PP 604: How to Live a High Quality Life with Steven Kuhn

“Switch it up, turn it around, seek that quality of life, spend more time with your family, spend more time in yourself doing the things that you love, be happy and joyful. And then the money, the luck, and the coincidence will happen. It’ll all fall right into your lap.” –Steven Kuhn

 

Don’t chase after money; let money chase you. A high quality life does not go after money as its priority. It goes after the good things and things will happen with a certainty. That’s what today’s episode highlights as an important value that each person must cultivate for a better life. For a fact, money is essential to be able to achieve something. But, could shifting the order really make a difference? Many people live by routinely earning money and forgetting to be truly alive, and the outcome is the same. A major turn around like this might stray from a conventional perspective. But, there’s no harm in starting that now through a different approach. Afterall, we do things so we can be happy in this life.

 

HIGHLIGHTS

01:45 Meet the “HITman”
10:13 The Key to a Quality Life
16:59 3 Ways to Grow a Company
25:30 Don’t Give the Control to Somebody Else- Ever!
30:48 Live With NO Expectations
35:31 No Time Limits
39:20 Certainly Certain That Things Will Happen with Certainty
45:08 Live a Quality Life and Money will Follow

Have you been hit so hard by life itself for living an autopilot life instead of a high quality life? Be ready for a major turn-around as @thekimsutton sits with @stevenekuhn in #HIT #PPR #PPS #highqualitylife #timelimit #money #expectation #certaintyClick To Tweet

About Steven Kuhn:

 

Steven Kuhn has lived his life from rock bottom to sky high. Today, he is known as the “HITman”  and “Turn Around Guy”. And rightfully so, as he stands courageously before the crowd knowing he has discovered the key to living a high quality life. Steven travels across countries to share his wisdom, especially to the business world to help them make that turn around in their journey and sustain a high quality of life. 

Website: https://steven-kuhn.com/
Email: steve@steven-kuhn.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Stevenkuhnofficial/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevenekuhn/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/steveneugenekuhn/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenekuhn/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAuy76rzjjrrYS4aXfkX5qQ

Resources:

Steven’s Online Course
 How to Grow and Scale Your Business Exponentially in the Next 30 Days
The HIT Show Podcast by Steven Kuhn

 

Inspirational Quotes:

“Successes-It’s all relative.”

 “I believe in this thing called the life enterprise…We’re CEOs of our own life enterprise.” –Steven Kuhn

 “The key indicator for living a life a high quality of life is living without expectations. There’s two ways of living without expectations: One is you don’t have them. And the second one is, if you have them, you must verbalize them.” –Steven Kuhn

 “Once you have quality of life, once you have that self-respect, the money comes on its own.” –Steven Kuhn

 “Self-respect involves making yourself priority. Without you being the best version of yourself, you can’t give the best of what you have.” –Steven Kuhn

 “The point of no expectation is to be able to make your own choice . So when you make your own choices, you’re operating from your own core principles.” –Steven Kuhn

 “Someday never comes. You only have NOW.” –Steven Kuhn

 “Until you know how you got to where you are… and put that into a process, at least give it a name and understand what you were doing, it’s hard to build on that.” –Steven Kuhn

“Certainty completely erases the “how”. Once you’re certain about something, you don’t even worry about how it’s going to happen because you know that’s going to happen.” –Steven Kuhn

“You can’t be successful in business the way you could be if you’re not living according to who you are and your identity.” –Steven Kuhn

“Everyone wants to be happy with themselves. That’s just a simple fact. It’s difficult to do.” –Steven Kuhn

“Switch it up, turn it around, seek that quality of life, spend more time with your family, spend more time in yourself doing the things that you love, be happy and joyful. And then the money, the luck, and the coincidence will happen. It’ll fall right into your lap.” –Steven Kuhn 

EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION

“I think the most important piece of what we talked about today, you know, everyone talks that, there’s two things that people see in life. One is, they want to feel happy with themselves, right? So that everyone wants to be happy with themselves, that’s just a simple fact, it’s difficult to do. But the one thing that everyone worries about, first is, I need to make money so I can be happy with myself. Switch it up, turn it around, seek that quality of life, spend more time with your family, spending more time in yourself, doing the things that you love, be happy and joyful, and then the money, luck, and the coincidence will happen in a fall right into your lap. And I’m not even kidding.”

——————

 

Kim Sutton: Welcome back to another episode of Positive Productivity. This is your host Kim Sutton, and today I am thrilled to introduce you to our guest, turn around specialist Steven Kuhn . Steven helps businesses turn around using a variety of different strategies, and I am so interested to learn more about what he does because listeners, you’ve heard the journey that, me and my business had been on. You’ve heard the journeys of so many other guests on the podcast, but I want you to hear first about Steven’s journey because he himself has been remarkable, as is every one of our journeys. So Steven, I just want to thank you for being here today. Just our prechat alone has already been so pleasurable, but for listeners who haven’t met you before, would you mind sharing a little bit of your journey and how you got here?

Steven Kuhn: Yes, indeed it’s a long story, but I’ll keep it short (laughs). My hell from Pennsylvania, and I joined the military when I was 19 or 18, left for Germany when I was 19 in the army, and stayed until 1993 after Iraq, after my duty, tour of duty in Iraq. I got out in Europe and stayed here, and I lived in nine countries, and did some amazing things besides the highs, I had some very lows as well, call homelessness in 2008 in Berlin, Germany. I had nightclubs, I had health clubs, I had big chains, I worked for the Nasdaq, after Nasdaq was this company, I worked for German parliament, German politicians. Spoke for creation European Parliament, just a lot of crazy things. I worked for Andrea Bocelli, at Jagger, Olivia Newton-John, and I’ve been self employed the whole time. So it’s been, I don’t wanna say a struggle, but that an amazing experience for me. So everything that I did was to sustain my life, my quality of life is, which basically the goal of everything I do is to sustain the highest quality of life possible. And now I’m living in Hungary, which is my ninth country. My business is still based in Germany, so I’m there as well. And I’m married with two children.

