Focusing Your Subconscious to help you succeed – Small Business Show 223

The Small business show episode 223 for Wednesday, May 15, 2019. Greetings folks and welcome to the Small Business show here at BusinessShow Co, the show that is BFA Small Business. That's what we do here. Sponsors for this episode include a new sponsor, linode.com SBA promo code SBS2019. We'll tell you what that's all about in a minute. And also thealternativeboard.com SBS we'll talk about that in a minute too. For now, here in Durham, New Hampshire, I'm Dave Hamilton.

And out on the west coast, I'm Shannon Jean. How goes it, man?

It goes. It's been busy. I was traveling again this past weekend. I was in Princeton, New Jersey and then Philadelphia for actually a couple of business meetings. And then I was spoken Philly. And we also toured some colleges. I brought my son and my wife with me and we toured some colleges because it's that time for him. And so it made sense to, you know, pack it all together. Yeah, yeah, it was nice.

It was good. Yeah, yeah. That's cool. It's good stuff. It's good stuff. We're doing the, the college tours as well. And it's, you know, it's, it's interesting for my son. And you're looking through everything. Okay, well, let's go here. Let's go. I just, I don't know. I don't know if I can, I can, you know, I gotta go put it on. I don't know if you guys have naviance out there.

Of course.

Yeah, I'm sure they have. They seem to have a monopoly on this. You use it as a very specific time in your life and then never use it again. Right. But you know, I, it, it brought it to, to my attention when you know about preconceiving how things are gonna be with my son. It's like, well, I don't know if I can get in there. I don't know. It looks pretty. You know, it's like, well, let's, let's figure it out and, and let's, let's go talk to them because maybe there's other ways. Just because naviance maybe shows it's a stretch, maybe it's not sure and sure.

It'S not the only thing. And it can be wrong in both directions. That's right.

Yeah. And I just, I kept, you know, mentioning, hey, you know, let's not pre. Set up these things that, oh, it's not going to work or it's this and you Know, it always reminds me of what we talk about here on the show all the time, of creating your own reality. And if, you know, I, and I, I use these same lessons on my kids, which I'm sure drives them crazy, but in the long run, I'm hopefully programming them to focus on the opportunity, not on the roadblock. Right.

Yeah. Why I do the same with my kids. I. When they say, oh, I can't do that, I say, well, with that mindset, you're absolutely right. They hate.

You're totally right.

You will make yourself right. That's right.

Yeah. Yeah. And. And it's, you know, your subconscious or your inner judge, whatever you want to call it. And I, I thought, you know what, we've already, we discussed this in advance. I was like, it's a great time to do a show all about our subconscious and how it can either help us succeed or hold us back. So that's what we're talking about today. Yeah, I like your, Your subconscious mind. Yeah, I'm, I'm very interested in this. And, you know, especially, like, you and I get on this show and we're positive and upbeat and, you know, but we also talk frequently about having to go through the grind of, you know, every day isn' going to be uplifting and full of, you know, big rewarding things. There's a lot of stuff. You just have to kind of do the grunt work and grind out and, you know, so today's a good. It's a very opportune time to, to do this touch on this topic. So. And, you know, we all have this inner judge in our head, and it's very easy for either to let it hold us back, but it's a little, I think, a little more difficult to teach it to really help us and propel us in our. But hopefully by the end of the end of the show. Oh, yes, absolutely.

And I will say right at the outset here that hopefully we'll give you some tricks and tips to train your inner judge, but. And hopefully you will experience, if you haven't already, the results of that inner judge in a positive way. There is nothing more frustrating after having experienced that to having one of those down periods where, like, you're like, things aren't going as well as you want them to. Your inner judge is telling you, no, oh, you're a fraud, you're a failure, like, all that stuff. But, you know, in your head, you're like, all I need to do is flip this switch in my brain and it all changes because it is all You. And it's not easy, but if you commit to it and do it, it will happen. But. But the flipping of that switch does not necessarily happen overnight. And. And no, it's. You just need to stick with it as well.

