In this coordinated episode, David Waldas, Founder of The Aligned Living, shares strategies for alignment and flow in life and business. If you struggle with disillusionment or lack of passion in leadership, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What aligned actions create fulfilling entrepreneurial freedom
– Why passion drives sustainable success in stage 1 ventures
– How to find your unique spark beneath fears
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the Start scale and succeed Podcast, the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey as a founder. And for those of you who’ve followed me or listened to the podcast for a while, you probably know that it was a podcast episode that totally changed the course and trajectory of my life over 10 years ago now, and my goal with each and every episode is to offer that kind of life changing wisdom for founders in each stage of their journey. And today, I’m especially excited about that opportunity for all of you in stage one, all you pre founders listening today, because my guest with us here is David Waldas, who’s the creator of the aligned living system. With a background in education, coaching and entrepreneurship, he helps individuals achieve alignment and flow in both their personal and professional lives. David is also the author of insight, influence and flow, a guide for business professionals, where he shares practical tools for achieving sustainable and lasting success as an international speaker and coach. David’s work has positively impacted lives worldwide, helping individuals reach their highest potential. He’s here with us today. David, welcome to the show. I actually just recently, yes, I just recently read a study that was done by Pew Research Center. I think it was and of self employed individuals, they were considerably, I will say it that way more likely than not self employed individuals to be fulfilled in their job, to say that they love it. It was something like 60% which was amazing to me, right? And despite all the pro employee changes that have happened in the market over the last four or five years. You know some of the silver lining, if you will, in the wake of covid is that more than half of professionals that they surveyed were still less than thrilled with their job. So first question for you here out of the gate, why do so many professionals feel stuck and will starting their own business or side hustle solve it for them?
David Waldas
Yeah, that’s great, Scott. I think it’s that feeling of I don’t have, you know, as much agency, over my workday, over my work life, over what I’m working on, what I’m not working on, and that feeling that feels like somebody else is dictating my life or my work life, or what’s open to me and what’s not open to me. You know, we love freedom, and then we go to create it ourselves. And you know, I love where you’re going with this, the idea of, Am I creating freedom for myself, or am I just making myself my own boss? And maybe that’s even worse than my last boss. I often joke. And I was like, how self employed? Well, it’s great, but my boss just won’t let up. You know, it’s and so, you know, are we creating something that is about passion? And you know what? I started joking with my clients usually after they’ve signed up with me, saying they’re like, Man, I just keep getting more in touch with my passion. I’m like, Yeah, I didn’t tell you this when you signed up. But one of the things that happens anybody I work with becomes unemployable, you know, within the first two months, because you can’t do things ineffectively anymore. You can’t do things the way other people want you, like you get passionate about what you want to bring, and you have to bring it. And so when that’s our driving force, rather than, you know, God, I want the freedom whenever. And I think this is just a dead on truth about everything in life, whenever we’re trying to create by getting a waste from something, yeah, we’re just hanging ourselves out to dry. It’s got to be I want this, and this is what I want to create. Not I’m not doing that shit anymore. I’m gonna go do something else that never, never works, right?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s so, so true. And what’s interesting is you see the journey that founders go through, that reality kind of sandwiches it on both sides. Yeah, you see a lot of folks early on that that are trying to leave some type of bad boss or bad something out behind them and and you jump in, maybe they should, maybe they shouldn’t start a business. Well, you fast forward 510, 1520, years, and folks are thinking about getting out of their business, and they leave to get away from the whole thing. You know, it’s really wild. And, and, yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I think the advice in either of those situations is, what are you going to not what are you going from?
David Waldas
Absolutely, that’s why I was, yeah, I often think about that too. And I’ve, I’ve taught people who’ve had boats, I’m like, oh, and I’m thinking about getting a boat. What do you think? And they go, you know, two best days of owning a boat is the day you buy it and the day you sell it. And some people’s businesses are like that, like, oh, freedom. Oh, my God, this won’t end, you know.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. It’s so true. So in in my world, the world that I come from, I should say I’m working almost exclusively with founders and their leadership teams. And so one of the questions that I get asked a whole lot from people casually, when I tell them what I do, is this question, what do you think of you know, X, my business idea, whatever it is, right? Everyone’s got an idea, and I actually don’t think that’s the right question. It’s a good question. It’s one that you have to answer if you’re going to start a business, but it has to be feasible, right? Well, that, and I think a better question is, Should I start a business, right? Like, is this actually the right mechanism or platform for me? And so when you’re working with your clients, does that question come up, this idea of whether they should start their own business? And if so, how do you help them navigate it?
