THINK Like a BLACK BELT Week in Review (made with Spreaker)

Welcome to the premiere episode of Think Like a Black Belt: The Week in Review. I'm Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt. Each week I'll cover topics that I covered in my blog on ThinkLikeABlackBelt.org. I'll throw in some topical items of interest when appropriate and highlight some of the great achievements of the week by you, the people who think like a black belt. So let's get started. Thanks to the Jim Jamz Jazz track from the Milan Latin Jazz Quartet. Love that stuff. Anyway, back to the blog. What was that first item? Oh, the first thing I wrote about, I think, was on Monday, and we were talking about becoming the master of you, embracing the process of perfection. And you know, that's one of the things that I end up talking about an awful lot, but people sometimes don't understand what authentic mastery is. And first I want to say that, you know, anybody can be a master. That's the tricky part, I suppose. It's not just for elite people. It's not for the super high achievers. Now certainly, when you're talking about mastery, it's talking about your highest level of achievement. That's the important word, that it's about you. But you don't want to compare yourself to someone else. One of my masters used to say this, that if you compare yourself to others, you're going to find 50% of the people are better than you, 50% are worse than you, and it's just always the case. What you're trying to do is measure yourself each day, right? Your performance today. Against your performance yesterday. I just want to end today a little bit better off than I was before. But let's, again, let's talk about really what authentic mastery is. The mind of the true master is really beginner's mind, is what we call it in martial arts. That means that the authentic master is always looking for new challenges, right? New opportunities for learning, for growth and development. And this idea of mastery, like everything else we talk about here, is an ongoing process. It's your ability to embrace that process, or to start each day with a new sense of wonder and curiosity, that's really going to determine how your day's going to go. It also helps to keep a healthy disdain for any sense of satisfaction. You know, one of my favorite movies, my wife Alex and I, we watch it so much, it's called Big Night. And there's this great scene in there where this guy's so frustrated, he's trying to run an Italian restaurant, And things just aren't going well. So he goes to a mentor of sorts, a friend of— well, he thinks he's a friend— who runs a very successful restaurant across the street. And the poor guy's just sitting there, you know, wringing his hands and pulling his hair out, and he says, "It's too much. It's just too much." Well, the mentor just freaks out, jumps up. He says, "It's never too much. There is only not enough." I love that line. It's true, especially when it comes to your growth, to expanding your, your knowledge, expanding your experience, your wisdom, your awareness. Like I said, mastery isn't reserved for the elite. You know, everyone can, and everyone— I think everyone should become a master. Now, what that means to you personally means dedicating yourself to the process of perfection. The perfection is some focused skill.— some talent or ability that's going to help you move forward. If you want to make a living out of it or build a business, then it gets a little more complicated because you also have to pick a skill or talent or ability that other people are going to care about enough to pay you for it. Right? We're talking about a marketable skill in this case. Now, there's a lot of talk out there about following your passion, and you know, hey, that's all well and good. It's nice if you can do so, And very, you know, a lot of very highly successful people will swear that they're following their passion. I think, you know, again, I think that's a good thing. But, you know, if you can't be with the one you love, you love the one you're with, so to speak. Wayne Huizenga, the great CEO of Waste Management Systems, I don't know if he set out to really be passionate about garbage, but he's certainly shown a passion and an acuity for being able to run that type of business. So whatever you choose to do, it is important to inject your passion into it. The only reason I'm cautioning about passion is, and I've argued this point with many, many people, you know, you throw a plate on the table, try to fill it with passion, and well, you're not gonna be eating very much that day. You just can't eat a plate of passion. So be very careful with that. In my own experience, you know, I started— obviously most people started in martial arts business, if you will, out of passion. We loved martial arts. We loved what it did for ourselves. We wanted to share it with other people. That's a pretty common story in a lot of different businesses. But, you know, quickly I found that if you didn't adhere to the great philosopher Elvis Presley's idea that you got to take care of business, you're certainly going to be starving pretty soon. So you got to make sure that, yeah, passion is great to get you into it. You want to be passionate about what you do. But make sure that your passion, if you're trying to make a living at it, that your passion is marketable, that there's a target market out there. If there's not, there's a lot of things you can do though. You know, it's interesting because sometimes people have an extreme passion for something and there's not enough people around them to sustain that passion to make a living at it. Now do it anyway if you want. I mean, I've got nothing against that. I don't think I'm ever going to be a professional musician again. I guess you should never say never, but You know, I love to play guitar, but I don't care really if I