Mental Models For Success & The Opportuneur by Brad Costanzo

Thank you, everybody, for having me here. This is super cool. I've known Nick for a very long time, and in fact, the guy right there absolutely changed the trajectory of my life, is put more money in my pocket indirectly from something he, I guess I would say sneak attacked me with. And I'll explain this. I was gonna play a video on it. Couldn't quite get it to work. But just a little bit of the history of that four and a half years ago. I was consulting at the time. I had recently sold my business about a year prior to that. I was consulting. I was looking for kind of an outlet or to do something else. I had this idea because everybody and their brother had a podcast. I was like, I got an idea for a podcast. But like a lot of you, I have a lot of ideas and more of them are in my maybe someday pile. And Nick had me on his show, Life on Fire podcast. And we were sitting down, it was on video, and I told him off camera that I've got this idea for a podcast, and I would call it Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Castanzo. I came up with that. I was sharing another friend's podcast on Facebook. I was like, check this out. This is some bacon wrap business advice if I've ever heard it. And I was like, it's kind of random. That would be a cute podcast. It'd be fun if I decided to do one. I told him. He's like, that's cool. So we're in the middle of the interview, and it's not live. It's recorded, obviously. And Nick goes, so you're got a little reinvention going on. So tell me about this podcast that you've got now where people can subscribe to it. What's it called? It was as cool as, hey, And I go, bacon wrap Business. He's like, can you know, where do they go for that? I go, baconritbusiness.com I did not own the URL, by the way, so I'm proving that they exist. So he's like, well, tell me about what the idea is. I'm like, so I'm just going with it next to it. I've been on other podcasts before, and every podcast was usually like, well, this will air in two months. So when I got done with this podcast, I'm like, thinking. I asked him, I was like, okay, so how much time do I have to get ready for this? I got two months to launch this podcast. He goes, 10 days. What? He go, yeah, this goes live in 10 days. If you don't have a podcast, and everybody's going to go to this dead URL. And I hope you can hit the URL. Okay, So I looked. I bought it right there when we were sitting there. So the podcast has been. It has never been my business. I am a. I am a consultant. I'm an entrepreneur. I recently bought some businesses, and my background was about 10 years in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. But the podcast by itself has led to more opportunities, both for my guests, for my listeners, and my ability to open really influential doors because it gave me a platform. And I never, ever would have, because I know me. I had a million things going on. I would not have done that if you didn't light a fire under my butt and say, okay, you've just got to do it. You held me accountable, forced me to do it. And because of that, I've had such tremendous experiences in business in the past four and a half years. And those of you who do know me, nobody can really say, what exactly does Brad do? I can't even say it. My mom's always asking me, what do you do? I was like, are you an entrepreneur? I was like, no, I'm more of like, an opportune. I find opportunities, but then I organize resources to take advantage of those. There's also a big difference between an opportunity seeker and an opportune. An opportunity seeker is always seeking opportunities that might already exist, and they hope. They stumble across them like they're panning for gold. An opportune, which. I don't know if I invented that word, but I Googled it. I don't think I found it. Some staking my claim on it. An opportune looks for. Looks for inefficiency in the market. They look for gaps. They look for needs. They pay attention to what's going on, to what people are buying, what people aren't, and what maybe two different types of people might need. And they try to put them together creatively and see if they can organize resources and capital and ideas around making it happen. I happen to be pretty good at that. I'm absolutely terrible at building and scaling and running a big business. That is not my. That is not my bag. Now, because I've got such a varied skill set, I thought, you know what would best serve everybody in here? Should I talk about, like, tactical marketing strategies and little microscopic things that you can do, and you'll be like, oh, that's kind of cool, but maybe it's not going to really impact my life? Or should I talk about probably one of the big themes at this event, which Nick mentioned in the last thing, was about mindset. And I'm the guy, I'd be sitting at marketing or other conferences, and the minute they start talking about mindset, I'm like, give me this stuff that I can go home and use. But there's been absolutely nothing more responsible