ep141 – Chris Baran’s Nuggets

Show Notes

Have you ever started a new job, joined a salon, or stepped into a new business, and genuinely wanted to help… only to have people look at you like, “Who are you?” It felt like no matter how hard you worked or how much value you brought, you were invisible.

The truth is, we’ve all been there.

The reason often has less to do with your talent and more to do with the stage you’re in. There’s a framework I teach called the Power Model. It’s built around six different stages, or conditions, that we all move through in our careers, our finances, our relationships, and even our personal lives. Each stage comes with its own challenges, and if you don’t recognize where you are, it’s easy to feel stuck or frustrated.

In this episode, I’m going to walk you through the Power Model, explain each of the six stages, and help you understand where you are today. Once you know your current stage, you’ll have a much clearer picture of what you need to do next to keep moving forward.

Complete Transcript

Chris Baran 0:00
Hey friends, in this episode of Head Cases, we’re taking a sidebar to dig into the big ideas and questions that have come up recently with our guests. We’re calling these little detours Chris’s nuggets. You’ll still get an entertaining story or two with hard-won lessons learned, but also some focused insights that I know you’ll be able to use in your business and in your life. I’ve got my trusty iPad here for some visual aids, so now is a great time to find the video versions of this episode at Coach Chris Baran on YouTube or on Chris baran.com and we’re switching to nugget mode now. Hey, let me run this by you. Have you ever started in a business, in a salon, or in some point in your life, and you tried to help somebody, and they looked at you like you had four eyes, and said, “Who the hell are you? And you didn’t realize that they were looking at you like you were invisible, and no matter how hard you tried, no matter how hard you tried to help people, it just didn’t help you fit well. There’s this thing that that we call in a power model, which is just certain stages that we have that take you from when you enter into a relationship, whether it’s business and finance, or or or in partnership with your family, and so on, that you have certain conditions that you’re in, and sometimes we, we don’t know what to do when we’re in that certain condition. I realize right now that that you might, it might sound like a whole lot of gobbledygook for you right now. So I’m going to walk you through what we call the power model, and the power model is, in essence, six steps that we have for different conditions that you’re in, whether it’s in finance, you know, meaning that in your financial life, whether it’s in your personal life or whether it’s in your career. So, for those of you that are listening, what I want you to do is to realize that I’m going to be putting up a graph here, and if you’re just listening, then I want you to think of a ladder, and I want you to think of the ladder with five rungs, and in between each of those rungs is where one of these conditions are going to sit, and that ladder is going to be going vertically, so, and if you want, if you want to see the visual of this, if you just go to, in our, in our show notes, there will be a link, and it’ll, it’ll send you to our, our, our YouTube, it’ll send you to the YouTube videos, so that you can, you can watch it visually. If not, either one, whether you’re listening, whether you’re watching, please just take out a, just take out your pen and paper, and write this down as I go along, because I’m going to go through a lot of information here in a really short time. So, I want you to imagine, as you’re working up this ladder, I want you to imagine just right, you’re below that first rung, and, and that first step that we have, and that first step that you have is what we call just being invisible, you’re invisible to the people that are around you. Now, remember when I’m talking to you about this, and I, and you probably heard me say that this is about whether it’s in your career, what’s whether it is in your financial life or whether it is in your personal or in your, your relationships, your, your marriage, your partnerships, etc. You go through these same conditions, and and I want to get, I’ll give you a couple of the examples as we go along. Now, if you’ll noticing here on the left hand side, you’ll notice there’s a graph, and for those of you who might be mathematically challenged, as I was in school, that what I always talk about a graph with the x that goes vertically and the y that goes bought across the bottom that goes horizontally, and if you imagine being an invisible and you were going to graph that in in your whatever relationship that is, then it would be you’re just there. I mean, it’s..

