S2 E12 - Don't be a dead fish

Creating your friendship circle can be defined as very specifically and precisely an impactful moment that my beautiful co host Brittany Turner will be describing in this can't miss episode of Broke to woke.

You left us on a cliffhanger as normal. Brittany, you mentioned the incredible discipline that it takes to build said circle. How do we build it right? We can change it. How do we start it? How do we structure it? Where do we go? We're all listening for you. We're waiting for you.

Well, there's so much that goes into it. Again, we've all written our eulogy. Yes, the love of all that is good because we're going to keep referencing this thing. Who do we want to be? What did we do? And then we've talked about how do we build the wealth? How do we build the health in order to get there? But who needs to be in our life that we can learn from that we can build things with that we can create value for to help us make that story true. If you want to be happily married and have this kind of marriage, then you should probably marry somebody that's on the same page. Also willing to work on it if you need to be. And a billionaire that develops nations and influences leaders. You have to ask yourself, why would a leader listen to me? What do I have to get rid of that's holding me back from everything that I want to become? And so a quick and dirty exercise that I don't know if I've ever shared.

Oh my gosh.

Everything you run to in your moments of stress is everything you have to get rid of to go to the next level.

Shoot, let's that one take in.

When you're stressed out, are you running to self medicate? And people hide under this word called self love? I'm all about self love in the right way, but avoiding is not self love. That's actually the ultimate self hate. You don't really love yourself enough to do what it takes to go to where you want to go. So you're just being pathetic on the honestly. So am I hiding in Instagram? Am I hiding watching the Office when it was on Netflix? Are you hiding by running to boys and getting attention? Are you hiding by texting somebody you shouldn't?

Yeah.

Are you hiding in alcohol, drugs, like what is your self medication?

What do you go to?

What do you do? Interesting. If you guys can stay with me is when you're approaching your own current limit, the ceiling of where you've ever been, but your goal is on the other side of that ceiling. As you approach it, you're going to start feeling stressed because you're going to be outside your comfort zone. You're going to start feeling all the things that say, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Now go. Run to this. Distract yourself. I just need a drink. I just need. What are the things that are going to stop you from having the energy, the power, the force to be able to break through that ceiling to get to the other side of where you really, really want. Want to be, or you said you want to be?

Yes.

You know, so don't self medicate in the moment of your stress. Run the hills. When you start feeling that tightness and you don't feel like going up and you're just like, just take a break or whatever, push through it. Then you take your break. Push all the way through. And I've had so many people around me. This is probably one of my biggest struggles. They're like, oh, you work so hard or you do this or you don't come drinking with us and you don't come dancing with us and you don't this. You need balance, Brittany.

It's your favorite word.

Oh my gosh.

It's your favorite word.

Can't stand it. It's so annoying. And the biggest thing for you to remember is only listen to people you want to be like in that specific area. The people telling me to have this quote, unquote, balance, which means run out the door of what used to be offices. Remember those things back in the day?

Yeah.

At 4:58, make sure you're packing your bags. At 4:25 and you know, you look at your phone and go to the bathroom and check your instagra, start checking out early so that you can have the B word. And.

All of the people that were giving this advice have. Are living paycheck to paycheck. Don't have the health, the relationships, the impact, the influence. And they're not changing the world for anyone. They're living for themselves. And the bachelorette, yeah, it's like they might have, quote, unquote, more friends that they could go to the mall with, but do they have friends that they can sit in the sand and look at the stars and say, how can we orbit around the moon and create hotels that are quite attached to the moon, but they're in the moon's gravitational pull so they don't leave. And we can go up there and have a stay with our family and let people explore the universe instead of just our one planet.

And my woman, who are your Friends. And when the person is there on that beach, they're going with you in the conversation and they're like, what are you talking about? Moon Hotels.

It's their idea.

Are you?

Yeah, it's their idea. And I'm the one saying, man, I gotta level up my dreams. Which, what's funny is when you're around other people who make you want to level up your dreams. Not that I'm not enough, but then I'm thinking too small.

Yeah.

I'm not changing humanity in the way that other people are because that's what's normal for me now. It's like, those are what my friends do. So how can I do it too? When that happens, it actually makes everything in your life easier.

Right.

I have a picture of Elon Musk. He's doing this really fun Space Ranger, like jump.

