Nino Fincher—How to Break Through Hidden Mental Ceilings, Build New Neural Pathways on Purpose, and Lead with Emotional Presence That Changes the Whole Room

Nino Fincher  0:00  
In reality, your entire structure, everything from head to toe, is designed to operate together, and people isolate and compartmentalize things. Fitness, psychology, medicine, they all compartmentalize how we heal or treat patients, but we are made to operate as one unit.

David Bush  0:21  
Welcome to the Business Builders Playbook, the show that breaks down the systems and strategies behind predictable revenue growth to win in business. In each episode, we're diving into the proven strategies that separate the winners who scale from the losers who fail. This show is sponsored by bdr.ai the AI-powered business development platform that automates your outbound prospecting, so you can focus in on closing deals instead of chasing leads. Let's get started. Welcome everybody to the show. I'm super excited to dive right in to introduce you to my friend Nino Fincher, who is an expert at helping people elevate their playbook in mental performance. She works with CEOs, executives, top performers, you know, all kinds of various industries. And we've had a conversation prior to this booking of this podcast, and we just hit it off immediately. We shared a lot of common values and belief systems, and we just kind of collaborated for so long that we're like we need to record a show and talk about how business builders can improve their playbook with better mental strategies to overcome a lot of the strategies or a lot of the barriers that we face as entrepreneurs and senior level executives, so Nino, thank you so much for taking some time to have a conversation today.

Nino Fincher  1:41  
Such a pleasure. Thanks for having me. It's fun. It's fun to be here with you.

David Bush  1:46  
Well, you've spent quite a bit of time in research and experience in coaching high-level performers to raise their mental games. So, I'm just kind of curious, if you would just give us a little bit of your background and what has brought you to the conversation today that would give you the expertise and experience to be able to help business builders to develop a better playbook.

Nino Fincher  2:08  
Okay, I came into what I'm doing now in kind of a roundabout way, and my primary sort of a hero story is kind of, I went through the hell that's called depression, and I counseled depression for years, as a, you know, I got license, and or I got master's degree in counseling, and I worked with people with depression forever and ever, and then I learned what it actually is firsthand, and so kind of having walked through that, there are certain principles that I've learned and certain structures that I observed that have been so helpful that kind of have allowed me to get to the point where everything else seems kind of fit into that structure, and so my coaching program ended up being helping people walk through those four steps that transform how you operate, whether it's business or finance or relationships, etc. But yeah, I came, I came to it through having learned how to do counseling, and then having studied theology, and then having studied ethics, and then having done coaching, and like I have a truckload of certifications, and this and that, and the other, so it's an eclectic, but very useful and directed set of skills, I would say,

David Bush  3:37  
yeah, well, it's like the what's the name of that movie where he says I have a certain set of skills and I'll find you. What is that taken? I think is the movie that Niamh Leeson plays father that will not be overcome by whatever the obstacle is he's going to find his daughter, and I think that that's really the kind of the vibe that I got from talking with you is that if somebody has been taken by emotional mismanagement and they've just gotten themselves into a predicament, whether it be a plateau, maybe it's distress, maybe it's depression, or maybe it's just that, you know, kind of just struggling with mental roadblocks or emotional blocks that are preventing them from not only living their best life, but having the best possible opportunities in the marketplace, and so let's, let's just dive in and talk about some of the biggest mental and emotional roadblocks that you see inside of entrepreneurs and senior level executives.

Nino Fincher  4:41  
Um, I think the biggest thing, if I were to summarize, is to say people don't know how the mind operates, and it's detrimental, and it delays them, and it has them focused on unnecessary and irrelevant issues, just, just, just by learning a certain set. Of rules again by which the mind operates, it can be a difference between you succeeding or succeeding faster, and and being kind of stuck in a hole going in circles, and just to reference, you know, the movie that you mentioned with Liam Neeson, I think of it as having three sort of categories that need to be attended to when you're improving anything, it's your mindset, mindset tool, tool set, and skill set, right. And so, if you, I think that's the easiest way to categorize, where am I missing, and where, where is the disconnect, or the link that needs to be connected, or the hole that needs to be filled, and it's inevitable one of those three will be kind of derailing you from what you're trying to accomplish, usually.