Kim Sutton: There is so much there. First you got me on homeless. My husband is a United States Airforce veteran who found himself homeless actually a year, only a year before we met, he was living in outside of Fargo, North Dakota in the middle of the winter, and found himself homeless. I mean, I have no desire, I am sorry to our North Dakotaian, and of course listeners, I have no desire to visit you in the middle of summer, much less, you know, in the negative 40 degree, 50 feet of snow, winter, just, no thanks. I grew up in Rochester, that’s about as close to that type of environment as I ever want to get, attitude wise. But it was a tough spot for him because he enlisted on 9/12/2011, 2001, sorry, I was a decade off. And did his six years plus of service, and then transitioned back into the real world, which he had honestly never really known because of the circumstances which led him to even enlisting in the first place, and it was a tough place. So, how do you go, this is me being extremely nosy, so forgive me please.

Steven Kuhn: Nope.

Kim Sutton: But did homelessness come before Mick Jagger? Andrea Bocelli? and Olivia Newton-John? Or after somewhere in the middle.

Steven Kuhn: It came in the middle.

Kim Sutton: Wow.

Steven Kuhn: So after, before the other two, you know, as successes, it’s all relative, right? And you know, we thought, we often think when we’re growing up, we have to do the things we’re told to do. You know, go to school and get a college degree, get a job, work your way up, this kind of stuff. Well, when I got in the military, I had no desire for working for anyone. I tried, you know, I worked in the nightclub scene for a while, then I opened up my own nightclubs, and I opened my own cocktail bar, and I would consult other ones who had open their, but the, let’s say I kept trying to fit in, fit my round peg into the square societal hole and it just didn’t work. And I kept running against the walls. And the first time that happened, I lost everything, cleaned my first wife, I mean she left. I didn’t lose her that way, she left and I didn’t see the signs that were screaming in my face saying: “This is not the way to live.” So, I went back to that life after I wrote a book in Germany, and in German and it was a bestseller, and I literally wrote it two weeks later was a bestseller, and I was on a yearbook tour. And that sort of sustained me until I figured out, okay, I’m going to go back to the corporate world as a facilitator, turnaround guy, and that’s what I did. And then again, six, seven years later there I was again, you know, at the end of my rope, gun to my head, ready to let it all go. And I called a friend, an Austrian, said: “Look man, if you don’t come get me, I’m not gonna be here tomorrow.” So, he sent me a plane ticket, I flew to Austria, he picked me up and dropped me off at a monastery with Benedictines monks. And I stayed there for eight months, and I didn’t tell anybody where I was, I didn’t pay any bills, I didn’t pay anything, I didn’t have anything because I had just become homeless, so I said: “Forget it.” So, I went to the monastery, came back, was a whole different person, still didn’t have a home, but it didn’t bother me. Matter of fact, I reveled in it. Matter of fact, I can understand why people like to stay homeless. But now, mind you, I had a car, so that was my everything. And in my car, I had suits and ties, which is what I would wear everyday, cause that’s how people used to me. So still, even though I was free of societal, you know, imagery in my mind, I still thought that I had to be that person that everybody knew me as, instead of being myself.

And that’s when I finally decided to go back to the corporate world, I said: “I want to do it on my terms.” And when I went back on my terms, they sent me to Budapest, they asked me to go to Budapest, so I went, or I came, and that’s when I decided to be me for real. And it created teams, and companies, and cultures that I’ve never seen anywhere else. So that’s sort of become my mantra and people know me this, a lot of people call me the HIT man because I base everything that I do on honesty, integrity and transparency, which in short is H.I.T. It’s also the name of my podcast H.I.T show. And H.I.T is real simply put, honesty is being honest with yourself about who you are, why you do what you do, what your purpose is and your identity. And the transparency is how you communicate that to the entire world in any form there is. And integrity is a byproduct of those two. And when you live that life, you’re 100% authentic, it’s just ridiculously authentic. Then you can actually dictate your own market value, which is what I do. So, I say what I want and they either take it or they don’t, and I’m not worried about it. And because of the certainty that I have in my life, I’m typically, you know, typically booked or contracted to do the jobs that I wanna do, or the tasks that I want to do, the projects that I want to do. And that’s all based on H.I.T, and it just goes much further. I believe in this thing called the Life Enterprise, and you know, much like a business enterprise, we’re CEO’s of our own life enterprise, and just like a CEO of a business enterprise, the answer only to the stakeholders, the stakeholders in our life enterprise, or anyone in our life. So our wife, or husband, or kids, or family, friends, anybody. And we have one mission in our life enterprise, and that is to leave those people, our stakeholders in a better place, when you leave them as when you met them. And that’s another thing about, the only way you can do that is if you’re truly interested in them, number one, number two, you know who you are, and you love yourself, and you accept yourself 100%, and of course you operate according to H.I.T. And it just makes this entire thing that it makes us entire life, this quality of life so high that the revenue, the money, the earnings, the good things in life come automatically. Everyone tries to make money to have a good life, but living a good life first attracts money. And that’s what I learned over the years.

Kim Sutton: Wow, I don’t know if you realize even how many parallels we have, you know, besides the fact that I have boobs.

Steven Kuhn: (laughs).

Kim Sutton: I do have a question before I jump into that. How honest would you say your being before you called your friend in Austria?

