Ep.39-Coaching Call with Alex Smith "The Universe Rewards The Action Step"

This is the You Winning Life podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, LMFT 🎗️ and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

One of the most difficult parts of being a therapist and coach is that it's hard for people to see exactly what I do, especially since confidentiality is the main part of my job. So I reached out to people in my social network and put out an ad that said I will trade free coaching sessions that aren't of clinical nature and on topics that they are willing to be open about to the public so I can use it for this podcast. I got hit up by a ton of people, but I hand-selected a few that I thought would allow me to bring the most value for them and for you, the listener. I'm a believer that sometimes a person only needs one powerful conversation to realign them with where they need to be heading. And this was my hope with Alex. He's not only an amazing person, but has a ton of resilience. I focused on how he can make his life have more simplicity, probability, and leverage while trying to create his new podcast. I found that he kept getting caught up in his story and trying to teach me and tell me lots of stories. And at the 13-minute mark, his internet cut out for a second, which gave me the ability to start challenging his thinking about what he really wanted and needed from this conversation. Because of that technical glitch. And I realized that so many of us do this so we can become more relatable. We try to connect deeper with people or to just justify our own value to others through stories and experiences. I myself, I'm a storyteller by nature and feel like people, that people won't like me unless they get to know me and know my entire backstory. But it took me till the 16-minute mark to really help him get this idea. My fear was that I was going to sound like a total a-hole to him by stopping him mid-story, but good therapy and coaching isn't about us learning your entire history over multiple sessions before we can help you move forward. I am more concerned with patterns of what one believes about what they do than to hear about a whole narrative and a whole justification for why they're stuck doing what they do. In other words, the problem isn't the problem. It's what you believe about the problem. That's the problem. For him, it was the, "I can't take the next step in life till I have it all figured out," which was keeping him stuck and not being able to do anything about it for next steps. My biggest challenge came when I asked him if he was having fun trying to create his podcast, and he responded, Well, I like doing all the stuff for it. For which I said, that sounds very different than actually loving it. And at the 31-minute and 45-second mark, he starts to get some deeper insight into how his patterns are really holding him back and owns his paralysis by analysis process. I also found that he has so much great wisdom that he's learned, but wasn't moving it from theory to practice, from his analytical brain to a more positive emotional experience. If you stick it out to the end of the episode, you will be able to hear this massive shift in his mindset. Okay.

Yeah, and we'll go from there. So just give me a quick 2-3 minute background since we really don't know each other that well, right? So, you know, where are you coming from? What are you doing? What's just like, where are you at now in life? And what's the reason for why a podcast has become your highest priority for yourself? Awesome.

Yeah, well, thanks for giving me some time. So my name is Alex Smith. A lot of people A lot of people make fun of me because they think I'm the quarterback, but I'm not. He gets advice from me, I think, sometimes. We'll see. But I happen to be from the D.C. area, so my parents live in Rockville, Maryland. I grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, so I'm a Nebraska Cornhuskers fan. I'm also a Washington Redskins fan, and I live in Florida right now with my wife. We've lived here for 5 and a half years. We live outside of Tampa in Palm Harbor. Florida. We moved, we were, I don't know if we'll be Damn Yankees quite yet, but we moved from the north to the south, from Philly. We lived for 10 years, so she's a devout, devout Eagles fan. I don't know how, if I could put that in capital letters enough. I think they all are. So I've been to many more Eagles games than Redskins games, let's say. But yeah, I mean, a lot's happened to me over the last couple years. I did the group, the BYLR group, about a year and a half ago, and I don't even know how I found Jesse. I really don't. I think I probably— someone probably liked something on Instagram, and I was just sitting there watching a video, and I want to say I watched it on New Year's Eve. My wife had gone to bed, I was just still up, and I was like just surfing the web, and I found this thing and I was like, "Wow." I really want— it was like we all do around New Year's resolutions, "I want to really make this an awesome year." But then, I wasn't a huge workout person. I wasn't a huge wellness, nutrition, any of that stuff. I wouldn't say I was completely lazy, but I just— that wasn't my thing. That wasn't my thing, but I liked his message in that it wasn't just for people that were— that was their thing. It was not for just the insane person to, you know, want to really like change their life and work out and totally just transform themselves. It was really for everyone to, I think, live their full potential. That's what he keeps on saying is that we all— his biggest fear is just living up to his full— not living up to his full potential. And I'm like, "Yeah, I can get into this." And then, he was just so real. He was him. It was him talking, doing this himself, devoting his time, responding to people, hundreds of people on Instagram. I mean, he's probably one of the first quote-unquote celebrities that would respond to me, even if it was something small. I'm like, "Is this him? Is it a bot?" But I think it's really him. I think that really kind of helped me. I was at a point in time where I was, you know, just kind of unsure where my career was headed. I was— I've been at a company for 7 and a half years in the HR tech space. I do— I've been doing sales ever since college in all sorts of different types of different positions, you name it. My first job out of college was door-to-door sales, commission sales, selling coupon cards. For basically, you know, it was not a pyramid scheme, but it was pyramid-like, let's say. It wasn't totally illegal. Yeah.

The beautiful thing about that is if you can do door-to-door sales, yeah, you can sell anything in the world.