ever make a living at that. But I love doing it, and I do it every day, and it, it does something for me. So there's a place for passion as well. Now let's say that you— I don't know, let's, let's take an easy one. Let's say you want to open up a frozen yogurt shop, but you find out in your area there just aren't enough people to really make a go of it. But if that's what your passion is, that's what you really, really want to do, you might consider moving. You know, you might consider going to where the people are, taking your skills and abilities. If you're delivering information, of course, you've got the internet available to you the same way you're listening to me right now, and that's a great way to get the word out. So there isn't really any reason to restrict yourself, but again, understand that you've got to go and seek out the people who are going to care enough to pay you for it. Otherwise, it's a hobby, not a business. Again, nothing wrong with that, just realize what it is. Now, when you're talking about applying yourself and developing this mastery, that's really how you create value in the world. You know, if people need or want something, they seek out the master, right? If you want the best pizza, you go find the best pizza cook. If you need open-heart surgery, hopefully you're going out to find the, you know, the master surgeon. So what you want to do is, as far as being able to market your mastery— and we're going to talk about that a little bit because we've got that that wonderful new online program with Udemy. You know, Marketing Your Mastery is a live presentation, a half-day boot camp, and we've got one coming up I'm going to tell you about, but it's also now online at Udemy. All you got to do is go to Udemy, that's udemy.com, and search out Marketing Your Mastery and you're going to find it. But what you want to do if you're going to develop, if you're going to market your mastery, first of all you have to have it. So you want to dedicate yourself to becoming what I'd call the go-to expert in that field. You want to become the person other people come to, other people seek out if they need or want something. Before we go too much further, let's, let's talk about being the best, because a lot of times mastery is equated with being the best. Now it's not about competition, it's about being your best. Focus on developing your talents, your knowledge, your skills, and do this continually. Right? As I said a few minutes ago, end each day better than when you started it. I love this quote from Charles Schwab. He's a great financial pioneer who created a lot of the systems that we take for granted these days. But he was once asked about the competition. I'm sorry, I don't remember the exact quote, but anyway, this interviewer was asking him what, what his competition was doing, what he was going to do about it, how he's going to respond. And he said, you know what, I don't care what the competition's doing. He said, I'm too focused on what I have to do to provide the best service to my customers, and that's it. Why worry about the competition, right? And you know, that led me to a thought this week that I'm kind of proud of. I hope you can apply this. You don't become a master by looking over your shoulder. You become a master by looking ahead, right? Look ahead, learn and do what you can today, and let your competitors look over their shoulders at you. That's what mastery is all about. So a little recap. Remember, mastery is about being your best, not necessarily about being the best. We have to let that go. I'm going to take a real quick short break. You can have a little musical interlude, and then we're going to be back with much, much more on Think Like a Black Belt: The Week in Review. Alright, if you're just tuning in, I'm Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt, and we're here on the inaugural episode of Think Like a Black Belt: The Week in Review. We're going to review the the blog posts of the week, talk about them in a little bit more detail, and eventually we're going to have some guests on the show as well from time to time. But I'm going to be honest with you, this is a chance for me to express, you know, my ideas to you in more detail than I can on the blog, and we're going to do an awful lot of that as we go along. But we've got a real special treat that we're going to do every week, and it's going to be highlighting those of you who are out there who really know how to think like a black belt and all the great achievements that you're that you're coming up with. So without further ado, I'd like to highlight the things you can do when you think like a black belt. Oh, by the way, join, you know, join the amazing Black Belt Mindset Mastermind group on LinkedIn. There are some incredible people there that you want to network with, and there's an awful lot of network going on there. Just go to LinkedIn and search out the Black Belt Mindset Mastermind group. It's an open group. You're going to get in and Then we'll outline how we run the discussions and whatnot there. But make sure you brag about yourself a lot there. That's how you open up and meet people. Our dear friend and Black Belt Mindset Master in his own right, John Brubaker, Coach Brew, announces the release of his new book, Seeds of Success, a modern business fable based on Coach Brew's time with his coaching mentor. Now he's going to be on tour promoting the book. It begins June 6th in Charlotte, North Carolina. I believe he went to school down there. I believe he was a— I think that's a Tar Heel. If I need to be corrected, just chime right in and let me have it. A portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the Leukemia Lymphoma Society. And John wants to add, for his North Carolina friends, he'll be in the area from June 6th to June 12th. He'd love to get together and even squeeze in a