Yeah.

And on the left it's got Tesla, and then it's got SolarCity, and then it's got Space. Right. SpaceX on the right.

Yep.

And I look at that and I'm like, he had six kids at the time and he runs these three companies and he's this, this, this and this. And I was like, what am I whining about? Like, really, Brittany, what are you whining about? Oh, you've got more emails to respond to. Come on.

Right.

So it's so important who's around you. And I'm not saying to not have a balanced life. I'm saying to design a life of whole life success.

Right.

By being intentional with every freaking second of your life.

Yep.

Because that's an investment of your time, your energy and your one chance. So it's got to serve you. We're not flopping around like dead fish. Nobody listening to this is going to be flopping around like dead fish through life. It's, it's done. You're too, it's, it's too late.

We don't want you to be a dead fish.

You've heard too much.

Yeah. Stop being a dead fish.

What about you?

You're ready to go?

Yeah.

No. And that intentionality, that approach, when you're talking about your friend and you're talking about your circle, you're mentioning specifically having those people there that are brilliant, that motivate you, because.

And I'll be very clear, there are always times where you can be sad, frustrated, upset, worried, fearful. But those times should last seconds, five to 10 minutes. Have a conversation with someone and go up front. I just want to vent for two or three minutes. Right.

Then we'll Move on.

We have both done that together to each other. You know, like, hey, I'm just gonna get this off my chest really quick. I just gotta tell you this thing, and then let's figure out the problem, let's figure out the solution, and that's absolutely okay. But when you are picking and choosing and determining who is in the circle with you, understand that. Again, ready for this mind shift, my friends? You can have multiple circles. You can have a family circle where it's like, this is my family, and I'm gonna do my absolute best to work on my family circle.

This is the place they get in my life.

This is the. Exactly. This is the place. This is the time, this is the energy. This is what our devotion is. This is how I interact. This is how we just, you know, we talk about and discover and communicate. Because, yes, your family might not all be massive, amazing dreamers, and there's nothing wrong with that, but pour into the people who are in your family. Right? My sister's current boyfriend, his name is Paul, and we were discussing at my recent wedding an idea that he had.

Congratulations.

Thank you so much. And he had this idea where he says, jeremy, I want to make knee pads, but I want them to be strapless now. Sounds really weird, but he's a contractor, right? And he's on his knees a lot on the floors, does flooring, does tile, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, how would a strapless knee pad work? You know? So we go through this business idea, and we start talking about this thing and this product and this invention, and he just has three or four small, limiting beliefs ahead of him. So we just remove those out of his way, and then bam, here's his trajectory. And this guy gets all fired up and just amped to a thousand, like, I'm gonna do this next week. I'm like, yeah, it was so cool, because having that moment for him and for me together really brought closeness. And that can be a family circle where you have discussions and you have time and you have energy with your family of whatever they want to do. Because no path is incorrect, it can be different than yours, and that is perfectly okay. But then if you have a circle that does propel you, this is your business circle. This is your leader circle. This is your whole life circle. These are the people that inspire you, motivate you, challenge you. Right? You challenge me frequently on a daily basis with tiny, tiny little things like, I can do better. We can do better. I can create this better. I can say this better. There's Always moments in time where we get to decide and we get to choose. Can we be a little bit better? And not only for ourselves, but we have to remember, if we are in that circle, hopefully we are providing value to the people in that circle. It's not just us mooching off of them and gaining their abilities and their talents and their skill sets. Pour it into them. Pull something out of your heart and give it to the other people in that circle that you're a part of so that they can learn from you.

Do you think I challenge you because I'm controlling and I nitpick him to death?

No. Just want me to be better.

Why?

Because if I'm better, guess who else is better? You.

But if you're better and I actually care about you, that's what love is.

Yes.

And Jeremy is a very good friend of mine and my friends. What I would classify as a real friend is someone who kicks my butt to reach my potential. So if I call them up because I feel like quitting, which has been often, guess what my real friends do. No, you're not. Babies depend on you figuring this out. Here's all the reasons. Da da da da da da. Guess what my old friends used to do. You're right. You need a break. When you've gone too hard, you're going to burn out. Yeah, you're gonna burn out. Stop. Take a vacation. You could have quit at 24. Why are you still trying to do all these things like employees? Always that lalala. Just go on vacation. Let's go drink tonight. When can I be at your house with a bottle of wine?

