The Entrepreneur DNA - Stop “Shoulding” Yourself: How to Build a Business That Actually Fits Your Life | Jess Wass

Episode Date: April 16, 2026

In this episode, I sat down with Jess Wass to break down what it really means to build a business and life that actually aligns with who you are. We talked about her “Managing 360” framework, why so many entrepreneurs feel stuck or overwhelmed, and how most of us are chasing success based on what we think we “should” want instead of what truly matters to us. We got into values, decision-making, comparison, and even when quitting is the right move. This episode is a deep dive into how to stop living someone else’s version of success and start building a life that actually fulfills you. Jess Wass Bio Jess Wass is a Career Coach, Organizational Development Consultant, and the Founder & CEO of Reworkit, a transformational coaching company that helps high-achieving individuals and organizations build careers and cultures with intention. With over 15 years of experience across finance, consulting, hospitality, and startups, Jess specializes in helping professionals and leaders navigate career transitions, lead high-performing teams, and overcome the internal and external barriers holding them back. She holds a Master’s degree in Social-Organizational Psychology from Columbia University and is a Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC). Jess blends behavioral psychology with real-world leadership experience to deliver practical frameworks that drive clarity, alignment, and results. Jess has been featured in major publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and Fast Company, and is known for her expertise in helping overachievers who feel stuck design careers and lives that actually work for them. Socials & Links Website: https://www.jesswass.com/Company: https://www.reworkit.co/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jesswass/ About Justin: Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The Science of Flipping podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur with over and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is up, the entrepreneur DNA family? This is going to be incredible. Now, as always, I bring on the best of the best guests, and they are going to be the advisors to the school community, sk-o-l.com forward slash the entrepreneur DNA. That's where you can learn directly from them, not just on a podcast, but learn their expertise, engage with them, ask their questions.

So if you want to grow as a business owner, get to school, S-K-O-O-L-com, forward-slash the entrepreneur-D-N-A. So you can listen to my next guest, who she is an expert at managing 360. She's an expert in corporate leadership. Jess Wass is here. How are you? Hi. How are you?

I'm so excited to be chatting with you again. I know. Now, if you guys are watching this, the bummer is we just found out she's in Brooklyn. And I think I'm headed to Brooklyn in like 10 days. So we could have been doing this live, but we will still make it work no matter what, right? Yeah, we got the magic no matter what. That's right. So listen, you're very much an expert about what I believe is a great term, managing 360.

Tell us more about that. Yeah, so when I say managing 360, I'm talking about managing up. So this is more for folks who are still working in corporate where they have to manage up to people hire them. How do you make sure that you're being seen, heard, and appreciated and valued so you can get promoted? And then managing down, which is very relevant to this community in particular. How do we manage everyone underneath us? How do we lead? And then what I call managing yourself. So that includes managing your career, managing your own mindsets and emotions and how you're moving through this role to make sure that you're showing up and leading the life that you want to live. What is the, where do you see people go wrong here? I call it shitting around. So there's a lot of shoulds that people employ in their life. I literally was going to ask you to say that again. because I heard shooting around and I'm like, is that what she's?

Yeah, it's intentional. Yeah. Yeah. Stop shooting all over the place. Yeah. So I think I should do this. I should do that. But that's how a lot of us live our lives based on how we think we're supposed to live.

And I talk about this all the time, especially when I work with entrepreneurs. When we left corporate life to go build our own business, we took a risk. And if you're going to build this life for yourself, it should work for you. The ideal life for me may be different than the ideal life for you. How I want to show up for a parent may be different how you want to show up as a parent. The things that are important to you in my life may be different than the things that are important to you and your life. And our businesses and the way we run our businesses and set them up should reflect that. Yeah, I think there's not one size fits all.

It's funny. I had a good conversation. Jen Gottlieb is a friend of mine. Most of my people know her. She and I were talking recently and just she was like, Justin, when's enough enough enough? Like she was asking me like not for me, almost for herself. We were just talking about business and growth and do we want to go bigger? Do we want more?

Do we need more? Do we need more money? Do we need more client? Like when's enough actually enough? What's your answer to that question? I think it depends on the person. And that's why I don't think it's a question you can ask someone else to answer for you. It is a question and this is where I spend a lot of time with my clients because you have to be really clear on your why.