Yeah, no, I, I believe that. Um, you know, I, I did, uh, see the wrong way, in my opinion, to sell things. And I think it's good when you learn eventually the wrong way to do something, you know, what is the right way. But I do say that did teach me a lot about people, human behavior. I think it probably taught me the most about work ethic and just, just, you know, continuing to push forward after a sea of no in your face. And, and you're not— why are you doing this? Because I'm not really making much money. I probably— there was days I lost money. With gas and all this stuff. So, in any case, we can talk a lot about that, but I mean, I've done that, I've been in call centers, I've worked in the newspaper industry actually. That was kind of my first, just biggest step in my career to move into the path that I was taking. I was in advertising sales, so I sold recruitment advertising to HR people and executives. So, my goal was to help companies hire the best people, connect with the right people, and I did that through selling things like job postings and resume access. We were a newspaper that partnered with Monster, and so it was really successful. I mean, I did really, really well, so well that I was one of the best reps for the partnerships nationwide, and they asked me to come over and run newspaper partnerships for them with a team of about 8 or 9 other people like me to jump over on that side of business. So I did that for the last 7 and a half years and then, it was the best job, still the best job I've ever had, smartest people, just coolest things you got to do, travel to awesome places. I mean, some of my partners were Honolulu Star-Advertiser in Hawaii, Puerto Rico, El Nuevo Día in Puerto Rico, a paper. So, you got to go to some awesome places. You got to, it wasn't just sales. You got to, yes, though I was an individual contributor, so I had a quota and goals that I had to hit, but I was also working, I was training, I was working with management, trying to understand how our business impacts the overall business. So you learn just working with executives, you learn working marketing, running events, you learn negotiation, you learn all sorts of different things. It was an awesome experience. And it's a challenging business for that sector. It's no secret, I mean, Monster— I worked for the company that literally invented an industry, a technology. I mean, it's a funny story. The CEO, and we would tell it all the time. I don't know how much of it is legend or truth to this, but the story goes that he started the company on a napkin. I mean, he worked for an ad agency. At the time, you didn't put jobs online. You only had the newspaper, and so you just— if you wanted to hire someone, you had one place to go, your local newspaper. And he had a lot of clients that were hiring these really technical software engineers, and this is before Google even. Or AOL, you know, even the infancy of the internet. So he's like, what if we just put jobs online, like a list, you know? And people are like, that's, that's, that would be stupid. Cause the internet was like really slow back then. And then he just had this dream where, you know, the, the, these jobs would have a list online. And he woke up, went to a coffee store and, you know, kind of drew out the framework of the site. And then he drew this, he, he, he had this dream of a monster. Looked like— he had a dream that this would— if this happened, this would be a monster of an idea. And he drew out in his head this vision of this monster, this logo, and that's what he drew, and that became the logo of the company. And in the beginning, it was a total mess. I mean, the site loaded— he was like, I'm gonna put this logo on the site, it has to be there. They're like, that's gonna cause the site to crash and maybe load— like, a job would load in 30 minutes, and no one's gonna— he's like, it has to be there. So they did it, and it was really slow, but it slowly caught on, and then an ad agency, a very famous one, TMP, caught on to it, and it just kind of, it really just took off, and he was helping some of his, he knew that he couldn't service his software engineering clients if he didn't have something different, so he created this huge idea. His name was Jeff Taylor, and he, It was awesome. So when you create an industry, then you get all these people that come after you. Now I think there's 30,000 job sites, and it's just a very crowded space, and it's a challenge to innovate in that space. But I still love HR tech, and I love sales. So, but in, yeah, 925, over the last couple years, I mean, Monster was acquired about a year or two ago. We've had multiple CEOs, a lot of change. I'm fine with change. But yeah, the company kind of cut its way to growth and profitability, and they've had a couple rounds of layoffs. And despite being 130% to my goal, I closed one of the largest sales of our team's history last year, had an awesome year. I was laid off on 9/25 of last year. So wild.

So right now, what's coming in for you that you want to put out into the world? Because the thing that I want to focus on you for the next little bit, or with you on the next little bit, is, right, I know that what you reached out to me about was about this podcast idea.

Yeah.

And I know the podcast idea is only a bit about sharing ourselves and what's important to us with the world, right?

Yeah.

And I'm wondering if maybe I'm supposed to be— and you can tell me this— if I'm supposed to be helping you in a different way than just about the podcast, because it sounds to me like you said in the message that we talked about, is all I need to do is just press record. So I have all these things set up, but I haven't yet done what I need to do to now gather all the data, i.e., interviews and all these things, and then put it out into the world, correct? Is that kind of where you're stuck in that one process?

Uh, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm— I've put a framework together and I'm kind of at the final execution. So it's kind of like every day I'm just trying to do little things to move this, this forward. Um, but this isn't the sole thing I'm focused on. Obviously I'm in a job search, so I have interviews set up. So I am, I am in the throngs of that at the moment. So that's part of what's kind of, um, you know, I would say I I guess you could say slowing it up, but yeah, I mean, no, I'm excited about— I have interviews scheduled and I'm in the process of that, and so that's been going forward. And so, this is something I'm going on the side, and I'm not doing this for personal or profit or anything like that. So, when you do say, like, what it is about, what you want to put out into the world, and so, What I've been really curious about and just kind of thinking a lot about, and so when I found myself just thinking a lot about this, I started writing about it and then just listening to different things. I read this book called To Sell Is Human by Dan Pink. He's an author, he's a social scientist, and he really kind of gathers a lot of information from behavioral scientists and social scientists. This. And it was based on the premise that essentially, you know, something like, you know, 1 out of every 9 people in the workforce today is in sales, their title, where they're actually trying to convince someone to buy something for a profit. And that's in their job description. But the rest of us are doing what he called moving others, or non-sales selling, which is Persuading, Convincing, or Influencing Others. And so I started, you know, when I first read the book, I was, I mean, I was really engaged with it, but then the months, even, I mean, I probably read it 2 years ago, but what I start noticing more, because I have more time to kind of like focus on this stuff, is what I think we all do really, really well is these little human interactions or connections where we are just being human, being ourselves. So it's through kindness, through trust, generosity, love.

What I want to help you accomplish specifically is— I have no clue. In other words, you're very much like me, and this is what I appreciate about why, when I'm hearing you, why I why I put a pause to what you were saying is that I don't need to know all this in order to help you.