for the lifestyle that I have right now, which I'm very proud of, the choices I've made and the opportunities that have been getting me and the dramatic failures that I've had. But nothing has been more responsible for that than the way I make decisions, the lens that I view life and business and relationships. And it's not all stuff that I was born with or learned from my parents. I've developed them through trial, through error, through mentors, through relationships. And today, with your permission, I'd like to share with you some of those mental models that I rely on every single day to not only succeed, but to keep myself sane and actually crazy world. So one of these is the concept of ideas. I really do believe that the sweetest sound to an entrepreneur's ears, at least to mine, is, I have an idea immediately. Tell me, tell me more. But if you're like a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of people, you have too many ideas. And that's actually. It can be debilitating, right? And it's like, how do I know what to do? Now? You may have heard and raise your hand if you agree that ideas are worthless without execution. I'm not raising my hand. I don't believe it any more than I believe that children are worthless until they become grown, productive members of society. Children are full of potential. You can mold them. They bring joy just because of who they are. And life would be very less rich without them in the world. Just like ideas. Ideas are like children. They are live, they spread. There's good ones, there's bad ones. Just like children, right? But just like children, they need to be nurtured with structure and discipline in order to become fully realized, you know, businesses or ventures that you can take care of. And I've been trying to label myself and with a lot of the work I've been doing with clients as a strategic ideation consultant. And that is really what they bring me in to do, is to ideate on business models, marketing, growth, ideas, and taking, like what Nick said, I think about things a little bit differently and think about how do we make this bigger, easier, more fun, more effective and. And do something that isn't just a linear growth and the way you do that is a very specific process, and it usually revolves around asking the right and different questions. There's a lot of questions you can go into. But when it comes to the first step in ideation, what's more, ideation is not brainstorming. There is a very strict process you have to follow. And the process that I learned years ago and I follow with every single client, myself, my business partners, is a process that was revealed that Walt Disney did this. He was building his empire during the Great Depression, and Walt, they would say that you never knew which Walt was walking in the door. In a business meeting, was it the dreamer, the realist, or the spoiler, the critic? And in fact, Walt realized that a lot of us have these ideas and these ideas. Well, in fact, if you ever had an idea, you've gone to a family, a friend or somebody else, I've got this idea. Let me tell you about it. You're all excited. You tell them, does anybody want to venture the first thing that usually comes out of their mouth, why it won't work. Has that ever happened to anybody in here? That's great. Let me tell you why it won't work. Okay, so we do that to ourselves as well. And whenever we're thinking of new business ideas or anything else, I don't with myself, I'll think, this is a great idea. Oh, my God. This is what it could do. How am I going to plan that? And what would I do? Do I have the resources? Now that won't work because of this. And now it's just noisy in my head. And if you're trying to do this with a team, it's also going to get really noisy as well. So what Walt realized is we're going to have three offices, totally separate and distinct from each other. And in one office over here is the dreamer's office. And the only thing that you're allowed to do is dream. If it all works out like it's playing on a movie theater in front of your eyes, how amazing would this be? There's a rule in this office. Two rules. Don't plan it and don't critique it. Just dream it. You're going to get the chance to do those in the other offices. So now, when each one of you hopefully has some ideas and goals and things you want to accomplish, I'm giving you permission to just dream it first without any other planning or critiquing. Because when you're done, you're going to walk into the other office, which is the realist, the planner, the Doer, and you're going to just storyboard out what has to happen. I like to actually reverse engineer it, like, what do I want? And then work backwards. But what has to happen in order to make this dream a reality, given all the resources we have? And there's only two rules in this office. Don't add any more vision to the dream. Don't critique. It makes sense. And now we got a vision, and now we have the basic plan. And this is where a lot of entrepreneurs that I know, me included a million times, the