Bridging The Knowing And Doing Gap - Stephen McConnell

Stephen McConnell joins me for a grounded conversation about why personal growth stalls even when we know exactly what to do, and how to close the knowing vs doing gap without relying on hype or willpower.

Steven shares his path from a loving but financially scarce upbringing, to decades in the corporate world, to building a service-driven mission as the founder of the Growth Myndset Initiative. We dig into how identity shapes behavior, including his candid story of overcoming a long-term drinking life through experimentation, self-awareness, and a decision to live in alignment with health, spirituality, and emotional honesty. If you’ve ever wondered why New Year’s resolutions fade fast, this will hit home.

We also unpack neurolinguistic programming coaching in plain language, especially the word “programming” and why it scares people. Stephen explains how repetition wires patterns in the brain, why ego blocks growth, and how leaders can rebuild identity through small proof points instead of empty affirmations. From his seven laws of personal mastery to the burnout warning signs leaders miss, the through-line is intentional living, clearer values, and less distraction.

If you’re into mindset coaching, emotional intelligence, leadership development, entrepreneurship, or burnout recovery, you’ll take something practical from this one. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s stuck in “knowing,” and leave a review. What’s the one habit or distraction loop you’re ready to rewire this week?

Our team will choose random (but timely) episodes from our previous three seasons (which are our most popular ever!) to share with our listeners during the slower parts of a long podcast season. We think you will enjoy them! Thanks for listening!

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 1:03

Welcome back to one-on-one with Mr. U. Of course, I am your host, Mr. U in studio with us, speaker, writer, NLP certified coach, and founder of the Growth Mindset Initiative, Steven McConnell is here with us today. How are you, Steven? Good morning.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Doing very well.

Steven’s Story And What NLP Means

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Good morning. It's an honor to be here, Mr. U. Same here, same here. You may recognize the space. We had an opportunity to try to do this before. We have some shitty difficulties, but things sound much clearer and better now. So I'm excited about this conversation, Stevens. Let's get into it a little bit. But before we do that, if you watch and listen for the very, very first time, of course, in our show notes today, if you are a watcher or listener, you can follow our work there on all of our shows under the They Call Me Mr. You brand of podcast. Of course, we're on every listening platform and on our YouTube channel at youtube.com forward slash they call me Mr. You. So thanks again for watching and listening to our show and making us part of your week. We appreciate it. All right, so Steve, you uh talk a lot about bridging the knowing and the doing gap. I want to get into that, but first, let's hear a little bit about you, man. Where you from, how'd you come up? How'd you get to the place where you are today doing the kind of work that you're doing? Kind of as brief as you can, kind of share that with us. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yeah, as brief as I can. The well, I I was I was born and raised in a loving family. We were at when I was younger, we were in financial scarcity. A lot of the I saw my parents work as a team to build their entrepreneurship and so forth. One of the things I didn't realize is I had learned a lot of coping loops from an environment to where it led to alcoholism, where I was considered an extreme introvert. And I'd learned all of those until I started living until I built self-awareness to live intentionally. And that's what's gotten me to where I'm at now, where I am an NLP coach. That's where I practice every single day to be intentional, to check some of the still existing loops and teach and grow anybody else and empower them as I go.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

I love it, man. If you can, in a sentence or two, kind of encapsulate what an NLP certified coach does. Can you break that down real quick for those that are watching and listening today? Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 3:32

Neuro linguistic programming, and it sounds very fancy. Scientific. Scientific, yeah. So the coach really looks at those coping loops that I was speaking about, the emotions and the memories that are associated, because our subconscious and our memories are built upon emotions first. Our subconscious doesn't speak language, it speaks emotions and images and so forth. An LLP practitioner or coach has learned to go back as far as they can through the layers of emotions to build a better designed intentional life, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 4:18

Okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 4:19

And so when it was first created, NLP was really a psychological, a therapist deal, but they found patterns where not only could they help those people with the large traumas or simple phobias that they cannot exist within life. They've been able to help those.