Yeah, no, absolutely. I'm looking for you to get as much information, I guess, as you can from me. Right. You know, so I—

Well, so what do you want to know in one— what is it that you, in the next 20, 30 minutes, that if I can help you with anything in the world, that will get you along the way to where you truly deeply need to be. Because like I said a few minutes ago, I don't really think this is about the podcast. I think this might be about something bigger. Because it sounds to me with everything, you're able to close any deal, any sale you want, and you have proven expertise in that. But it sounds to me like you haven't been able to prove the sell to yourself, and you haven't sold yourself on you. And you're telling me a big backstory about Jeff Taylor. For 10 minutes, and you're telling me a great story about this book, but you're not telling me about what you want to do. So you're piggybacking, and maybe this is the mindset that I want you to start shifting with, at least, and correct me if I'm wrong, you don't need to rest on anybody else's laurels anymore.

Yeah, yeah, I would definitely agree with that. I mean, my past definitely doesn't predict my future. Absolutely not. I think what I want is really to tell stories, and I'm doing this because I believe, I really, truly, deeply believe that the more ways that we can tap into what makes us us and be, recognize some of those things, that helps, uh, in, in some of our human connections. And I want to try to help others in that. So I guess my, my thing from you is, um, I, I like to bounce ideas off of people. So I, I like to get your take on, on, on this idea. And forget taking the podcast off of the table completely. I, I, I'm— I have this idea, and maybe like you said, the I need to focus on maybe kind of framing it simple and understanding, like you said, selling yourself on it. I know that I'm curious about it. I know that I'm thinking about it. I know that I'm interested in it. And it's not for me. I want to do it to help others and show why it's important, why I believe it's important., so that others can see that as well. So maybe that's— Yeah.

So where along—

Start to it. Are you, you know, again, and it's funny because I've asked the question 3 times and you still haven't given me an answer.

Ask it again, I'm sorry, I didn't—

Okay, no, and I think this is part of the process, which I love doing, is I'm a very big communications and pattern person. My job is to help interrupt patterns. And the reason why, it's funny 'cause the phone line cut out, the video cut out for a second, and I think it cut out universally, I think the universe, answer, help me solve that problem, because I don't want to interrupt you. You're a nice guy, you have so much to say. Like, you and I are very similar, we're both storytellers, but when we're doing what we need to do, we don't have time to fill everybody in on the background to close a deal. We want to make a connection, we want to offer value, but they don't need to know everything we know in order to want to buy into us. And I feel like you might have a little bit of, and obviously it's part of the process of us getting to know each other, But what I really— and again, as I just asked the question, and I do this with my therapy clients, and I start off by saying, "I don't need to know everything about what's going on. I just want to know where do you want to be? And don't tell me where you want to be by where you're stuck and what you don't want anymore." So I'm going to very, very, very specifically and very clearly, of anything in the world that I can help you with, that I can help you either get unstuck from, get out of your own way, strategize, but if I can help you create a miracle right now for you, what miracle would that be?

I mean, I think that's a broad and leading question, and, and I don't think anybody knows. Um, if I asked you the same, I mean, that the definition of someone's miracle— well, it would be a, a couple people, and I don't think people know that. I, I I honestly, um, to answer that question, I, I think it's what could you do? Um, I don't really know without getting to know each other more and talking it out. Okay. Um, I— the— my, my first direct answer to that would be, um, where will I— where do I want to be? I mean, I obviously in the next few weeks will be accepting a new opportunity. I'm looking at interviews. I have interviews now, and that's what my next step will be. Why I really— why I led with the podcast idea is because, you know, you framed it by saying, "What are you struggling with?" So, this is something in my life I'm struggling to launch. I mean, that's really just the direct answer to it. I mean, are there other things that, you know, I struggle with? Like, sure. I mean, I'm running a— I'm doing all sorts of different things, but that's, like you said, I don't— you don't need to know all that. I'm specifically struggling with pressing record and getting all the information together. I have it. I have the roadmap. I have what I want to do. I have what I want to title it. I have the summary. I have the guests. I have the hosting service and the equipment that I want to buy. And I have all that thing. And I just have been doing this for the last, let's say, 3 and 3 months, and I've been doing it in stages of let's just keep one foot in front of the other to move this forward.

So are you a person who doesn't do anything and doesn't move forward in life until all the pieces are in place for you?

Hmm.

Are you not a ready aim person?

Yeah, Jesse's like a very, you know, ready aim fire, ready fire aim.

Right, and the story behind my podcast, I had none of that figured out. I started reaching out to people and say, hey, I would love to have you on my podcast. Here's how I'm doing it. I didn't have my mic. I ordered an entry-level microphone that goes into my computer. I was gonna use it like we're doing today. I didn't know if I was definitive on a name. I didn't know who was gonna be hosting it. I didn't know who was gonna be editing it. And I stockpiled a bunch of episodes. And then, when I found my guy, then I had the graphic art done, then had everything else, and I just offloaded it. I was just responsible for this, setting up the time, making sure the interview happened, downloading it, putting it into a Dropbox file, and sending it to my producer who does everything else for me, puts it back into the files.

Yeah.

Audio, video, social media clips, and Instagram pages. So I'm wondering, based on what I'm hearing, have you created a structure in your mind where unless all the boxes are checked off, I can't take the next step, and therefore you get frozen or you get stuck or you get delayed And is this also, what I'm really curious about, is where else does this show up in your life?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know where, I mean, the first question is yes. I mean, this is the first, I mean, that's scary, like, you know, just kind of doing something completely new.

What's scary about it?

