How to Stop Chasing Squirrels with Ted Bradshaw

Today's Guest: Ted Bradshaw

Ted Bradshaw served as an executive with Xerox and IBM, then left the Fortune 500 world to explore the thrills of entrepreneurship. What he found was a long string of success that looked great on the surface. But underneath it all, he felt anxious, exhausted, and stressed, chasing money wherever it led and wondering why he never felt fulfilled. Along his journey, Ted gained valuable insight into how a person can achieve fulfillment in all aspects of life and he shares those insights with his best-selling book, Stop Chasing Squirrels.

Highlights From The Show:

We begin the interview with Ted giving us a bit of his background, which is diverse and super interesting. From a dabble in real estate investing to video games, to online classrooms, and diagnosing cancer through nuclear medicine, it seems as though Ted has truly done it all. Today, Ted lives his passion in helping others find theirs. A leading proponent of the Entrepreneurial Operating System®, Ted is a speaker, author, an Expert EOS Implementer™, and the Community Leader for EOS Worldwide. Ted then breaks down the framework of the system for our listeners.

I then asked Ted to talk about his latest project, his book, Stop Chasing Squirrels. He relates that he wrote the book as therapy because he got caught up in setting goals and never really felt successful, even though all of the external markers reflected exactly that. He confesses that this issue was affecting him in very serious ways, including marital discord and panic attacks. He saw it with other entrepreneurs, as well. As soon as they were able to get their businesses under control by implementing EOS, they were left with the reality that they were not personally happy. It was almost as though having business chaos was a distraction from having to work on themselves.

Ted had mentioned that he had at one point followed a real estate squirrel, so I asked him to share that with us. Ted talked about how his father was in real estate and taught him that it was all about building value over time. He started investing in single-family homes, like many of us, and that led to multi-family units and then new construction. He saw that even when particular units were experiencing issues, real estate was still a successful endeavor for him. He decided to go all in on a larger project and unfortunately ended up working with a high-end construction company that went out of business and he spent the better part of two years cleaning up the resulting mess. Ted said that he learned so much from this experience, even with as difficult as it was.

Don’t miss the latest episode of the Just Start Real Estate Podcast with Ted Bradshaw who openly and honestly shares his entrepreneurial journey with us! Go check out his upcoming webinar and course at TedBradshaw.com!

Notable Quotes:

“I have started six companies - four of them are success stories and two of them were learning opportunities.”

Ted Bradshaw

“It was a ‘go big or go home’ kind of idea and we ended up going home on that one.”

Ted Bradshaw

“You don’t just wake up one day and accidentally find yourself in that field.”

Mike Simmons

“I am a big believer in serendipity - things happen for a reason.”

Ted Bradshaw

“Please tell me you didn’t find yourself in the Middle East on some black market run.”

Mike Simmons

“In three hours we were working through things that previously it has taken us three years to get to.”

Ted Bradshaw

“I don’t pretend that everyone here hears all of my episodes and does everything I say, but I have been preaching the book Traction and the EOS system for years.”