Steven Kuhn: I was lying to myself, you know, I have to do this. This is what I have to do. You know, I gotta fight, I gotta push. As a military veteran we’re taught that, we’re taught to run through the wall, we’re taught to push hard and never let anything get you down, and never let anything stop you, it’s either you make it or you die. And that was the sort of attitude that I had, but we weren’t in war and I wasn’t in war, I wasn’t in battle, it was my life. You know, there’s a lot of veterans out there and there’s some people like Jocko Willink, or Tim Kennedy, and these are veterans that are very prominent on the battle side of life. So you know, Jocko has a saying: “I get up at 4:00 in the morning because the enemy gets up there.” And I’m like: “Man, if you live your life like that every single day, you’re going to battle every single day.” So you get what you put your energy into, I think everyone knows that, that’s an obvious. So, I don’t do that, I do the exact opposite, I go positive, I go with the meditation, I do the, what I call magic mornings. So, I’ll meditate a little bit, journal a little bit, learn a little bit. Then I go to the gym and I pump myself up for the whole day, audio book in the gym. And then I do what I call my morning pur, my daily purge on video for my followers. And I just let out whatever is in me. And it’s usually something super motivating, inspiring, you know, I’m this all pumped up and ready to go. So the negativity disappears from your life when you live according to H.I.T. Because the one thing I didn’t tell you is that, the key indicator for living a life, a high quality of life is living with that expectations. Now most people would say, well that’s impossible. Well there’s two ways to live with that expectations. One is you, don’t have them. And the second one is, if you have them you must verbalize them. And that obviously plays a big role in business and in your relationships. Any relationship on a planet that’s healthy is based on integrity, that’s why it’s so important. So when I talked to my wife and I say something to my wife, or I do something for my wife, I don’t do it to get a reaction. I don’t do it to get something, I do it because I can, because I want to,cause I love her. When I do something in business, I do it because I think it’s the right thing to do, I don’t have an expectation. When you have no expectations, you’re never disappointed, so therefore you never experienced negativity, it’s incredible. And even when you do experience negativity because you’re solution oriented, you’re always going for the solution anyway so you don’t focus on the bad.

Kim Sutton: Damn, your good, wow. 2005, I started my first business, which should have never been started in the first place, and I know we should get rid of the shadows and I say that with a shed in front of it, but seriously, it was not a business that I started with any desire to have whatsoever. I already had a full time job, and I was doing the full time job more than full time. I mean, there was an hour long driving commute through cornfields, and then I would stay up till 3:00 in the morning doing the business, but I had to be back up at five to get to work. And by January 1st, 2008, I was admitted to the mental hospital. Listeners, if you Google it, that’s the same day that Britney Spears, yes, Mirrors. That’s the same day that Britney Spears was admitted to the mental hospital, so I’ll never forget, you know? Yes, I’m sure of that, that’s about it. But it was because I was not living an honest existence. I was not living, honestly with my then husband who was my high school sweetheart, who I also should’ve never married.

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: But I was not being honest with him, I was not being honest with myself. I mean, my business was, if I was lucky, making me a quarter a day, but I was convinced that I could make it work. But I never took a step back to look at the big picture, do I even want it to work? Do I even care if it worked?

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: And by new year’s of 2008, I was at the point that I was about to drive off the road because of as so sleep deprived, so stressed, I was like, this doesn’t work anymore. So, I told my ex that that’s how I was feeling and he checked me in. So that was a hard six days, but I gotta tell you I did, it was not a year, did you say monastery?

Steven Kuhn: Yes.

Kim Sutton: Okay, for some reason monastery always has me think of nuns and not monks, that’s a thing in my own head.

Steven Kuhn: Nuns are in convent.

Kim Sutton: Okay, thank you.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. So the mental hospital is definitely not a monastery. I mean, I was in there with this guy who was convinced he had left a tractor trailer full of zoo animals on the highway, and he was going around gathering Dixie cups so that he could take water to them. And I was just standing there thinking, what the heck am I doing here? I mean, there were actually a lot of health issues that impacted the way that I was thinking. And I was actually even hallucinating, and I was scared for the longest time, which is why I really love H.I.T. When you said you were HIT man, I was like, Oh, who do I have on the show? But honesty, integrity, and transparency, I was scared for the longest time to even share that I had been in the mental hospital because I was afraid of what people would think. But the truth is, is that I got there for a reason and it was because I wasn’t being honest with myself.

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: And it was also because I wasn’t taking care of myself, and in the end it was lack of self care. I’ve had hypothyroidism since birth, and I hadn’t been taking my medicine for a good year. I mean, right off the bat, that’s horrible, and then add sleep deprivation on top of it. They were surprised, I was even still alive when they did the blood work, but it took another decade for me to figure it out.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah, yeah. You know, we get signs all the time, you know, if you’re not aware of them, you’re not conscious of what the signs possibly mean, then yeah, we just keep traveling on.

Kim Sutton: Yeah. Actually maybe not a decade, it took me another eight years though, but two years after the mental hospital, I left my ex husband and I vowed that I wasn’t, had been a relationship full of lies and I’m not trying to throw him under the bus. We get along better now than we ever did even when we were dating, but it was a relationship totally on lies on my part because he was very controlling, and I committed to myself that my rebirth, which is what I call what I left him, was going to be all about truths and honesty. And while I was honest with other people, and I didn’t use white lies as I had before, I wasn’t fully being honest because I wasn’t even being honest with myself. That’s a journey every day. Have you noticed that? Oh yeah, definitely, it’s a constant. I’m always monitoring myself, monitoring my surroundings, monitoring my verbiage, my feelings, my thoughts. That’s why the magic morning is so key for me because I do that, you know, meditation, review the past day, set up this day. Then I journal, and I journal as long as I have to journal until it’s completely positive, and you know, manifesting. You know, sometimes you get up here, I don’t know, you just staying in that mood, especially I still have dreams of the war and things like that, so I wake up, sometimes I’m in a bad place, so I just know this is a process that I can get out of, but I have to do it consciously. Yeah, well I do not wake up with an alarm, and I’ve shared that on the podcast many times. This morning, however, was one of those rare days when I actually had a 9:00 podcast recording. I have set up my schedule now that I start my day at 10, so I set my alarm last night. Wouldn’t you know that my phone died?           