Chris Baran 4:04
it’s imagine you just got a red dot right at that starting point, and it just means that you’re invisible to everybody else, no matter what, where you came from, no matter how much knowledge you have, no matter how much, how much influence that you could give, and help you could give them to them right now, to you, you’re invisible. They’re there, they’re established in their business, they’re established in their, in their finance, whatever. And you are just invisible now. The what most people want to do when they get in that, in that invisible relationship, or in that visible condition, the first thing that they want to do is they want to advertise, and let me give you an example, because I remember I remember being in a new relationship when, or in the new salon, and I just moved into town, and I went there, and I had some information, and I went up to somebody, and I said, hey, I. I, you know, I can help you with that, because I know how to do that, and they looked at me like I had four eyes, because the reality was I hadn’t earned any right to give it with them yet. So, what most people do is, they want to over, they want to give too much, they want to try to help, but it really, what isn’t what you want, really want to do, what you want to do with them is you just want to serve, so instead of saying here’s how I can, here’s, here’s what I know, and here’s how I can give you information to make you better. What you just want to do is serve. Hey, how can I help? What can I do? You know, if you’re, if you’re in a just a new relationship with, say, a friend or whatever, you know, it’s just about how can you help them, how can you serve them? I can. I remember I met someone just a little while back, and I’d known them for years, just professionally, but never on a personal level, and they called me up and said, ‘Hey, I’m coming to town looking for this kind of new arrangement, and I said, ‘Hey, well, why don’t you just stop by, and you know you can have dinner with us or whatever, and so we started off that way, just by serving that person. If you’re in the salon, then just go up to somebody, and it might be you’re the brand new person, and there’s a senior staff that are there, and you can go up, say, “Listen, how can I help you? Can I do a shampoo for you? Can I get your client some coffee, or whatever? And you start to get a relationship, because remember, in any business, no matter what it is, is you want to build relationships first. So, instead of an advertising how good you are and how you can help them, then what you want to do is tell, as to serve them, How can I help you? Because it might even be if, if you’re in a relationship with someone, and let’s just talk about that for a second. You might feel if that person has a fear of what you’re doing or why you’re approaching them, it might be that you know how. Do you help to overcome loneliness? You know, how do you take away the apprehension that someone has of you? You know, and again, you can do that simply by servicing. So, in any relationship, all you need to do is just serve first, so that just means is listen for for lines that they’re using, line of command, so if somebody is higher up than you, help to serve them, you know, just use your questioning skills, and don’t talk about how you, how much you know, talk about how much you can help them, so that’s on the first level, that’s on the invisible level. So the next condition, and remember these are conditions, and you can be in any one of these, and you can be in different ones, depending on whether it is in your fanciful financial life, whether it is in your personal life, whether it is in your relationships that you have in our own career.