And, you know, I listen to the financial guru Ramat Setti, and he talks about designing your rich life. And I love that term because it implies that my idea of being rich may be different than yours. And so the way I design my life may be different than yours. And I think that's what it comes down to. I want more for why. Yeah. What do I think more money gets me? And I love to use, so my favorite TV programs are the Real Housewives.

And I love it because that whole program is designed because we're supposed to like aspire to be these women. We want them. They have the nice cars and the bags and the clothing. And then you watch the show and you see that their lives are a bit of a train rack most of the time. So you can get more money, but the question is at what cost? What are you willing to give up? Are you willing to sacrifice your marriage?

Are you willing to sacrifice showing up as a parent or showing up as a friend? Or are you able to get more without having to give those things up? But usually there's a tipping point. where if we say yes to something, we're inherently saying no to something else. But only you know the answer for yourself of when is enough enough. I just had an incredible friend of mine talk about this. If you say yes to one, that means you're saying no to something else, right? Yeah.

How do people figure that component out? What do they need to do in your expertise? Like to make the right decisions, to say yes to the right things that are in alignment with good intention is the word I wanted to bring up in the episode? because I find myself, even me, right? Like, I'm kind of a yes, ma'am. Part of it is I'm a people pleaser. I just want to make people have it. Try doing that and being a parent, by the way.

Really extremely. You're like all my clients. Yeah. All my clients are the same like that. But then I also like see all these opportunities because I have a platform and people bring these incredible opportunities. I'm like, yes, let's do all of it. But if you do that, then you have to say no and or ignore the other side of that.

How do you do this with alignment with intention? So one of the first place I start, and it sounds a little hokey, but is what I call a values assessment. A lot of coaches do this, but it's a really important first step. And all it's saying is you need to decide for yourself, what are the most important things that are driving you. And when I do values, I think about there's two types of values. There's what I call driver values and guardrail values. The driver values are the things that really motivate us. It's the things that we're reaching for, the things that put.

push us. That may be something like impact or money or power or prestige, whatever it may be achievement. But then there's guardrail values. Those are the things saying, I'm willing to reach as far as I can go without making sure I'm losing this. What are the things that you can't live without? What are the things if I had to say yes and I had to give this up, the trade no longer makes sense. Because whenever you're negotiating something in general in business, you're thinking about what am I willing to give up to get this? It's the same in life. So take that business mindset and apply it to your own life. What are your values? For me, I have my own personal values and then I have the values of my company. So when I'm presented with opportunities, I'm looking at my values and

saying, if I say yes to this, is this an alignment with what I said was important? And the reason you have to do this work before these opportunities come is because we're really crafty creatures, us humans. So as soon as something comes along, we will move the target and the benchmark. So we need it in writing so that we can reference back to it and not trick ourselves into thinking, oh, that wasn't actually that important. Yeah. The value segment is really important. I think wouldn't you agree, values change over time, not values of right or wrong. Oh, yes. But values for humans change over time.

100%. So one of the biggest segments of clients that I have is for what I call career clarity coaching, which is people come to me because they have hit a transition point in their life and their career and they're trying to think about what they want next in their career. But often they're coming to me because it's the transition in their life that's triggering this career crossroads. So it's usually I just got to. married, I'm thinking about starting a family. My kids are about to go to college. I'm about to be

empty nester. Or something happened to my family. My parents just passed away. Or I'm a single parent now. It's these life events that jolt us because what we wanted and what was important when I was 20 is different than when I'm 30 and is different when I'm 40 and 50. And I think the greatest thing that you can do is recognize that it's not failure for changing direction and saying, I want something different. It's just a natural part of life. Yeah, it goes back to the idea of this, follow your passion, you'll never work a day in your life.

Well, how incongruent is that statement giving what you just said? If your passions change over time through natural growth as a human, when you started your company as an ice cream company because you were 22 years old and you remember being a kid and that was fun, And all of a sudden you have kids and you're serving these young kids ice cream. Like, it's just not an alignment to follow your passion. Is that a total myth? Or do you have, do you buy into some of the merit of following your passion?