Steven Kuhn: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: Arianna Huffington, I’m sorry, I do use my phone for my alarm, but I normally don’t even take my phone into my bedroom.

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: Because I don’t, I have enough kids who wake me up in the morning, I don’t need an alarm (laughs). But I wake up about 7:30, naturally, not even with my alarm, and I realized that my phone is dead like, huh, well that’s keeping me true to my word that I share all the time that I don’t use my alarm cause it wasn’t even there. I would load to dig into, you being a turnaround specialist because I have to say that in my own business the biggest growth came when I turned around from having comparison ideas and trying to do what everybody else was doing.

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: And I say everybody else in quotes to really being me. And the breaking point came when I was wondering if I needed to cut my hair off, and in color it turquoise to get attention. And there was a whole story behind that. Listeners, I’ll put it in the show notes, but what type of clientele do you work with? And where do you see their greatest needs for turnaround coming from?

Steven Kuhn: Well, I should say that most people look at a turn around guy and say: “Okay, this guy’s going to help me fix the revenue. He’s going to help us save money, save cost, and things like that.” Which is, you know, obviously what I do. But what I do a little differently is, when someone comes to me and they know me, typically it’s a referral, and they say: “Look man, I need money, we were plateaued, or we need to grow, or we just got this big H.I.T, and then we don’t know where to get the money from.” I do one thing, I find existing streams of income, what I call dormant revenue that they’re not capitalizing upon. There’s three ways to grow company, only three ways to grow a company, that’s higher prices, more clients and repeat sales. And when you know this, underneath that is 35 ways within those three, there’s also a fourth way to acquire another company, and most people don’t do that. And when, you know, there’s three ways I go in and I see immediately what they’re not doing, and I say: “Look, you have this product, do an up sale. You have this client list, Email them and resell them something.” And it’s basically really, really simple, but most people don’t know what they don’t know. And so, I go in and I fix their perceived problem first, because if I go in and say: “Look, actually that’s not your problem. Your problem is your leadership and this and that.” They’re going to have to say: Who is this guy?” So what I do is, I gain their trust through fixing the problem that they think they have. And then in that period, we gain trust with each other and I see how they operate, work, and move, and lead, and then I can adjust accordingly. And then we have amazing growth. Typically just, you know, like a typical company that I worked, with roofing company was, in the first hour we found 150K that he wasn’t capitalizing, you know, just increases bottom line monitor for the cane first hour.

Kim Sutton: A roofing company with an extra 150K?

Steven Kuhn: Yes. Well, he did like 1.5 million the year before, so it wasn’t so bad, but now it was a year ago, and I coached him through a few new processes, and now he has three companies and he’s, I think he’s going up to 10 million. So that’s within a year.

Kim Sutton: Could you go over those three again? You said raise your prices. Was it more clients?

Steven Kuhn: Yup.

Kim Sutton: And then repeat.

Steven Kuhn: Repeat sales, yes, repeat sale.

Kim Sutton: Okay.

Steven Kuhn: Underneath those three, there’s 35 ways to do that. So collaborations is a big one, right? You know, when someone says to me: “Oh I need to get my message out.” I’m like: “Well find someone who has a sort of a parallel product that isn’t competing and switch swap lists, and send them out to each other.” And it’s the quickest way to get more good penetration in a new market with a new list. Most people are nervous to do that because they think they’re giving something to the competition. But if you’re scared of the competition, you’re in scarcity mindset, so you get out like a scarcity mindset, and be abundant. Everything I do, I give away, I do a live every single day, for the last 19 months, that’s why I decided to stay home. So 19 months ago, I came home, my son and my daughter turned three and four, actually two and three, and my wife was there cause I traveled four days a week,and I said: “No, I’m done, i’m staying home.” She goes: “What are you gonna do?” I said: “I have no idea.” So, I flew to Peru on my regular journey, I do a journey every year to Peru. And I worked with the Sacred Master Plant Medicines – Ayahuasca, San Pedro. And I set my intention to create a new life for myself. So I came back, and with the three months I had my online business, I was doing lives. I think I had a 100K revenue in the first three months without any marketing or anything, just through giving true value. So every time I go online, I give real, complete, full answers. And here’s why, if I talk to a hundred people, be on stage or on my video, and I say: “You can make $1 million if you do this.” 20% will pick up this, whatever it is, and about 6% will even take action. The rest of, between six and 20% will call me and say: “Can you do it for me?” And that’s sort of how I thrive. So I still haven’t, you know, we just started ads two weeks ago for a program that we have called Immediate Impact Revenue Program for small to medium entrepreneurs who want to grow and scale their business in 30 days. And then sort of use that as a platform by our springboard to go further, it’s a free class. You can take the class, it’s literally two and a half hours. I’m recording a new version, it’s a little shorter, but in a two and a half hours you literally learn everything you need to know, including some of those three ways to grow your company. And you can walk away there to scale your company without the obligation of buying anything and you can win. So if anyone wants to go to that, the website is stevenclass.com, so it’s Steven with a V and then class.com. But yeah, so you know, it’s all conscious, right? It’s all conscious, I do things on purpose with purpose. Certainty is everything. And so when I went to Peru, that’s what I said I want to, not I want, but I desire certainty in my life around these three things. And it happened, I bought a house, got a 100K, started my business, and it’s literally was the three months. And my wife’s like: “Oh, how’d you do that?” And I said: “How have I not been doing that?” (laughs).