David Waldas
Yeah, you know, that’s great, because I think when we hit a certain place inside of ourselves where we just go, Gosh, I’m really getting in touch with my purpose. That purpose either plugs into somebody else’s machine or it doesn’t. And if it doesn’t plug into somebody else’s and there’s not a spot in us, you know, what is one of the cogs in the wheel and in their system, or a way that we can help enrich their system, or lead in their system, then we got to start looking, well, how do we create that system? You know, I love that quote from, I forget his first name, but poor she started poor. She said, You know, there’s a car I always wanted to drive and didn’t exist, so I created it myself, all right? And that piece, you know, if it doesn’t exist, we don’t need to reinvent the wheel. If there’s a spot for us in somebody else’s machine, great, and if we can enhance it and expand it, because being an entrepreneur is, you know, it’s not easy. It doesn’t end. There’s always something you have to be taken care of. You’re responsible for everything. And if you don’t see it that way, it’s not going to work for you. Yeah, and, and so I think that that question is, is getting really clear about what your passion is, and it coming from your core, and what you love doing, and if you can fit into somebody else’s business, explore that first, really, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. I fully agree. And what I love about that is, one of the things that I often say is that the defining question at this stage that tends to separate founders from just folks who can plug into someone else’s system, as you described it, is that better way, right? It’s that it really doesn’t exist, and you can’t do it by any other mechanism. If you were to boil it down in kind of the most mechanical or even mercenary approach, it would be, you know, should I start a business if you can do anything else, do that, you know, if you can do anything else. So because it is, it’s hard, it’s challenging, it’s, it’s not the easiest mechanism for doing, but if your purpose demands it, you’ll, you’ll, I can’t say gladly, because it doesn’t always feel all that glad, but you’ll make that sacrifice, right?
David Waldas
Yeah, and you have to be able to manage the stress of it too, because, you know, there’s not a paycheck anymore, and that, that pay is being created by you. The vision is being created by you. And, you know, there’s, I think there’s a way higher upside for the amount of wealth we can create, but we can’t do it for that reason, because otherwise, everything is about, you know, trying to get there, as opposed to offering our service. And it’s great, you know, like, I’m getting ready to travel right now, and, you know, spend three weeks in Europe, and I just spent a week in New York, and my schedule allows for that. And when I was in sales before or teaching or education, it wouldn’t have allowed for that. But if I did it for that, you know, like, it just wouldn’t work. And so these secondary gains, which are often what draw people into it, can’t be the primary, yeah, otherwise, it’s, you know, if you’re working,
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so funny that you say that, I was talking to my son the other day, who’s very into wrestling. And this is like gut dreams, the whole nine yards. So like real wrestling, or real wrestling, not like WWF, but like real life, collegiate style wrestling, awesome and and so he’s training year round for it. He’s doing a great job. And job. And I asked him, like, why did you choose it? You know? Because I actually I wrestled for one year and I hated it, yeah? And he said, to be honest with you, I chose it because a friend told me that the hoodies were really soft.
David Waldas
I chose it for comfort. I chose it because the hoodies were soft.
Scott Ritzheimer
Oh my goodness. So it worked out for him, you know, he ended up winning, five out of five. And yeah, it was, it was a lot of fun. But here’s what I want to get to with that and that you kind of laid this out like there are primary objectives and there are secondary objectives. And how do you know which is which?
David Waldas
Yeah, you know, I think it feels different inside of us. You know, the thing that just goes, I gotta offer this, versus like, oh, that’s gonna be a sweet vacation, you know? And I think we’ve all had those things of like, oh, those perks, like, it’s gonna feel good to be rich. It’s gonna feel good to have money. And then there’s this something that just comes from out of it, out from the inside of us. It goes, Man, when I change somebody’s life, and I sit down with them, and a light bulb goes off, and they change directions, and they they see everything differently, like there’s nothing else I want to be doing in that moment. And I don’t care about how much money I’m making. I don’t care about time off, because everything’s complete in that moment. And if we’re not finding that in our business, you know, whatever it is, if it’s you know, you. Creating, like, if you’re a salesperson and you’re like, oh my gosh, I’m lining this person up with something that’s going to change their world, or I’m finding success, and I’m finding a way for people to understand what it is that I’m offering them. And it just keeps landing that feeling of, you know, really, where we’re in flow, where everything disappears, and, you know, we kind of forget we exist. That’s got to be the core of it, and everything else is going to be those secondary pieces, yeah.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, as you’re saying that, yeah, as you’re saying that, it feels to me like our primary objectives tend to be what we can give, right, what we’ll gladly, and our secondary tends to be what we get. And I love this idea because, and you talk about it a lot in the book, and so I did want to make sure we get to it in this conversation. Now, is a good point, but you talk a lot about this idea of flow, and for folks who haven’t necessarily looked at it, it seems like one of the most woo, woo things that we could come at, but Right? But it’s not like there’s there’s a lot more to this. So yeah, so what’s the science behind flow? What are we talking about when we’re talking about flow, and how do you help your clients to achieve it?