I think it's possible, but it's maybe not everyone's dream. I don't think you have to follow your passion through work necessarily. But I think you need to be following your passion in life. And this is sometimes what I find with my clients is sometimes what's most important. important to us is happening outside of work. And the role of work is to create the conditions so that we have that time and space and money to go pursue those things. For some of us, the work is the passion, and that's great as well. But to your point, we change and evolve as humans. And we have this, I think this false idea that when something ends, that means failure.

I think if you run a business for 10 years, that's unbelievable. Because we know most Most businesses fail, right? They don't make it to their third or fifth year. But if you decide after 10 years to shut your business, some people may say, oh, you failed. It doesn't exist anymore. No, I ran a successful business for 10 years, period, end of story. And now I'm ready to move on. And I think the best thing that we can do is to recognize when is it time to either move on or pivot or change the way that we work?

There's plenty of founders who move on from running their company to just being a board member. or you can sell your company. But I think recognizing when am I in transition and what is this no longer serving me and going deeper to figure out what is the change that needs to happen here. That's the important work, I think. When doing that work, you're usually following some sort of, I don't want to use the word prescription. I'm just not finding a word I want it.

Strategy prescription. You know, you're following something. What do you think is one of the bigger myths about, what is out there in the world and what reality is. Like what would you bust a myth for us about, you know, what's out there prescription-wise, oh, you need to do this thing. And that's the tone of what everyone's saying.

But in the real world, that's this nonsense. I think one of those myths is that you have to constantly climb the ladder. And that success is only if you keep making it to the top. And that if we're in a moment of pause or a moment where we're not trying to grow, that somehow we fail. I think that's the biggest myth I want to bust because I think there's moments in life when we are in drive. I think there's moments when we're in neutral.

I think there's moments when we're in park and sometimes we're in reverse. And I don't think there's anything wrong with cycling through that. And I think the same for your business. Is this a moment where I'm trying to grow because I think there's opportunity for that? But it's also okay to be in a moment of neutral where, hey, things are working well.

Let's just keep doing the things that we're doing. I don't actually need more or different. Like, let's just keep repeating. and I think giving yourself permission that doesn't always have to be hyper-growth mode. Don't you feel, and I'm sure with your clients, and by the way, this would be a great time for everyone to go follow you

and learn more about you. Where can everyone go to go follow you? One of the best places to find me is LinkedIn. Just look up Jess Wasse. You'll find me very easily there. And then you can always go to my company's website, reworkit.co, notcom.com. With intention, she couldn't afford DM people.

She could not afford the M. someone wanted like eight grand from her and she said no yeah that's actually that's true i we go back to values right and goals and it wasn't that important to go to dot com dot co was good enough i'm an 8020 person amen i did the same thing with ari i live dot co is dot com was taken they wanted some number that was just like no that not worth it that one letter doesn't it doesn't have that value for me so given what you were just speaking about um about maybe it's not necessarily, necessary to climb the ladder. Maybe that's not for them. What about those that are stuck? What about the people that are stuck in their career, in their business, they plateaued,

they're not feeling the growth. They don't know if there's even growth to be had. They don't know where, like, they just feel stuck. I see this a lot with my clients. And this is one of the big reasons why people come to me is because they're feeling stuck. And what happens when we feel stuck often is that we start to turn the ire inwards. And all of a sudden we point to our So I'm like, oh, I must be the problem. I'm not as smart as I thought I was. I'm not good at like I thought I was. Maybe I just can't be successful.

And that is the perk that breaks my hurt. And what another myth that I'll bust is that sometimes the problem isn't you. It's where you put you. So if you really want to be happy in your job as an entrepreneur or even in corporate, you need to align yourself with what I call the three levels framework. So the job that you're doing needs to align with the work that you actually like doing. The person you're reporting to, if you're not your own boss, needs to be someone that you can communicate and work well with. And the culture of your company needs to work at a pace and a place that works for you.