Entrepreneurship Lessons And Corporate Rebellion

SPEAKER_01 5:06

Okay, okay. Yeah, I think I think I'm following you here. All right, so it sounds like you came from a family of entrepreneurs. Did I hear that right? Yeah, yes, yes, I did. Okay, all right. So one of the things I'd love for you to share with our audience, because I know that there's a lot of people who watch our show and listen to our show as well, on the audio podcast side, and they are venturing into have their toes dipped into the entrepreneurial river, if you will. Right? Tell me, give us a quick synopsis of both sides of that. You grew up as watching entrepreneurship uh model by your parents. So obviously you picked it up, picked something up from them. Did you see that as a plus for you that you were able to learn that so early and not kind of fall into the common patterns of kind of doing the uh the normal uh process, which is you know, go to school for over a dozen years, get a good job, get a degree, those kind of things. Are you are you an advocate for pro-entrepreneurship because you grew up in a household, or do you have a different view of that? Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 6:13

Oh, that's I mean, there's so many questions and so many thoughts there. I love that. I'll say my childhood gave me the passion for entrepreneurship. Okay, my mindset was to rebel, hmm. And therefore, for 30 years I lived in the corporate world unhappy. Some of the principles of entrepreneurship were there. I always drive for it, I always experimented with different ideas and you know, drops, drop shipping, and all of these different things, not realizing that my purpose, my drive, my love is to be of service as an entrepreneur. Wow. So the rebellion part of it is maturing, if you will. And yeah, I I would honestly also say that when I was in the environment, I had my proverbial head up my butt. I didn't realize what I had had. I didn't realize to stop and be curious and say, what's this? Teach me this, teach me that. And so as they grew their businesses, I became entitled. Became entitled. That would be the the the blunch, transparent part, became very entitled towards it. Copy that. That makes sense. That makes sense.

Quitting Alcohol By Rebuilding Identity

SPEAKER_01 7:49

The idea of entrepreneurship, I'll be honest about it. I I rebelled a little bit myself. I didn't have that in my household model. My household was more of a traditional household. Yeah. So I just rebuilt against whatever the tradition was. But I really fought against entrepreneurship for almost 30 years. It took me a long time to figure out, you know what, this is where I was supposed to be. This is where I was best suited for. This is where I thrived the most. So I love that you spoke that to uh our viewers and our listeners. I think people think entrepreneurship, you know what, having an idea, having a business, and you just build it, and everybody's gonna come. But it's so much collaborative, intentional building that's going on there, community networking. So that's why I talk about that a lot. If you're on my social media, you see it often because I'm like, that is the thing that I missed and I didn't have all these years. So I love that you, even though you rebelled against it, and you came back and you recognized that it was the best place for you to serve the most people doing something that you loved and you and you had uh a value system behind. So I love that. When we were talking in our pre-interview, you talked a lot about your time uh dealing with alcohol. I think it's about 20 years or so. I if I heard you right, correct me if I'm wrong, I don't want to misquote you here. Sound like you said, you beat that habit all by yourself. As people who are watching, listening, who are like, I'm sorry, what? This man was gentlemen with had alcohol addiction for 20 years, and he didn't go to I don't think he went to the AA program. I don't recall that being a part of my discussion. So he didn't go into AA, he beat the habit by himself. Steven, you gotta explain how you beat alcohol after 20 years. That's a that's that's way more than a habit now. That's a pat that's a it's a lifestyle now after 20 years. Yeah, you beat the habit by yourself. Tell me how you did that because I don't understand.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