I mean, what's scary about launching your first podcast? Why did you, you know, do all those things, you know, the same way? I mean, what's scary about it is, It's, I don't know things, I'm learning. What's scary about it is, you know, nobody's forcing me to do this, I'm doing it myself. I mean, I'm the one motivating myself. So, if I'm doing all this work and it doesn't actually come to fruition, man, that's like really, you know, like, I don't know what the word is, like disappointing to myself, like not to anyone else. Like, I don't have, I'm not doing this I'm not doing this for a job, I'm not doing this for a promotion. I'm only disappointing myself if I don't do this. So, yeah, I mean, there's a— I don't know if I really had to think about different things scaring about it, but yeah, I mean, I feel like they all have to be in place. But then, I'm also like, you know what? It doesn't have to be perfect. It really doesn't. I know Jessie's like, "It has to, you know, do everything to make it perfect. It has to be perfect." I kind of, you know, see where he's going with that, but I disagree in that you just have to, you know, you just have to go. You just have to start and get on the other side of the wall, and then you can figure out where, where else. But I mean, right now I'm still on the other side, so I'm just looking for a little handle in, in the door or whatever to kind of pull that thing open, you know. Two questions for you.

Number one, did you plan on doing this to have fun with it? Yes or no?

Yeah.

Okay, question 1A: are you having fun in this process, or is it giving you more of a headache and stress?

Um, I am having fun. I like, you know, thinking of titles. I like writing the summary. Like, I like thinking of guests. I like when I sit down and do it. So no, it's not—

I don't feel like, oh, I gotta do I gotta go.

But the logistics, you know, I feel like the logistical— yeah, I mean, I am, I, I do like, I, I, I do like the process of doing it, you know.

But are you having fun?

I love— am I having fun with it? Um, you know, I, I guess probably not as much. I'm not trying to find ways to have fun with it. That's probably a good question to ask, like, do I like it? Yeah. Am I having Fun with it is a different question because it's like, you know, how can I make this awesome? You know, how can I create— I was thinking of today, you know, writing fun emails, you know, um, to, to guests of what I would ask them to be on. Like, how do I, how do I make it fun? You know, that's a really good question because I don't think I've thought of that. I just thought, well, I'm curious about this and I don't not like it. I don't— I'm not stressed when I have to devote time to this. So if I was, I'd be like, if I was stressing about the process, then I'd be, yeah, this is why am I doing this?

I'm hearing, right? So because you're, because again, you're going back into analytical brain. The analytical brain is non-emotional.

Yeah.

No, if you're doing a passion project like this in your life, what I'm thinking especially is that why would you, right? I think part of the next step of why you're not pulling the trigger on actually doing it is because that part It's not fun. And this should be a fun, easy, exciting— like the people that I'm interviewing, like, you asked me like, what's my fear? What was I afraid of? I think my biggest fear factor was, is that is no one gonna listen to it? But then I realized it's just great marketing for my numbers. When someone Googles me, they'll see that I have, as a therapist and as a business coach, that they'll see that I have actually some other platform. So I don't care about my numbers, and because of that, my numbers are inconsequential. Even more so, I'm having fun because I get to meet people like you, and I get to meet people like Howard Behar, who is the former international president of Starbucks, and I get to meet all these people that are coming onto my podcast. Why would they come on mine, right? I'm having fun meeting people that would never have been in my wheelhouse in the first place. I don't, I sometimes don't prep my episode until 15, most of the time, 99% of the time, I don't have my questions until 15, 20 minutes before the episode starts. I don't know what I'm gonna ask them unless I've already read their book and I'm already a huge major fan, but if it's someone, like an interview I did the other day, I literally didn't do anything but read their bio and their one sheet and went from that, and the conversation evolved organically. I feel like in order for it to be a much more organic instead of a question, answer, question, answer, where it's just very terse, I want it to be playful and organic and very narrative and very emotional what's going to come up, we don't create space for whatever's going to come up if it's rigid and rote. So that's thought number 1. Thought number 2, I want to go back to something you said a few minutes ago, and I think this is a very key thing that I wonder again if it's showing up in multiple places in your life. And you said, "There's so much I don't know about how to do this, about how to put it out there. What do I need?" Blah, blah, blah. My thought to you and my challenge to you is how much do you freaking think you need to know in order to put out a damn podcast?

I know, you don't. You don't need to know anything.

You let it become this big enigma of what it is, this vacuum of I need to know every single thing and I need to know hashtags and I need to know this and I need to know, wait, literally, what you probably already know is probably too much, which again goes back to why it's not fun for you.

Right?

And why I'm a big fan of leveraging it out to somebody else to do whatever you don't have to do, whatever you don't have to worry about. Let them take care of it for the couple hundred bucks a month when you can during that time, and obviously right when you get a job it's gonna be less of a financial burden, but if your value is worth X amount of dollars per hour, then don't do the busy work, don't do your editing, don't do your thing, leverage that out. I no longer do my laundry for the $25 or $30 a month, literally, for the $35, $40 a month it costs me to the two times I do my bulk laundry every two weeks, it costs me $40.

You're happier.

Forget the happier, it's two hours in my condo to do, right? An hour and a half to do my laundry, put in folding in it, put whatever it is. I drop it off, I pick it up, it's already folded, I put it into my drawer for $40 a month. If I saw someone for 30 minutes in my session, if I did a 15-minute consult, paid consult, I'm already making— I'm making $20 more in that 15 minutes than I am to do my laundry in 2 hours. So I leverage that out when it's a higher value, lower value activity. So a lot of the stuff that people think, and this is what I would say to anybody who's listening who's thinking about starting a podcast, and I saw this for sure, so this is literally fact. When I went to the Podcast Movement Conference this summer, I can tell you that 90% of the people there are editing their own episodes, both audio and video, and they spend on average 2 to 8 hours per audio. Forget the video, forget the video. And they're spending too much money on equipment, and they're spending too much money on all these things that they don't need, right? It's like going and becoming a cyclist, and instead of getting an entry-level $800 road bike with maybe a carbon fork with an aluminum body.

5 grand.