And sometimes you have really smart people who are just doing the wrong type of work or they're working for the wrong type of person or they're in the wrong type of environment. And that certainly was my story. And it took me a while to realize that the problem wasn't me and that I was broken or I wasn't as smart as, you know, my parents told me growing up. It was just I was doing the wrong things and I was in the wrong place and everything changes when you can move yourself to the right place. What about the idea that I think most people now are comparing this comparison nonsense, right? And I fall victim to it sometimes and most recently I actually did, which sucked, by the way. So I think I know where you're going to go with this because I've found it in my own life. But people have this comparison of the, I need to grow the company this big.

I need to have this big of a team. I need to be able to have this much revenue. I need to have all because so and so and so and so and so has that. And that's what it looks great on social media and the comparison of all that versus actually being happy and satisfied with your life, with your business and coming home happy every day. Talk to us about like comparison versus satisfaction. Satisfaction is that you actually say. I like satisfaction.

Satisfication. I don't know if that is. but I like it. Yeah. I like it. So I talk a lot about how envy, which I know is one of like the seven deadly sins, and it's supposed to be bad, bad, bad. But I think envy can sometimes be useful if you think of it as like a metal detector

on the beach. When you see someone, you're like, oh, that's what I want. It's like that metal detector. It's going beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. But you need to dig. If you just assume that what's under there is gold or someone's diamond engagement ring, then that's where you've made the mistake. Because what you need to do when it goes beep, beep, beep, is dig and find out what's under here.

Is it a penny or is it a diamond ring? When you see someone out there and you're like, yes, that's what I want. Ask yourself why. And there's a system out there just called the five whys. It's a very simple framework. You ask why. Then you answer it and you ask why again. And you keep doing this until you drill down to the actual root cause.

So if you see another entrepreneur out there, and you're like, oh, I need to grow like them. Why? Sometimes that first white will stump people. I mean, if you would ask me that in my scenario, and I've told a lot of people this, so it's not shameful. Do you know who Grant Cardone is? Yes.

Very large figure in the real estate space. I've been to real estate 20 years. So I'm in his office getting interviewed on his podcast. Big platform. Yeah. And he says, Colby, you've been doing this 20 years, you're playing small. You need to get into the apartment game.

I challenge you to get 3,000 doors in 36 months. I know, right? So I'm like, all right, let's go make this happen. So literally leave the, and I'm like, head down, let's go, let's go show him I can do that. And if I would have paused and said, why? It would have, I know my answer now, being able to look backwards, but it would given me a better way to do it because ultimately what that did is it forced me to run faster than my team could hold so i started to outpace my team my team couldn't hold all the plates

plates started falling fire started popping it just became quite literal nightmare right because i took a challenge and i knew i could do it but just because i could doesn't mean i should right that that age old quote and just that first question of why would have given me enough pause to potentially structure it right at a very minimum because I didn't structure anything I just started running. Yeah. And that's a common mistake that everyone makes, which is we start chasing something, but we haven't defined what we're chasing and why. And then what do we need to support that? So one of the frameworks that I created from working with my clients, both the entrepreneurs and the corporate folks, is when you start to feel that tension your org like you just described,

you can tell that things are falling apart or, you know, they're busting at the seams. Sometimes we will look and go, okay, the problem is the people. My team isn't keeping up. You know, that's the problem. Or I didn't create the right process. But in reality, the real root cause of 80% of problems is goals. We either did not articulate the goals or we didn't clearly communicate the goals or we didn't set the right goals. And then if we don't have the right goals, then we don't know how to structure the team to go support those goals.

So we don't have the right people or they don't know what their role. is in doing this, who's responsible for what? That causes most of the tension in organizations, and we have failed projects. That is usually the cause of it and the first place that I put my clients to go figure it out. And so I called that framework get a grip. And it is the windex from my big fat greet wedding. It is the Vicks vapor rub, you know, solution to everything. It solves everything, that one framework. So how do you, I want to kind of go into rework it. How do you, how do you combine it all? Meaning how do you combine purpose work being a leader to others, you know, in finding success and in kind of blending this purpose, leadership, success and

business together? Part of the answer is I'm still figuring it all out. And that's what I love about this and being an entrepreneur is you are constantly shifting things and trying new things and figuring out how to make it all work. And then when I'm more, working with my clients, part of it is just drilling down and getting to the root of what is the biggest issue that we need to solve first. Sometimes we make a mistake of trying to solve too many things at once. But we often need to drill and say, like, what is the biggest burning issue that if we can solve that, that will relieve a lot of tension? And then we can go and tackle the next thing. So is it a mindset issue? Is it a lack of leadership skill issue? Is it I'm not