David Bush  5:53  
Yeah, what would you say are some of the most common symptoms of somebody that may be struggling with the emotional well-being aspect, anything that you would just say would be kind of a quick assessment where people could identify, you know, whether or not they need to go to work on some of this.

Nino Fincher  6:10  
Um, one of the easiest outcomes that people deal with that is based in emotional dysregulation that I have helped the clients with has been insomnia, so a lot of people struggling with inability to sleep or to sleep well is usually an indicator that you know something something's happening either emotionally or mentally, and we, you know, I fixed insomnia in one session for people, which is, you know, incredible, but only because we got to the root of what was creating your body responding to what's happening in your mind, and in turn, in your emotional state. So that's huge. Anxiety is a big one, and I'm sure you run into this all the time, and anxiety can cover so much territory, anxious about this, and anxious about that, and and then lack of motivation is often what we call presenting problem, which is what the people come to me with, like just kind of can't quite get myself to, you know, getting gear and just do what I need to do, so they're going through motions, but the motivation isn't there.

David Bush  7:25  
I have a, I have a question that is something I had a conversation with the other day, and this business owner, very successful, had been going through kind of a tough patch in life, and been going through some difficulties, and and his feedback was, is that he felt like that he needed to make a shift and actually sell the company that he was really passionate about. When the company was in somewhat financial disarray, it wasn't where he would get the top value for it, and his, his idea was, is that I just don't have the motivation, I don't have the growth mindset to go build this business, which was one once fun to me, but now it's no longer. And my question was, is that based on feelings, based on your circumstances, like if everything was going well and you're crushing it all with your business? So I'm curious to know how you would help a an entrepreneur to process circumstances that oftentimes dictate feelings, which then oftentimes dictate the choices that we make based on how we feel. Just assessing the facts and maybe changing one's perspective around the facts. Does that make sense?

Nino Fincher  8:39  
Yes, it does. And I'd be curious to see what you advised him to. If you advised him,

David Bush  8:46  
I gave him more of the friendly advice. Is that I pray more than I think when I'm in that situation, I try to follow the calling of my heart and more spiritual, like what am I feeling called to be, do, and have more than, because sometimes I think that we can use our feelings as a guidepost to avoiding difficult circumstances, and we can go, well, I don't like the way I feel, so I'm going to stop doing it, when that could be the best character building experience, and it could be the best leadership experience that you could pass on to your staff, your team, your employees, that would carry on a much greater impact than just, you know, taking the easy route out and then redirecting to something different. But I think I'm not the expert, I don't have the grainy,

Nino Fincher  9:36  
but that's that can be one of the kids. I mean, there may be a variety of reasons for why, immediately, as you were describing it to me, the first thing that came to mind was purpose clarity. So that's another way that I help my clients. I do therapy, and then I do purpose clarity coaching, and for a lot of the leaders who have built a company and have seen it successful, they sort of just kind of but. Not really burn out, but it stops being exciting or interesting because they get to the point in life that they want to shift gears and do something else, which is also meaningful, but may not necessarily be the thing that they've done for the last 40 years or 20 years or whatever. So I would, with that gentleman that you're mentioning, I would specifically want to know when, when this started. What are the exact symptoms? What is he noticing that that his motivation is about? And then what I normally tell my clients is, you have to, well, there are four steps, really. So, the number one is if you are, if you're a man of faith or a woman of faith, it's essential for you to get clear on what, what spirit you're operating under. So, who, who is your, what are you listening to on a transcendent level? So, what are your values? What are you connected with, and then once there's that clarity, and your values are established, and your wants for that period, or for that specific business, or that season in your life are established, then how is your thinking coordinated with that? What's happening in your thoughts? How do they work? Do they, or do you feel engaged, disengaged, kind of, what is what are the patterns that you're noticing? Are they repetitive? Are they negative all the time, etc. etc. Because once you know the Bible talks about taking thoughts captive, right? So you capture the thought, and Bible says put it in obedience to Christ. Now, whether you obey Christ or not, you still have to operate by the principles that got put in place, which is why they work, because they correspond to reality. So, whether or not you want to, you can't harvest before it's time to harvest. Do you understand what I'm saying? So, I would say consider how your thinking is happening, and the awareness in that is essential, and then your emotional state will correlate to how you think, and and taking action is going to be dependent on those three essentials.

