IAM256- Therapist and Coach Helps Entrepreneurs Reach their Potential through Entrepreneurship

Jason Wasser is a Licensed Therapist, Certified Neuro Emotional Technique Practitioner and a Certified Entrepreneurial Coach. He believes that every business owner, whether and entrepreneur or intrapreneur, should have a therapist and coach in their life to help them reach their potential and minimize their stressors. Jason utilizes a mind-body-spirit approach when collaborating with his clients and their families. Jason owns The Family Room Wellness Associates in South Florida and works with entrepreneurial clients and their loved ones all over the world.

• CEO Hack: Be in a space where someone is holding you accountable and you can also hold someone accountable to be successful
• CEO Nugget: Leverage your social media and personal brand to show how you solve a problem
• CEO Defined: Building something that's bigger than you

Website: http://www.thefamilyroomsfl.com/

Instagram: @jasonwasserlmft
Business Finishing School's Business Growth Summit: http://bit.ly/Bfsgrowth

Full Interview

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:26

Hello, hello, hello. This is Gresham from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Jason Wasser of the Family Room Wellness Associates in South Florida. Jason, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Jason Wasser 0:37

Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:39

No problem. Super excited to have you on and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Jason so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Jason Wasser is a licensed therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, and certified entrepreneurial coach. He believes that every business owner whether an entrepreneur or intrapreneur should have a therapist and a coach in their life to help them reach their potential and minimize their stresses. Jason utilizes a mind-body-spirit approach when collaborating with his clients and their families.

Jason owns the Family Room Wellness Associates in South Florida and works with entrepreneurial clients and their loved ones all over the world. Jason, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Jason Wasser 1:13

I'm ready and excited.

Gresham Harkless 1:18

Awesome. Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to start your business?

Jason Wasser 1:24

Absolutely. So having grown up actually in an entrepreneurial family, I'm actually the second generation. So my grandfather started a family furniture business. After he survived the Holocaust and moved to Pennsylvania, I've been close to your neck of the woods. My father eventually took it over, they moved it down to South Florida.

And then a bunch of years ago, my younger siblings, my brother and sister kind of started getting involved in the business and pretty much managing the day-to-day. Meanwhile, as part of my journey, I've always been involved in informal education, the nonprofit world, the student programming, whether it's high school or college level programming, and never really saw myself as this person who's an entrepreneur, I always saw myself as a healer and the therapist more than I saw myself as a business person.

And a bunch of years ago, I opened up my own practice, still not accepting this idea that I'm an entrepreneur, that I'm a CEO, right, and saw the struggles of what it was to be a solopreneur, right, a person who's trying to run a business by themselves. And while I was doing that, I was hitting my head against the wall. I couldn't grow the business while I was seeing clients. And if I was seeing clients I right and servicing the people I care to service, I couldn't grow the business.

So I was stuck in a catch-22. And meanwhile, I was still fighting the idea of being a business owner, as opposed to this idea of right a therapist until a colleague of mine who was a chiropractor was also an MDT practitioner, I took about a year and a half to try to convince me to join about this entrepreneur conference in Dallas, Texas.

And finally, once I summed up my strength to be really uncomfortable, where I saw myself probably being less than all the other people that were there, even though I have had this business for many years, I jumped on a plane and went out for a weekend and walked out with the realization that not only am I an entrepreneur, but I'm actually really, really passionate about it. But I've just been thinking about it in defining it the wrong way.

And that some significant limitations in year one alone of changing my mindset and putting into play this program that I'm now a certified coach through brought not only radical, massive increase to my bottom line and profit in my company but also made it much simpler to operate. And now I use the same skills to help other companies and families change their life through that world of entrepreneurship.

Gresham Harkless 3:27

I love that. I love that because while you were talking I was immediately thinking about like this the book The E Myth, which always talks about the different aspects of running a business and how in order to go to a different level you can't be the at the technician I think it is the technician you have to move from the technician to the business owner to the kind of person that can see everything. So I love that because so many business owners I find struggle with it, do you find the exact same thing?