sure what I want to do with my career? You know, is it skill of will in some cases? And that's where you need to drill down and really figure out, well, where do we start? And the way I put together this business is honestly just figuring out what I love to help people with and what I think I'm really good at. And it's that intersection of what I created, which is managing 360. I'm really good at helping people manage up and get promoted. I'm really, really good helping people manage down and lead teams with clarity. And I'm really good helping people manage themselves in their career and figure out what is it they want and helping them get there.

Why do people, including myself and many others that you've seen, your top clients, clients that are making more money in God, why do they still, to some extent, sabotage themselves? Probably without no. Like, why does this happen? We all have what I call saboteurs. So that's the term that I use with my clients. Think of them as unconscious learned habits. So if you ever learned about, if you're ever like the power of habit, by Charles Duhigg.

I don't know if it pronounces his last name properly. But it's a great book. And it talks about the power of habits. If you want to break a smoking habit, how do you do that? Well, a lot of our saboteurs are the same type of systems. They are learned habits that help us at some point in our life, usually earlier in our life. Maybe we learned it during childhood.

But it's gotten to a point where it no longer serves us. So part of it is recognizing what are those saboteurs. You need to. to each of us, but also pretty common. There's things like perfectionists or, I'm not good enough. Those are some of the common ones that I'd show up. Or I like to call the prestige monster. I need more money, more higher title and power. It's recognizing that this exists. It's learning what it sounds like in your head because it has its own little record for each of us. And then it's pausing when you hear that voice. The pause is very important. When you're trying to break a habit,

You're trying to separate the trigger from the automatic action. When you insert that pause, you take it from the unconscious to the conscious. And when you're in the conscious, then you can make choices. So I always tell my clients, when they start telling me about some, you know, negative mindset, I say, repeat after me. The story I'm telling myself is because it shifts it from a truth to maybe it's not actual truth. And that little shift itself gives us the power to maybe fight back against that saboteur. But we all have saboteurs because we're all human. And humans are fallible.

The one that hits home for me, obvious, is I'm not good enough, right? Or I'm not worthy or whatever the case. Yeah. So that's my childhood speaking when I think about me personally, right? Is tougher childhood, alcoholic parents, blah, blah, blah, no one loves me. Everyone hates me. That little rhyme, right? obviously growing up you realize that wasn't the case my parents had addictions uh yeah but at the

same time you start to go and look at moments in time where i've made big mistakes and what and it almost feels as if like i need to go show everyone i can get out of bad scenarios just to show like look i am worthy right yeah so do a lot i mean do you see a lot of entrepreneurs go through cycles like that where, you know, they're trying to show the world how worthy they are to the point of ruining something, right, blowing something up, intentional or not, just so they can show how they solve the problem? Yeah, I see that all the time because most of the people come to me are what I call overachievers. And they're overachievers, you know, the reason doesn't matter, but they're constantly trying to prove something to someone. It's usually not themselves.

it's usually to someone in their past and their history. And I always say is like my goal is not to cure your saboteur so that voice never pops up again. I'm not sure if that's realistic, right? You may have to go to a therapist for that and that's okay. But what I do want to do is help you turn down the volume on that voice so that you can hear your own voice above it, so that you can learn to ignore it, and so that you can make choices, do I want to listen to this voice or not? Because we get into trouble when we don't question that voice. When we allow that voice to be the automatic habit that triggers that action before we even think,

when, you know, Grant challenges you to go do a part base, you just go, yes. Instead of pausing, we're like, well, do I want to even do this? And why do I want to do this? And how will this help me in my goals? And so part of it is also having compassion for that saboteur voice and compassion for yourself. Hey, I know why this voice is popping up. it's trying to protect me because it doesn't want me to feel let down by back in the day, my parents, or today letting my family down, whatever it may be.