Getting a 5 grand thing and they're getting the Di2 shifters that are electronic and they're spending 5 grand on that. And you don't need it. It's negligible and you're never gonna be, you're gonna ride the same distance and the same speed because you're gonna bonk and you're not gonna have the right nutrition, you're not gonna have the right energy because you don't get there yet. Keep it simple. And the fact that you're not having fun because you didn't say definitively yes right off the bat. And I'm a big believer. That unless it's an absolute complete yes, it's a no. It's very binary. Unless it's an absolute complete yes, it's automatically a no. And I think that applies for when you're job interviewing. I think that applies in relationships. I think that applies with friends. I think that applies in financial decisions. I think, right? And I go back always with my clients to core values. But what I'm wondering is this idea that if I had you write this out as a homework assignment, I would I'm going to say to you, my friend Alex, you need to write a bullet-pointed list of everything you think you don't know yet that you need to know in order to put out episode 1 of your podcast. And if it has more than 1 bullet point, you're completely missing the point. What I'm doing with you right now can just be downloaded and literally just put and transfer it into any online platform in the next 45 minutes, and an episode is out into the world. And it's that simple, right? But if you have to think about this and that, and marketing and traffic and hashtags, and the perfect show notes, there's no relevancy, right? It should be good, it shouldn't be a train wreck. But my guess is, and my challenge to you, and maybe if this is the one thing that this conversation was about, is that I want to see for you, and I really want you to take this evaluation and not think about it, let it marinate, but over the next week, see where you're doing this in other aspects of your life that you haven't been realizing it. Unless all the pieces of the puzzle are there, unless I know everything about this, I'm not going to go all in, unless I know everything about this, whatever it may be, I'm not going to go take that next step, and you're now getting completely what we would call paralyzed will. Stuck. Unless I'm an expert yet at knowing it, unless I read every single book and I can quote the author in all of their studies, I'm not going to go ahead.

Yeah, no, I think it's great, great advice, obviously. You know, I think a lot of times— this is probably one of— I mean, if I really had to think about the rest of my life, I'm somebody that if given the choice, my wife and I are on vacation and we don't know directions, I'm going to just go ahead and ask someone and go ahead and do it. Ah, no, let's figure it out, I can do it. I'm like, why? It's right there, who cares? Or let's just go and figure it out, you know? Let's just drive and we'll figure it out. I'm very much like that. She might say, "Well, no, you don't want to waste time just going and just driving down the road if you have just a little bit of doubt. You want to be confident in where— with whatever you do." So, with what you're saying, it makes a ton of sense. Paralysis by analysis, or whatever, analysis by paralysis is a real thing. I learn the most when I just am trying. That's learning, like you're just trying and then you're messing up and you will. And I think every great— every podcast, any— anything, I mean, doing anything in life, anyone great messed up a million times and are still messing up, the best of the best. Screw crap up all the time. And I see—

That's great in theory.

Yeah.

That's great in theory, but if you truly believe that 100% in your integrity, in your heart and soul, you would already have a podcast episode out.

I know, I know, you're right. I mean, I say it when I say it. Yeah, you're right. You need to believe it in your heart and your soul because I mean, yeah, you're right. It would be started, it would be like, I'd have already a couple episodes out where the audio is not great and I like, you know, screwed up a little bit. I mean, so you have to internally believe it, heart and mind.

Wait, who has to internally?

Me. Yeah, yeah, you, the person.

I have.

Right, right, right. So, right, and I really want you to get this, because I think this is so salient, and I think this ties everything together for you, is that again, like, as I start off, right, you gave me all these narratives, and you gave me all these stories about all these people who are doing it and successful, right, and these wonderful— but you yourself, right? I don't care about Jeff Taylor, I don't care about Jason Wasser.

No, no, you're right, I was kidding. I do get off on a tangent, I get off on a tangent. It's a weakness.

And so, why, again, like I said, I'm a huge storyteller, and I even have this process in my mind that no one can really know me unless they know the story about how I got here, 'cause it's about that.

Yeah, no, they don't care.

What do I have to prove? But really, what I'm thinking for you in the most simplistic way, is I think that there's a lot of difference between macro and micro for you, between meta and practice. And I think that my challenge to you is to just do and just put it out there. And in fact, what I'm going to do is to challenge you that between now and next week, is to literally put out an episode. Interview a person. I don't care if it's someone that's on your list already or not. It could be a complete practice episode. It could be you talking if you're not gonna be interviewing anybody. It could be about you going through this process of what it was like to put out an episode. Your psychological emotional process, the fear behind it, the I don't, right, the aha moment that you might be having hopefully during this conversation and talking about that. But I'm going to challenge you that within now and next week, on Thursday, you're going to have an episode completed. I don't care about the editing. I don't care about having your graphics. I don't care about your intro outro. I don't care about any— I want you to have, whether it's with you alone or whether you're interviewing someone else, I want that in my inbox by next Thursday. And I'm gonna push some buttons with that. Otherwise, yeah, right? It's really uncomfortable. So I think that otherwise we're gonna talk and talk and talk, and you might have a conversation with somebody else, and then another conversation with somebody else, until you get the exact— and that goes back to the question of how much do I truly need to know, and how much do I actually not know about running a good podcast? And I'm just saying push record.

No, that's good. Sometimes, it's not enough to challenge yourself because I do feel like I push myself and, you know, you— like I'm challenging myself 2 weeks. I connected to you because you said you ran a half marathon. I listened to your episode. So, I'm doing my first 15K. I'm training, I'm running like I did— I did 7.3 miles yesterday. I did 6 on Monday, working up. I've been training for the last 6 months. It's good to challenge yourself, but really, when the real change happens is when you're accountable to someone or someone else. I never want to seek people out to do that because I'm like, "I can do it myself. I can always do it myself.

And you can. And it's an enhancement of that because otherwise you're stuck in an undelayed timeline, right? And I think why the most successful people are the most successful. What's the UFC boxer? The Irish?

Conor McGregor?

Conor McGregor. Do you know who he just hired as a coach before this last fight?

No, I didn't.

