The Happiness Factor

What's up everybody? Today's episode of Behind the Mindset with Jared Goetz is a book talk between myself, Dean Pagano, and Jared Goetz, the author of Overnight Success. Today I talked with Jared about Chapter 1, Everything Is on the Menu for You. We talked about shattering your limiting beliefs, developing a mental muscle through hardships, forming your own opinions on life, and much more where that came from. So I hope you get some value out of this episode.

Enjoy.

Starting off here, Book Talk with Jared Goetz. Uh, obviously chapter 1, everything is on the menu for you. This is your first book, Overnight Success. Uh, my first question is Everything is on the menu for you. What does the name of the chapter mean?

So what it means is that although you may not see where you are right now because of your past and your history and things that have formed your current beliefs and like what you currently see the world as, it doesn't mean that you can't get to where you want to go. It just means that everything is available for you right now, but you may not be able to see it yet.

Alright, cool. So without really spoiling any of the book for us that haven't read the book, how would you kind of sum up this chapter in a couple of sentences?

So this chapter is all about outperforming your subconscious mind. So, you know, as children, as we grow up, we have different things that we go through that shape the way we see the world right now. And sometimes you can't always think your way into the right mindset. You actually have to throw yourself into situations until your performance actually supersedes your beliefs, which then raises your standards.

Awesome. And why did you choose to start off your book here, and this being your first book, why did you choose to start off with this chapter in particular?

Well, it's a really powerful concept. To be honest with you, this is one thing that I learned that really changed my life because I've tried things so many times. I've been an entrepreneur for about 10 years now. And I've had way more failures than I've had successes. And my reality was shaped by my childhood. So like, I never really truly believed that I would be able to be successful deep down inside, even though I really wanted it. There was always something saying, you know, maybe you're just not smart enough, or maybe, you know, you didn't come from successful parents. So like, you just don't have it in your DNA, or you don't have the help of your family. So for me, a huge lesson was that when I wasn't ready and I didn't know what to do, If I just threw myself into things, eventually something happened and it clicked and actually raised my set of beliefs. And that concept is really important to people who are trying to think themselves into the right mindset and just can't quite get there. Oftentimes, or almost all the time, you're not going to be able to think yourself into the right position. You have to just start doing until you outperform those beliefs that you currently have.

You mentioned at the very start of the book that a lot of people don't typically get what they want out of life because they don't believe that they can. Why do you think that is? Why do you think that most people have these limiting beliefs?

Alright, so the reason most people have limiting beliefs is because they haven't accomplished what they want to accomplish yet. Simple fact. Like, you may be wanting to dive into e-commerce and dropshipping, and you may see people like myself or other people have success, which, you know, makes you believe it's possible. But at a deeper subconscious level, for yourself, you don't truly believe it until you actually feel it or until you actually see it yourself. So the simple reason why people have these limiting beliefs that stop them from actually getting to where they want to go is because they haven't achieved what they want to achieve yet. Simple. Also, when you're, you know, your childhood shapes your beliefs, right? Like, unless you grew up with two parents that were extremely successful and they've done everything that you want to do, okay, then you know it's possible. But if you grew up in a household You want to be an entrepreneur, but like your dad was an accountant and your mom was a school teacher. Okay, you see other people as entrepreneurs, but at your childhood, at your core, you didn't grow up like that. So like maybe your subconscious doesn't think that it's possible for you.

So what advice do you have for individuals who are struggling to shatter their subconscious limitations and progress forward?

So my advice is pretty plain and simple. If you wanna shatter your subconscious beliefs, you have no choice but to take action until you actually do shatter those beliefs. So for example, when I first got into e-commerce, I saw other people having success, but I didn't truly believe it was possible for me because it wasn't working. But I was consistent and I had discipline. And I kept myself working on things every single day. And then when I got my first $100 day, it was like, oh, okay, making $100 a day is possible. And then when I had my first $1,000 a day, then it was like, okay, making $1,000 a day is possible. But I didn't believe making $10,000 a day was possible until I kept pushing myself to a point where I made $10,000 in a day. Now my beliefs are that I can make $10,000 a day, but I never thought I could make $50,000 in a day. And me 3 months ago never thought that I could even make $10,000 in a day. But I kept pushing myself, kept trying new things, kept hiring new people, kept going to events, kept learning, and I had a $50,000 day. And like, that was something unfathomable back in the day, you know, even just a few months prior. But as you achieve more, your standards get higher. And the only way to break those— you can't sit in bed or sit in your office and just think your way into having these, you know, these beliefs that actually push you forward. You can't just think your way into it. You actually need to just do and keep doing until you achieve those things that shift your mindset and your subconscious.

Nice. In this chapter, you talk a lot about growing up in New York and the hardships that you had to deal with at a young age. How do you think your childhood and these experiences helped shape the person you are today?

You know, I think everyone's background and growing up and childhood shape who they are today. For me, I grew up with a single mother in a one-bedroom apartment, and she oftentimes worked two jobs at a time, sometimes even three, to make enough money to make sure I was in a good school and that we had everything we needed and I was able to play sports. But for me, I knew I needed to do something different. I needed to earn money. I needed to make money because I would need to support myself. I wanted to do things I saw other people doing. I didn't know how I was going to make money. Not having my father around for a big portion of my childhood, I wasn't shaped into, you know, following a role model necessarily. In fact, you know, growing up with just a single mother and an only child, like, we had a lot of conflict. So nobody was really my role model. I was kind of seeing the world on my own terms and coming up with my own ideas and visions for what the world's really about. So it kind of actually gave me— there was a lot of times where I could have went off track and really screwed up my life. But I just kept moving along and things kept working out. And now I've been able to shape my own perspective on the world as opposed to following in someone else's footsteps. A lot of people that you know, maybe their dad is an insurance broker and they really look up to their dad, so they become an insurance broker. Nothing's wrong with that, but for me personally, I didn't have anyone who I was following in their footsteps, so I kind of made my own path.