ready, fire, aim, approach. We go off half cocked and we chase something that is, you know, we're going to hit some speed bumps down the road that we didn't see, and it's going to derail a lot of success. And that's where, you know, we fear failure, but we're not willing to examine what would failure look like. And Walt realized that too. So now you take the plan and the vision and you go into the critics office and everybody, yourself, your team, you're going to sit there and you're going to think, what could go wrong? What are the holes? What am I missing? What are the resources? We don't have that. All you're doing is you're finding the speed bumps. And you're not there to spoil the party. You're simply there to make sure that the cops don't get called on you for hitting too crazy. You're there to protect. It's risk management. And the critics office is where you get to just unload and come up with all of the stuff that might not work so that you can then take it back to the planner's office or the dreamer's office and solve that problem. I mean, is this relatively simple? I'm really blowing it out. Dream plan or critique, don't do any simultaneously. The way you can use this also in your own life, with your own team, is if you understand this framework, teach it to somebody else. Teach it to your husband, your wife, your business partner, your employees, so that now when you're talking to them, you go, hey, I've got an idea and I need you to step into the dreamer's office with me. What you've just done is you've given them the permission to hold back their critiquing. You're going to get a chance. But can you see, by the way, that if you're doing this, that your communication and team building will greatly improve? Because now everybody's going the same way. So I want you to literally do that as my Single biggest secret tool that I've ever used that's been responsible for successes. And when I don't do it, it almost always fails. Thank you. Now, speaking of coming up with a plan, a goal, another mental model that I backed into and I realized is that fuzzy goals are good. Has anybody ever heard of smart goals? Specific, measurable. I'm not a smart goal guy. In fact, the only smart goals I like are very short term, three to six month goals. I do not set goals. I'm not saying that you shouldn't. I'm saying for some people, they don't work. I've never been able to sit there and go, okay, I want to have a seven figure business. I want to have business doing $2 million in revenue. I want to serve this many people and this. And I want to have a six pack. And I want. I can't do it. It doesn't drive me. I can't make it drive me if it doesn't drive me. I set fuzzy goals. And several years ago I was frustrated because I couldn't set a smart goal. I was like, I just want. Here's what I want, three things. I want to be really engaged and enjoy what I'm doing for a living, period. I want to work with amazing, inspirational people that I like being around. I want to make a really good money. Now, none of those are specific. The problem is after I achieved those, I felt like I was running a marathon. Like I passed the finish line and I forgot to look back and realize you can stop running. Because I was like, man, I just, I had to hit my goals. And we don't have goals, we have aspirations. But it is funny because when I look back, I was like, oh, damn. I really like what I'm doing. I could like, I'm sure I could like something more. I've got clients who are billionaires, world champion athletes, amazing entrepreneurs who are changing the world, charities and philanthropist organizations. And I'm making really good money. I mean, damn, it worked. But it wasn't completely fulfilling because I didn't have that, you know, those numbers on there. But it was actually more fulfilling because I realized that I don't have to set those. If I set the aspiration, if I set things to say, things like that, that it's going to work out okay. I may not say I'm driving from San Diego to New York City, but I'm going from San Diego to the east coast or the Northeast because as long as that's where I want to be, it gives me the opportunity to take detours along the way. It works for me. It may not work for everybody else, but there are a lot of studies that show that the most goal oriented people, strict goals, are some of the unhappiest people, the ones who achieve them. There's this paradox of Olympic athletes, gold medalists, when they win, the high is like 30 to 45 seconds. And then now they're like, oh, damn everything. I just, I got to reset my goals now what do I do? And they become gold junkies. I don't want that for you. I'm not saying don't have goals. What works for me is having short term specific goals. There's a product I want to launch, there's a workshop I want to create. And I'm going to do it on February 1st. And I'm going to do this, this, this. That's a goal to me. But I want to be really engaged, working with amazing people, making really good money, that I can pay my monthly nut and rent and all this other stuff and still be happy