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October 6, 2025 14 mins
There are only 5 days left until we begin Patterns of Power, a 10 week experience built for leaders and professionals who have done the work but still feel drained, stuck performing, and unsure why success feels like suffocation. THE START DATE IS OCTOBER 14TH - DONE BY CHRISTMAS, START THE NEW YEAR IN SELF-LEADERSHIP!!!

In this episode, Coach Craig sits down with leadership coach and author Brent Perkins, former CEO of two eight figure companies and writer of Paper Cuts The Art of Self Delusion — available now on Amazon. https://amzn.to/3IAwqAF 

Together they talk about capacity, your ability to hold more without breaking. They explore what happens when your vault is empty, why discipline alone is not enough, and how a thousand small paper cuts quietly drain your energy, attention, and presence.

This is the first time Craig has ever collaborated with another coach in this way because he has never been so confident in the value of the partnership. Craig’s expertise in destructive habits combined with Brent’s expertise in leadership creates a powerful experience for high performers ready to make lasting change.

If you lead teams, businesses, or people and still feel like you are white knuckling life, this conversation is your wake up call. It is time to stop performing and start leading from a place of power.

Spots for Patterns of Power are almost full. Enrollment closes in 5 days. Click the link below to learn more about the program, including how you can be reimbursed through your company’s leadership or professional development budget.
https://coach-craig-b8c2.mykajabi.com/patterns-of-power-cohort 

If you want to talk directly with Craig, schedule a free 30 minute consultation call to see if Patterns of Power is the right fit for you. The program investment is 5,000 dollars and includes a 100 percent money back guarantee.
https://api.leadconnectorhq.com/widget/bookings/consult-for-leaders-w-craig-pe 

Take the next step today before enrollment closes.
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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, what's up everybody.

Speaker 2 (00:01):
Craig Perry here and you're listening to sex afflictions and
porn addictions. And today I have a really special guest,
someone who I respect as a professional, but also someone
who I've gotten close to over the course of the
past couple of months as a friend.

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Welcome Brent.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
Yeah, thanks, Craig, Good morning, and really really quick.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Brent is the owner of three times Bold.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
He's a leadership professional development coach at an interesting story.

Speaker 1 (00:30):
We're not going to get into that. We're going to
keep this quick and concise.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
But one of the things that I noticed and helping
people stop their destructive behaviors, and we'd crush it. We'd
have this initial experience where we would crush it and
then and then they go flat. So these are the guys, Brent.
They're sober, they're clean, they're accountable.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Completely depleted.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Eventually, right after that burst of of of of success,
they find themselves white knuckling and again managing systems, wondering
why success felt like slow suffocation and I know, like
something's missing, like we need to like like shock this

(01:17):
group of people.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
And then I met Brent and.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
He named what I had been seeing but couldn't articulate,
and we were treating we weren't treating depletion as the crisis.
We were treating it as a character flaw. Brent, talk
about capacity.

Speaker 4 (01:34):
Yeah, you know, I love this word because it's it
means so many things to so many different people, and
yet it's real for all of us. Right, But capacity
isn't It's not time management, and it's not productivity. Although
that's that's what so many books are written about and
we get talked about, you know too.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
All the time.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
But that's that's the heavy side of it, because that
just feels like one more thing, one more system to
get done. But the capacity to real at least in
my world, what I've seen is helpful to really get into.

Speaker 3 (02:08):
Working on and talking about.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
It's our internal bandwidth, you know, that piece that allows
us to hold more without breaking. And where I see
in my life, with my kids, with my you know,
in business, is that's the difference between reacting to life
and actually leading it. And here's what a lot of
leaders don't realize is that you can you can't build

(02:30):
capacity while your vault is empty.

Speaker 1 (02:34):
Yeah, let's talk about that, Brett, explain the vault.

Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yeah, So Your body is a vault. It holds all
the things you intentionally or unintentionally put in there. And
what I've found is that the only resources that really
matter when it comes to leadership. And let's be clear,
leadership isn't just at work. Right, you're the leader of
your life, and you can bring that leadership to your family,

(02:58):
to your community, to your you know, wherever it is
you go. But in terms of leadership, the only things
that matter. There's three currencies, energy, attention, and presence. So
it's not your calendar, it's not your strategy deck, but
can you actually show up with energy? Can you hold
attention on what matters? And can you be present when

(03:18):
it counts? Most people I work with are trying to
shove more into this vault right their body, but it's
maxed out. It's full of a bunch of other shit.
So as they start even trying to put the good
stuff in, it leaks, and we get sick, We snap
at our kids, We make decisions that we end up regretting.
And you can't hold what you keep promising yourself your hold, well,

(03:40):
there's no room. And the problem isn't discipline.

Speaker 1 (03:44):
I know.

Speaker 4 (03:44):
We get told create more habits. In fact, your genius
at that greg right, But you can create more habits
if you have no room to hold it. So it's
a capacity problem. So if I can, I've got an
interesting little story that was real in my life, that
where things changed for me.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
All right.

Speaker 4 (04:05):
So I went on a backpacking trip about ten years ago,
and it was around mountaineers called the Wonderland Trail. Circumnavigated
this mountain right outside of Seattle, was gorgeous, almost one
hundred miles twenty seven thousand feet of verticals, crazy numbers,
And I went to go check out of life, learn
some stuff, get my you know, get out of my

(04:27):
head into my body, and have some epiphanies. And three
days into this ridiculously difficult journey, at least really hard
for me anyways, I was pissed. Nothing was happening. My
brain wouldn't shut down. I had no breakthrough and.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
I could I was just tired. I was frustrated.

Speaker 4 (04:44):
I'd come all this way, you know, trudged myself out
into the middle of the wilderness. Sure it was beautiful,
but at this point I couldn't see any of that stuff,
and I was I was coming around in the backside
the mountain this third day and walking across the volcan section,
it wasn't the prettiest and there are these purple wildflowers
that started popping up. I didn't think anything of it,

(05:06):
but I was pouting. I was just in this bad mood.
And I get to the top of this area where
kind of crusted, and I just threw my backpack off.
I sat down with a big like sigh and a
hump and just melted into the earth around me. And
I realized after a few minutes after I let my
pity party go, I was sitting in this field of

(05:28):
these purple flowers that had kind of been, you know,
evading like my true senses as I'd walked by them
up to this place, and I hear this buzzing sound
and I look down and there's two bees on my leg.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
Well, I'll allergic to bees.

Speaker 4 (05:44):
I didn't think anything of it at the moment, and
I just let it happen. And I watched these thousands
of bees buzzing in this wildflower field, just thinking about
the beauty that existed in this kind of volcanic portion
of the of the mount and all of a sudden
hit me that as a leader as a at that time, CEO,

(06:09):
as a dad. I have a choice, just like a bee.
I can be afraid, I can sting people show that
I'm powerful, right, I also compollinate, can create beauty. I
can see it, and it's a different type of power, right.

(06:31):
And this this made me realize that the one thing
in life that I believe we're all given without prejudice,
that we all have equally, its choice, and I give
it up all the time. And I was so depleted.
I was so deep in this performing place in life,

(06:53):
so underwater and just surviving my own life a stinging
with my only option that my body could actcess. I
wasn't a bad person, My vault was just empty, empty
of their currencies it needed full of all the ship
it didn't need, right, So I didn't have the capacity
to choose pollination. And that's when it really hit me,

(07:14):
like I can't lead from depletion at that place. You
can only defend, you can only sting. And I'd been
singing everybody around me because I had nothing left to give.

Speaker 2 (07:25):
M Yeah, I know it's it's I see that so
often and people who look successful, people who've done the work,
they fixed the behavior still stinging, still defensive. Gosh, sometimes
one bad day from burning it all down because the
vault is empty.

Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah, and this, Yeah, that's that's an interesting, interesting point
and made me realize too that this, you know, this
doesn't happen overnight. It's not like a damn broke and
the vault is just empty. You know, this happened over
a long period of time, through a thousand paper cuts.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, thousands, thousands of thousands.

