We recently connected with Sandy Rutherford and have shared our conversation below.

Sandy, appreciate you joining us today. Coming up with the idea is so exciting, but then comes the hard part – executing. Too often the media ignores the execution part and goes from idea to success, skipping over the nitty, gritty details of executing in the early days. We think that’s a disservice both to the entrepreneurs who built something amazing as well as the public who isn’t getting a realistic picture of what it takes to succeed. So, we’d really appreciate if you could open up about your execution story – how did you go from idea to execution?

When one of my children developed some serious health issues, I left my highly successful corporate career. I wanted to find something to do to work from home that would allow me to be available and flexible to support my daughter’s health journey. I had numerous entrepreneurial ideas, both on my own and with others, that I acted upon and expected success to come easily. That was all I was used to. But success alluded me to my utter frustration and annoyance. I zeroed in on the idea to be a coach because I had informally but effectively coached and mentored my whole life, in all of my career chapters so I thought this was a good idea. But I had no clue how to make that happen, where to take the idea, or what type of coach to be in a flooded market.

But I was open to help, to guidance.

And as the saying goes, when the student is ready (and willing!) the teacher will come. And so he came!

I then received an email out of the blue about working with Bob Proctor as one of his coaches. There was my path, my coaching focus, and I loved the idea!

It wasn’t until I became immersed in Bob Proctor’s success program and started understanding how to make success come easily that my coaching business took off.

What did I do?

In working with Bob, I began to understand how to take an idea through to successful execution, that it’s not luck but an exact process. I learned how it’s actually laid out scientifically. Here’s what I did.

First I realized I not only had to be crystal clear on the success I wanted, I had been too vague up till that point, but that I had to be really emotionally engaged in the success I wanted to create. I had thought I had been, but I realize now I was just “intellectually enamoured” not emotionally jazzed. Being intellectually enamoured can really fool you into thinking you’re all bought in but I realized there is a HUGE difference.

So I worked at getting crystal clear and emotionally jazzed about the coaching business success I wanted to create, and that started to up my game and my desire to lean in and make it happen.

Secondly, I realized that my self-image, while strong in many areas of my life including past chapters in my corporate career, was in no way strong enough to support entrepreneurial success. THAT was a tough one because I as I said, I always had a strong self-image. But as it related to being a highly successful entrepreneur, I saw that I in no way believed I was a consummate salesperson, nor a high flying “out there” entrepreneur – in fact I realized my self-talk was to the contrary. As soon as I clued into that and started aligning my self-image with my coaching success goals, everything started to happen.

The big realization was that I could only go as far as my self-image programming allowed, and until my self-image programming lined up with the kind of success I was passionate about, I just wasn’t going far.

In fact, the biggest thing that happens, which I now teach, when you get clear and jazzed about YOUR dream goal success AND align your self-image to support it, is that you started losing the excuses that sabotage your success and you commit more fully.

It’s so powerful and that’s what happened to me such that I became one of the top tier coaches working with Bob, taught on stage with Bob (one of my dream goals) and created a highly successful global coaching practice, helping to change people’s lives by accelerating their successes.

Sandy, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a Success Mindset Coach, taught and mentored by Bob Proctor. Entrepreneurs and professionals hungry for successful new chapters partner with me to CUT THE C.R.A.P. (an acronym that stands for Counterproductive Really Asinine Programming :-) ) and accelerate success. We all have that kind of programming and it is what stands in the way of anyone’s breakthrough, dream goal type success.

Most people
– know they are capable of more
– don’t know how success works and so they way underachieve
– and don’t know how to get past what stops them

So I help people accelerate success by

1. getting at what stops them in the right order because success is an exact process
2. immersing them in an incredible environment of support, guidance and accountability second to none – because we need way more help than we think we do
3. upping their level of commitment to quantum leap their results

I have 3 high powered programs that address the above:

1. FASTPATH to Success online program which is eye opening, mind opening and heart opening and shows you a whole new way of creating an easier path to success
2. The Self-Image of Your Dreams – a 10 week wonderful intensive where we blast your subconscious with powerful, positive messaging about how incredible and capable you are. And you are! but your subconscious doesn’t know that … yet!
3. Our Unstoppable Success System which is a 6 month life changing program with lots of hand holding to help you break out of the old programming and show you just how to achieve the kinds of successes you’ve always desired.

Our company is called Inspired Destinies because each and every one of you has personal and professional destination possibilities that are inspiring and endless. We want you to step into the spotlight and take center stage so that you CAN step into your inspired destinies! Our environment is designed to help you do that, with a lot of love, guidance, calling out your BS :-) and celebration, because there is so much to celebrate about who you are and what you are capable of!

