Entrepreneurs Over 40 Episode 14 with Allan Milham

Episode Fourteen features Allan Milham talking about his firm Questage and how they help Entrepreneurs prepare for the third act of their life.

My Key Takeaways:

• It was great talking to Allan and learning more about his pursuit of achievement as well as learning about the third act of life. I was struck by how candid he was in sharing some of his life stories.  One in particular that stood out to me was when he was sent away to school to improve his reading when he was 12.  In a follow up exchange he quoted Friedrich Nietzsche stating "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
• He pointed out that in our culture we tend to define ourselves by what we do whereas in other cultures you may be defined more by your family and other important factors.  
• He is dialed in now with what he is doing in his career but it wasn't always that way for him.  While his siblings knew almost instinctually what they wanted to pursue career wise he didn't know at an early age. It wasn't until he was 30 that he decided to go out on his own and pursue Executive coaching.
• He also shared that working with young Olympians helped him to understand better the mindset around performance.  In his words, We all come sort of with this naysayer that can be sort of an inner critic and limiting beliefs that hold us back.  We have this other voice that says sometimes go for it, right? What he refers to as the whisperer.
• Allan points out that we have a gap in leadership right now and that as a society we need for the Boomers generation to continue to lead and mentor the generations coming after it.
• The challenge he sees today, is that a lot of us are falling asleep.  We're numbing out. There's just so much, negativity that our systems can't actually take it all in. So we're sort of going to sleep.
• One tool that Allan really likes both for personal assessment as well as understanding your partner is the Interactive Enneagram developed by Dirk Cloete. It is a profound tool to use in entrepreneurial environments and with teams so that we can really understand who's who, so that we can leverage our strengths.
• Another important tool for the 3rd act of our lives is Self Care, because bold leaders know how to take care of themselves. They know how to be healthy. They know that exercise is important. They know that sleep is important. They know that eating correctly is important and they know that downtime is important back to the mindfulness and the meditation.  when we really take care of ourselves, our family wins because we have the energy for them to show up and we have the quality of time and we're making that commitment. And with that energy, there's a vibrancy that we just bring to our work that allows us to win.  When we deplete ourselves, we really are breaking down. We should always be asking: how am I doing with my self care? 
• Allan has also found that when we're purposeful, right when we're in passion, when we're waking up with excitement to do something, we now through positive psychology can see that we're actually literally living longer. Optimism, having purpose, and productivity literally is allowing us to live longer than if we are unplugged, isolated, and not productive. So why not make the 3rd act of our lives the best act of our life?  Allan's a real advocate for self-development, self-growth to do the work, so that you can be best in your game.
• Allan's number one piece of advice for the Entrepreneurs Over 40 listeners (and myself) was to ask yourself as you look the mirror. Are you good with what you see? Are you at peace with what you see? Are you aligned with what you see and are you living the life that the person in the mirror is wanting you to have?  If there are question marks around that, spend more time with them.

You can check Allan out at Questage.com to learn more both about himself and also how Questage might help benefit you in the third act of your life.

Now next week we will have on John Moyer talking about how you can benefit from Hypnosis in the first part of a two part series. Be sure to hit Subscribe in your podcast app so you don't miss it or any of the other episodes.

Show notes and more can be found at EntrepreneursOver40.com