Yeah. It's a system. It's not a goal.

Right, Right.

If you set a goal that, oh, I'm going to train my subconscious and it's going to be my positive partner and, you know, just rocket me, it may do that right then and as you do it, but you constantly have to nurture it and develop systematic ways to teach or trick, if you will, if you want to look at it that way and to help get. Get you where you want to be. And so I thought it would be helpful today is, you know, to. First, let's. Let's talk about the definition of it. You know, really what. Our definition of it, which may be different than other folks or whatever. And.

Yeah.

You know, then let's go into how we're going to get. How we're going to turn it to, you know, I say, like, get friendly with it.

Right? Yeah.

And then this. And then I want to touch on this Scott Adams and his moisture robot theory, which we kind of just alluded to a few minutes ago. But so. So let's talk about the definition. You know, and we've done a little bit, but really it's, you know, the voice inside your head. Right. And maybe even not the voice you get to hear from time to time, but it still controls your actions, right?

Yeah. It's what you believe about. About yourself and. And what's going to happen next. Yeah.

Right. And I think as. As small business owners, it's really tough because we don't get our ego stroked. We don't get the pat on the back that much. We have to create it for ourselves. And you can. Whatever success in the sales numbers or you've got a great culture, you've got, you know, you've created this great place to work, whatever it is that you've put on your success list to remind yourself that you are successful, even if they're just little small things. This inner voice and this inner judge, you know, really important to get friendly with it and you know, because it can be your enemy.

I like that idea. Yeah. Right. It's not just getting to know it, it's getting friendly with it. Yes.

Yeah.

Because have to get it in a very. You already know it. There's no.

You do.

It's. It's. It. Yeah. The relationship is tight. It's. That it, you need to make. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And, and know that when you're talking, you, I think, have to talk back to your subconscious and your inner judge just as much as it talks to you. And, but you don't get to talk directly to it.

You have to do like via these third parties, like your success list. Right. That's really what it is. Yeah. You're triangulating your subconscious.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And you're, you're, you're doing things on a, sometimes on a daily basis that is, you know, you're going to get closer to it and, and nuzzle up against it and just remind it of just how awesome you really are. Just how you've already succeeded. You know, you can take the most basic thing. Hey, I wanted to start the day at 6am and I did it. I, I've won the day by starting.

A, just by getting up.

Yeah, you're already a success. And it's not like, you know, you're going to preach to yourself, I did, I did it. But just that little thought, oh yeah, I'm having a successful day because I got up and I did X, Y and Z. I use the trick every day before I go to bed. I'm like, okay, well when I get up, I need, I want to knock these three things out, you know, before I really, quote, start work at 8 o'.

Clock.

So when I get up around 6, I sit down and I always knock these little things out and they make me feel better. When I'm taking a shower and I get up to my office, I'm, oh man, I'm already having a great day. I've already achieved these little things.

It's so smart. Do you mind me asking like an example of what one or two of those little things are? Just to give, just to give our listeners kind of a frame of this.

Yep. One of them today was to write the show notes for this episode and I didn't want to wait around. I thought about it yesterday and I was like, no, I got too much stuff. And I said, okay, so first thing tomorrow morning when I get up, I'm having coffee, I'm sitting, the house is quiet, nobody's up yet. I'm going to knock these notes out. And then I knock the notes out. You know, it maybe takes me 15, 20 minutes and then I jump into the next thing and I always, I always go to LinkedIn, I answer any messages that I've got, any notifications. I do a quick read of the business news, which I really like. To do and then I jump over. And the last thing I always do for my social selling business is I. I follow a thousand new followers. It takes me exactly just about 10 minutes. So if I have three things, one of which always varies, but two of which are always the same, and it makes me feel good and it's great. And if I don't get those things done, it's not like I have a bad day, but it's part of my arsenal to, you know, be friendlier with my inner judge about what I'm getting done.