To cut to the chase – when you cut the CRAP to do the right things with the right mindset and in the right environment, success is made easy. That’s what you get when partnering with me.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There were times that I questioned myself, doubted myself and even started to think I just didn’t have what it took! But if there is one thing we learn in this area of personal development, and as Napoleon Hill states so rightly in his masterpiece “Think and Grow Rich”, “without persistence you will be defeated even before you start. With persistence you will win. Be persistent no matter how slowly you may at first have to move. There is no substitute for persistence.”
And so I persisted, and I kept my sights on the vision and feelings of achieving Inner Circle, NOT the disappointment of not. No matter that I missed it a couple of more times, I looked for ways of building my business differently and better, I did not keep doing the same thing over and over again – we all know what that is the definition of (insanity). And a famous image stayed in the forefront of my mind showing a man giving up digging when he was just 3 feet from gold. I knew I was at my “3 feet from gold”
And when I did hit the required numbers, and made Inner Circle, looking back I knew it was in me the whole time. I just needed the journey and course corrections to get there. As Steve Jobs stated “you can’t connect the dots looking forward, you can only connect them looking back”. It’s so obvious I was on a journey and persistence and perseverance was key.
And importantly, I had the environment of support, guidance and accountability that allowed me to persist, no matter the setbacks. We all get setbacks, but we have to embrace our ability to be resilient, persist. learn and course correct.
It’s in us all to reach our own “gold”.

Any advice for managing a team?

This is a favorite topic of mine because it embraces some of the most uplifting concepts of success.

The first is considered the #1 key to success, and is called “Impression of Increase”. Imagine if you were in the habit, as exceptional leaders are, of leaving everyone you came in contact with feeling better off, feeling better for having interacted with you. This is a simple yet powerful concept because when you are honestly attempting to leave everyone better off, you are putting yourself in harmony with the higher side of the other person’s personality, They feel uplifted and so do you!
When you consistently see the best in people YOU are going to be in a phenomenal vibration, and the returns to you are incredible! This is powerful and powerfully attracts.

So look for ways to celebrate your people, for all that they are now. Every one of your team is a goldmine of talent – imagine if you conveyed that to them and celebrated their achievements, no matter how small, every day! Watch what that does for morale!!

Your mindset should be that every single person is gifted and you are instrumental in creating an incredible journey for every person on your team no matter how long they are with you

Would YOU like to work for someone like that?
Do you think there would be a payoff? The answer is YES there is and it’s HUGE!

Where we feel valued and appreciated, we feel happier. Research supports this

Happy employees are more productive employees. Just think – how productive do YOU feel when frustrated or you feel undervalued, not appreciated, or taken for granted? How productive do you feel when you feel valued, appreciated, sought out for your contributions, and celebrated?
It is in us all to want to be more, do more and have more – that is the condition of the human spirit. The spirit is all about expansion and fuller expression, about self-creation and growth.
Allowing your people to grow and develop and contribute more is actually working in harmony with a person’s natural desires
Thus creating an environment conducive to personal growth and evolution fosters happiness and raises productivity.

Let’s talk about leadership’s role in creating an incredible journey for employees. Leadership is all about influence – positively influencing every person you come in contact with be it employees, prospects, clients, suppliers, partners, colleagues, community leaders, and so on. The more positive your influence the more profound the effect.
An exceptional leader can be defined as one who cares less about what others think about him or her as a leader, and more about what others think about . . . themselves. Such a POWERFUL take on leadership!!
Embracing these approaches to leadership will have a huge impact on creating an incredible employee experience. Think about this. If you as a leader, are focused on bringing out more and more of your people’s talents and gifts, allowing them to grow into more of what they truly are, thus helping them to feel better and better about themselves, then you are having a profoundly positive influence on them.
And this goes straight to the bottom line. An incredibly positive employee experience fosters happier and more productive employees.

The last thing I will mention is transparency and inclusivity. People don’t mind change so much as they mind being changed – and without their input. Share your vision, with passion, with your team, and solicit ideas regularly from them on how you can ALL be better at serving the client. I would suggest starting each day with a 15-20 minute coffee meeting to celebrate any wins, big or small, from the previous day and asking for new ideas on how to be better. And NEVER reject any ideas for that is to snuff out creativity. Let every idea count for consideration. Have fun with it.

Your people are your greatest asset by far so treating them as such and letting them know they are valued will indeed have a huge payoff!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.inspireddestinies.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/inspireddestinies/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/InspiredDestinies
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandyrutherford/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/InspiredDestini
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCk6g9CXJahpOqjaqtkESfHQ