Kim Sutton: Right.

Steven Kuhn: So that’s what I do now, that’s how we lived. So we do a trip every year to Peru, which we just got back in May. We’re going again next may, it’s already halfway sold out, typically go with 15 people, we spent 10 days, we worked with Ayahuasca, San Pedro. We work on certainty in a business, we worked with a business mindset, so we don’t go there and do hippie things and that kind of stuff. But we do work with vibrating sound instruments for, some of the veterans come with us for their TBI, their traumatic brain injury, we work with Ayahuasca and San Pedro to, for the yin and yang. Ayahuasca is the Aerie female energy and some patriotism, masculine grounded energy. And when you work with those two, and then we go to Machu Picchu, and it’s just an incredible time. So, I use a lot of different methods to stay within myself with me. And I can just say to anyone here who isn’t comfortable with being themselves, with themselves, by themselves for an extended period of time is not reaching their full potential, I promise. So, until the point is, you know what, I can go to a mountaintop by myself for three weeks and it wouldn’t bother me at all. That’s literally where I’ve been since I got out of the monastery. And that’s literally how everything exploded because there’s nothing to worry about. Number one, number two, no one at all is responsible for anything on the inside of me, so I decide, and I dictate how I react to, or whatever I say. Otherwise, I’m reacting, only, and if someone makes me mad, say for instance, we get an argument, you make mad and I yell at you, basically your slave, you got me yell. So once you realize that being by yourself, and being happy with yourself, and exploring who you are and loving yourself, accepting yourself, respecting yourself, honoring yourself is the key to true quality of life and happiness. It’s hard to grasp because people like” “All lies bullshit. I need to make money, then I can do that.” Well, like I said before: “Once you have quality of life, once you have that self respect, the money comes on its own. So quality of life first, then the money comes after automatically.”

Kim Sutton: Oh, I love that. Listeners, you know that I don’t really watch a lot of television. I mean, it’s rare for me to watch TV at all, but I have been marathon binge-watching a couple old shows over the past couple of weeks while I’d been doing a major website belt and they’ve just been keeping me going, and for the last couple of days has been Top Chef. Are you familiar with that show, Steven?

Steven Kuhn: No, I don’t watch TV at all, no.

Kim Sutton: I don’t normally either, but it just keeps me occupied in the background. To be totally honest, I burnt myself out listening to, about 300 podcasts in a week, or two times speed, and I needed a break from it.

Steven Kuhn: You know? No one needs that.

Kim Sutton: Yes. So, I went to the TV and sat, but I was listening last night, and just the rage and the blame that some of the contestants were vocalizing towards other people and just the blaming. I was sitting in my chair thinking, Oh my gosh, I hope they get some help because it’s not everybody else’s fault.

Steven Kuhn: No, never, never. And it doesn’t matter what happens. I mean, if something happens to me through somebody else, that’s because I put myself in that situation. I mean, you know, taking self responsibility, you know, being responsible for yourself is the key. And as soon as you start blaming somebody else, you give them the control to somebody else. I mean, why would you control? What would you list on this control that you are what you are? Where do you go? What you do? No, no, no, no. Even if you have a job, you don’t have to be that way.

Kim Sutton: Right.

Steven Kuhn: When I was a freelancer, they would bring me in and wouldn’t tell anybody that I was a self employed guy, they would say: “Look, he’s a new director.” Because they didn’t want people saying: “Oh, he’s only here temporarily.” And, I did what no one else could do in those companies in the same position. Not because I was a freelancer or a self employed, but because I got results and I always presented solutions. So, I didn’t complain, you know, if there was problems and I had to go to the CEO, I went to CEO said: “Look, this is the problem. This is what I see. Here’s three solutions I’d like to do the second one.” He’s like: “All right, go do it.” Done. And after that I never had to ask again, I just did my own thing, and people don’t understand that. But when you ask for permission to do your job, you’ll always have to ask permission to do your job. And you’ll never excel because they’re gonna expect you to come and ask them again, what are you doing? You’re doing that on yourself? You have to ask me. And so, if you can get someone in your chain of command, or your boss, or somebody to trust you in the way that I just said, by every time there’s a problem, you create free solutions and present them. “Look, here’s the problem. Here’s three solutions. I think number two is good.” After a while he’d be like: “You know what? Just do it.” And so these are the kinds of things that I teach, taught in this kind of thing. So, when I was in these other companies as a freelancer, they were like: ” Man, Steven gets to do everything. What does he have to do everything? Look at his results, he’s positive all the time, he never complains, he’s always uplifting people, he’s elevating people, he’s doing things that no one else does.” And it’s all about being positive and having an impact in the world around you. Matter of fact, our credo was, in our health club chain, with 87 health clubs. It was, I inspire myself, I inspire my team, I inspire the members, and inspire the world around me. And we said that every day, multiple times. I mean, we literally lived that credo, it was incredible.

Kim Sutton: So, I had about 5 to 10 questions that came up, but I want to scratch all those. And I would love to know what you think of the two words. Why not?

Steven Kuhn: In what context?

Kim Sutton: Well, I’m thinking about the way that I even came to that was, I was thinking about permission, you know, asking permission.

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: And while you’re talking, I realize that it wasn’t necessarily about asking permission from my clients that was holding me back, but getting permission from myself.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: I was in business for four or five years, working 40 to 80 hour weeks for clients and not focusing on my business at all, I was purely building theirs.

