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Your Second Act isn't just about starting over; it's about starting smarter. You’ve left the safety of a structured career to follow your passion, and while the opportunity is exciting, the uncertainty is real. You have the vision and the drive, but without a roadmap, that leap of faith can quickly feel like a freefall.
Welcome to Second Act Business Owner, the podcast dedicated to ensuring your new venture lands on solid ground.
Hosted by Lee Gray—an award-winning ActionCOACH, certified executive trainer, and serial entrepreneur—this show is for the courageous professionals who are trading corporate stability for entrepreneurial freedom. Lee understands that being an expert in your field doesn’t automatically make you an expert in running a business.
Each week, we strip away the fluff to provide the real-world MBA training you need to turn chaos into clarity. From navigating the emotional rollercoaster of ownership to mastering the mechanics of profit, Lee brings the structure and strategy required to build a legacy.
Hit follow and let’s get to work.
Ep06
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[00:00:00]
Lee Gray: Welcome back to the Second Act Business owner. I'm so happy to have you here today. I'm having so much fun. I'm really, really looking forward to sharing with you today. It's a thought tool, an actual tool, and a moving you ahead tool. It's something that is going to really change your life
it's, it's actually called the Formula for Life Success. So if you wanna stay tuned here with me, I'm going to share with you [00:01:00] the formula for life success. And I know that gets you very excited and it's also not as complicated as it sounds. And I'm gonna help you improve your life success just by sharing this formula with you today and giving you a couple of tips.
The DGLPA Success Formula
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Lee Gray: Basically, the formula for life success is about. Small movements. It's about recognizing where you are and then small movements with great impact so that you can build your dreams bigger and stronger and achieve your goals. That's basically what the premise of it is, and it basically starts with dreams.
So your dreams. Think about your dreams that you have, and think about multiplying those dreams times your goals. And then multiply that times your ability to learn once you've set a goal. And then finally, not finally, but two more things. How well you [00:02:00] learn about what it is you wanna achieve in life and your goal, and then how well you plan that, and then how well you take action on that plan.
So it's D-G-L-P-A dreams, times, goals, times learn times, plan times action in the mathematical formula.
Scoring Your Dreams
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Lee Gray: As you're multiplying this, these numbers across, you're giving yourself a, a score of one to 10. So on a scale of one to 10. Where am I on Dreams? And I'll, tell you how that works and I'll tell you how it works with all the other areas too.
So you may think to my yourself, how do I even decide what my dream level is? And that's a good question, and I think that's why I wanna focus on dreams today. And about your, your, the extent or the. Extravagance of your own dreams.
Why We Stop Dreaming
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Lee Gray: One of the things that I learned about working with clients over the years is that we've been taught as little kids, I'm, I'm gonna dream big.
So what do you wanna do when you grow up, when you're six years old? [00:03:00] I'm gonna be an astronaut. I'm going to be a heart surgeon. I'm gonna be an NBA player, or a, I'm gonna be an Olympian. It doesn't matter. Because we don't have any limitations to our dreams when we're six years old, which is, oh, I love that 6-year-old mind for that very purpose right there.
The other thing is when we get to be about 14 and we tell someone our dreams, that's the first time. Usually someone says, who do you think you are dreaming that you can be an Olympian? Who do you think you are? And then when we get grown up and have children of our own or having to pay our own bills, then, then we really have to put those dreams aside because we have to focus on.
The things that you know, sort of keep us alive.
Dream Bigger Like a Kid
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Lee Gray: The idea around dreams is this, I'll give you an example. My grandson came to visit me at my office one day and I had a client visiting who is a pilot. An air has an airplane, an eight seat airplane. And he was saying, well, Lee, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna take some of my friends.
We're gonna fly out [00:04:00] to such and such and we're gonna be gone for a few days and I'll, I'll call you when I get back. And my, my grandson just looked at him and after my client left, my grandson said, that guy has his own plane. You can have your own plane. And I said, absolutely, you can have your own plane.
Do you wanna have your own plane? He said, yeah, I, I would. What? Well. What do I need to do to have my own plane? I said, well, you need to be a certain age and get a pilot's license, and then you need to figure out a way to own a plane or rent a plane, or lease a plane or share a plane with someone else. And, and then you can, you know, continue to practice not practice, but flying and until you can do whatever you want with it.