Yeah, yeah. Let's discuss it over drinks.

Right.

What do we have to have to drink to solve every problem?

When I go through hard times, I would make these different calls again. Everybody doesn't want to go through them alone. And I would get this different advice. My real friends were always encouraging me to reach my potential. Not just encouraging me, kicking my butt. And these other people who are still my friends were telling me to quit, basically abandon ship on my calling and self medicate in whatever form. They're not all evil, but they sounded fun. And I took a minute to actually define this, because once you spend enough time with people, we call them friends.

Sure.

So I think it's important, at least in your own mental game to understand and categorize, like awake friends versus asleep friends. So I'm gonna read through what I think. Real friends hold you accountable to reaching your potential. Don't let you quit on the things that matter. To you. Don't expand limiting beliefs.

They encourage you to finish strong versus medicate or run away. They strategize with you to help you reach your dreams.

Drifters slash your asleep friends. They do what everyone else is doing. They encourage you to medicate. Their main entertainment is what others are doing and escaping. What others are doing and escaping. They get mad at you for trying to change or grow or they criticize you. Do you think real friends criticize you?

No, they shouldn't.

It's kind of like how people fall into abusive relationships and or trafficking situations. You've got to take the time to define what love really is because love does not control, criticize, abuse, blame, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we can see it more obvious in abusive relationships. But when did we last say this person's a real friend versus not? I have one person left in my life that criticizes me all the time and tells me I'm this and this. And like, why are you trying that? It could be your family. You have to understand again what place they get. And if you're going to let somebody speak into your life, they've got to be in the real friend category.

Yes, absolutely. And I love that definition, especially when you bring it up to.

Marking down all the people that you have in your life frequently and you can determine and figure out are they actually a friend? Because if you spend a certain amount of time with them, well, they're probably a friend to some degree. Right. And you want to make sure that you put them in the right category or you spend the right time with that person really pouring into them, have them pour into you and just make sure that this is a symbiotic relationship that can help propel not only you, both of you, or however many friends you have together. Right. And I see this so much as I spend time with you and our friendship circle and the people that we surround ourselves with on a constant basis are people that I want to do life with.

Amazing so much. I took the time because, guys, you have to idiot proof your own life for yourself sometimes.

Yeah.

I had to put this on my vision board. I wrote so that I wouldn't be confused by what the advice I was giving. Getting a friend is someone who walks with you in life, in the good times and bad, encouraging you to be your best self.

Simple.

Yeah.

And if they're not doing that or you're not doing that, don't use the F word.

Let's bring that back again. If you are not doing that, you might have people in your life that aren't doing that, but are you doing it?

You might be the criticizer.

Precisely.

Wake up.

Precisely. I love that. That's massive. Because as you expand, as you grow naturally, your circle of network and the people you hold closest should grow as well. And make sure that you're not only the giver, but you're the receiver. Make sure you're not only there to. To expand, but you're there to pour into your friends. Because if that friendship is amazing and incredible and important to you, then you will grow together. You'll do it simultaneously.

It's gonna be hard to hear, especially for my really giving women out there. Yeah, we will sacrifice ourselves for our kids, for this, for that, and we think, like, that's holy. But I love what you just said because what does it really mean to gain the whole world and lose yourself and lose your soul? And it's gonna sound a little selfish, but you do have one life and true love, true friendship. Because they're in the same category as love is symbiotic, and they should want to be creating value in your life as well. And if they're so selfish, then just understand that's not love.

We have to be in a place of love, especially if that's your number one word, life. So I love you, Brittany. Thank you for being my friend. Thank you for going down this podcast journey with me and helping pour into so many people and bridging creating that bridge from people who need it most to people who are going to use it for the best purposes, AKA going from broke to woke. It's been an amazing journey and we're going to continue the journey. In fact, that journey continues in the very next episode. All you have to do is just click on it.

You're going to want to hear this one.

Just keep listening. We're going to be there. You rock.

I know that last episode has got you jazzed up, but where do you go to take this information to the next level? If you're looking to get into real estate investing but don't know where to start, go to broketoook.com Jeremy and I have created courses for you to be able to understand which assets class is right for you so you can dive in, get the information you need to start building wealth in real estate.