and have a house on the beach. That's my aspiration. And for me it works. So one of the reasons I'm telling you is because I don't want you to go through almost 45 years old, frustrated. You can't set a damn goal that makes you get up in the morning and drive you. But I think you can all set aspirations. Speaking of goals, speaking of things that we all want to accomplish, anybody want to know the easiest way to make money right now? Easiest way. Day job. You get weekends off, check out at 5 o'. Clock. You want the easy money, you get benefits. You want the easy money. By the way, there's nothing wrong with jobs. Jobs are amazing. We need jobs. We all need to employ people. Nothing wrong with that. Being an entrepreneur, a lot of it's like, that's what I want to be. It's hard. You're going to get punched in the nose many, many, many, many times. And if you're not really resilient and adaptable, it's going to hurt. Do it anyway. But there is a huge difference between being an entrepreneur, which is a lofty goal, and being an entrepreneurial, which anybody can do. Entrepreneurial means you identify opportunities to add value, to help somebody out, to make a change, to make a difference, to move something in a different direction than it would have moved without you. And you can do that as an accounts receivable clerk at a big company. If you simply start to ask your boss questions. Hey boss, I was just curious about what's going on in the company. I ask about stuff that have nothing to do with your department and see if you can solve those problems because you can either get promoted or if you solve that problem really good, maybe you realize you've got a job as a consultant and you can start a business that way. You don't have to be an entrepreneur, but you all can be entrepreneurial. In fact, it's the only thing that I think is going to really move this world to a better place is if more people think like that, how can I solve bigger problems and challenges? The next mental model that I discovered over the past few years, and I'm kind of continuously adding to it, was going for a walk on the beach and I had this kind of little epiphany because I was trying to break down what has been the secret of my success. And it kind of dawned on me two letters or two words that I'll get to in just a second. But first, the other two words that go right before that, which I added later, are physics and knowledge. So physics is very easy. Is what you want to do possible or impossible? Does it break the laws of physics? Because if it doesn't, congratulations, you have a shot. Now the only thing standing your way, or one of the only things, is knowledge. I recently bought a business and I didn't. I sold a couple businesses, but buying one is a totally different story. And I. I didn't know what I was doing. I was like, okay, I think I negotiated and found a good deal, but I could probably drop the ball. There's a million ways I can get burned. What am I going to do? And I was like, well, I need knowledge on a couple things. So I studied, I read, and I made some phone calls. I learned. So this is very. By the way, this is very elementary. It's not impossible. The only thing standing in your way is knowledge of how to do it. Because there's a million things here. You guys know exactly how to do, like the most basic to some, like your jobs, your businesses. You've got knowledge of how to do it. There's no second guessing. You just jump it in and you do it. But what if you don't have that knowledge? What if the knowledge is hard to acquire? That comes down to the other parts of the formula, which I believe very strongly in. And when I look at it, it's not only the secret of my success, it's the secret of everybody's success, even nation states, which is access and influence. So access is a very interesting word when I say access. Some of you might think, do you know. But that's not how I. I see access as a very rich word. Access means, you know, when you were growing up, did you have access to loving, supportive parents who had maybe money to put roof over your head and send you to a good school? Or did you not have access to that? Did you have access to capital to start a business? Do you have access to. To mentors and friends who will support you and access to a loving relationship? And if you don't have access to that, you're kind of, you know, you're kind of at a disadvantage. But also understand the difference between access and ownership, because you can access something without owning it. I don't have to have a car. I can pull out my phone and I can access somebody else's car because they're driving Uber or Lyft. I don't have to have the money because I can either learn how to go raise venture capital or angels, or I could do a crowdfunding kickstarting campaign, or I could do another way to access somebody else's money. And oftentimes, if you don't know how to do that, it's simply a function of knowledge. Right. And how do you get access to knowledge if you don't feel like reading a book? Well, that's when you access