David Bush  12:12  
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Nino Fincher  13:20  
right, it's just an outcome, it's a byproduct, it's not what you go after.

David Bush  13:26  
So, let's, let's shift to talk a little bit more about mental ceilings that are oftentimes self-imposed. You know, we hear a lot in the marketplace about glass ceilings, where, you know, we put these belief systems in place because of previous experiences, you know, from relationships that we had, and a lot of times those ceilings are so limiting, but they're all constructed by us, like we're the one that's guilty of actually putting that ceiling in place, and so, How do you help a business leader to deconstruct some of the mental thinking that's maybe kept them at a certain level of success or significance or a certain level of financial prosperity versus really opening up the opportunity to let them become that all they were created to become,

Nino Fincher  14:16  
yeah, in my work getting to the root of the problem is essential, so the reason I'm able to transform people in such a short period of time is because I get right to the root of what is creating the issue. If, if you're doing this independently, I would say your identity is foundational. Who do you think you are? Who do you think you're representing? And how are you? How do you want to show up when you do show up, whether as a leader or as a business owner, as a friend, as a husband, why you name it, you know, whatever it is that wherever the struggle is. What is your identity, or whose thoughts or beliefs or convictions is your identity established on? That's that's essential to understanding it clear about, and oftentimes people sort of operate based on everybody else's belief about them, or things that they have learned from previous work, or from from their parents, or from the failures you know, and the kind of labels that they have attached to themselves, usually subconsciously, and then carry them to the their logical conclusion, which is how they play out in real life, if you, if you cut, like, I had a client who just couldn't get past a financial failure, that I mean, it was a big chunk of money that that he lost, but it became so much of a label and, and one of the structural beams, kind of, so to speak, of his identity that it was impossible for him to operate without it just staring him in the face all the time, and so, and so, being able to kind of go beyond that and go bigger and wider, while at the same time being super specific and clear on what you're, what you're thinking, what you're dealing with, is really what's going to make a big difference, if that makes sense.

David Bush  16:27  
Yeah, well, I know that I've read a lot on the idea of rewiring neural pathways, and by a long distance, I'm nowhere near the level of intelligence to understand the actual chemistry behind this, but would you give us kind of more of a layperson's understanding of how you know over seasons of life we build up these neural pathways that actually cause us to repeat certain behaviors even without consciously choosing those behaviors? If I'm understanding that correctly, and then what are some of the things that you provide in your work to help individuals to actually, you know, blaze new truth trails, you know, and basically develop new pathways.

Nino Fincher  17:13  
Yeah,

David Bush  17:13  
you can actually start to create a new habit, habit pattern that becomes more automatic because you have actually repeated a certain process. Does that make.. does that make.. I