Jason Wasser 3:49

Absolutely. And I share this with everybody, especially people who are reaching out to me for ideas about going into graduate school for therapy or any other type of business like that, that I really poorly that technician, manager entrepreneur, which is what the EMS talks about, to anybody who's getting a salaried position and or they're that solopreneur person that they're the technician, right, whether you're a janitor, whether you're a barista at a coffee shop, whether you're a therapist, whether you're a doctor, you're only getting paid when you're doing the work.

And a lot of times that comes with also a lot of administrative work as well. A lot of extra paperwork, all that stuff. But going up to the level of a manager, someone like me was doing all three, I was trying to manage my paperwork, marketing, answering phones, scheduling everything, and trying to network right, going to networking groups and advertising, and managing all that and I didn't have enough time in the day.

So when people come to me now, and I walk them through each of those things are radical shifts in a person's idea whether they're a student, or they're already running a business on how to change from that paradigm. And in fact, that's one of the first books or I'll say skip the book, just go on YouTube and listen to as much as you can. You're gonna get all that in a much shorter, more efficient time, but I know that we've been trained to go to school.

Go to college, get a job, and get that salary to have that safety and stability. And, and But meanwhile, you're still trying to do all those other things. My paradigm, a new paradigm is to become the person who is the most successful, you have to give up practicing the trade in which you're trained to learn to go to the next level, so you don't become Superman or Superwoman and try to do it all. And that's what I help both my therapy clients as well as my coaching clients really let go of, and it really does help change everything for them.

Gresham Harkless 5:27

Yeah, I can definitely imagine that. Because you know, so many people kind of struggle with that usually, a lot of people that start businesses have some type of expertise, they're really good at something. But sometimes that can limit your growth because you're so good at it that no one else can do it better than you, which it kind of touches on at the beginning of the E Myth. So I know you've touched on a little bit is that kind of like what you do for the clients you work with, and what you feel kind of makes you unique? And you're just like, You're what I call your secret sauce.

Jason Wasser 5:48

Absolutely. I think the secret sauce is not only do I have the therapy side and this coaching side, and the coaching program, I was actually trained under a capital venturous, who is radically successful, has over I think 50 companies under their portfolio, and their passion is specifically and his name is Rick Tapio. His his passion is training and helping other entrepreneurs reach their potential through entrepreneurship.

And he does that through core values, values-based decision-making minute by objective, my other buddy Matt Minero, I don't know if you've heard of him through the unique money podcast, is also now co-owner of this program called Business Finishing School, talks about a lifestyle by design.

And that's kind of the way that I coach my clients where we typically think too small, right, we think about a goal that we want to make, you know, in the next three to six months, but I push to five to 10 years out and reverse engineer and I know the anxieties can be provoked in them because we usually make a goal or what we want to attain. And then we take a step back from that, just below the level of resistance to emotions.

And my job as a therapist and a coach is to push you into that anxiety-provoking state because that's really where I believe your potential lies once you get past that. So by doing that reverse engineering put the putting together this lifestyle by design.

And then when my clients are in person with me, I throw a neuro-emotional technique at them, which is a mind-body stress reduction protocol, we find out what the self-sabotaging self-limiting stories are that hold them back, and you can find the therapy that coaching and the IDT. And you have a game changer that I don't believe anybody else in the world is doing.

Gresham Harkless 7:14

What I wanted to do was switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or book or a habit that you have. But it's something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Jason Wasser 7:23

So one of my favorite things through this program that I'm a certified coach through was the accountability groups, right, there are so many masterminds out there, there's everybody's offering a mastermind, which I see more as like a first buy, and sale to get that person to buy more of your products. What I mean by this situation is that you find 234 other like-minded people that are equally committed to doing the work through a very specific lens to help you get to a goal in each of your personal and professional lives.