Oh well, I'll go back to the entrepreneur thing uh and equate it to being a gym gym person building muscles, right? Okay, okay. To build something building muscles, you have to be in it mind, body, and soul. Your identity is there, right? And so building a healthy life is times 10 at least. That's that's the entrepreneurial journey. Now let's equate that to drinking, let's equate that to sobering up. And at a point in time, my identity of myself as an alcoholic, as living not healthfully, you know, feeling the pains every single day, emotionally tampering down my emotions and so forth, and my spiritual journey, obviously, same, tampered down. Those realizations was like onions being just peeled, and you're crying, and you're crying, and you're realizing you are not who you want to be, you are not who you should be. That pain became so much that I started to change different things. First and foremost, I went from hard liquor to wine, thinking that that's the issue. And then with wine, I also started experimenting with eating vegetables and you know, knowing that I'm my health is deteriorating, my blood pressure. Just really starting to experiment, those experiments, those curiosities built spark of self-awareness. The spark of self-awareness allowed me to have an entrepreneurial or corporate term, KPIs, key performance indicators to where I can experiment and iterate and improve. And so eventually there was a point in time where I realized that alcohol in general completely needed to be out of my life. It's not who I am.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

I love it.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

I love it. Then the spiritual, the health, and also the emotional came into it. And NLP coach is what drived the emotional healing. I love that. I love that.

The Knowing Versus Doing Gap

SPEAKER_01 11:54

Well, so people that I can't imagine what people are thinking. Just because, you know, there's been so many traditional ways that we have been encouraged to, or it's been recommended that we do things a certain way. We solve certain problems a certain way. This is the way. If you don't do it this way, it's not really being done correctly. So I love that you have an alternative mindset toward that. I think we're gonna stretch it out a lot more outside of the alcohol addiction and of some other areas because some of the things that you talk about, I feel as though they really uh point to what happens when you have the right mindset. So we're gonna get into your initiative a little bit, but talk to me about the bridging the knowing and the doing gap. What does that mean? And how does that apply, do you think, to people maybe who maybe watch and listen on both of our platforms today? The knowing and the doing gap. How do you bridge that? What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 12:51

All right. So, New Year's resolution. Um, let me ask you, Mr. You, have you ever created or had a New Year's resolution?

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Many, many years ago, that's when I figured out that it didn't work, but many, many years ago, I did definitely have one planned. And before they said happy new year, I had this plan that the next following year was gonna be different. I was gonna do this different, I was gonna go to the gym more, I was gonna eat better, have better relationships, you name it. Get up earlier, you name it. I did it all, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

And by February 1st or by March How about mid-January? Mid-Jan, okay, see. What the difference between there and there is the knowing versus the doing. The knowing is you know you want to be that person, you know that these things are beneficial and more aligned with who you are. The emotional part of it stops you. And there's different parts of that, there's different sections of the emotional. Think about something that you don't like to do. The thing five minutes to ten minutes before it is a pain, is a pain point that stops you from doing it. Or the title or category you call that thing. I don't like doing accounting, it's mundane, it's boring, right? The mindset behind it. And therefore, if you go into it and say, Well, I do accounting so that I can see my PL so that I can, and this allows me to push forwards and drive my clients to have the transformations that they have. You're now reframing that emotional tag on a mundane topic that you don't like to do, and therefore you can do.

Growth Mindset Initiative And Ending Poverty

SPEAKER_01 14:52

Yes. These plans that we have. I don't do New Year's resolutions anymore. I think it's uh a waste of my uh precious time, but I totally get how emotions can get in the way. And I definitely I didn't want to come back to that to see to ask you why you think emotions hinder us from getting the way of what we're trying to accomplish in life. Let's talk about you and your uh your new initiative, the growth mindset initiative. Why'd you start that? What was the uh the end goal there? And what are you seeing through his journey?