I like, this is great. Yeah, they're right. They're easy things, but I like the idea of doing three of them. But two are, you don't have to think about what it's going to be. Right. You're giving yourself room to play with one, which is cool. Right. You know, you have some variety. But like you said with the show notes, you were thinking about this earlier, so.

Yes. Oh, yeah. They were pretty much done in my head. Right. Yeah.

You just had to take it from your head and put it down. It wasn't like you had to invent this thing out of whole cloth. Oh, man, that's great.

And really, there's four, because I'm not a morning person at all. And I would be. Probably part of me would be happier doing this from 1am or midnight to 1am or whatever. But I've come to realize that it's not. Not a great use. It's not. It's not great. Good for me. It doesn't function as well with my family's time.

Right.

And so. Okay, I'm going to go ahead and jump in the morning. So that one thing of getting up at right around 6am that could be the most powerful thing that makes me feel good about the day. Right. To get started.

Yeah. Because you did this thing that you have convinced yourself subconsciously is a difficult.

Yeah. Right.

It requires some discipline, but.

It does.

But it. But only a little bit. Right. You know?

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's not. Yeah. And I heard a guy talking on a. On a Gary Vee podcast where I listened to him on LinkedIn often, and this. He had a Navy SEAL on. And here's this guy that's just a badass and he's accomplished all this stuff. He wrote this bestselling book and everything. And he said, he goes, oh, you know, my first success of the day is getting out of bed when I want to. And I was like, oh, that's a great framework for this because I would like to do that. And so, you know, don't overlook the little things. They build and they cascade into bigger successes.

Yeah, they do. And that's the thing, that's the trick, right? They do, they cascade. But you have to at least be aware that you've. And give yourself credit. Like you said, you're successless. Pat yourself on the back. You don't want to spend the entire day just patting yourself on the back.

No, no, no, no, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think it's is for people like us, it is easier to forget to recognize that you did something totally than it is to go over the top and be like, oh, I'm so awesome all the time. I mean nobody wants that either. But in once I started writing things down, once I started using that to do lid to do to did I knew a brand new one, the to did list method that we discussed here. And then I have that, that successless thing that we've got an article up on the business show co about it really helped me because it forces me to take those. It's like, ah, you know, you're not going to have every day is not going to be full of awesome achievements, unbelievable sales, you know, and part of the thing, one thing I don't like about small business, maybe the only thing is over the decades that I've been doing it, I've often defined my sense of self worth by the numbers at the end of the day.

Yeah, oh, totally. And it's a thing to do.

Yeah, yeah. And it's taken me a long time of concerted effort to step away from that, although it's critically important. But that's not the only measure of my sense of self worth at the end of the day. And so these little tricks have helped me, you know, to, to get beyond that. So, and, and it's programming. It's like we mentioned Scott Adams here a lot on, on the show and it, it's just so much of what we talk about is you're programming your brain. Scott always says, you know, we are moist robots and we have to program ourselves. And it's, and this is what I think is a requirement of, you know, you get to create the program that you want.

Right, right.

I've said it here before. You, you get to write your own story. So why wouldn't you write the best story that you could put in the best program into your body and your brain, you know, as you possibly can for you, you know, the unique programming of what you want to do and how you want to feel but you got to be active in actively doing it. It's just not going to happen. And if you just kind of. Yeah. Slog the day through.

I want to share two sentences and it's the first two sentences of Scott's article from 2010 entitled Programming the Moist Robot. And they are. The brain makes associations automatically. That's why aversion therapy works. If that's not enough to get you into this mindset of. Oh, wait a minute. Because that's right. Right. The brain does make associations automatically. That's what we're talking about here, triangulating that subconscious. You just need to put the. You need to put the information in. The brain will associate it whether you want it to or not. So you got to fill it with the things you want it to associate.

Yeah, that's right. That's right. Yeah. And it's not difficult, but it does require an active role by yourself on a daily basis with these little things. So I think we're going to jump into a little break here, but then after we come back from the break, we'll talk about tips and tricks for changing your mind and how to make it work for you.