So for example, I've through this program, I have two other people that I work with one's a chiropractor out in Portland, Oregon, and another one a buddy here in South Florida, who is a business coach, and also does kind of like outsourced CEO, and works in online education. And each of us is going through different themes and how it applies to each of our problems, both emotionally, emotionally, and practically about our business, our limitations, our delegation, and time management.

So we go through themes, as well as the module from this curriculum to help us do better as well as to hold each other accountable to do the work that we say we're going to do. And I think that's something that most people don't realize, to hold yourself accountable is really difficult.

And a lot of people don't have that. And that's why all these great books out there, you know, weigh the seal, and all these things about like, how do you get up and rise and grind and all those things, all these cliche phrases, but to be in a space where you have you aren't holding someone else accountable, and they're holding you accountable is radically, radically, radically part of the success factor.

Gresham Harkless 8:43

Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. A lot of people say you know, how successful you are is determined by your environment. And if you want to in any way, you touched on a little bit, when you mentioned that you went to the conference, and you said you felt like you weren't up to par with these other people, but you put yourself in that environment, and all of a sudden you start to manifest itself. So doing that on a regular basis, like you guys are doing. I think that's definitely a great CEO hack.

Jason Wasser 9:05

Well, I think that's also part of that story, right that people carry about their success factor, right, I grew up I was a scholarship kid. And to know that, and I also wasn't a great student, I barely graduated high school to know that not only my successful therapist with a great reputation, but to know that I came from a parent's divorce scholarship, right, not doing really well in high school, and then finding out what I'm passionate about.

And then putting myself in that environment. I want to challenge your listeners to not be afraid to take that risk to do that, to now be coached by some of the big-name people out there and have a personal relationship with some of the big-name people that are out there in the entrepreneur space is really something that I've leveraged through this in the last two and a half years.

So I was nothing to have, you know, leverage with this community of people who were radically successful making hundreds of millions of dollars a year and I'm not saying it from an ego place. I'm saying it by those influences become part of your network. Right. And I think that if you bring value and there's also a difference for people out there who know the thing of a CEO No, just because you're selling a product doesn't make you a CEO. But when you have a business, right when you're when you have products and a company around it, that's what makes you a CEO.

And I think that people out there need to understand that there's more than just a product in order to do that. And a lot of times the product they're trying to sell them is themselves. And that's really tough. Because the number 15 minutes, and we'll be done, and we'll be done. But to leverage the people that you're engaging with is really powerful.

Gresham Harkless 10:24

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely wouldn't, you know, agree with that. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to be a time machine, what would you tell your younger business self?

Jason Wasser 10:35

So the younger business self of me would realize that I am an entrepreneur, I think, back to the time I was in graduate school, we didn't have social media. So I did graduate school from 2003 to 2005. And that was right after Facebook got started. No one was using social media for business. I think maybe around that time, Gary Vee was probably the only guy who was using AdWords and all this stuff, but no one was leveraging a personal brand. So I have two friends from here in South Florida, who just started graduate school, their twin sisters, and they just started the family therapy program that I'm in.

And I said, throughout your entire from day one, you start creating Instagram, that's just your professional Instagram. So by the time you graduate, where you have two years of graduation you graduate, and then you have another two years until you get fully licensed, that's four years to build up a social media presence in and your brand in that timeframe.

So that night, I got requests for both of them on Instagram, with business brands, right with their therapist brand. And this is something that I feel like if you don't I agree 100% with Gary Vee, if you don't have a brand, if you're not leveraging social media, not to tell us what you do, but to show what you do, how do you solve the problem? What's the problem you're trying to solve? I wish I knew that back then. And I also realized that the and it's something I teach my clients is that entrepreneurship I 100% believe is a therapeutic modality that you can heal and figure out your purpose through entrepreneurship, probably more profoundly than you can in many other ways.