When you can acknowledge the voice and then bring it to the person and say, okay, but is this voice helpful in this moment? We often are able to rise above it, but we have to do the pause. Listening to yourself is easier said than done. I'm going to bring up a topic that I believe in, and I just saw a coach. Sanchez if you're familiar with her she just said something that I've heard before but haven't thought about recently until I heard of say it again that pause that listening to yourself quitting is oftentimes you know the age old memes and all the motivational people the only way

you fail is you quit not wrong per se sometimes quitting is the right choice I don't think people quit fast enough yes I had a story about that that actually. So when I was growing up, I was a runner. And I made, you know, varsity cross-country. It's a sophomore. Everything was going well. But I never loved running. I was just good at it. One junior year, I decided to go to cross-country camp with my teamie. It wasn't my idea. It was hers. It's a one-week intensive camp. I get on the bus to go that day. And my friend is too sick to show up. So now I'm going all by myself. I show up to that camp in something. weird happens to me. From the moment I got on that bus, I couldn't stop crying. And I'm not a kid who

cries. That's not me. Something was happening in my body. When I got to that camp, my legs wouldn't move. I couldn't run. It was like someone snipped the cord from my brain to my legs. I called my dad after a day and I said, you have to come pick me up. And my dad got in the car and drove the several hours to go pick me up from upstate New York, wherever we were. When he shows up, the camp owner says to him, don't take her, you're going to teach her to be a quitter. My dad said to the guy, I know my daughter. And if she says she needs to go, she needs to go. And I think part of it is recognizing when something doesn't serve you. When something isn't right, listen to that voice. And a lot of us, I work with a lot of women. I work with men, too.

but I think especially for women, we've somewhere along the way been taught not to listen to our gut, not to listen to that voice. And I feel blessed that my parents reinforced that it's okay to listen to that voice. And when I told them something wasn't right, and I've quit a lot of things. I had a job in investment bank at Lehman Brothers, turned down that offer. I worked at Bain Company, prestigious consulting firm. I quit after two years. Because when something doesn't feel right for me, again, when we say yes to something, we're saying no to a lot of things.

If I'm here, then I can't be pursuing what I'm meant to be pursuing. If I'm here, it's going to take me longer to get to where I'm really supposed to go. And so asking ourselves, am I quitting because it feels hard

or am I quitting because it doesn't feel right? And I think those are two different situations. You said it perfectly. Am I quitting because it feels hard? Which I think we would both agree is not the right reason to quit. versus in my quitting, it doesn't feel right in my gut. It doesn't feel in alignment. It doesn't feel right with the intentions I had. It's incongruent. That's important difference. A huge distinction.

Let's lean into that. Let's talk about the distinction of like congruency alignment with your intentions versus doing it for an incongruent reason. What can result from that? Well, it goes back to goals. What am I trying to achieve? What's a important to me. Values is same as goals. What's important? Why am I trying to get there? When we are not focused on what we need to do, we may create a beautiful life, but someone else's idea of a beautiful life. We're living someone else's life, not our ideal life. And that's the consequences. And there are things that can break along the way, right? I'm sure you know plenty of entrepreneurs in the pursuit of success more, more and more have lost marriages, have broken relationships with their children, have not

showed up for family or friends in the way that they want and for what at the end of the day. If they're happy at the end of the day, they can rest their head on their pillow and say it was worth it, then that's fine. I don't judge anybody's choices if it works for you. But if you're laying your head on that pillow at night and you're not happy and you're regretful, that's where we've gone wrong. But we can avoid that if we can just back up and go, we need a North Star. Being an entrepreneur is really, really difficult. There's no one there's. tell you what to do, you have to figure it out. We need frameworks to help give us. I call it like freedom in a framework. Give us, you know, um, bumpers on the bowling alley. It doesn't mean I'm

going to get a strike. You can still end up in the gutter, right? And get zero pins down with that. But it helps push you in the right direction, right? And make it easier for you to actually hit that strike. You know, it's funny. You'd almost listen to this episode and think this is a motivational podcast but you you literally have a full-blown program coaching program strategy tactics to help entrepreneurs guide through this this is this is a very deep episode actually where it's not just motivational like there's things that we all as entrepreneurs or even aspiring entrepreneurs deal with right and in we're talking about a lot of them here but like if someone is going to like say hey i might need some help where can should they go to their website reworkit.co or where would they want to go if