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: And I always told myself, I don’t have time to work on my business, I can’t take time. And there just came that point when I said, why not?

Steven Kuhn: Why not? Why not? Well, that has to do with making yourself priority like we just talked about, you know?

Kim Sutton: Yeah.

Steven Kuhn: You know, you have to be,self-respect involves making yourself a priority. I mean, without you being the best version of yourself, you can’t give the best of what you have. So for me, it’s like building a house, if you don’t have a foundation, it might look nice, but that first big wind comes, it’s all gone. So for me, I have to take care of myself first, which is again, why I do the magic mornings, I have to prep myself for the day, I prepare myself with my family. We have a ritual every morning, they come down and we sit on the sofa, all four of us, we hug and cuddle, and we talk about our feelings, and how much love we have for each other and respect. And you know, I have those conscious moments every single morning, looking in their eyes and connecting my wife’s, you know, specifically my wife, my kids are still too young to actually get the whole thing, but my wife is my superhero, you know, she’s everything to me and she gives me the power, and the freedom, the support, the love to do what I think is right. She completely trust me without a shadow of a doubt. And that’s just something that I can only receive, I can only receive that if I love myself and accept myself. Otherwise, I’m just looking for her to make me happy and that’ll never happen.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I love that. And, I have to say that, when I was not giving myself permission to take time on myself, there was no foundation. In July, 2016, found me in another suicidal state. I’m surprised that my business, not crash and burn, but I crashed and burned personally, and when I came out of that I realized, okay, something has to change. Like, big has to change and it’s been one brick at a time, and three years later, I mean, the fact, I can say what I’m thinking now better than I’ve ever been able to say what I’m thinking before. I want to go back to what you were saying though about expectations, because I think it’s such a beautiful thought, and it can be a reality for listeners who are thinking, well, there is that expectation. I mean in my marriage with my husband, there are no expectations. We love each other. We treat each other well. We’ll do what we can for each other, but there’s not an expectation, I’m just going to use this as an example. There’s not an expectation that every time I get up from my, you know, leave my office to use the restroom, that I’m going to do something for him. What I love to do something for him, you know, hey, do you need a drink? Do you need a refill on your coffee?

Steven Kuhn: Yup.

Kim Sutton: And it makes me feel good, and he does the same for me, but there’s no expectation, if he walks through the house and he doesn’t, oh my God, whatever.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah. It’s key that people understand that, the point of no expectations is able to make her own choices. So when you make your own choices, you’re operating from your own core principles of H.I.T, or whatever it is that you have for core principles, and that makes you automatically on the right path. You’re automatically omitting positive vibes and vibrations. You’re automatically in the place where you should be. If I tried to please somebody, or I do something to get something, I’m off of my path, I’m outside of the realm of my core principles. So I’m not going to be authentic, i’m not going to have a different kind of vibration, different kind of energy, they’re going to feel it. For instance, you come home with flowers. First thing, what’s the wife say? What’d you do? Right? Expectation is, it only brings flowers. What the hell is wrong? So change that, right now.

Kim Sutton: Right, yeah, that just makes me want to puke.

Steven Kuhn: Right, so the second thing is, you come home with flowers unexpected, like all God, he wants something, right? So, you know, the guy comes over to give her flowers tonight, maybe it’s going to be a great night. And you don’t say that though, you don’t verbalize that. You just give the flowers, and act like it’s just for flowers. But in the end, you know, in the back your energy showing her, okay, I want something, and she’s probably thinking to herself, or she is thinking to herself and yet, what does he want? Oh, he probably want sex or something. You know? So you have this like misconnection of vibration and energy with each other, and the next thing you know you’re fighting over the chicken, or the toothbrush, or whatever because you either, like I said, if I don’t have an expectation that won’t happen. And if I verbalize my expectation and you can do it in a jokingly way, like, Hey baby should we, maybe I’ll get lucky, you know, something like that. And at least she knows that you’re expecting something and then she can react directly to that. Now that takes the time, and that takes, you know, working with each other that she can say, well that’s tonight because blah, blah, blah. And I have to be able to accept that, and the only way I can accept that, if that thing that I’m asking for is not supposed to make me happy, it’s just a joy. Because if that’s how I gain happiness, and she says no, then I’m crushed and she feels bad, right? So that’s the whole thing about no expectations and loving yourself, it’s such a delicate house of cards until you figure it out. Then it’s all based on you, everything, everything, the whole planet in the world that you live in is based upon you. And unless you’re squared away and on key on point, then you’re always going to have these small differences. Even if you’re, you know, there’s a lot of gurus out there, a lot of people would meditate 12 hours a day, or whatever. First of all, they’re typically broke. So that’s a big misbalance right there because they’re putting all of their focus on one thing,and not the entire balanced life enterprise. So, there’s always going to be some, you know, I’m not perfect either. There’s things that I work on all the time, but like we were talking about before, he’ll be conscious of that aware of monitor all the time. And I monitor people, I have to monitor the reactions to how I speak, or what would I say, then I’m always sort of adjusting that accordingly. When someone asked me, they said H.I.T Honesty and true transparency: “how transparent and honest can you be when you’re in a board meeting and like you can’t tell them everything?” Well, common sense would tell you, obviously I’m not going to sit here and say I had an argument with my wife today and I feel really shitty so I don’t want to do this meeting. You know, that’s not the kind of transparency I’m talking about. I’m talking about transparency that’s going to be, transparency and honesty to the point that both parties and with the positive resolution. So, it’s that’s the kind of transparency, honesty I’m talking about just so we’re clear about that. I’m not going to go out there and say things that aren’t pertinent to the situation.