David Waldas
Yeah, so we’re really, what we’re talking about is a state of consciousness, and people meditate, and a lot of people have found some sort of peaceful place inside, in meditation. And what I’ve found, and again, this was like a spontaneous experience for me, where I ended up in this, you know, internal state of consciousness is that it’s very easy to get there. The reason that we don’t go there is because most of us are so entrained with everybody else’s energy fields and everybody else’s surroundings, everybody else’s thoughts, everybody else’s emotions, that there’s so much emotional noise running into us all the time. And when it’s that loud emotionally, we’re not going to be able to quiet our inner world, because it’s not our inner world, it’s whatever we’re surrounded by. And so what do we do? We go I need a retreat. I need to go somewhere where nobody else is. And so I teach people how to basically re, rework with their rewire their own energetic system, which is a part of us that we all have, that you walk into a room and it’s super tense, and you start to feel tense, or you walk into a room and it’s like a party vibe, and everybody’s happy, and you start to feel the party vibe. You start to feel happy. And so there’s a part of us that picks that up, and science has really just dialed that in now that there’s information that gets passed through our electromagnetic field that all runs in this torus and this toroidal field, this kind of donut of energy that loops through us. We overlap, and we have experiences with each other’s energy. And you know, it’s really undeniable that we’ve had that. If you’re sitting with somebody who’s sad, you can feel it kind of pulling you in. You know, why do you tear up sometimes when somebody else is having a hard time? You know, we end up with that inside of our experience. And so, you know, it’s great to be able to feel that and have that true empathy, but when it’s 90% of what we feel, and only 10% is us, we don’t have the ability to go into flow. We don’t have the ability to really even get in touch with what we truly want, because we’re so busy managing our surroundings. And so I teach people how to restructure it so they’re feeling themselves 90% and the external world and the emotions of everybody else 10% and the moment we do that, now we can quiet our inner world. And once we can quiet our inner world, we have agency over it, and we can move away from all the distractions, all the micromanaging, all the meddling with everything, and start to move in a place where we just trust things a lot more, because we’re just feeling greater clarity, greater quiet within. And you know, it’s a really hard state to describe, because what people love to do, and of course we do it, is we just go, Oh, I think I know what he’s talking about, because it’s the closest thing we’ve had on meditation. I think I’ve had that, or maybe in sports, I’ve had that. And it’s always surprising to people when they go into this internal state of consciousness, because you just because you just seem to know what’s next. You just seem to know very intuitively how to navigate, and you’re not pulled into the what’s wrong. And this is somewhat what we were talking about, right? Because you know, if you’re leaving a job because your boss sucked, or because you don’t have the freedom or whatever, that’s all the what’s wrong. And then we look for what’s not that we solve the problem really with the opposite problem. Really, we go, this has no freedom. I’m going to create freedom. I’m going to I’m going to do the polarity. We see it in life, you know, like in dating, you know, somebody who’s really obnoxious, like, Oh, I’m going to go date somebody who’s really quiet. Oh, they’re really boring. Now I’m going to go back to somebody who’s really obnoxious. You know, we’re just always solving problems with the opposite problem. And when we go into this alignment, into this place of flow, it’s really next right action. It’s like what’s right for me, and it has nothing to do with what’s making me uncomfortable right now. Because the moment we play that game, we’re bouncing back and forth between the opposite, as opposed to really feeling our truth. And so from that place, we just get clear, and we just start to flow with things. Yeah, and it’s fantastic. It’s always surprising to people.
Scott Ritzheimer
There’s another point in your book that I thought was really interesting. I believe the language you used for it was the gift of rejection, which I thought was very appropriate for this conversation, because one of the challenges that we have as entrepreneurs, and you don’t really think this. Is going to happen. But like everyone else, has the power over whether or not your business succeeds, right? Every customer could, like, make or break your business tomorrow. It feels that way. And in that real heightened, those real heightened stakes, there’s the sense of like you’ll experience, you know, as much rejection in the first two years of starting a business is most people in, like, two lifetimes. So absolutely, how do we turn that around into the gift that that you think it can be?
