow golfers, please say thank you. I'll say Thank you, Matt. Anyway, hey, so, and for you, so the only time you can really practice, you just got to get out of the Chicagoland area. Do you do much indoors? Yeah, so we've got facilities. There's a bunch of, like, there's a huge trend that kicked up during COVID is indoor hitting bays.

4:06Yeah. But we actually have one that's about 30 minutes from our house. One of the clubs owns it. They own, it's a giant dome. it's an inflatable dome if you could picture this like it's an inflatable dome it's got about 150 yards of space from where you hit to the back wall with the top tracer so you hit off a mat it's it's a bay like a driving range but you've got you've got a computer you've got couches like it's it think of top golf yeah except smaller like enclosed so that's that's where we we go every weekend. And that's so funny. Yeah. I go to Topgolf more than I go on my own golf course I live on.

4:45Yeah. I mean, it's a great, you know, Topgolf is great. I actually do. I've actually done a couple events where I get a group of entrepreneurs together. And so golf is intimidating for them. So I take them to Topgolf, like you can have fun and then you have some food. It's, it's pretty cool. Oh, yeah. It's a good vibe. It's a good vibe. Well, well, Coach Reg, Reg, tell me about the work that you do with entrepreneurs? Yeah, it's interesting. It's been quite a journey, Josh. I have moved from the space of mentoring and doing marketing for entrepreneurs to coaching them. And the difference between mentoring and coaching is mentoring is you dispense advice.

5:24When you coach them, you get them to get advice for themselves. So my passion is tapping into an entrepreneur and helping them discover their insight within. The greatest teacher, the greatest into it there is, is the wisdom that's inside of you. And I help people unlock that, which is just absolutely in my wheelhouse because what I've done as a coach on the basketball court for 39 years is get the best out of my players. Now I just get the best out of my clients. Well, tell me a bit about like, if you were to, I would imagine, you know, you've got a perfect kind of mini Ted talk ready to go. Like the parallels between professional sports and entrepreneurialism are many.

6:05But if you were to kind of like, you know, kind of focus your message around that theme, what would you imagine you'd be saying, go ahead and give us a little mini TED talk if you like? Yeah, I mean, mini talk. Athletes and entrepreneurs are so similar. It's scary. And you understand this. The idea of an athlete is always trying to improve herself or himself. There's this dedication to improving their craft and they go deep on it. The best entrepreneurs that I coach and I've worked with are ones that want to go deep. They want to get better. They hire experts, they hire mentors, they hire coaches.

6:42Even Tiger Woods still at his age with his accolades has a swing coach. Michael Jordan had a training coach and that's what people do. So I love that the desire for an athlete to grow her game or his game or an entrepreneur to grow their game, they take similar paths and they seek out experts that help them hone in, get expertise and drive further in the marketplace. I think the other thing is that athletes and entrepreneurs are dreamers. Entrepreneurs are people that sit down and think about how can I solve this problem? Think about a big mission. Well, athletes too, think about sitting down as a 12-year-old and watching the Super Bowl on TV and then finding yourself in that game 10 years later.

7:31You hear these stories over and over, these big games, these big moments, and you hear them say, I was dreaming about this 10 years ago and now here I am. Well, if you've worked with entrepreneurs or had conversations with them, you find them saying the same thing. 10 years ago, I had no idea I'd be standing here, but I had this dream. I think those are two things that are so similar and why I enjoy working with not only entrepreneurs separately, athletes separately, putting them together. Entrepreneurs that are former athletes is who I'm really passionate about because they know what it takes to really drive themselves forward in different arenas.

8:09Yeah. Bob, in 2025, what are you hearing from business leaders? And what are you seeing? What needs are you seeing? I'm hearing uncertainty. And I know you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs too, but we are at a time when everything is shifting and there's not a lot of things that we could hold onto that are certain. And so uncertainty is kind of the prevailing thing that I hear from people inside and out. And here's what I'll say. these are the times we live in and there's so many applications to athletics right you never know what you're going to find when you get on the court but here's the thing even in a time where there is mass chaos when we have an administration that's going to put 25 tariffs on mexico and canada and the stock market is up one day mildly you know way down on another day how is it that we can survive in this game that we're playing of business and not go crazy?