Tony Robbins.

Oh yeah, yeah, oh no crap. Makes sense. Serena has them and yeah.

Right? So you're having—

And he won.

And he won.

Right?

Because he's completely in his head and he talks too much trash and all this thing. And it was a very different mindset for him this time around. Everybody needs an accountability partner. And no different than you, I have my accountability group. I have people who hold me accountable for different aspects of my life. And you want people who are already a little bit ahead of you. They don't have to be perfect. Because you can definitely tell the difference if you, like you just said, you listen to my running episodes, my marathon episodes. You can definitely tell the difference in my podcast when I'm just doing a monologue with no one to interact with versus when I'm interviewing and engaging with somebody else on the screen. I'm a people person. I would much rather have a person in front of me or a workshop in front of me or in 2 weeks I'm going to be probably between anywhere between 50 and 150 people in a workshop that I'm giving, depending on— it's kind of like a TED Talks type of thing, and there's 6 going on in an hour. So I'm gonna be speaking at that. So it could be 50 people, it could be 150 people, but I'm much better interactive than I am doing a monologue. So that's why you can see 95% of my podcast has been interview-based. I don't want to be scripted. I don't want to be like, let me read off the script, and I lose my energy. And you can hear that, but people who don't know me We don't know that, and my fear is that it's going to come off as dry. It's going to come off as not engaging. It's not going to come off as valuable. And that's just all in my head, but I still hit record because it was salient. It was timely. I was going through some medical stuff. It was a challenge. I know there's people out there who struggle with motivating themselves and running and exercise and all that. And if I can train for a half marathon in 2 months, I don't know anybody who You can't, especially when I was having the vasovagal type medical conditions. And I literally, like I said in the podcast, a bunch of years ago, I blacked out in my gym. No joke. Just doing burpees. So obviously, it's a big issue, but I still ran. And I still kept going. And I still, right? I want you to have that. And obviously, I don't want anybody who's listening to have any medical things to keep doing something against medical advice. I knew what I was doing with medical condition, with medical advice. There's nothing that's gonna go wrong. There's no irrevocable harm to you by recording and putting out an episode. The worst thing is, is you take it down. The worst case scenario is you get 4 people who listen to it and you get bad reviews and you take it down, which is not gonna happen. But then you talk about the process of the process and you can say, "Hey guys, remember episode 1? Now I'm at episode 38." I want to go back to what it was like for me to do episode 1, and here's why episode 1 took me so long, because it should have been 6 months before that that it should have been out, and where I was at in that process, and why and how I became more confident, how my process got easier, how I got more out of my way, how I got out of my head, how I got out of my paralysis by analysis, and share that story, share the authenticity of it. That's what people want to hear. That's why I offered. To have people come on as a podcast guest to share this process of what it's like to be coached, right? And to see what is good therapeutic coaching like? Because I can't, HIPAA-compliant reasons, I can't do therapy online and share that, right? But coaching, we're not, right? But we're getting into mindset, we're not getting into diagnosis, we're not. So I had to find a way to say, how do I share what I'm passionate about and what I know I'm damn good at with the world?

Yeah.

And that's why I said in the marketing, right, it's not around a psychological, emotional, mental health issue, or— right? This is only about self-sabotaging limitations and beliefs. So I want to challenge you again within a week to have that. I want you to literally see in what other ways is this showing up. Ask people around you. Ask the people who are closest to you. I met this guy Jason He asked me to ask you guys this. Put it on me, blame me. I'm really curious where I don't go all in because I'm either perceived, or I share that I don't have enough or know enough, or I don't feel like I'm enough. And because of that, I've missed out on opportunities to connect, on opportunities to create, on opportunities to bring more value because I am perceiving myself, or maybe I'm putting out the energy or the vibe that I need to have all my ducks in a row in order to move the next level, and where are you seeing that show up for me? I guarantee you, if you do that, it's going to be a life-changing experience for you.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I have, you know, a lot of different types of groups of friends and a lot of people that I've met through different communities, and so I absolutely think I can. I can probably start with my wife, probably has a lot to say, but, you know, in a lot of ways, I do feel like I'm a really, like, motivated, ambitious person. I do a lot of things for myself. I do say, I do try a lot of things. I do get involved in a lot of things, but, you know, and I kind of ask myself the question you just asked, I do to myself a lot, like, where am I— what gaps am I missing with this? Where could this be better? What could I be doing differently here? What did I do wrong there? What could I have changed about— So, I do really analyze myself, but it helps when you do ask others. It was funny, you're making me think about something recently that happened, because, you know, you said, "Oh, you're great at sales, you could do everything, you've been successful throughout your career." I'm not— I don't think I'm God's gift to sales, you know, by any means. It's a craft. It's something you always can never perfect. No one can, no matter how many things you sell, or quote-unquote sell, in your life. And the other day, we were on vacation in Hawaii. We were having a conversation with this guy, my wife and— there was a guy sitting at the end of the table, and he wasn't talking. He had his dog, and all of a sudden, we just eventually kind of said, "That's a great dog. Where'd you get him?" We got him from this kennel, and where this is going is we had a great conversation, and then he said something like, "Yeah, well, you know, I'm an introvert. I wanted this dog to really, you know, love and to give me that friendship because I'm an introvert." And I said, "Oh, kind of." But he's like, "I still go out to the bar, and I still kind of— I don't want to try to be an extrovert because I've gone through a lot of therapy, and that's not what you want to—" I try to do because I've realized myself as an introvert, but I'm okay with being in situations where I'm an extrovert. And then I said, "Well, so like kind of like an ambivert because you know this book?" And then I said, "Dan Pink." And then I went through this whole book and started telling him all these stories about this book. And my wife was pinching me, you know, because he's like, "He doesn't give a shit. He doesn't care." And it really took the— and I really took it personally because I— I really feel like I am trying to offer insights or being helpful. And I was really— I really like you. You love people. You just want to, you know, kind of give people all the information that you know. Sure.