Oh yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. And you're right. I do. I want to take a minute and talk about our two sponsors. Our first sponsor today is a new sponsor for us and it's Linode. Linode.com SBS that's L I N O-E.com SBS where you use code SBS2019 gives you a $20 credit to set up instantly and deploy your SSD based server in the Linode cloud. Now there are all kinds of reasons that we as business owners need to have servers in the cloud, right? You might be hosting a WordPress site, you might need to set up a VPN. You might have. I mean, maybe you like to play like Team Fortress 2 and you want to set up your own Team Fortress server. Right? Like all of these things can be done at Linode. And in fact, the three that I mentioned, you don't have to set up the server from scratch and install all the stuff. They have all of these quick start things, you just click one of those things. I needed to set up a VPN that did not exist in my office. Like it was not terminated in my office. I needed to set one up that was somewhere else and I used the Linode cloud to do it. I set it up on a server that's running me $5 a month. Right. So you take your $20 credit. $5 a month, you can Figure out how much you get for free there, right? And within 10 minutes I had this VPN server up. Because yes, I know I'm comfortable with Unix and all that stuff, but you don't have to be. That's the beauty of this stuff is you can just set these things up and your server can be running. And if you want just essentially the bare metal experience in the cloud, you can do that too. All SSD storage based, so it's super fast. It's all at Linode's. You get to pick which of their 10 worldwide data centers to use. And they've got a brand new one in Toronto that not only allows users to comply with all those in country data protection requirements, but you're also taking advantage of all of Linode's technology and tools, all of this cool stuff and this great new cloud manager that they have@cloud.linode.com you gotta check this out. So go to linode.com SBS and then use coupon code SBS2019. That gets you a $20 credit. And we've already talked about how you can use that. So go check it out. And our thanks to Linode for sponsoring this episode. Our next sponsor is the Alternative Board. Tab. We like to say owning your own business is a major accomplishment, right? You've gotten this far because of your hard work, your dedication and your ability to program your brain like we're talking about in this episode. But taking your business to the next level requires help. You need to talk with other people. And that's why you need the Alternative Board. It's a group of business owners and experts in your area that you can turn to for valuable advice on growing your business. Tab has been helping owners and CEOs of privately held businesses for close to 30 years with their business owner advisory needs. Now, each board is made up of 10 local non competing business leaders. You meet together for four hours each month to discuss relevant business issues, opportunities, sales, hiring, training, operations. But you also get help building an actionable strategic plan for your business and one on one business coaching in between the meetings. Having a TAB membership can make a huge difference for your business. A recent TAB survey showed that their members surpassed the average sales revenues of other privately held businesses by two and a half times. So you can get the help you need to take your business to the next level. And you can go and apply for free today to find out if there's a board seat available in your area. It's at www.thealternativeboard.com SBS. That's thealternativeboard.com SBS and our thanks to the Alternative board tab for sponsoring this episode. All right, Shannon.

Cool. Those are. Yeah, those are both really, really useful sponsors. Awesome.

We can have sponsors that actually, you know, that really make a difference for your business and do it right away.

Yeah, it's great.

I agree. Yeah, I agree.

That's cool. So before. Before we jump back into and talk about some ways that you can get friendlier with your subconscious, I. I do want to also want to recognize, you know, recent guest we had on Monica Shaw. She was in episode two long ago. You should. If you didn't hear that episode, you really should go listen to it because Monica, who runs a coaching business called Revenue Breakthrough, you know, she just had some really powerful messages that were related to this topic and about working with clients that didn't feel they, you know, were. They were not worthy, so to speak, of, you know, earning money and get. And creating wealth and stuff. And there's some really powerful. And it's. It really was the first thing that prompted us to do this episode. So thanks, Monica.