9:15Well, I believe that during times of mass chaos, there's also mass opportunity. When things are chaotic, the people that are calm, the people that are sure of who they are, they have a deep connection to their inner wisdom, and they can feel that compass pushing them and pulling them and getting them to the right place. They are going to find that even during these chaotic times, you know, 2025, where we sit, it's chaotic. It's up and down. AI, huge disruptor. We don't know what AI is going to do. Right now, it's a little bit of a magic trick, but the fact is AI is a disruptor just as much as an administration is a disruptor.

9:57War is a disruptor. All these things, we can take hold and say, hey, I know who I am. I know what my skills are, and I know what my superpowers are. I'm going to focus in on doing this because this is totally my zone of genius and I could absolutely help these people. And we focus in. And when everybody else is screaming, the world is falling. We are there. We are there saying, no, this is good. This is opportunity. We are prepared for this. So the people that I'm working with, Josh, I'm preparing them for disruption. I'm preparing them for what's next. And it's not about having any particular strategy.

10:35It's about working on this. It's working on your mindset so that you are prepared for whatever comes down the way. Yeah. You know, Bob, I was, you know, I've been talking about this frequently and my wife and I've been talking about, you know, what we do in our personal lives. I mean, obviously, it leads over into everything that we do professionally as well. And, you know, there's a lot of distractions out there. And there are a lot of things I think that, you know, on that theme of being a leader that represents calm in the storm, you know, that kind of that stoic leadership is badly needed.

11:12We need people who are going to be stable, who are going to exercise that. And from my experience, and I'll just speak for myself, I find that when I lean into the chaos and just kind of fill my life with that, that does me no good. It degrades my ability to be who I truly need to be for my family, for my team, for my employees, for my clients, for my audiences. and so I think there's something to be said for you know kind of like a little bit of mental hygiene as well because you know particularly I'd say on social media there's a lot of you know there's a lot of division and chaos happening which which I really want to be a part of to be honest with you that does not fuel me no and it shouldn't and it doesn't feel right to you because you know there's a better way.

12:07And I think that's the better part of you calling out to say you need to be different. I think you said on an email earlier this week or last week talking about you're doing a deep dive into stoicism. Yeah. That kind of calling doesn't come from like your conscious mind. That comes from a deeper place. Like something deeper inside of you is like, explore this concept. Now, stoicism existed before the internet. Okay. Wait a minute. Let me check my timeline. You're right. Yes. Okay. So there is this deep ingrained human kind of drive for things that are lasting. And so I have a good friend, Perry Marshall, who encourages people to read books written before the printing press, because these books, the Bible, like the, you Marcus Aurelius, the Odyssey, these books had to be written and passed down.

13:05They're worth reading because they had to be protected before they could be mass produced. And so this calling to this deeper work is your human spirit calling out to you. And it's saying, look, this stuff, this social media, this way of doing things, it's almost like a lot of shortcuts. It's distractions. you're seeking something deeper, something more impactful. Take eating for instance. Now, the way we have learned to eat in our culture in the Western world is that we eat very quickly and we do very little prep time. Now, what I have learned in terms of my body is that it's not good for my body.

13:51And so I've had to be intentional about changing my eating habits so that I'm eating less processed food. In fact, I'm eating no processed food. I'm eating organic food. I'm eating less meat. I am changing my body, but it takes a lot of money and it takes a lot of preparation time to do so, which means I have to make a choice to put away the thought that food prep should be quick, easy, and fast, and so I can move on with my day. I am deliberately slowing myself down in terms of my eating style. I've also made a decision to not spend time on social media. I'll check in maybe once a day or once every other day, but I have had to make a decision that that is not something that I want coming into my body.

14:38So I don't want processed foods coming into my body. I don't want processed information coming into my mind. It's a deliberate conscious action that you take and your body will respond positively because if you can block out distractions, that's when the creative force just, it just comes down on you and you'll be able to like, just have these ideas and you're not, it doesn't cloud you. If you were doom scrolling through Facebook or Instagram, your mind is only focused in on, on that dopamine hit and is not open for creative inspiration. You know, athletes would never, you know, if an athlete's having a bit of a slump, right?