And he's like, wow, you know what? I think I would like to be a pilot. I think I would like to have my own plane. The story there is. If you don't know that a dream is possible, how can you even dream it? So we have to go outside and really be creative and, and think of things that we might wanna do that we haven't thought about before.
Like I, [00:05:00] you know what? I just wanna have a restaurant where you can come in, fill your own plate and go sit down. I don't know, I just made that up. But that's a dream that maybe. No one has said out loud or accomplished before. We have to pump up our dream ability, get in our 6-year-old head again. And I love talking to my clients.
When we meet, the very first time I talk to my clients about their dreams and they'll say some things to me like, you know what? I just wanna take my family on a, on a vacation for a week Really. Really, that's your dream. How about your dream is to take 29 people to Switzerland for a month and live in a chalet and have a chef fix you breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day?
Now, that's a dream. A dream around your business needs to be accelerated just like that. Because we haven't given the dream muscle anytime to grow and to be stronger. And if we don't use our dream muscle, it literally starts to decay and we think, oh, [00:06:00] that's it. Life's over. I'm, I'm 39. No more dreams for me.
Or, I'm 28. No more dreams for me. Or I'm 70. No more dreams for me. Remember, dreams are ageless. Second acts are ageless.
Turning Dreams Into Goals
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Lee Gray: So I wanna talk to you about. Goals next. So the bigger the dream, the bigger that number is in that multiply effect. So apply that to the goal. Now I've got this big dream. What's my goal?
How do goals work?
SMARTY Goals and Your Why
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Lee Gray: You've heard of SMART goals. I love smart goals. I have a different kind of goal that I like. I like SMART T goals. S-M-A-R-T-Y. What does the Y stand for? It's your why. Why does it matter to me? It goes back to your dream. You gotta be able to articulate that. You know, a goal to earn a million dollars is a different goal than I wanna earn a million dollars and I wanna support my local charity and I wanna build a, playground for the youth in my community who haven't had a [00:07:00] playground in the school in all the years.
They have to play on a dirt playground, whatever that is now, that is a dream with a goal and Right. I love that. So a goal is smart by being specific. I wanna buy, I wanna invest a million dollars. I wanna make a million dollars by the end of 2032, for example, and I want to take that money and invest it in a school.
Build a playground for them. Now that specific, measurable, achievable means I can do it. 'cause I've set a goal. I'm gonna make the money in 2031. I'm gonna install the playground in 2030 or 2029, whatever year you choose. And is it achievable? Absolutely. Because you've set it out loud, you've gotta plan to make the money.
It's going to happen. Are you gonna have to. Figure out how much it costs and things like that. Absolutely. Yes. There are some detailed things you have to do, but it's specific, it's measurable, it's achievable. Is it realistic? Absolutely [00:08:00] realistic. It's not. It's absolutely something that needs to be done.
It's relevant. It's going to change the lives of children and t it's time. Set. There's a time set and I wanna have it done by 2030 or whatever the year is that you decide to pick. And the most important thing is why? Why? Because I wanna leave a legacy and I wanna serve children for the rest of my life and the lives of many others.
Now, that is a smart goal, isn't it? So think about smart goals. Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant time. Can it be done in a certain, you've gotta know the time. It can't just be an endless time. And then why is it important to you?
So that's a little bit about goals and think about the bigger the goal and the bigger your ability to adjust and assign goals to your dreams, the more likely they are to happen. So you take those numbers, dreams, times goal. The bigger the number, the larger your output.
Learn What You Need
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Lee Gray: so the formula for [00:09:00] life's success continues with dreams and goals.
Then what is it? We have to learn Now We can do anything we already know, but if I wanna achieve a goal for something I haven't done, for a dream I haven't yet achieved, I have something I have to learn. Going back to my dream of putting a playground in a school, if I wanna do that, I'm gonna have to learn, well, what's the cost?
What's the construction? What's the, the what parameters, what are things I have to learn about? What kind of licensing do I need to get? What kind of safety do I need to be aware of? So what is the learning? Number for us in this formula for life success. So your dreams, times your goals, times your ability and desire to learn.