Chris Baran 7:41
The next step up is you go from invisible, you’re going to move up one level, and we call that, and we call that one emergency. Emergence, and what that means is emergence, emergence, and what that means is you’re the you’re the person that does just joined and you’re now start to emerge with the group, they’re starting to know who you are. If I’ll give you another example, when I started off in my business, and the first business that I had, we started to, and I’m going to take you down one step here, and I’m on that first in between that first and that below that first rung, right now, when I was invisible, I thought, what I should do in business is I should advertise, so we put out all sorts of advertising campaign, but nobody knew who the heck we were, so the advertising was useless. What I should have done, and what I learned to do after, was I should have served the public, I should have went down and done community things, you know. How can I help the community grow, so that the community knows that I’ve, you know, that we’re good at heart? You see, so that was there. Now, now think about the next step as I moved up that ladder in between those next two rungs, and if I grab draft this part out on, you see, on that xy graph to the side, you’ll notice that you’ll start to improve, but whether it’s profitability or relationships or or connections, they’re still going down, you still, you’re still not all the way or there yet. So, what most people will want to do, and they’re emerging, they’ve done all their advertising, etc. and you think things aren’t going really well, maybe I’m not making as much money yet, so the first thing that they want to do, what they think that they should do is they think that they should conserve, they feel what they should do is if they need to save money in this relationship, I’d been advertising that wasn’t working, so I figured, well, I’m going to cut the advertising campaign because I’m just emerging and merging right now, but remember, right now what you want to do, the proper thing now is what you want to do is spend, and that means even though at that point if you have your business. Is nobody’s going to come in if they don’t know about you, so this is when you should spend money on promotion. You should spend money on trying to sell the people on how good your, your, your business is, how good you are. If you’re in a salon, this is where they start to see who you are. You’ve built a relationship with them, so now this is where you start to spend meaning. Hey, I learned this particular technique, I’d love to share that with you. See, so you’re spending your time helping other people, and you’re actually promoting you while you’re doing this. You see it, so that’s your first sec, first in between those first below that first rung is your, you’re invisible as you move up one more condition, you’re in emergence, and then as you move up one more, this is where, and I’m going to give you the graph first, if you can imagine, imagine on that graph that we know that we’ve, we’re always doing a whole lot of things wrong and we’re doing a whole lot of things right. So, if you can imagine in that graph that you’ve got, say, 345, circles that are on the bottom are things that you’re wrong, you’ve got those green circles at the top that are things that you did right, and if you sort of connected them all, you’d see that there there’s really deep valleys, so you’re doing a lot of things that are really working well, you’re doing a lot of things that aren’t working, so the valleys are low, the peaks are high, but you may still not be making a lot of money yet, a lot of people, and they’ll say in in business you have to spend quite a while building your business in order to make it profitable, and the same thing in your relationships with people within the salon.

Chris Baran 11:43
If you’re a salon that’s working there, you might be doing things that are right, you might be doing things that you had to correct. But in this group, this particular section is called chaos, and inside there, this is where.. damn it, I know I’m doing all these things, but I feel that either sometimes the people may not be liking me, or everything that I’m doing seems to be working, but maybe I should just cut back everything that I’ve been helping with. I’m getting these lows, so maybe what I should do is just cut back. Maybe I shouldn’t be helping the other people, maybe I shouldn’t be giving them advice. That really is what can happen to all of us. Remember, that’s that little part of your brain that’s trying to self-preserve you, and it will lie to you, and so it’ll tell you to cut back, and that’s absolutely the worst thing that you can do. Now, you need to keep going exactly the same way that you were doing, but what you’d need to do is you need to get your systems in place. Now that means if you’re in a business and you’re starting your business, that’s where you get to get all of your systems down, so your business is scalable. What are you doing at the front desk? What’s what’s the cutting systems that you’re using? What’s the coloring systems? What are all the systems that people have, so that everybody knows the same language, everybody is doing the same thing, and you’ve got this system that when somebody walks into the business, they get quality all the way through, and those systems, while I don’t necessarily mean in a relationship you’re having, you write down your systems, but you just take a look at what are the things that were that are not working? Write them down and stop doing them. What are the things that are doing right? Pay attention to them, improve upon them, and make them work even better for you. So, let’s just review, and you’ll notice, and right now, if you’re just listening, that all of those, there’s a red line, and that one, that middle rung, and that’s generally everything below that is when we’re starting to emerge as a business, emerge in a relationship, emerge in in finance, you know, you’re trying to get, you might be starting off saving money, and in so far as your work, your way up to chaos, and it’s still not working that well, you’re not saving a whole lot of money yet. Now, that red line, right where this marker, this is the key point, rate what happens right in here, and I’m going to give you the next level first, above that red line, and in between those rungs, that next one, that line that we all kind of are hoping for is called stability, and that just means, like, I’ll just give you the business one first. That business one means it’s stable. If you see it on a graft, on a graph, on that same graph, you would, you would normally be, you’re starting to gain headway, you’re coming up a little bit, it’s coming up a little bit more. Your systems are getting better, your profitability is better, your relationship with your staff is better. And imagine that same way that works along that would be in your finance, if it was your finance before, you might have been in chaos, and you’re wondering, where am I going to get enough money at the end of the month, and now. All of a sudden, you know you’ve got money left over, you’ve got money to save, you’ve got money to spend on a few extra things. In a relationship, it might be where things had its more of up and down. Now there’s in your relationship, you’ve gotten less squabbles that are going on, you have more, you have better relationship, more quality time with people. Now here’s what can happen is unfortunately when people get above that line. I want to give you a figure here, and I want you to listen in real close to this. It is right what I’m doing now is I’m going to create an arrow. I’m creating an arrow that goes right from that bottom just to above that red line, and inside of there in businesses, and this part is really critical.