And I think that's an incredible actualization of personal through that. So those are just some you know, those nuggets of bone up on all the reading, but nowhere your role is right back to the entrepreneur, the manager and and the technician. So people are really great at baking cakes, and then you hire a partner to be the marketer, I think are really good macro thinkers. So know your role, know what you're really good at. And don't try to like to force yourself into something else. As if like, there's an ego thing there. I think that would be the biggest nugget I would ever give to someone.

Gresham Harkless 12:22

Yeah, absolutely love that. And I love that I usually always say entrepreneurship to me equals hope. And a lot of times like you were touching on, you know, the healing and how you're able to heal things through entrepreneurship. And I think that definitely is something I would echo as well, too. So I love those CEO nuggets as well. So I know, we touched on it a little bit. And we talked about the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And I want to see if there's anything additional you had or like how you would define what you look at as far as being a CEO.

Jason Wasser 12:47

So it's interesting, I don't see myself as a CEO, I have a very, very niche practice, I have a chiropractor and a nutritionist that work out of my office as my associates. But I feel that unless you're really running a larger scale company, this idea of having the sight of CEO, really, people are still holding on to that Superman Superwoman principle.

And I think to really be a CEO means that you are a master at delegation, you're a master of implementing and getting people around you that are aligned with core values of your business, you're a master of brainstorming objectives and action steps, and holding each person in that business accountable. But you have to have a business. Right?

Again, I I like the idea that people aim to be a CEO. But there's a difference between being a president or a founder of something and being a chief executive officer, which means that you have an executive team, which means you might have a board of directors, which means you might have stakeholders in your company investors, but I want to challenge people to think bigger than them being Superman or Superwoman.

And that's the only way that you can eventually become a CEO is when you build something that's much bigger than you were at the end of the day, the business does not revolve around you that if you disappeared for a month, it would still run, I think when we get to that point, then you can officially call yourself a CEO.

Gresham Harkless 14:06

Nice. I absolutely love that. I love that perspective. Because a lot of times I love the phrase, the master of delegation, because when you are and you have that perspective, you're thinking long term, and you're putting the people in place to be able to execute on those specific things that they're great at as well, too. And make sure masterful leader and a Master of delegation, as you said. So I truly appreciate the time, Jason and I wanted to pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and then of course, how best they can get a hold of you.

Jason Wasser 14:31

Absolutely. So I know that people out there are kind of figuring out like, this coaching thing is such a big thing right now. And I really want to make sure that people know where to go and where to look for coaching. And obviously, I'm not here to be the therapist and coach for everybody.

As a therapist, I can only see people that live in the state of Florida. But when I'm doing coaching, the background that I have as a therapist is where I can separate between what's an emotional challenge and what's a solution-focused challenge is to find someone who does have that background and so should focus work. Unfortunately, a lot of times there are coaches out there that are doing therapy.

And unfortunately that also you can wake up in the morning tomorrow and anybody can call themself a coach. So know who you're working with know what their experience has truly been and know the difference between working on a therapeutic issue and a coaching issue. And I'm happy to answer anybody's questions and point them in the right direction.

As I said, I'm not here to take everybody I don't have the caseload in the bandwidth to take everybody I take very, very specific clients and but I do take people who are passionate or committed to long-term change in their life committed to realizing that mind body spirit has to be part of a work-life balance has to be part of it. Accountability has to be part of it defining core values has to be part of it and making themselves really uncomfortable to figure out who they are capable of being has to be entrepreneurs part of it.

So happy to help anybody out there, please put them in the right direction, or even set them up with some coaching time with me and the best way to get me is through my website. It's wwwthefamilyroomsfl.com and the SFL is South Florida. I can also be found on Instagram @jasonwasserlmft

Gresham Harkless 16:06

Awesome, awesome, awesome. I will have those links in the show notes as well too, just so that anybody can click through and follow up with you and follow you on Instagram of course, just like the students you did that you spoke to before. So again, I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day,

Jason Wasser 16:20

Thank you so much right back at you.

Outro 16:21

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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