mentors. That's where you access somebody like Nick Unsworth over here, or you access somebody who's down that road and trotted before and they know the ins and the outskirts. I got you. Here's what you do, here's what you don't do. Let me shortcut it for you. I've got amazing people access to in masterminds and businesses and colleagues that I cultivate these relationships so that I can access them. The reason I have a podcast on itunes is not for my audience. I'm proudly the host of the most selfish podcast on all of itunes. It is designed for two things. If nobody listens. It allows me to talk to people that I really want to talk to and build relationships with. It allows me to pick their brain, which is normally a word I hate because it's me just getting, but allows me to pick their brain and get amazing information. But I also give them a platform to share their knowledge with the world. And that is one way I access influential minds who are. Who are just brilliant. And it is shortcut my learning curve. One of the one day I was at a mastermind and I heard a guy talking and it was blowing my mind when he was like, telling me. I was like, I never really heard about this stuff, and I want to know more. He's sitting right over here, Mitch Axelrod. And I was like, this is amazing. How do I access what's in your brain? Like, I kind of want to download it. And I think I wrote him a check for, like, $10,000 to be able to just get on the phone with him. Like, I don't know, it was like eight times or something like that, and just say, all right, tell me about this. Tell me about this. Elaborate on this. It was worth it to me to understand how his brain works and how he approaches these things. I was willing to go into my wallet and pay for it because I wanted access to his knowledge without reading a million books. And the very last one of those formula is influence. Because you can have all the knowledge and all the access in the world. If you can't influence somebody to take action, a customer to buy from you, somebody to partner with you, a man or a woman to date you anywhere, if you can't make an influence on them, you can't make an impact. You can't make a difference. So if you have access and you can build influence, interpersonal influence and mass influence, you have so much power. I mean, think about the way kings and nation states were built. I mean, they had access to resources and. Or not. And if they had access to the people and they influenced them to fight for them, this is the way that Washington is wrong. Access and influence can be a technology for good, or it can be a technology for corruption, and I won't go down that road. But is it against the laws of physics? What knowledge do you need? What access do you. Can you get even if you don't own it? And what influence do you need the wheel in order to. To get that into action, to put it into action and make a difference. Speaking of that, speaking of the podcast and the access, the influence that I've gotten, I'll tell you a story about another guy who Nick mentioned. He became a client of mine named Jesse Itzler. So I read a book called Living with a Seal, and it's an amazing book about this billionaire who moved the Navy SEAL in with him and his wife, Sarah Blakely, for 30 days, and he just trained the hell out of him. And it was. It's a hilarious, motivational, uplifting book. Power of a podcast, power of a platform to be able to give value to somebody else. I get the ear of a billionaire for an hour. I asked him all these great questions. You can hear it on my show. But then I did something that few other people do. I paid really, really close attention and I asked him a few questions. Like we got this famous question like, what's a nut you're trying to crack? And he told me and I was like, you know, I got an idea that I think could help you with that. Let me do this for you. I just kind of grew founder Spanx, and we did some really cool stuff over the past year and a half or so. And I got access to his mental models, which is a whole other thing. Like, I could talk for an hour about that. And then through him, I got to meet my next client and now a business partner in some ventures, a guy named Frank Shamrock. If anybody is a fan of mixed martial arts, Frank is a five time UFC champion, known as the legend in the sport, the father of the 90s. He's an actor, entrepreneur, filmmaker, an amazing guy. And not only do I get to do business with him, but I get to learn from this champion mindset. And one of the things I'll share with you of this mindset, and this is 100% his, I use it, so I'm sharing it with you, is the concept of plus equals minus. And he says you can accomplish absolutely anything in this world if you understand this formula, plus equals minus. And that is first find your plus. Who is above you, who's done something you want to do, who has went that path, that mentor, who could you learn from? Find that person and learn. Now the next step is the equal. Try out what you learn. There's another little formula called little learn, Try, teach. But