Chris Baran 15:42
82% of businesses never make it above that line, and part of it is is because they haven’t taken the heed and put those systems in place so that they can get above that line and gets to stability. Now, as we all know, and I’ve been talking about in this, that right now there is the stable part that we have, and there’s the things we do right, and there’s the things that we should be doing that we’re not. What happens in stability? Instability is sometimes people will get bored. What will happen is they’ll become complacent, they’ll become complacent about the things that are quite, they’re doing, and they’ll try to change things up, but what you need to do when you’re in this particular situation is this is where this is where quality control comes in, this is where you test everything, where you measure things out. If it’s in a business, what are you doing to fine tune the things? So you think here’s the things that I’m doing right. What are the things that I need to do to make them better? So, if it is about my education and the way that I’m growing as a stylist, I might.. what am I? What are my things that are doing good? How do I fine tune those, and how do I make them better? What courses do I need to take? What do I need to do? If it’s in a relationship and it’s smoothing along, and you’re having a great time, you’ve got a great relationship with your friends or your partners, take a look at what’s working and how do you make that even better. What are the things that you need to do? Okay, so it’s just really about fine tuning at about that, so just remember, you went from invisible to emergence to chaos, and you finally hit it above that line, and things are stable now. This is the part that I know, I know that I’ve been in, out, believe me, and I know this because I’ve been in and out of these conditions in various parts of my relationships, business, finance, and so on, and this next area is absolutely a wonderful area to get into, and that’s what we call abundance, and that’s just a, that’s a fancy pants name for affluence. It just means that if it’s finance, your everything is working, your bills are paid, you’ve got nothing to, you’ve got no debt, you’re getting better in life, you’re raising. If you’ve got a business, it means that now your business is taking off. And while you might have some little hiccups and up and down, if you look on that graph on the side, and that again, for if you’re listening, that xy graph, if you can imagine a green line coming off of that, it’s still got hiccups and it’ll going up and down, but it’s still going up at a 45 degree angle, so you can, you’re still progressing. Now that’s the part that we want to do. The I, here’s what can happen in that area is, is all of a sudden people will say, look, it, I’ve got all this money, I’ve got all this relationship, I’ve got all this, these, these, what’s the word I’m looking for.. chits, these favors that I’ve got, these things that I’ve done right, and now what I want to do is I want to spend. So, if you’re a business owner, that’s where you might say, ‘Well, look at.. I’m going to buy that speed boat I’ve wanted to get.. I want to buy that new sports car, you know. And so, instead of now, what happens.. instead of going what you need to do into here is they start to spend money, and what can happen is when they start to spend.