It seems like from losing everything to building back up to where you're at, there were a lot of opportunities that you pursued. I'm sure at the same time you passed up on a lot of opportunities, so I just want to get your take on opportunity costs and being able to stay focused on the big picture despite a lot of opportunities coming your way, just choosing and selecting the right ones.

Yeah, as you gain more success and more notoriety, inevitably more and more people want to do things with you. You know, you check my Instagram DMs now, I get at least 20 people a day that wanna do something with me. And back before I had achieved, you know, the level of success I have achieved now, like some of those things may have been appealing. In fact, I actually moved from Los Angeles to South Florida to get away from all the noise because I know that if I'm scattered and I'm working on all these different things, None of them are gonna— it's hard to build a business to a level of success you wanna get to. It's hard. And it's almost impossible if you're scattered. Now, when you have resources and you have an enterprise and you have, you know, 50+ employees and you wanna build more verticals, yes, that's possible. But when you're first getting started, you can't be business partners in 5 different things because you just need to focus so much attention on each individual thing that you don't have the capacity to do that. So for people just starting out, I definitely recommend like honing in on one thing that you're doing and not getting the shiny object syndrome. Now, especially these days, it's hard because there's so many people flaunting things online, on Instagram, like, oh my God, this opportunity looks great, let me jump ship and do this one. But if you don't see things through, you're never going to achieve what you need to achieve to break those limiting beliefs that you have. So for me, I try to stay focused on what I'm doing. I moved to where I'm at so I can do that, uh, and I'm gonna ride out where I'm at until a point where I can just continue to invest in other things as opposed to just build things myself.

So even at your lowest points throughout your journey, you were able to strengthen your mindset and turn many of those obstacles into advantages to help excel your career. Now I've heard you refer to this a lot in our other YouTube videos and other talks, as quote, developing a muscle when you go through these hardships. So what's the process like and how can somebody flip the switch to turn hardships and obstacles into their advantage?

Well, I don't think that there's necessarily a switch that you flip to turn it into an advantage. I think that inevitably hardships are an advantage. At the time they don't feel like one. They actually feel like, you know, I have problems that I can't— like I've been at a point in my life where I thought like I could never come back from it. I had no money. I was in debt and I got slapped with a $250,000 lawsuit and I couldn't even afford a lawyer. If you asked me back then, like, are you gonna make it out of this? I would tell you no, I'm probably gonna have to file bankruptcy and my confidence is lost and I don't think I'll ever make it. But I did keep, you know, trying to move forward and trying new things and eventually I did get past that. And looking back, that situation formed a muscle in my mind that makes problems not look that bad anymore. It's almost like working out. If you go to the gym and you can bench press 135 pounds and you work out for 6 months and you can bench press 225 pounds, 135 pounds doesn't feel like a lot anymore, right? Because you've built up that muscle. It's the same thing. The more problems you go through and the more you solve, the more of a muscle you have toward the stress and fear that those problems cause. On top of just the muscle against that, you're actually building your confidence levels while in the process because you're confident that you can get past obstacles. So you have less effect from fear and stress, and you also have a higher confidence, so you can blow past problems very easily.

Okay, so in Chapter 1, you talk about a fictional book called The Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman, and you recognize this book specifically and mention that you can relate a lot to the main character. So after you read this book, why did you resonate with it so much and how did this shift your mindset moving forward?

Yeah, so when I kind of hit rock bottom, I moved back to Long Island to live with my mom for like a few weeks while I figured out what I was doing. And I was simultaneously reading this book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior. It's a fiction book and it's about a guy who is like really good at his sport in high school and, you know, an Olympic-level competitor, and he thought he had everything figured out. He went to school at Berkeley and he, you know, got all the beautiful girls, and he thought he had all of life figured out. But deep down inside, he wasn't happy and he wasn't fulfilled. And he met this man that worked at the gas station, and he looked down at this man. But in due time, this man actually became his mentor and talked about meditation and how to make yourself feel better and feel happy. And it kind of reminded me of myself because, like, when I was 21 and I had success, I thought I knew everything. I thought I had everything figured out. But then I realized when the money and the notoriety went away, I was nowhere near fulfilled and I felt horrible about myself. It made me realize what was most important was inner happiness and feeling good about myself. So I was able to relate to that. It made me start focusing much more on myself, on exercising, meditating, getting my mind right, and focusing on being the best version of myself rather than focusing on what I need to accomplish. And what I learned is that in turn, You actually accomplish much more by being the best version of yourself.

Cool. Okay.

Yeah.

So, so I want to, I want to end all the book talks with a quote from each chapter.

Okay.

And basically I'm going to read you a quote from the chapter and you just have to, to kind of explain it in more detail. So in chapter 1, you said, quote, massive personal growth happens when your internal world matches your external world. External world.

What do you mean by that? So the overarching theme of this chapter is how to outperform your subconscious mind. So when your external world matches your internal world, that's when confidence is born. That's when, you know, what you've always visualized that you wanted and would like want your life to look like actually matches what your life looks like now. Then you start to build up a confidence that you've never had before because you became the person you wanted to become. And that creates momentum. And with momentum, you continue to break barriers, you continue to break your limiting beliefs that you still have, and you start to perform at a higher level than ever before. Awesome.

What's up guys? I just want to say, if you made it this far, thank you so much for listening. If you received any value from what you just heard, please, please, please, I can't stress this enough, share this with your friends, family, and your team, and make sure to tune into the next podcast. See you there.