learn it. Find an equal, find a colleague, find a competitor, find somebody on your level that is either you know you're going against them and that you can compete with them, so that can help kind of light your fire, or that you can collaborate with them and cooperate, maybe do joint venture deals and have fun, but you can vet them with stuff. Is it working? Maybe you ask their advice, but you don't have to look up to them. They're your equal. They're your foxhole buddy, if you would. But then find your minus. Because when one person teaches, two people learn. There's no better way to integrate the teachings that you receive here in a book than to reach out and tell somebody else exactly how to do it. So, and you actually have this obligation as a member of this class species to pass it on. Learn it, try it, teach it. Plus equals minus. And with that you're learning from the best. You're Trying it out, you're seeing what works, you're seeing what doesn't. You're teaching it and you're integrating it and then leave it if you want, or double down on it. But that alone will be extremely powerful. By the way, equals and minus, that doesn't work as well because who are you learning from? Where are you getting your information? I mean, our entire species is passed down knowledge like this from mentor to apprentice. And if you don't have one of each of these, then you might want to double check. How am I going to really achieve my goals? Or can I achieve them quicker if I do? So like a great exercise when I'm done or when you go to your room tonight is say, who is my plus, who is my equal, who is my minus? And if you don't have them, you better find out who they are. And the quicker you do, the quicker you will have a success in this. Because the entrepreneurial road is really, really challenging. And we are all fired up here and you should be, but in a couple days you're going to be back in your regular world with some friends and family who are not as supportive and nobody else here is like sharing the same energy and, and you're gonna be back in the drudgery and the monotony. And if you don't bring your own logs and keep on adding wood to the fire and ask for help when you need it desperately, it's going to go out. It goes out in me like I've achieved a decent degree of success and I have a hard time finding that extra motivation. And sometimes I beat myself up. I'm like, man, I just don't know. And I'm second guessing myself. I'm like, why exactly this hard? And I don't know if it'll work. And now I've got the benefit or curse of knowledge. And that makes me go like, ah, I know all the things that are going to go wrong now. And it scares the hell out of me. But I realized something the other day with somebody that was coaching me, taking me through some of my blockages and limiting beliefs, et cetera. And it reminded me about the very first business I did about 10 years ago when I was putting something out there that was absolutely probably gonna fail. Like there was no market validation. It was just something I kind of wanted to do. I wanted to try it out and see what happened. And if it didn't work, it was gonna be public and it was, I was gonna look dumb. And you know what? Those thoughts never went through My mind back then, it was literally, I'm just gonna try this out and I'm gonna treat it like art. Because if it's work, we try to find a way to avoid it. And if it's art or entertainment, we try to find a to way to pursue it. And I realized that, dude, I was looking at this like art. Like, okay, this might work, it might not. People might like it, they might not. I'm going to learn a hell of a lot along the way. And if it works, cool. If not, I'll figure it out. And it reminded me, play, make it an art project. Your business is an art project. Whatever business you think about starting right now, you may not be doing the same thing in three years. I want to let you know this. It will all be okay. It will all be okay. And that doesn't mean it's going to turn out the way you envision it. In fact, I guarantee it won't. 100% of your plans will not come out the way you envision it right now. Something will happen. Some of it will be good, some of it will be bad. But you will adapt and you will change. And you will use the resources and the knowledge you have in the support network and you'll adapt. It's. And you'll try something new and you'll keep doing it again because that's who you are. That's why you're in this room. That's why you've got resources like Nick, like Megan, like life on fire and everybody else. There is no such thing as failure. There's only feedback. And if you're not afraid to fail, you're much less likely to do so. And with that, I hope that these mental models, these ways of thanking have been useful to you. And if there's any questions, I'll be around. But I just hope that you get as much use out of these as I've been getting and hope to continue to get in the future. So thank you, Nick, for having me up. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you, brother. And.