Chris Baran 19:09
Unfortunately, if you can imagine, if you’re listening right now, I’m going to draw a curved area, that area, a curved arrow that goes all the way back down to emergence, and I’m going to cross out that e and I’m going to put in a y, so you end up when you spend too much here, you end back up in emergency, and the trick here is whether, and whatever it is, if you did something wrong in a relationship, if you did run something wrong in your business, what you have to do as quickly as you possibly can is do whatever you can, and I’m putting an arrow back up to stability again. Right now, you’ve got to get back to stable as fast as you can. Otherwise, the relationship, the money, the business will run into hardships right away. So, you want to get back to stable. Now, that’s what can happen. If you spend when you’re there, let’s talk about what you need to do to make sure that you’re moving forward, and if you’re the things that you should do instead of spending is you want to, you want to pay down debt, you want to get paid down debt, you want to make sure that you’re investing, investing the money that you have, you want to make sure that you’re diversifying while you’re there, you know, those are the things that you want to do when you’re in abundance, so that you’re making money while you sleep. If that’s in a relationship, it’s again, what are you doing to make that relationship better, and so on. And as we move up to that top one, the top one, the top condition is called is called power, and and in I’ll give you an example here, that where most people, when they get into that position of power, they get into the position where it says nobody can touch me anymore, and they start to disconnect, and they disassociate with the people that got them there, and that’s where envy can start with other people, and they start to perceive it as arrogance, and if you’ve ever seen that, if you’ve ever seen sometimes, even when the arrogance isn’t there, I’ll give you an example. If you look at pop stars, and pop stars, they go through the ranks, and you love them as they’re growing, and then all of a sudden they’ve got all the money, they’ve got all the followers, they’re getting all the awards, and now people just perceive them, even if they’re not, they perceive them as being arrogant, and they’ll start to disassociate with them. Now, what people need to do here is you need to stay connected. You need to stay connected, and if that means you, as the owner, stay connected with your staff, stay connected with your, with your, with your clientele. You know, the, the, the idea behind this, think of Steve Jobs, when Steve Jobs, while he was gaining that notoriety, graining, you know, whether you liked him as a leader or not, the point was, is he always connected with the people, he always remember, if he always stood out, he had his jeans on, he had his turtleneck that was rolled up, and he walked out, and he did his incredible talks that he did to the public to tell people where they were going next, you know, and so the whole point behind this is to remember how you can work up each and every one of those steps as you go all the way from invisible up to power model, you know, and if you get up to power model, that’s where you really want to be in your relationships, that’s where you really want to be in your finance, and that’s really where you want your business to be, is a power model of what this is.

Chris Baran 22:44
Now, remember that these are conditions that we have, and whether you’re it’s in finance, your business, your personal life, or your relationship, you can be in different positions that you have inside there, so you might be, you might be in your business, you might be in a position of power or abundance, but yet you might be in a position of chaos when it comes to your relationship, or you could be in just emerging in a relationship, and you could be working from chaos to stability when it comes to your business, so remember each one is separate, so if you just think about this, and that each one is a condition, and you have to think about how you’re going to shift from one position to the next, and the key point here is to remember people that, and even the analogy might make you think that it’s a level you’re working up to, and, and, and I want you to think of it more as a position. How can you level up your position instead of just moving up to a different level? If that makes sense. So, with that in mind, I’ll tell you. Here’s what I would love to say to you: is that if you like what we’ve been talking about here, and if you want to, if you want to know how to level up, then just follow me. Follow me at your favorite podcast player, or if you want to subscribe to my YouTube channel, and we’ll make sure that you get access to this, and we have, and the next one, the next thing that we’re going to do is called Level Up, and how to help you and give you a guide of how you can work through, so you can level up, how you can move up in the one or two of those positions, and put a plan together for that, and so if that is something that you’d like, just either follow on that, follow on the on the podcast and make sure you follow in there, or subscribe on the YouTube channel, and I’ll make sure that get to this. So, just remember, whether it’s in these are what my goal with you is always rather than just giving you business stuff, or how to move ahead, remember these are life lessons as well. So, I hope this has. Helped if it helped you, just make sure to subscribe, and, and I promise you, we’ll have that next exercise on how to help you level up. So, in the meantime, you take care, and all the best. Thanks again for watching this episode, and if you liked what you heard, remember to smash that like or follow button, depending on your preferred platform, and make sure to share it with anyone you know that might be a fellow Headcase. Head Cases is produced by Cut Action Media, with Marjorie Phillips doing the planning parts, Lee Baran on the video bits, and Adrian Taverner mixing the audio jazz.