The higher that number is, the bigger your output's going to be at the end of this formula. The next one is planning. So I wanna talk to you a little bit about, I'm gonna go back to learning for just a moment. I have a client who [00:10:00] has a, the, a massage therapy business, and I, I, she started out her business with a handful of employees and she was answering the phone and delivering massage services.
And she had to learn a lot of things to achieve her goal, which was to not be working in the business. Her goal was not to be working in the business. Her dreams were much bigger than that, but they were supported by this goal. She had to learn how to be a manager. She had to learn how to be a leader. She had to learn how to hire people.
She had to learn how to train people to do the work so she didn't have to, she had to learn the payroll rules around paying people. She had to learn how to fire people. She had to learn how to be a boss, basically, because none of those things she, she did not have to do any of those things to this point to achieve her current dream and her current goal.
But as her dreams and her goals increased, so did her learning. She now has achieved a lot of the goals that she set out [00:11:00] for and the dreams that she first set out for a while back in her business. So all because of the level of her learning increased because you can only achieve the goals of the things you know how to do already.
Planning and Taking Action
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Lee Gray: Now then we have to plan and execute, and I wanna talk to you about planning and execution. So when I work with my clients, we look at an annual basis and I want you to have an annual goal. I do, you need an annual goal and annual plan, and the dreams that you have, although bigger than one year, they have a one year stopping point that you have to be aware of.
So I want you to have a one year plan and then quarterly plans. From there, the action of actually write, writing down the five goals that you will wanna achieve every quarter, and putting them in front of you on the mirror in front of you, on the desk, in front of you. So that you see them, because the daily actions that you take in a plan should be supporting those five goals for that quarter, then support the half year and the half year [00:12:00] supports the year.
Then the year goes back and supports your dreams and your goals. So that's the importance of the plan. And remembering the five goals that you set to achieve in that time period, followed then by action. So what does action look like? Action for some of my clients is, you know, having a weekly meeting with me and providing the proof of work that they did, having somebody hold them accountable.
It could be taking action to open a bank account and make my first deposit. It could be taking action of meeting with a leasing company to buy my first building, or if you're. Maybe a real estate investor, maybe action is to start looking at properties that you wanna buy even before you have the money to buy them.
So that's the action.
Calculate Your Multiplier
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Lee Gray: Dreams, times, goals, times learn times, plan times action. If you use the one to 10 formula that we talked about earlier, 10 is the highest. Then the highest score this can be of this [00:13:00] multiplier is 100,000. So take your numbers and multiply them and see where you are. You may find that the number is like 1400 or 1500 as a multiplier, but when you take those numbers and ask yourself, my number let's say is 2000 for simplicity purposes, and my goals are a four, my dreams are are a three and whatever the other numbers are.
What if you just eek your dreams up by two numbers? Do the math because when you eek your dreams up by two numbers, it impacts the whole formula for your life's success. That's why I want you to really think about those dreams, go back to your 6-year-old self and say, Hey, hey, you come help me dream again because I've forgotten how to do it and I know I want to, and I'm ready.
I'm ready to be a dreamer. I'm ready to. Dream about my second act. I'm ready to set some goals for my second act. I'm willing to learn whatever I need to learn for my second act. I'm gonna [00:14:00] write a plan, set a plan. I'm gonna take action. Take action.
Final Challenge Dream Big
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Lee Gray: So I hope that you've enjoyed this formula for life success today as much as I have.
I'm very excited about it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. So make some comments to me. Let us know. Reach out to me here on the podcast. You'll find a link in the show notes to contact me.
Do it. Go ahead and tell me what is your dream. I'm gonna support you. What is your goal? I'd love to hear it. Your D-G-L-P-A. I wanna know what the steps are. To your formula for your life's success. Thank you so much for joining me today. I thought it was fun. I hope you had as much fun as I did, and I'll be dreaming along with you as I continue my second act and you enjoying your second act.
What I'd like to express today is it's a continuous reminder to me that the simple things are not always the obvious things, and the obvious things are not always, always the simple things, the simple and obvious thing today. [00:15:00] Was about dreaming. Dreaming big. So take the time to do it. Go find your 6-year-old self, and that's what I feel like expressing.
What do you feel like expressing.