Yeah. When she talked about that during that episode, I made a note for us like, oh, this is a topic to explore. And I had that experience, too, in my own way. It's really hard to envision what your life would be like if you could take things to the next level. And oftentimes the fear of not knowing what that is, not being able to envision that. Right. It's the fear of the unknown. And often that can keep you at whatever level you are. I know for me, the thing that sort of broke me out of that mold was all the consulting I did, and specifically the computer consulting. I would go to people's homes and offices and fix their computers and set stuff up. And I had the opportunity, of course, to go and see people at their homes and get to know these people that were in a whole different class for me, right. Like, you know, many levels up from me. And it was like, wait a minute. Like, these people are just like me. Yeah. Okay. They. They are more successful on paper, with money, and, you know, all of that. Their houses are certainly bigger than mine. You know, any. Like, I could check off lots of boxes, but it was like, wait a minute. These people. I could do this. This is fine. This isn't. There's nothing scary about this. This is fine. And taking that and convincing yourself and again, programming your moist robot that this is an okay thing that, you know what it is. Remove that fear of the unknown. And it really does help Me succeed. I've seen it with employees, too. You know, you give somebody a raise and it sometimes can. Or a promotion even, and. And it can freak them out, you know, and it's like, no, no. Like, you got to get through that. Yeah, yeah, for sure.

For sure. And. And I think that, you know, one of those things are so important to tell yourself this over and over again. And, you know, one of the things I picked up from watching my kids play sports over the years, especially my son and lacrosse, is when they make a mistake, they handle it in a, I think, a great way because, you know, the coach, they have limited time, the game's there, and all this kind of stuff. So, you know, I kind of, you know, you have to master how you remember mistakes. And we ask all our guests to come on the show when or when they come on. We talk about mistakes as a learning tool. But what we don't do or what's important not to do is dwell on the mistakes. So if you're. If you're playing, you know, I watch my kid screw up and that comes off the field, and the coach is just, you know, destroying. Railing on him about. Yeah, about making this mistake. But the last thing the coach says, okay, you screwed up, now get back in, run the play, don't do it again, and move on. So it's a very quick. We going to hit it hard, and I'm going to just tear you up for making this mistake. But now, you know, forget about it, get back in, and I know you can do it. Run the play that you practice. Well, it's the same thing for all of us is, you know, think about the mistake you made and then build on it. Don't dwell on the negativity. Master how you remember it so that it doesn't become a negative thing. Because if you let it, it will creep up and remind you anytime you're faced with that same situation or a similar situation. And that's what you don't want. You want to be able to, oh, hey, I've learned from that previous mistake, so I'm not going to make that mistake again or a similar mistake.

You need to trust yourself to know about the mistake and not make it again instead of trusting yourself to know about the mistake and definitively making it again. Right. Because if it's the latter. Yeah, you're not going to try. You're not going to experiment again. That's where things get. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's. It's really important. And I can tell you from personal experience and I've. I've mentioned this on the show before, but many, many, many years ago, I made a tremendously expensive mistake and I lost just, you know, a million bucks. Okay, we'll just hit round numbers. It was a million bucks, and I had to go home and tell my wife, hey, I just. I. I gotta tell you something. We just lost a million dollars. And I.

It was a million dollars. You didn't have either. This wasn't.

No, no, I was making. To pay it back. I was. I. To start paying it back, I had to use credit cards. I mean, this was like. I had. I didn't have it. You know, I was just gonna.

Just so people understand, this wasn't like you had 10 million and down to nine.

Oh, no, no, no, no. Yeah, yeah.

You had a million and now you owed a million, right?

Yeah, yeah, yes. It's a good thing to point out. So I was like, wow, I'm. I'm as broke as I have ever been. A broker.

So negative.

And so, yeah, it's just brutal. And I. I remember telling myself, you know, in the beginning, I didn't even want to look in the mirror at myself because I felt like such an idiot. And it was very. Physically, I was like, wow, this is not good, you know, and so I made myself look in the mirror. And I used to. Every morning and I used to pound, you know, kind of pump on my chest, go, okay, you can get through this. This is not going to be the defining moment of your business career and all. And now looking back, you know, and this was like 20 years ago, that I think was the beginning of giving myself permission to learn from that massive mistake and move on and. And then flip it in the sense that it did become a defining moment of my business career because I got through it. I didn't declare bankruptcy. I found a way to generate the money to pay it back, and I paid it back in five years and just moved on. So you can get through what seems like insurmountable odds, but it's your mindset of how you think about it. I could easily thought, I have just screwed up. I have lost more money than I had made in the previous five years, and I'm going to be a failure forever. But you can't think like that. You have to cozy up to your subconscious and to, hey, we're going to, you know, I'm going to power through this and I need your help. How I think about it.