SPEAKER_00 15:21

Oh, all right. Well, I have had through the journey, through being, you know, alcoholic and all of this, I've always had this calling to be of service. Okay, and to help others. Through my life, I had done it many different ways in the wrong ways. I would I would see somebody that I cared about, and I would then impart my beautiful knowledge upon them in a way that that would just kind of turn them off. Yeah, and I'm being very kind to that. So I remember once I realized my North Star, my North Star, my dream, my journey is to solve poverty for this world.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

So is it is it gonna happen? I don't know, but I would love to build the team that builds the team that builds the team that builds the team 550 years from now. Human beings are in a more secure spot. My journey is to that. Once I realized how of service and the deep passion behind it, I remember every part of my life that aligned with it. And I remember like pre-kindergarten, there was, and this is this is this is this is dating back, right? Pre-kindergarten, I remember one particular book on the bookshelf. It was Bible stories, but it was pictures, and I knew the Bible stories, and I would sit there in the teacher's chair when the teacher wasn't paying attention, and I would just sit there and tell the stories because I wanted people to know the stories, I wanted to help them, and that's one of my fondest remember remembrances, is because it's that passion that drives me now, and so growth mindset initiative. Right now, we are addressing emotional intelligence and mindset frameworks through neurolinguistic programming, executive coaching, team dynamics. All we're we're doing all of that simply because mindset is 90 something plus percent of our own personal realities. My mindset changed before I had to see who I was going to be before I sobered up. I had to see my spiritual journey before I became deeper in my spiritual journey. And so there's absolute poverty and there is relative poverty. A large portion of relative poverty, poverty is just that it's mindset, it's generational learning, it's learning from families and environment and growing from that and repeating it.

What Programming Really Means In NLP

SPEAKER_01 18:10

Okay, okay. I want to I want to get you to this is not to break down what you do and to tear you down. Please understand that's never my intention. As I've I've interviewed several NLP coaches, I don't know how many it's been, but it's been a lot. For some reason, it seemed to find me. I'm not quite sure exactly why yet, but I want to talk to you about the P in NLP. Because just where our world is headed, and the things that you hear in the room, the chatter, the commentary, the word that P stands for programming. Tell me how you help people get over the hump of being able to hear what you have to say and perhaps be uh a client of yours when that P is ringing out so much. It's not the literal, it's not the neuro-linguistic part. It's the program. Are you gonna program me? How do you help people get past what's uh what's a clear barrier of entry for a lot of people? This could be a new question that you have been asked before. I don't know, but I'm pretty good at doing that. If that's what happened, but what does what does what does what does that programming mean to you? That that word, how do you work around the the challenge people have with the mindset of that? And how does that affect your work?

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I the programming part, and to simplify the programming part, Joe Dispenser says the well, it's not his quote, but he repeats the quote. I'm not remembering who the quote actually, anyways, neurons that fire together wire together. So if you think about it just again, like a muscle, right? And you build your muscle, whatever you repeat happens over and over again, and those brain neurons fire and strengthen. I am a bodybuilder as far as I was. Excuse me, I was a bodybuilder as far as alcoholism is concerned, right? And then I had to learn something new. Those new neurons didn't fire. Now, how to bridge that? I usually encourage clients to start the self-awareness awareness journey. The self-awareness journey allows them to see the beginning parts of where they are and their ego. The ego is a blocker. Anything after, and and you might recognize the term from the Bible, anything after I am is ego. So I am a excellent coach. Excellent coach is ego. I am state of being is exactly where we need to be in the self-awareness journey, therefore, bridging that, and it's difficult per client. It's it's it's well not difficult, it's depending upon each client, it the level of difficulty is there because if someone like me in my 20s, heavy ego, always pushing my thoughts upon everybody else, speaking to myself now to then, I don't I don't know if I would necessarily be able to reach myself, be honest. Gotcha. So I initiate, I aim to initiate self-awareness, and I also aim to initiate what like my North Star, what I've stated, my North Star, somebody else's North Star, their journey. And in this way, self-awareness and their journey starts to show who they're supposed to be, who they are. And in that process, it's I've found that that usually develops a skill of passion. I don't want to use passion because passion is emotional, but there's core values, which I call skills love, respect, trust, faith. Those are skills, you practice them. And therefore, passion is also one of those. And that that's exactly what I initiate aim to initiate in each client.