But do you know what will prevent you from feeling like crap about that? Yeah. Asking permission first.

Absolutely. For sure. Or just kind of in tuning to what people— who he was and just not even saying it. Some things aren't worth even saying because they don't— help the situation. Like you were just saying earlier, all those things are totally irrelevant. And you're right, because I'm, I, I'm meeting you for the first time, so I'm like, you said tell me about yourself. I, I don't do this in interviews. I just say, well, this is what I love, this is what I believe, and this is what I do, and this is where I'm going. And it's just a simple paragraph. And that's what's— but yeah, yeah, so keep it concise. But yeah, I mean, I do go out, um, I do think a lot. So I, I— when you put that out there, you're probably one of 6 people I've reached out to to kind of bounce, it would be like, I got it, poke holes in my idea. I want to— I heard Adam Grant talk about this on Adam Grant. I don't know if he's a, you know, social sci— he's a behavioral psychologist at Wharton. And he said on this podcast, he goes, I look for a challenge network, a network of people, and I seek them out intentionally, my friends, people, just to poke holes in my ideas and to say, this is what's wrong, this is This is how it could be better. And I challenge him, look, oh, it's perfect. You don't need to change anything. I'm like, really? Gun to the head, you have to change something. What are you going to change? And he seeks that out, and I like that. But then, you know, sometimes you need to, you know, just kind of, like you said, make it fun, and you have to go. You just have to execute. So I put that mantra— I'm totally going against my mantra because you'll laugh when you hear this. My mantra this year was was think and execute. I think I'm pretty okay at the first part, but the second part of that is— So, I would challenge you again, right? Flip it. Execute and think. Oh, I like that.

Because what I'm hearing, so I'm just gonna go back to, as we round up our time, when you were talking about introvert, extrovert, right? I'm actually born very, I was very very shy when I was younger. And it wasn't until I was in 10th or 11th grade where I was very involved in a youth group at my synagogue, and I became a board member for the chapter, right, in our youth group. And each of the different synagogues in our area would meet up and they would do events, and then there was a summer, like a summer week-long retreat at a sleepaway camp. So all the synagogues would get together from all the high school kids from this network of kids. And I realized that the identity shifted for me. When I became Jason, the board member of whatever my position was. I wasn't just Jason. I was Jason, the guy who was apparently good enough to be on a board and hold a position and was voted by peers. So now I brought value, right? And I realized that all of a sudden, I wasn't just me with the insecurities and the shyness, and you don't know me in person, but I'm only 5'2", right? And, you know, I don't know how tall I was then, maybe still 5'2". But, like, here I am, right, in the height of puberty, and right, and girls, and all these things, like what do I have to bring to the table? And it was when I started building an identity of everything that isn't me organically, when I have these titles, and these stories, and these experiences, then I have something to offer. And I realized years later, I'm like, "Wow, that's a really profound insight that I have, that if I strip all that away, what am I getting to bring to the table?" And that's actually one of my earlier episodes is, if I asked you who you were without your job title, and what you do, What would you tell me who you are? And I have an episode on that. But I want to break down this idea of an introvert, extrovert, because it's really very powerful. Introverts and extroverts, you can have very, very people who think they're introverts who are very social and very friendly and love being around people. And you can have extroverts who at a certain point are like, I got to go home. What truly defines an introvert and extrovert in my book as a psychological professional is in what way and how do you choose to recharge your battery?

Yeah, that's what he told me. I completely, 100% agree with that statement. He actually ended the conversation. He was like, "Okay, this is where I want to end the conversation." I felt terrible because I'm like, "Where did that go off? Where did we go off?" Because I wasn't trying to force my opinion on you. I was just— you told me something in a conversation, it made me think of this, and then And he didn't agree with it. I was like, "That's okay." But that really kind of, you know, just, it affected him because he's like, "I'm just here to hang out with my dog and I'm an introvert." And, you know, I might think, "Oh, well, then why'd you come to a bar?" Well, because, like just what you said, it's not that he is afraid of people, he's clearly not. We had a good conversation and he went to the bar. If you were afraid of people, you wouldn't go to a bar. It's because, yeah, because we— he finds that, yeah, he recharges, he feels, you know, better, he finds comfort in, he needs that, that really kind of helps him and anyone feel alive by being able to have those instances where they can recharge in their own space.

And it's probably also fun for him, which absolutely— yeah, totally— to the final 3 things that I want to share with you. So when you were talking a few minutes ago about like this, like, mindset, like the 2 words that you came up with, right? It's, it's, uh, it was execute, right? Think and execute.

I think and execute.

I, I want to give you 3 different words that I would like you to just contemplate and let marinate as we, as we wrap up our time. The first one is fun. If it doesn't, if it's not fun, don't do it. If it takes you out of fun, don't do it. I don't care how much you intellectualize it. If it's gonna be intellectual and it's not fun, don't do it. If it's intellectual and fun, do it. Number 2, simplicity. Sounds to me like you're overcomplicating a lot of things that don't need to be complicated. That's number 2. Keep it simple. Number 3, push record. Fun, 'cause, and I think they lead into each other. If you're not having fun with it, you're not gonna make it simple. The more unfun it is, the more complicated you're getting it. In order, yeah. Right, you're literally making it too analytical, and then it just becomes this exercise of mental acrobatics. Ain't nobody got time for that, including you. You have more important things to do. You have a life to live, not to be stuck in your head. There's a world to be engaged with, there's people to connect with, all those things. So I want you to be as much out of your head as possible, which I think means, really, when you create this accountability group, whether it's gonna be me, whether it's gonna be people you're gonna talk to, whatever it can be that's gonna hold you and push you, is ask them first before you dance on it for the first 15 hours in your head. Just go right to them first. Make it simple. Let them streamline the process. Before you have to be stuck in your head about it for a month. Right? Make it simple. And then number 3, once you had fun in simplicity, go record. Push record. And that's it. Right? So, if we kind of just kind of go back to what we said from the everything, right? I think this idea of you moving others, as you shared about this book, I think that word, that phrase really stood out for me. Because of the many things that I'm really appreciating about this conversation, and one of the things that I absolutely love about you is that you are a people person. And when you said like, I'm not the God's gift to the world about sales, that's not the point. You have so much to offer and so much to give and so much to connect with, but every moment you're standing in your head and running around in your head is a moment away from your God-given purpose and your potential.