Nino Fincher  17:24  
think I understand what you're asking. I can give you, I can give you an analogy, an example, and then sort of give you a concept, if that's helpful. Perfect. I love telling the story, and this was not my client, but it was such an.. it was a client in the modality that I work with who was dating a lady who was a musician and orchestra, but he, he, he, he struggled with the sound of the drums, and, and so every time she would invite him to her performance, he just couldn't last, and I mean, it became such an issue that they, they eventually broke up, but he would get up and leave in mid performance every time. It was just an incredibly uncomfortable feeling of that he experienced when he heard the drums, and to shrink the story in a session, and having spoken with his mother later on, it turned out that when he was little, little, they lived in another country, and his mother said, "You know, when, when, when I was pregnant with you, your father wasn't home, and some robbers came into our house, and I hid, I hid in the closet behind some suitcases, she said, and I was so ter.. I was terrified that they were going to kill me and kill you, and she never told him that story, that you know, because why tell your kid that nightmare of a story, and she said, and my heart was just beating so hard, I thought I was going to lose my mind, and so the the incredible thing was that his, his entire being registered that sound inside the womb of his, of his mother's womb, of that, that he then identified as drums later on, and so once that issue was cleared and dealt with, there was no longer an issue, which is incredible, and so when people say, you know, what is the word, you know, buying mind body, mind body stuff, you know, and it just sounds like woo, and some kind of yoga studio crap that you know, just kind of peripheral in reality, your, your entire structure, everything from head to toe, is designed to operate together, and people isolate and compartmentalize things, our health systems, or well-being system, you know, fitness, you. Psychology, medicine, they all compartmentalize how we heal or treat patients, and but we are made to operate as one unit, and so the exceptionally just phenomenal part of what we are gifted with is the brain that literally has the capacity to redesign itself physically, and it's called the neuroplasticity of the brain, which means that it creates new connections with the neurons, almost like if you were to walk, for instance, through a grass, which is a fresh grass, after, after a minute, it's gonna sort of grass will just kind of pop back up, and you won't be able to tell somebody walk through it, but if you continue to walk the same path back and forth enough, then you're just gonna build a pathway that you know it's there, and so it's the brain essentially does the same thing,

David Bush  21:02  
great analogy,

Nino Fincher  21:03  
and it's, it's, it's phenomenal, and so, yeah, and so you can, same as learning language, for instance, you know, you can learn a new word, but, but it's important to repeat that word multiple times until you no longer have to repeat it, and it just kind of registers in the same way your brain builds a new neural pathway, now it's part of who you are, and so that's kind of how it works.

David Bush  21:28  
Yeah, that's interesting. I've always been curious about how that process looks, and you gave us a great visual picture on that. I can remember that idea. There's a grass being patted down, so

Nino Fincher  21:38  
yeah.

David Bush  21:39  
Couple more questions before we wrap up. I want to talk a little bit about the leadership aspect, and how the emotional state that you're in as a leader becomes a contagion that can actually spread to the others in your organization, both on the positive side and the negative side. So, talk a little bit more about how that shifting your emotional state into a better state of mind or a better state of being can actually shift your whole organization state.

Nino Fincher  22:10  
Yeah, I mean, I think all of us have been in an environment, maybe in our families or in business setting, where you can just, I mean, you can feel the tension. People say you can feel the tension, or you can cut the tension with the with the knife, or you walk on eggshells. I mean, there are terms and expressions that literally reflect how, how you show up, or how somebody in authority shows up creates the environment that others are become sensitive to and are influenced by, and you know, if a parent can come home and be so angry or disengaged and frustrated to where the kids are gonna, it's impossible for kids not to notice or to not be affected by, in the same way as a leader, people who look up to you and who look to your direction, look, you know, to you to make decisions and create that atmosphere, absolutely are affected by how you interpret what's happening, or how you guide them, or how you lead them, and it's impossible to guide people and be kind of all in leader or present leader, when you're not, you know, when you're so distracted by emotional garbage that's happening inside of your mind or your heart that you cannot focus on what's essential or cannot be supportive to, you know, your, your right hand man or woman who needs, who needs direction, because you just too distracted or unaware, and so on and so forth, and it happens all the time. I mean, I'm sure you've seen it, you know, in businesses and their story after story that a business leader can tell you, or employee can tell you, you know, and a lot of people leave, like, I mean, you've seen that big poster on LinkedIn, people don't leave bad.. what is the poster? It says people don't live

David Bush  24:06  
tabs, leave bad managers,

Nino Fincher  24:07  
right? Right? Or yeah, bad bosses, whatever. Lots bad bosses are, you know, sometimes a bad boss is not a bad boss. Sometimes he just doesn't freaking know how to handle this.. this nightmare that he's dealing with, that he just doesn't even know why he's so angry or why he's frustrated, you know, but, but he cannot help but let it kind of leak throughout the company.