Seven Laws Of Personal Mastery

SPEAKER_01 22:41

I love that. I love that. Yeah, that's that's really good, man. And that's your Question that quote was by Donald Heb H E B B 1949. I wasn't around this, so I didn't I didn't hear when it was originally spoken. Maybe a two-day question for us after we close the show. But uh I want to ask you about now, you talk a lot about personal mastery, and I and that's something I think I worked through just as a high performance coach and the and the clients that I will potentially be dealing with. Those are the kind of things I think I would deal with as well. Inside out leadership, we talk about a lot of those things. You created a practice called the seven laws of personal mastery. I'm not sure whether you're willing to just close those here. If you're not, and it's in the book, I totally respect it. That's so maybe you can just share the idea of the personal laws, and maybe just one or two of the laws, and not reveal the whole uh seven laws of this uh uh ingrained other work.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

I'm not afraid of either the book will be published in sometime this summer. But the seven laws. Congratulations, man. Congrats. Thank you. The seven laws are clarity of vision, consistency of action, alignment with core values, and yeah, as explained, those are skills, ownership and accountability, emotional intelligence, adaptability in growth, in growth mindset specifically in the book, and reflective learning. Those are and if Don, if one is done right, your life transforms. If you build a system with them, you're you're continuously growing. It's it's almost continuously painful, but you're choosing you're choosing your growth, right? You're choosing intentional living, and isn't that exercising, entrepreneurship, everything we've been talking about?

SPEAKER_01 24:39

I love that framework, man. I love that. Honestly, one of the reasons why I felt like you would be a great fit for this show, and I I say this not to be facetious, just be being honest. And I'm honest. I feel like I connect with them, and I feel like they get me, they they get what I do. They are great referral partners for me. They we get to kind of connect and vibe and network in the same spaces, and it helps us both thrive and grow. And you know, I know I probably sent you, I don't know how many texts and emails since we had our pre-interview, probably a lot. You know what I'm saying? But this is the kind of stuff I'm talking about. Because I deal with uh leaders who are overthinking, overanalyzing the situation. They're close to burnout, but they're not detecting that they're in that burnout cycle. They don't even realize it until it already happens. They're dealing with real pressure and then and they're losing their identity in the midst of it. This is what you deal with. This is what I'm doing, I'm like, this is perfect. So out of those, out of those seven laws of personal mastery, what in your experience, what do you believe is the is the one that people just struggle to get that, get that one ingrained? It's a hardship for them to get that one handed. It's always just that one. Is there one law you can think of that falls in that category?

SPEAKER_00 26:15

I would say it's in between all of them, and it goes back to the ego. The ego. And that because we've learned how to protect, well, excuse me, our subconscious naturally desires to protect who we think we are. And this when I say who we think we are, it is the subconscious identity of who the subconscious thinks we are. Okay, and that's why a lot of people say, What are those continuous verbal verbal reinforcements of I am successful, I am wealthy, I'm healthy. We're trying to speak to our subconscious when we should be building the identity to our subconscious, proving it through small actions. And I would say that that it's it is the ego because we're it's those loops that protect us. And the way around that is the core values, practicing those skills, reinforcing those skills while knowing where you're going.

Burnout Signals Leaders Miss

SPEAKER_01 27:26

Makes sense, makes sense. Just a couple more questions, and I'll get us out of here today. All right, so you spent 30 years in the corporate world. I wasn't, well, I guess I kind of was there that long, not in one place, just moving around in Fortune Pop and the companies and such. You talked about patterns that you've seen in habits, in belief systems, limiting beliefs and that kind of thing. And you saw quietly caused burnout in leaders. So this is something that I'm asking for selfish reasons specifically because this is who I deal with, but you deal with them as well. What kind of habits or patterns did you see and let you know the leaders were being burnt out burnt out and didn't even realize it?