Yeah, well, you. To use other terminology, not your terminology, you found your rock bottom and we all have a different level, and I've hit different rock bottoms at different times. And I'll tell you, you know, as long as you can handle it like you did in a way where you say, okay, wait a minute, I need this now. I need to apply myself. We all know that we can apply ourselves way better than and way more than we typically do. Right. There's always more. And if we were stuck in the jungle and had no food, we'd figure it out. Right? Like the human, we are capable of a lot.

Yeah. You don't know what you're capable of until you have to do it. Right.

If you can hit a rock bottom in a way that isn't entirely unhealthy, it can actually be a really good thing because it forces you to say, okay, wait a minute, I gotta dig deep. I gotta do this. I gotta do all this stuff I knew I could do, but I wasn't doing. Here you go. That can be a very powerful thing that bounce off of whatever rock bottom is. And it doesn't need to be, you know, the worst version of rock bottom you can think of. It just needs to be one that scares you a little bit. It's quite frankly, what you're going for.

I was scared. Yeah, I was scared. And, you know, like, it took me about five years to pay it back, and then I couldn't really even talk about it for, like, another five years, you know, and. And getting comfortable with using it as a. As a positive story. It took me a long, long time, you know, so worked. You know, it worked out. It's great. And I. And I do use it, and I share it through really rough time, and I think it's powerful for them to hear it. And so that's why I share it here. So. Yeah. Yeah. So the next thing I had on my list of my notes is that, you know, remember when you're a little kid and you should say things like, hey, whatever you say, you know, I'm rubber and you're glue, you know, bounces off me and sticks to you. Well, there's a lot of truth to that. You know, you can't say that in a business meeting, but, you know, maybe depends on who you're with. But, I mean. But you got to take things with a grain of salt. People love to tear other people down, especially if you've had some success. And, you know, it's kind of a crummy part of the human condition that there are people out there that like to do that. Which it leads to me into Another part of, you know, or note that I have about getting rid of the vampires in your life and surrounding yourself with positive influences, people that want to tear you down, and you're going to use that, hey, you know, nothing you say is going to stick to me. You need to. To eliminate them from your life one way or another. Some people you can't, but you. It's really important, I think, to at least offset the negativity. Right.

You have to identify those vampires. And if you do need to be involved with them first, I would question whether you truly, like, ask that question of yourself. Do I really need this person in my life? Like, do they provide more value than they take away? Right. Is it a net positive thing?

That's.

That sometimes a hard question to ask, but you need to do that. But then if you do have to involve yourself with these people, with these vampires, limit your involvement. Compartmentalize it so that you extract the positive and walk away. Then come back. Extract the positive, walk away. Don't listen to all the negativity or whatever it is. But yeah, you got to identify and compartmentalize. And if you can identify and then compartmentalize to zero, that's often the best. But if you can't, that's fine. But identify, compartmentalize.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Like, there are people in my life that I truly love and have relationships with, but I will never talk to those particular people about my business because I know what's going to happen is it's going to be a negative experience because they just can't grasp, you know, and some of these folks are like the people that ask the question, like, what exactly do you do?

Right.

And. And so I love that. That concept of compartmentalizing doesn't mean you can't hang out with them, but maybe there's certain things that you can't talk with them about.

That's it. You just avoid those topics entirely. And I. I become the master of this. Yeah, I say that I've become the master. Most of. I see what I. I just did it to myself. I just said, I become the master. I know that I haven't. I know that sometime people get the best of me, but I tell myself that I'm the master at compartmentalizing them so that the next time I'm a little bit better with it.