David Bush  24:30  
Yeah, well, as we're closing things up here, I'd love for you to just walk everybody through a kind of a high-level overview of your movement move method and how they can apply that to building a better business, building a better team, building a better process, and I know you've got videos on that, maybe you could redirect them back to some of those resources, but would you just give us a high level overview of that method?

Nino Fincher  24:57  
Yeah, sure. Thank you. So the. The easiest thing, and the quickest thing, and you can double up the speed. I say, tell everybody, double the speed when you're listening to stuff, is to go to my TEDx talk on the subject, and that's kind of where I go through, go through those four four steps. But the bottom line to them is you have to create some kind of a movement, you know, and oftentimes when people have struggled for an extended period of time, tiny movement doesn't register as successful at all, because it's so small compared to what they really want to be aspiring to, but the small movement makes a tremendous amount of difference, so if you can create the tiniest movement today and be consistent with it again today, and then the next day today, instead of planning for the next three months or planning for the next six months, that that tiny movement will compound, and it'll, it'll create the make a big difference in getting you to transformation. Another step is understanding how overcoming the things that have held you back in the past is essential. So everybody's held back by the past, guilt, failure, frustration, loss, all kind, you know, betrayal, pain, you name it, you know, all the stuff that all of us have struggled with, or have dealt with, right? Or they are held back by the fear in the future, but leaders, generally, like leaders I deal with, rarely struggle with the with the future, they usually struggle with the past, because high-level leaders aren't afraid to make decisions, they dive in and they go, go for it. So, past is a massive, massive hostage holder, and being able to understand that you have an already overcome a lot of what you think you're dealing with is essential. Number three, understanding the value of what you're doing, like for instance the guy you mentioned, who is wants to sell the company. Well, okay, why now? Why do you need to sell it? You don't need the money, or do you need the money, or is it because something else has become more important? So, what is the value that you are assigning to what what needs to have your attention and your time, and then finally really getting clear on expectation, because your mind will always anticipate something, and you literally get to be in charge of what it anticipates, and you can anticipate failure, you can anticipate success, and just with a little bit of training, you can get to either one, or you know, or by default, just go to the other, which is what the mind's operating system is, and so those four things: movement, being able to have overcome, and reminding yourself that you have, establishing your value and the purpose and the clarity of what is it that you're aiming for, and then finally setting the right expectation. It spells out move, and that's that's kind of an easy way to remember how to get to it. I'm there's a book upcoming as well, so if anybody wants to, they can contact me, and I'll put them on the list, but you know, and that'll motivate me to really get it done by September.

David Bush  28:21  
Absolutely, and we'll put the contact information in the show notes to make sure that everybody can get in touch with you. But Nino Fincher, N I N O F I N C H E r.com is the website address. Am I correct on that?

Nino Fincher  28:35  
That's correct.

David Bush  28:36  
Very good. Well, hey, it was such a pleasure having another conversation with you. I appreciate you sharing some of your wisdom and tips and strategies to help others to find more victory inside their business, as well as their personal lives. So, thanks everybody for joining us for the show. Go check out her, hey, let's move to Elf venture.com and get more tips and tools on how to develop an emotionally resilient mindset.

Nino Fincher  29:00  
Thanks,

Speaker 1  29:01  
dude. Bye.

David Bush  29:02  
Thanks for tuning in to the Business Builders Playbook. If this episode gave you some plays that you can start running in your business today, hit subscribe and share with another revenue leader who's tired of the pipeline grind. Building predictable revenue isn't something you figure out alone, whether you're looking to automate your prospecting with bdr.ai or you just want to talk through the growth challenges you're facing. Reach out, we help business leaders just like you to build systems that actually scale. And if you're ready to stop being your company's highest paid prospector, let's have a conversation. Reach out to us@bdr.ai Until next time, let's keep building

Unknown Speaker  29:40  
you.