SPEAKER_00 28:03

Habits that I see are always a form of distraction.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

Form of distraction, okay.

SPEAKER_00 28:13

You always see, like, for instance, I I'm thinking of one particular individual who I whom whom I coached, where they jumped into every small fire, if you will, small fire of the moment, and that distraction of the moment became lack of long-term thinking. The overthinking then starts in the self, you know, us depreciating ourselves internally, us continuously working, overworking, working while we're off, receiving texts and calls from different teams trying to do the same thing, the small fires burns us out. And so I would say that that would be the top number one is always addressing some sort of distraction. And these days, the world, our world is relatively distraction-heavy and creates that short-term thinking pattern. Dude, I can go into this all day, man.

Who Coaching Cannot Help And Where To Find Him

SPEAKER_01 29:17

You gotta join my community, man. You gotta accept my invite. You gotta accept my community invite that I sent you, man. Join my community, man. This is this is the kind of stuff I want to talk about. This is this is this is good stuff right here. All right, so I want to stay focused on our time. All right, so one final question for you, Steven. You guys who are not aware, it's the founder of the Growth Mindset Initiative, speaker, writer, and certified NLP coach, neurolinguistic programming coach. I want to ask you one final question, and I'll give you a chance to speak to the people and let them know where they can find your work. Who are now? I think as somebody who has built this business, built this practice that you're engaging in now, you you figured out who you can help, who you serve. Who can't you help? Who's somebody who is like, you know what, they come to you with a client, potential client, and you know you can't help them. They just are in that list. You just can't help them. Name name three or four types of people who will be on that list that you just can't help. No offense, but you're somebody that you can't not in your niche, I guess if you could say that. Two or three kinds of people.

SPEAKER_00 30:21

Those people that I screen out, those people that I I recommend to other people are heavy on the ego centric. They know they know. Hey, have you tried this? Yeah, I know. I've done that. Yeah, I know. No, I know this. I do attempt to reach some at some levels, but when I I feel that it's just gonna be a battle, I don't even, I don't know. I don't want the I don't want to take on that challenge yet. At some point, growth mindset initiative, we will hire therapists so where we can do that, right? So I'm not I don't feel I'm skilled enough to have that just another one is the individuals who have a really large trauma, and I can work them, I can get them to a place where they're functioning better, more empowered. But overall, I recommend them to the master NLP coach that I I'd studied under. Okay. I would say, yeah, somebody that's I've if I'm speaking to them, they have no level of wanting to change, wanting to grow.

SPEAKER_01 31:45

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01 31:47

You can't send either of those folks to me because I I don't I'm I'm screaming them out too. So don't send them my way. That's not that's not what I need to be there. But Stephen, thanks for being here, brother. About a fantastic interview, uh fantastic discourse with your man. Take a couple of minutes, man, if you don't mind, let people know where they can find your work and share any uh pearls of wisdom you may have within the next minute or two. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Pearls of wisdom. I would say that uh I believe it was Roy Disney who had said that know your values, know them very well, and every decision becomes easier. Where you can find me? Mindsetgrowth.com. And that's spelt with MY. It's like you're owning your mindset, md setgrowth.com. There, I have free resources, I have coaching links, I have memberships, all the resources are there. If you still want to study a little bit more about me, just just like you're on LinkedIn, reach out to Master U, Mr. U, and reach out to me on LinkedIn as well, because we're both heavy on LinkedIn. So those are the three places.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Thank you very much, sir. Speaker, writer, NLP certified coach, and the founder of the Growth Mindset Initiative, Stephen McConnell. Thanks for being here, sir. Thanks for your time today. Thank you. Great questions. I love it. Same here, sir. Thank you for your uh answers. Fantastic answers. I'm Mr. U. We're out. Have a great day. Thanks again for watching and listening.