That's right. No, I love that. Yeah, it is. It is an. And, you know, in my notes, too, I had. It's a 247 commitment to be, you know, friendly with your subconscious and to Develop this system of training and programming it to be on your side. It. And I didn't realize that I was doing this all the time until a number of years ago. And I, you know, I love music and talk about on the show, one of the things that's important to my business, my toolbox. Right. Some music. And I was listening to this Beck. This song by Beck, and it's called Loser, and I think it was one of his big hits.

Yeah, it was a big hit for him. Yeah.

Decade ago or something like that. And when I, the first time when I was in the car and I was trying to be driving to work or something, and I heard it and I could really hear the lyrics. And there's a, there's a, A section of lyrics where Beck says, I'm a loser, baby. And I found myself not being able to sing those lyrics. I couldn't do it. And I. So what I did is I just changed it. I just put the word your. I just changed, you know, And I was like, hey, that's really great. So when, to this day, when I hear that song, I sing it, you know, hey, you're a loser. You're a loser, baby. I mean, I am not. And I cannot think of myself in that. With that phrase, however surface it may be, you know? You know, singing into song. It. You're putting it in your head, I just can't do it. And I don't. And I don't suggest you do it either. Change things around you to fit your worldview and your interview of, of the person that you are and, and, you know, make it positive. Why not? Why wouldn't you do?

Whenever I, I sing the song, I'm a. I'm a loser, right? By, by, by the Beatles. Right. You know, as a. Oh, yeah. Lennon and McCartney tune. I'm pretty sure it was a Lennon tune, but. And I love the song. I mean it. Like, the melody is perfect, right? But I, I, as you were telling this story, it made me realize every time I sing that, especially that line, I'm thinking of myself as John Lennon. Like, you know, like it's, it's not me saying. It's him saying those words. So I didn't change the words, but I changed who's saying them. I like it, right? And it, like, I didn't even think about it until you said this just now. I was like, oh, yeah, yeah.

Whatever trick you use. I mean, I don't even like saying, Saying that line here on the show. It makes me cringe. I'm like, I can't say this about myself, you know, I just will not let it be, you know, not. Not let it happen. I just can't do it.

Yeah.

And. And I think the other thing, you know, it's really important and some folks have a problem with it, is you need to give yourself permission to really dream and visualize the way you really want your life to be, the way it should be, and the person you want to be. And you need to, again, surrounding yourself with people that are positive when you're around people that give you that positive feedback. Give yourself permission to talk about it. You know, right now, you know, is it transition in my life, and my kids are getting older, moving out, so we're talking about, hey, you know, we're going to stay here in California. Are we doing this kind of stuff? And so I talk big, you know, and I see my wife, Renee. Her eyes are like, what? We're not this kind of thing. But I always remind her, hey, this is a process. Going to be talking like this for about five years until we finally create and mold this future together, this next step of our lives that we really want. And how I get there is by visualizing dreaming and talking about the details and then lopping off the things that don't work.

And then it's okay to talk through something and then decide at the end. That's not actually the reality I want.

That's right. That's how you figure it out.

That's how I experience it by talking about it. It's like, oh, this is what it would be like, oh, actually, you know what? Now that I've gotten myself here, not so much. I'm going to take a couple steps back. Yeah, that's.

Yeah. And it's better, I think, to talk it through versus, like, in the case of us, like, hey, let's all move somewhere. And then all of a sudden you turn to go, wow, I don't really want to live here. Yeah, it's not so good. So, you know, know, think big, you know, put yourself visualize, you know, where you want to be, what you want to achieve, what your business is going to look like. You know, really, really put it out there, put it up on the wall, write it on the mirror. You know, there's a whole. If you search for, like, vision board, you know, online, there's millions of, you know, articles about creating this vision of you. That stuff really works. You know, it may sound, I think the reason it works.