David Waldas
Yeah, and I think it’s true in all areas of life. When we’re really stabilized on who we are, you know, we look at some people and they’re just kind of appealing to everybody, right? And go, Well, that’s That’s so great. Everybody likes them, But who are they inside that that that they can be somebody that’s so benign, that everybody just likes them. And when we really get clear on who we are, and we hold that in a powerful way, there’s gonna be people that love it, and people that really are not interested, or, you know, even you know, are just like, I, don’t want to be around that like it goes against my own principles, or it goes against my own sense of safety, right? And if people are trying to be safe, and they’re around somebody who’s just like, we’re moving forward and we’re creating stuff, and they’re like, I’m out, you know? And so that gift of rejection, it comes from being really clear about who you are, what you’re creating, and being fully committed to it, not wishy washy, not trying to appeal to people, but just coming from your own clarity. And when we do that, it’s a bit polarized, right, but it’s successful because it’s clear. And when we try to appeal to everybody, maybe we get a lot less rejection, but we just can’t create because we’re just a bit more amorphic. People can’t really be our super fans, because they’re just like, yeah, they’re great. Yes, I guess they’re great. I don’t know that. Yeah, I was in Philly being around them, but there’s no conviction. And from that place of conviction, we lead, and when we’re leading from that place, people are in or out, and that’s great, because it does not waste our time or theirs.
Scott Ritzheimer
Very good. David, this is question that I like to ask on my guests. I’m interested to see what you have to say about it, but it’s this, what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all? What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching or listening today knew?
David Waldas
Yeah, I mean, it’s, it really is that we all have this ability to tap into a place inside of ourselves, that we have this incredible gift to bring this unique to us. And it may sound a bit cliche, but I’m talking about literally getting in touch with it, not trying to find it, not going, Oh, my mom always said I was like this, or my teacher said it was like this, but something that lights up inside of us, that burns so bright that we can’t help but bring it to the world. And when we seek that place, which is usually underneath our worst fears, which is usually underneath the things that we’re the most ashamed of, and we move through that, I always call it the shame or fear veneer, or shame veneer, because it’s it feels like it’s solid, but it’s not. And when we push past the shame and push past the fear, we go, Oh my God, there’s something really special in here, and that’s me, and I’m going to bring that and when that spark lights up inside of us, there’s no stopping us. So when we’re playing it safe and trying to figure out, you know, where do we fit in? What can I what do they want? Oh, I’ll offer what they want. Everything has a certain amount of watered down, no no conviction. And so when we can find that spark inside of us, underneath our fears, underneath our shame, that’s where all their fulfillment is. And that’s that’s really work I do is teach people that place and help them bring it.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Speaking of the work that you do, well, there’s obviously the book out inside, influence and flow, a guide for business professionals. Where can we get a copy of the book, and where can folks find more out about you and the work that you do?
David Waldas
Yeah, so, I mean, it is on Amazon, but you go to my website at davidwaldas, W, A, L, D, A, s.com, and it has access to, you know, you can order the book from there. But you can also see, I do small group programs like five to seven people, I do a handful of one to ones pretty close to booked up on that. But, you know, there’s often an opening coming up here and there, and then I train coaches in what I do too. And so, you know, a lot of people that are even just want to learn how to coach this, because it takes them to a whole nother level in their practice. And so I would bet that three quarters of the people I’ve trained to be coaches really just incorporate it into themselves and how they engage with each individual they work with in their business, and others just do it professionally. But it’s it’s one of the things I’m most excited about, about taking the system that I teach and handing it to others to create that exponential impact so that it’s getting, you know, shared over and over again.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Well, David, thank you so much for being on the show. Just a privilege and honor having you here today, and for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact David Waldas
David Waldas is the creator of the Aligned Living System. With a background in education, coaching, and entrepreneurship, he helps individuals achieve alignment and flow in both their personal and professional lives. David is also the author of Insight, Influence, and Flow: A Guide for Business Professionals, where he shares practical tools for achieving sustainable and lasting success. As an international speaker and coach, David’s work has positively impacted lives worldwide, helping individuals reach their highest potential.
Want to learn more about David Waldas’ work at The Aligned Living? Check out his website at https://www.davidwaldas.com/