Makes a lot of sense, no, I agree.

I want you to stop telling stories. I want you to connect. I want you to connect by pushing record, and I want people out there to hear all of the amazing— tell your stories on your podcast.

That's, that's what the whole thing is about, telling others' stories, not me telling, not me telling at people, uh, talking with them and telling their stories of this, of how they move others and connect with others. So I do I love that, and I think I don't have to be perfect at it. Obviously, it's a work in progress. I think it is for us all, and that's the whole kind of impetus of this thing, is that we can connect with others when we think more intentionally about how we're doing it. So yeah, you're right with everything. I agree.

And I think the second thing that I want to wrap up with is, you have all these adages, all these teachings. All these mantras. Get rid of all of them.

They don't mean crap.

They're great to regurgitate. They're great to, right, use in context of something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I literally, literally, literally— one of my favorite quotes, and this is from Dr. Scott Walker, I don't know where it originally comes from, but it's his favorite quote, and he's one of my mentors, and certified me in this modality called Neuro-Emotional Technique. He's a chiropractor, and a brilliant, one of the most brilliant men I've ever met in this world. He says, "The universe rewards the action step." And I think that as long as you're stuck in theory, as long as you're stuck in a story, as long as you're stuck in your mind, there's no action. And my man, you are so full of fire, and you are so full of wonderfulness, and you are so full of like, joy, and like, you're a really— I don't need to have known you longer than this conversation to know that you're an authentic dude. I can see it, and I can feel it, and the people who are going to know you and already know you know that. But every moment you're in your head, you're not sharing that with the world. So my challenge is fun, simplicity, and push record.

I like it. And that's simple. And that's very simple and actionable. And I think can be fun, all three. So very good things, man. This is a— I really, really, really am genuinely grateful that you just put that out there in the world. And I could have scrolled through Facebook a ton of times and totally scrolled by it. And I probably did. And I was like, yeah, why not? Let's— I don't know this guy, Jason Wasser. I've never listened to his podcast. But something caused me to, obviously, the reason maybe why you're doing these, caused me to say, yeah, I'm struggling with this, I need some, I'm asking for help, I guess that's the first step.

That's it, got out of your head.

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit.

Reverse rewards, the actions that my man's talking about, 'cause all it is is a response and to make it simple, and the follow-up and the connection, right? And yes, we're gonna hopefully have a part 2, because in a week, I wanna schedule a time with you in a week from now, we're gonna have a conversation again, and we'll keep it to a 15-20 minute conversation. And we're gonna see, and you're gonna come back and you're gonna share with me where we're at so we can really see like what changed in a week. Do you think that things can change that drastically in a week? Right? But fun, simplicity, push record, stop, right? I want to hear the stories. That's about, that's your way of connecting, but I feel that a lot of times Right? Like I said, like I tell you, and I share to my clients, I don't need to know 99% about you to hear, at least in session 1, where you want to be, because we just get caught up in old story. But I don't need to hear your old story in order to help you tell a new one. You wouldn't be sitting here in my office, right, you or whoever, if the old story was working, if the old scripts were working, if the old attempts to solve the problem were working. I want to help you figure out what your belief system is behind that, but I don't need to know everything, right? What you shared with me was very, very limited in our time frame, but look where we got to in the span of 45 minutes. And I think that's what's really cool about really getting out of our heads, and just why I was a pain in the ass to you earlier and said, "Dude, okay, but what do you need? How can I help you?" Right?

Yeah, it's funny. Yeah, I don't know how many— yeah, so yeah, I thought we were, you know, 45 minutes, I thought it would be longer than that, just with all all the stuff that you've taught me, you've given me a lot. So, I think that really ends on a good point. Okay. But yeah, you don't need to know about my old story to tell a new one, I think is a great piece of advice. And I think we always don't always know how someone can help us until we, like you said, just do that action step, and hopefully, the universe rewards it. So, thank you, Jason. I'm virtually— Shaking your hand. And a big hug. Bring it in, bring it in.

Thank you for being so brave and trusting someone who's an absolute complete stranger. But I think that's the beauty of like in our network and our circles of people, especially in the BYLR community, right? So true. We're gonna more likely to trust people who are like-minded, and I'm a very big fan of like-minded people who are doing like-minded things, helping each other out in a very different way than what we might know. I really wanna thank you, tremendous gratitude for you. For being able to get out of your comfort zone and trust someone, you know, in a very brief, quick time, who you probably got pretty annoyed at in the first few minutes for calling you, like, what the fuck, you know? Why is this guy being a pain in the ass? But the process is the process, and I'm here to kind of shock people out of a process, because if you think that you're gonna do it the same way with me that you've done it with everybody else, don't waste your time and don't waste mine, right? And I thank you for going out of your comfort zone to do that, 'cause I saw your face turn red when I asked you a very specific question, and your brain started turning in a different way. So we're gonna be in touch and we're gonna just, we'll have a follow-up and we'll go from there. Cool, man.

Hey, I would love it and enjoy it. Thank you so much. It's been a real pleasure, man. Thank you so much. Awesome, brother.

Thanks for listening to the You Winning Life podcast. If you are ready to minimize your personal and professional struggles and maximize your potential, we would love it if you subscribe subscribe so you don't miss an episode. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at Jason Wasser LMFT 🎗️.