Kim Sutton: We could dive so much deeper into that, but I just want to stay on expectations for a little bit longer if you don’t mind.

Steven Kuhn: Yep.

Kim Sutton: So in 2009, I was introduced to the law of attraction, which completely changed my life because I had been walking around and just existing up until that point. And I was 30 by the time this happened, with a dark cloud over my head.

Steven Kuhn: All right.

Kim Sutton: If I wasn’t happy, it was always somebody else’s fault. And then that one moment, I mean it was my chiropractor, friend Ed, who introduced me to the law of attraction, my life just changed. I realized, Oh my gosh, I have the power, I have the power and it’s not anybody else anymore. So now visualization is huge in my life. And for the last five years, I’ve had my dream house blueprint as one of my saved bookmarks, you know, in Chrome. And it’s a picture of the house is the backdrop of my Gmail. And this past weekend, I actually just random, I found the property that I want to build this house on Sunday.

Steven Kuhn: Right.

Kim Sutton: It’s not an expectation. It is a dream. And I see it happening. So, where do you see expectations? I mean–

Steven Kuhn: Well, I get what you’re saying,and this is the deal. I’m very visual. I have a dream board as well, a vision board, but I have to change it so often cause I keep reaching everything so quick. So, I wanted this house and we found the exact house we wanted with the exact office, with everything that we wanted. And it was in three months, and we bought it. And that’s because of one thing, it’s not because I’m thinking of it. You said one key word, someday, right? Someday never comes now, you only have now, it’s right now. So when you visualize, you have to visualize yourself in that house right now.

Kim Sutton: Oh, I do. I see myself walking around with a cup of coffee and just, I can smell it, I can see it.

Steven Kuhn: The way you’re talking is like it’ll be in the future soon, one day, someday. So you’re pushing it forward, you’re automatically pushing forward. So it’s like, when someone says I want to be a millionaire in two years, why would you say two? Why would you put a time limit on it? What if it happens tomorrow? right?, so exactly. So if you’re putting a time limit on it, you’re actually closing a claps on on your eyes. So you don’t see the two most important things that success, and that is coincidence and luck, coincidence and luck, or response for about 30 to 40% of any ultra successful person’s business life, life enterprise. And when you’re focused on one thing, it’s also how you look at it. What’s the house really represent for you? Is that the house that you want? Or you want to live the life of a person who has that kind of a house? See the difference?

Kim Sutton: Yes.

Steven Kuhn: So if I want a house like that, I would ask myself what kind of person would live in that house? Is that me? Well, yeah. Okay, I got five companies, and I’ll have to make this much money. You know, I’ve got the house, and then what kind of car would I have? You know, how many cars in the garage? What’s the family? What’s a neighborhood? Where would I go out? Where to hang out? Is there, you know, that kind of stuff. So, I started creating this picture in my mind of the entire lifestyle where the house is only part of that lifestyle. Therefore, I’m encompassing much more into my vision, so that it actually happens for real and quicker. Because the more that I include, the more signals I will be able to receive from things that I see that remind me of it, or see it, or lead me in that direction.

Kim Sutton: Wow.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: I don’t know why I didn’t see that before, and I’m not chained to take credit away from you, so I just want to thank you. But I had written a soulmate spec sheet when I left my ex husband, if these are the qualities I would rather be single for the rest of my life. But this is what I’m looking for, if I should ever date anybody again. And within three weeks, I met my husband who is completely my soulmate. There was no expectation, I wasn’t even looking for him, but I had that, well, there was expectation. That’s what I would have in a man if I were to ever date again. But I wasn’t looking for that person.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: So, I love that you said coincidence and luck, because I find them on Craigslist, Steven. I was looking for furniture and I found him. So yeah, oh, I love that.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah. And of course, of course. I mean it’s took years of practice, and I’m going to tell you how I came up with this, and this is going to–

Kim Sutton: Please.

Steven Kuhn: –this is probably going to blow your mind as well, because it dawned on me, I was doing all these things, and you know, I was walking up to Andrea Bocelli and saying: “Look, you need me to work for you. You have no idea who I am, but I want to work for you.” And I want to retain hem in the music industry, which doesn’t exist in him. Then they said: “Okay.” I went to Olivia Newton-John, and opened her her company in six countries, and I was always saying: “Man, what am I doing? What is this like? What you know?” Until I realized, until I put a process and name what it is that I do, I don’t know what I’m doing. So I look back and that’s where he came from. That’s where PPR came from, Problem Product Resolution, that’s where PPS came from, People Procedures and Structures. That’s where all these acronyms that I use come from to describe the ways that I lived my life. Now, through teaching it and repetition, which you know is a master of all learning through repetition, I get better and better at it to the point where it’s like almost speed manifesting now when I do these kinds of things. So this one I’m talking to you about today, I talked about last time on another podcast, s it just keeps building upon itself. So until you know how you got to where you are, as far as the positive things go, the things that you repeat and put that into a process, at least give it a name and understand what you were doing. Well, it’s hard to build on that isn’t it? Cause you don’t know what you’re building on. So when I realized that it was like, holy cow, once I had that, it’s like I’m building a high rise. It’s just — cause the foundation has H.I.T, then I have the life enterprise, then I have relational capital. So investing in relational capital is just like investing in financial capital, but you have 100% guaranteed return, and relational capital and the law of reciprocity dictates that you will receive what you don’t have when you give what you have. And give what you have, could be love, could be knowledge, could be anything. And once you trust in that and you have certainty in that, by the way, it’s a big difference between the house that you’re looking for and the house that I got is, I was certain that I was going to get it right now. Like, I have no doubt in my mind you have belief, that’s the first step of certainty is belief. Belief is active, so I believe that I can do this, and that I believe this is going to happen, I believe, that’s conscious, right? And then you have faith. Faith is like, sorta when you pray and you put it up there, and every once in a while you’re checking on on it, you’ll pray for it again. You look around, there’s anything happening and then you have certainty. Certainty completely erases the HOW? Once you’re certain about something, you don’t even worry about how it’s going to happen, cause you know it’s going to happen. You just sit, kickback and let go, and I”ll honest to you, when my wife, we found this house and my wife said: “Do we have the money?” I’m like: “Nope.” And I sign it anyway because I was so certain that this was our house, the one that we wanted and that it was meant for us, and don’t worry about the money, and she signed it, and two weeks later I had the money.

