This month, Joe Draheim of National Taxi Limo discusses how coaching helped him to develop his ‘discipline practice’ in his personal and professional life.
Karyn: Joe, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what you’re currently working on?
Joe: I come from a technology background but decided to start a more practical business, National Taxi Limo. Currently, though, I’m gravitating towards taking what I learned from starting NTL and putting that learning back into a more technological business and into some personal projects that I’m passionate about.
Karyn: When you and Karyn first met, you were just starting your own business. Can you tell us about how practicing discipline helped you with that?
Joe: Practicing discipline helped me immensely in starting my own business. Prior to last year, I wasn’t good at managing time or money…I was kind of a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants guy. I had to use discipline to learn to manage both my time and money accordingly so I could be successful both in my business and in my personal life.
Karyn: How has working on creating a ‘discipline habit’ affected you?
Joe: I started to learn discipline a long time ago, in a place I love – my safe place – the gym. To make a ‘discipline habit’ I took the lessons I’d learned from going to the gym, the only place I’d been disciplined before, and combined them with the lessons I learned from Karyn, my coach. This allowed me to create habits of good time management and finishing what I started which I applied both to my business and other areas of my personal life.
Karyn: What have been the biggest challenges of working on being more disciplined?
Joe: I come from a long-line of hard-working blue collar dreamers. I had to use the discipline habits to actually do the work to turn my dreams into reality. If you aren’t disciplined it’s easy to talk about doing things, but hard to actually do them. And unless you do things your dreams can’t turn into a reality. It’s hard to change. Being disciplined enough to change has been my biggest challenge.
Karyn: What would you recommend to others who want to become more disciplined in their work and personal lives?
Joe: First, find your passion and then find a coach and listen to what they say and put it to use. And, the most important thing, REALLY, the most important thing is to enjoy the struggle...because…how we get there is as important as where we are going. You’ve got to understand that discipline is the struggle and you’ve got to enjoy the struggle to make discipline work.
For further information about Joe’s work (and yes – as well as owning National Taxi Limo, Joe is a fabulous web designer), visit his website OnWord Web Design.