15:17If they were to then start obsessing on all the negativity being thrown at them and, you know, all the negative chatter and the, you know, it's like, that is not gonna, that's not gonna get you back in the saddle, my friend. Like, you know, and so why as leaders, would we think that that would be helpful for us? It's the exact same thing. Yeah, well, how are how are we as business leaders any different from an elite athlete? I mean, we are trying to master our craft as well. And so we can model what they do. I mean, most athletes turn off their accounts. They may have social media accounts, but they have somebody else running it.

15:55Can you imagine what it would do for somebody that plays? Let's say they're an NFL player. They play one game a week and they have a bad game. Can you imagine what it would be like for them to go through and suck in the opinions of all the washed masses that have this vested interest in how they perform on the field? How could that person possibly perform if they're trying to live up to the expectations of people on social media, right? Most of them shut that out. They go within. They spend time with their coaches. They get out in the practice field and they work on their craft. That's what we have to do as business leaders.

16:31We've got to shut out the noise. We've got to get back to basics. If we have a bad day at the office or a bad month in the office, we've got to get back to the fundamentals. What does it take for us to simplify this and solve the problem? Tell me about how you work with your clients. I really enjoy one-on-one and small group formats. and I do that because I'm an empath and I work best working with small groups of people. Ironically though, I enjoy speaking to larger crowds. So I like to market by doing things like writing books and speaking to large audiences, but pulling out of that audience those that are ready for this kind of work.

17:19So I enjoy one-on-one work. I enjoy small group work where we go deep on things And so as a coach, we are working on issues related to somebody's health, somebody's legacy, somebody's relationships, somebody's purpose, you know, deep dive into their business or their career. And those are difficult to discuss in larger group formats and get the impact. So my preference is smaller groups like masterminds and one-on-one. That's how I prefer to work. Yeah. And then what does that look like? like how do you how do you like how do you do that like are you are you meeting for a long period of time or yeah so i i have a couple different offers so when somebody uh comes into my orbit and they want to experience working with me i i've got a uh a 90 minute session called a spark session and what that does is you can come into my world and and have a coach have a have a coaching conversation with me and I don't call it a coaching conversation.

18:26I'm kind of telling you what we're doing, but we have a conversation around a particular problem they have. And we work through that problem in about an hour and they come out with at least an answer or a next step towards their, uh, towards their solution. The other way I really love to work is, is taking them from that to a full day experience. And what we do is we spend about a day and a half together, mapping out what a fully filled life for them looks like and mapping out the next steps. And then working with me on a probably a two or three week rhythm for maintaining that and working through any issues that come up and making sure they're progressing towards the life plan that they've set up.

19:13Yeah. Your website is BobRagnaris.com. And again, it's the spelling in our podcast player, you just kind of click around the information icon and click on the cover art. You'll get to it. We've got a direct link there. They can always go to coachreg23.com. That may be easier to remember. Coachreg23. Yeah, that's another fast one. Okay, good, good, good. If someone, and I see that you've got some resources for everyone, what would you recommend they go and drink up? I would love for them to get on my newsletter list. I don't presume that anybody has the right to necessarily say, hey, I'm somebody for you.

19:56I want them to resonate with me first. And so I make sure I have a free newsletter. The only thing I ask is an email address. I'd be a bad marketer if I didn't do that. It'd be awful, awful hard to send them the newsletter without that. It would. It would. Smoke signals. I mean, we could always do that, I guess. Yeah. Look up in this guy. Coach Bob is talking again. My cadence is I send a very thoughtful newsletter called Spark Insights every Wednesday. Yeah. And it gives a deep insight into what I'm thinking about, who I'm working with, and just what's top of my mind. It really gets somebody an idea of who I am.

20:34I talk a lot about stories of people that I work with. Obviously, I protect people's names unless they give me permission to do so. So that's the best way to really just get a sense of who I am. And then always, there's always an invitation. If you're working through something and you're thinking about, hey, I could use the help on that, I always direct them to a Spark session, sparksession.net. And it's a really easy way to have a really conscious conversation with a coach that knows how to be a mirror and reflect back what situation you might be going through and work through it in about an hour.

21:12It's pretty powerful. Coach Reg, Bob Regnerus, thank you so much for joining us. Your website, once again, is BobRagneris.com. Thank you so much. Josh, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.

21:29Thanks for listening to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders, asking them where their best business comes from.

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