Speaker 2 (08:08):
Of little experiences, conditioning training that depleted you. And you know,
the thing that I love about paper cuts is everybody
wants to process the big trauma, the divorce, the child's
had wound, the thing that broke them. And yes, yes, yes,

(08:32):
yes that matters. But meanwhile, you're having the same fight
every Tuesday, checking your phone one hundred and forty seven
times a day, saying yes the things you hate because
disappointing people feels like death. That's the thousand paper cuts,
and you're wondering why you can't heal. So one of
the things I really liked about Frank Guys when I

(08:52):
met him was this book that he wrote, paper Cuts,
The Art of Self Delusion. We are brilliant at convincing
ourselves the small losses, the small betrayals, betrayals of ourselves,
our identity, of our core don't matter, but they do.

(09:15):
They do matter. This notion of it's fine, I can
handle it. It's not that big of a deal. It's
not that much of an impact. Yeah, but that's listen
the aggregate, the cumulative impact.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
Your fault is empty.

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Yeah. Yeah, And these paper cuts, they're not random.

Speaker 4 (09:35):
Actually, this is the curious part of you know, their patterns,
and I found the shift is that when I stop
listening to them as problems or four problems and start
listening for the patterns inside of them, everything really becomes
more approachable.

Speaker 3 (09:55):
Right.

Speaker 4 (09:55):
So the problem might be I'm stressed, but the pattern
is I say yes, but for I think every single
time because I hate disappointing people.

Speaker 3 (10:04):
You know.

Speaker 4 (10:05):
Another example is, you know, the problem might be I
can't focus, but the pattern is I've trained myself to
reach for distraction the second I feel uncomfortable, you know,
or I'm my problem is I'm just exhausted, when really
the pattern is I've been running the same depleted software,
the operating system inside of me for the last twenty years.

(10:27):
And I call it discipline because I do the same thing.
You know, one thing you manage the problem, one thing
you interrupt the pattern.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (10:35):
I love that perspective, Brent, And so guys, this is
why Brent and I are doing something really special this fall.
And it's so exciting because for thirteen years I've been
the addiction guy.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
I still am the addiction guy, and I'm growing and
I want you to grow and I want you to
grow with us.

Speaker 2 (10:57):
And I was the guy that people came to when
something breaks, and that works important. But what we're building
now is for the person who fixed the behavior but
is barely holding it together. The person who looks successful
but they feel like they're faking it. The person who

(11:18):
knows something has to change, knows knows it's not sustainable,
but isn't sure.

Speaker 1 (11:27):
Exactly what to do. That's what Patterns of Power is for.

Speaker 4 (11:34):
Yeah, and we're gonna be working with ten people over
ten weeks to interrupt the patterns that are bleeding the
capacity dry. Right, And Craig knows the patterns. He's a
genius out in it. This is what you've spent a
lot of time helping thousands of men do. And I

(11:54):
know the architecture. So together we're gonna build something. We
have built something that I've been wanting to do it
for a long time and I know, Craig, this has
been a very long time coming for you too. And
it's a space where transformation happens through recognition. It's not
force anymore, guys, it doesn't work from that place because

(12:16):
this can't be therapy. It can't just be to the program.
It's really accomplished through pattern interruption and where we're done performing,
we admit that we're stuck performing. We're dancing, we're playing
the game when society wants us to play, and we're
done with it and we're ready to lead.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
I call it the circus monkey or sometimes Brent, I
feel I have felt like the performing seal and so yeah,
so stop into So if that lands, guys, if this
is resonating with you, if you hear that we're speaking
to you and you feel like you're performing and it's
not enough, then there's a link. There's a link to

(13:01):
learn more about the ten week program that Brent and
I are doing. And if it doesn't take the paper,
cut things and run with it, get Brent's book.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
You're really, really really gonna love it.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
Either way, stop managing symptoms and start interrupting the patterns.

Speaker 3 (13:17):
Yeah, I mean, guys, I'll leave you with.

Speaker 4 (13:22):
Just my own truth, which is all I can give you,
and that is my vault became empty because I normalized
the leak. So it's time to see the pattern. It's
time to choose pollination.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
Thank you Brian so much for being here today, and
thank you for listening. Guys.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
I wanted to keep this specifically short and sweet. If
you are interested in our ten week program, please click
the link below. If you're not, check out Brent Perkins book.
You're gonna see more of Brent. He's a good friend,
and Brent looked FORWARDO working together, going forward.

Speaker 3 (13:59):
Get I love it.

Speaker 1 (14:01):
Thanks Craig all Right, brother doculator, my man, bab
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