They're actually really like, I need to get a little help here. So you can go to ReWorka.com and see the full suite of everything that we offer. But if you're an entrepreneur or a leader and you're feeling like there's some sort of tension in my business, something isn't working for me, it feels chaos. I actually have this assessment that I created based off my get a grip framework that will tell you where you need to start to help diagnose those issues. Because my background is not just I worked in corporate, but I actually have a master's in organizational psychology, which is essentially applying. psychology principles to the workplace. My sweet spot is taking science and frameworks and breaking it down in a way that's actually usable, makes sense, and easy to understand. Because theory is great, but if it doesn't work in practice, then what good is it? And there's a lot of great information

academia, but they don't bridge the gap to talk about how do I actually use this in my day-to-day, in my meeting today. And so I try and create frameworks for my client. that will give them an easy tool and a place to jumpstart. It's not just words. I don't just give words of affirmation by clients. I do plenty of that. But it's also based on tools and frameworks. And at the end of the day, I want people to take action.

It's great that you leave this conversation and feel warm and fuzzy. But if you don't do anything different tomorrow, then I failed. I think that's... So it's about taking action. Yeah. And I think that's really important for people to hear because I have, and everyone's heard this on my episode, so I won't go through them all. but the number third, I have a hierarchy of,

of calling pillars to success or anything like that. But the third one is taking action. Because if you feel like you're in alignment, you feel like you have good intentions, you made a decision who you are and what you want to be, and you don't do anything about it, there becomes an issue, right? And I think this goes back to what we were talking about

a little bit earlier in this episode about quitting versus moving forward. The reason why I said what I said, which you and I are saying the same thing, but I believe people need to quit faster so they can get back to alignment. Yeah. Because fulfillment and success don't always, they're not always aligned.

What society sees as success materialistically, like home and cars and money and vacations, doesn't always equate to fulfillment. And that's where I say, and I believe you're going to be in alignment with this, that's where people need to check themselves. They need to go reach out to adjust and say, hey, I need to be fixed a little bit here.

I don't feel like the train is off the tracks. Yeah. And that's my job is to help get you back to you. Because again, the choices I make in my life are for me. I'm not going to tell you that you should live your life like me. And I think that's beautiful that you and I can build two different businesses and different lives as long as we're happy. And the people around us that care about us are happy.

That's great. So my goal is to get to the center of what's important to you, business owner. and how do we start to pause in areas where we need to pause, go faster in areas that we need to go faster, but really get to the crux of where your problem is. And I think one of the biggest reasons why people come to me is you can listen to tons of podcasts and get great free advice. The problem, to your point, isn't taking action. And I think about this a lot in terms of AI or they can replace coaches. And my point is, you can know what to do and still not do it.

When I'm working with my clients, I'm also working on how do I get you comfortable to take a step? And then how do I start to shift your mindset so you can recognize progress and not just only waiting to you to the destination? Because plenty of people will give up, right, the wrong type of quitting we talk about because they're on their way, but they haven't made it yet. And so they think that's a failure. And that's the biggest way you can get in your own way, which is big. change happens over long periods of time, but it starts by taking small steps. And sometimes you can't see from where you are all the way to the destination. All you can see is the first two steps in front of you. But you take that first step and all of a sudden two more steps illuminate.

But you'll never see that four step if you didn't take the first one. Giving yourself, I use the framework of alignment or I'm sorry, runway. You got to give yourself enough runway. And there's, again, I'll kind of butcher it. But We've all heard that like 1% off on an airplane leaving Miami to New York, if you are one degree off, or the plane needs one degree by the time they should be in New York, they're actually going to be in Washington, D.C. And so people need to understand over a long time,

not being alignment can land you in a totally different place than you actually intended up being. And that's why if this resonates, you got to reach out to Jess, LinkedIn, Jess Watts, W-W-A-S-S-S, and reworkit.com. Those are two places? Yes, those are perfect. This has been an incredible episode.

That is Jess Wasse. Reworkit.com. I'm Justin Colby. This is the entrepreneur DNA. And if you think a couple people might need to connect with Jess, please show this for the least two of your friends. I'd appreciate it. See you on the next episode.