Kim Sutton: Wow.

Steven Kuhn: So, it’s certainty that matters. It’s certainty that matters, because it’s the same reason that I told you before. If I’m not certain and I’m trying to control the HOW? Right, and the outcome, exactly how it’s supposed to be. Again, I’m focusing on a small range, and I’m missing luck and coincidence, and my luck was that I met a coach through somebody else that I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise, who coached me for literally an eight week period once a week for an hour. And in that eight week period, I raised a 100K.

Kim Sutton: Wow.

Steven Kuhn: And that only happened because I saw it as an opportunity, and I wasn’t looking at, Oh, I need to save money, I need to make more money, I want a house, that kind of stuff, so I was open for that. You have to see what’s going on around you, when you can only see what’s going on around you. When you’re certain what point you’re going after is happening, then you don’t have to worry about how it happens because it will certainly happen.

Kim Sutton: I just want to share with you one more thing. So along with, I do a lot of mindset and mindfulness work as well, and along with that, my religious faith is very important to me. On January 1st of this year, I gave it all to God. I said: “I don’t know how it’s going to happen, but I know how.” And I just gave it up, and I had created, I’m not going to put an E on this podcast for any listeners who are listening with kids, I apologize, but I had to get shit done list.

Steven Kuhn: Yeah.

Kim Sutton: And I’m standing in the shower one day and I just heard this message: “You need to change that name. You are not making shit, you are not making shit. These are prioritized purposeful actions. You need to change that list name.” So, I got other shower and went to my Google Docs and renamed it. It’s my PPA’s now, Prioritize Purposeful Actions. Is it a PPA? If it’s cleaning out my inbox? No, it is not a PPA, that has a GSD and I don’t do GSD’s anymore, and that has been a huge shift this year. Steven, could you share the URL one more time where people can go and sign up, your course, and it will be in the show notes listeners, which you can find at thekimsutton.com/PP604, but you’ve just had me thinking so much and I know listeners as well. And actually while you’re doing that, where else can listeners find you online?

Steven Kuhn: Well, my class is stevenclass.com, real simple, and I talk about all this stuff and talk about life enterprise. I talk about H.I.T, all this kinds of things in a business, because you can’t be successful in business that way you could be if you’re not living according to who you are in your identity, so that’s stevenclass.com. My website is steven-kuhn.com, there’s all my stuff on there. There’s my speaking reel, a lot of goofy stuff, hundreds of testimonials with people that I’ve worked with. So, you know in the end, basically as a turnaround guy also turn lives around. So, I do probably, only about 45% business consulting and coaching. And I end up, it’s funny, I have a guy right now, he’s moving his entire business to America from Australia. And I said: “Okay, so you need me to help you with–” “No, no, I don’t need you with the business. I need you to get my mind right that I’m actually going to make it.” So it’s funny how although being a business consultant all these years, turnaround specialists all these years, and implementer, literally the culture of the company, the culture of the people in that company in the way they love themselves and care for them. And literally, we had meetings every day at 1400, sorry that’s 2:00 PM, and it was the entire team, and we always spent a good 15 minutes on self-development, meaning yourself, not do this and do that, it’s yourself, love yourself. We did Tai-Chi, we went out and talked to strangers and elevated them and made them feel great. So you could see the reflection of yourself, and this is what I mean when I said I went back to the corporate world, and I became who I was for real and not just a manager leader that you wanted me to be. I was always a good leader. But when I did this.,I changed the culture of the company so drastically that to CEO, the owners came down and they said: “Look, I want you to go to every 87 locations and teach this to everyone because it was so impactful. The revenue went up, the complaints went down.” I mean, the attrition went down, it was incredible, but it was only because we focus on the human being, every single one of us, and not obviously as a team unit, and not like these over like, read this book, or let’s do this exercise, or just checking the boxes. we literally cared for them. And that’s what I talk about, that’s what true success is and that is actually true quality of life.

Kim Sutton: There is so much more there, I love it. Listeners, again to sign up for the class thekimsutton.com/PP604, the link will be there. So if you’re trying not to burn dinner, or don’t want to fall, yeah, you can go get it. Wow, I have so many more questions, but in respect for your time, I just want to thank you so much for being here and I might have to ask you to come back for part two.

Steven Kuhn: My pleasure.

Kim Sutton: But thank you so much. Do you have a parting piece of advice or a golden nugget that you can share with listeners?

Steven Kuhn: Well, I’m looking at my daughter right now. She got some new clothes, looks beautiful, baby, awesome. I think the most important piece of what we talked about today, you know, everyone talks that, there’s two things that people see in life. One is, they want to feel happy with themselves, right? So that everyone wants to be happy with themselves, that’s just a simple fact, it’s difficult to do. But the one thing that everyone worries about, first is, I need to make money so I can be happy with myself. Switch it up, turn it around, seek that quality of life, spend more time with your family, spending more time in yourself, doing the things that you love, be happy and joyful, and then the money, luck, and the coincidence will happen in a fall right into your lap. And I’m not even kidding.