I think the reason. Part of the reason it works is it. It Removes that fear of the unknown. Right. When I grow my business, like, well, I don't know what that looks like. That's scary. Well, pretend like you do know what it looks like. In fact, tell yourself what it looks like. And now it's not the unknown anymore. Now you're just moving towards a thing. Right. That's easy. For most of us, entrepreneurs are good at solving problems. Right. And if your problem is I don't know what to do next, that can be really scary. But if you just dream for a little bit and sort of paint a picture, then you can say, oh, so my problem is I'm here and I want to be there. Well, that's like. That's the easiest thing I can do all day, is just planning path.

Yeah. What would your business look like if it was twice as large, you know, 10 times as large? You know, I remember we had. Oh, man, his name is. He's gonna kill me. But the guy from sell your Mac on the show and, you know, he was making comments and he was like, oh, yeah, you know, we're gonna do 5 million. And I think, you know, within five years, we can do 50 million. Yeah, it's Brian. That's right, Brian. And. And I was like, that's awesome, man. You know, because that's what you want. Oh, yeah. We're gonna figure this out. And what's our business look like at 50 million? You know, it's not, you know, I mean, again, you're just. You're just tricking yourself. You're programming. This is what it is gonna be very easy or not. Maybe not easy, but I'm going to be very comfortable having a $50 million business.

Right.

You know, 10 times where I'm at right now. There is no fear talking about it and working towards it for a number of years, visualizing what it's going to look like, what the numbers are going to look like, how many employees we're going to have. That, that visualization and really gets you comfortable, you know, with achieving it. So when you really do get.

That's the trick, man, is that removal of fear. I never thought about it before until we did this, but it totally makes sense that that's why that stuff works. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's great. A couple more things on my list. You know, I really am a big fan of using audio to. To program yourself, whether it's inspiring or positive music or, you know, listening to, you know, whatever it is. We did a retreat, a company retreat with one of my businesses, a number of years ago and I had a speaker come and as part of the giveaway thing we did for all the employees, we had her record a customized tape for each person. It was tapes back then, so a long time ago, a cassette if you will, and each person filled out a little questionnaire what they wanted to achieve this kind of thing. And this woman recorded, you know, 15 minute audio with some music in the background, very soothing, telling that person, here's hey, you're going to achieve these things. This is what your life is going to look like. This is a. And the way she did it and it, the way it was very soothing, you know, it was awesome. And it again, you're just programming yourself. You're getting yourself comfortable with building wealth, with having, you know, yourself surrounded by people that love you and all these really great things. And that audio programming, you know, it really works. It certainly worked for me and I would highly recommend it.

Yeah, yeah. What a great idea. Oh, I like that, man. Yeah, that's good.

Yeah, it works great. So, you know, go back, look at the things you're achieving. Use a success list to make sure you recognize all your successes, even the small ones. You don't want to, you know, get your head full of how great you are, but you do want to remind yourself that you're achieving things, albeit even if they're small, on a daily basis. Start your day strong, you know, hopefully some of these tips and we'd love to hear your tips too. Feedbackusinessshow Co or businessshow co Facebook to come talk on the small business support group. Come chat with us. We'd love to hear from you guys.

Yeah, absolutely. And I'll remind you, come to BusinessShow code and sign up for our our mailer. It sends out every week with the the show notes for the show which include all the chapters with timestamps and links. All the things that we talk about in the show, like that programming your moist robot article that you've already forgotten about but you really wanted to to go and read. It's there, right? And if you sign up via email, it'll be there in your inbox too. So you won't even have to remember because you've already forgotten about it, right? Because we, we went through 10 other things since then. Go back and guess what? You know, we always tell you our job with our sponsors is to generate your interest and have you go check them out. Beyond that, it's between you and them, whether you buy or anything like that. Well, the links to all those sponsors are right there in the show notes, too, and you can have those in your email box. And that can really help you help us. It's a really easy thing for you to do to help us promote the show and really keep things going. So please do go to BusinessShow Co and sign up for that, and we'd really appreciate it. It's good for all of us.

Yeah, it is. Thanks for listening, everybody.

Thanks, folks. Keep living that charmed life. You can live that charmed life.