speaking engagement for your organization if time allows. Now, another great announcement going on. Our dear friend Spencer Hughes. Spencer Hughes was the host of a wonderful show Fox Across America that I used to guest on quite a bit. That's how I got to know Spencer, and he's taken his talents from the satellite world right here on web radio, internet radio. So, and he's on Spreaker. In fact, he's the one who turned me on to Spreaker. So look, just look up the Spencer Hughes Show right here on Spreaker. This is what he says about it. He says, my daily show is the most eclectic you'll find anywhere. From politics to pop culture, from human interest to the paranormal, real life, real passion, real radio. And I can vouch for that. Spence is one of the greatest guys to listen to. He's got a great voice. He's a lot of fun. You might not always agree with him, and he doesn't expect you to, so make sure you get in on the fun and debate and argue with him if you want, or let him know that you support his thoughts as well. And finally, our dear friend and mentor Joe Callaway just released a new book. And it's called Be the Best at What Matters Most. That's an incredible book, I gotta tell you, and it's a follow-up to his book A Category of One, which you must have in your, in your library. Joe Kelly, like I said, he's a dear friend and a great, great mentor to me. He's definitely at this point in real time teaching me to be the best at what matters most, and he can do that for you as well. You can get his book at JoeCallaway.com. Also, you can find all these titles—anything I mentioned here—you'll be able to find in the Black Belt Mindset library, the Black Belt Mindset bookstore at thinklikeablackbelt.org, which is also where you'll find the blog. So there you go. Those are the great things that people are doing when you think like a black belt. Well, next up, I was responding to some comments on a LinkedIn discussion, and it centered on the continuing wage gap, or the perception of a wage gap between women and men. So that's what started the whole thing, and part of what— part of the discussion really led me to think about a friend who I You know, I only met this person once. It's amazing how, how sometimes a person that you meet just for a few minutes, just a brief flash in your life, becomes someone who's very, very inspirational to you. This was certainly the case with me with Captain Julie Clark. I was doing a web television show for a website called flyingnorthamerica.com, and you can see that on the blog. I actually posted the interview with Julie, and what an amazing woman she was. I mean, we became friends in the first 5 minutes of the interview. And then later on, we, we all went— Alex and I and her crew— we went out to dinner, uh, because Julie is an aerobatic pilot. But more— well, that's incredible achievement in its own right, but her real claim to fame originally was that— talk about shattering glass ceiling— she did it by becoming the first female captain at a major American airline. And anyway, What happened was, as I sat down and listened to her story— talk about trying to break into the good old boys' network. Now, she didn't complain about it. It was very interesting, her take on it. You know, there were some operations that she worked for where she was treated very, very well, and other places where she said she definitely, definitely bumped up against that, that, um, you know, good old boys' network. And, you know, as a woman trying to get into that— and this is priceless, you got to listen to the interview because She tells a story where she arrived at one job— this is before she was working for the major airlines— but she worked at one smaller airline where she, she went to tour the place and do the job interview, and there was no door on the women's restroom. Now, I really don't want to spoil the story for you. You can also get this on YouTube. Just go to flyingnorthamerica.com. Those episodes are still up. But like I said, go to thinklikeablackbelt.org, and you go to this week's post, and I believe the title was— yes, it was— What Glass Ceiling? Celebrating the Unique Challenges and Opportuni— unique challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurial women. I gotta fire the guy who titled that, but then I'd have to hire myself back the next day. At any rate, yeah, you've gotta listen to the story. I don't want to ruin it. Let Julie tell you how, you know, what she did about arriving at a, at a place with no door on the women's restroom, her being the first woman that was going to be employed by that company. Anyway, let's get back to what that discussion thread was. And this happened on a LinkedIn site, one of the LinkedIn groups that I belong to. And the whole idea was, like I said, that there was this continuing wage gap, and there was a response to that. There were reports that recently came out, and there were comparisons about how various states had moved either up and down, up or down on the chart, as to where, you know, where they position themselves as paying women in relationship to men's wages. So, the first response that I had— I just want to read it for you verbatim— that— let me grab this for you, hang on just a second, make sure that I'm not lying to you. Here we go. I thought— here we go. There we go. Bear with me. Inaugural session, right? I said, and this is the whole thing, a lot of times when people perceive this wage gap, and I'm going to be real blunt about it, the wage gap is largely due to the fact that women choose career paths that pay in relationship less than men's jobs do. On par, remember, and you You need to stand up for yourself if you ever get in this situation. You'll find out that we're very, very blunt in this program. If there's a gentleman who's getting paid X amount and he's got X amount— if you've got equal, uh, an equal job description, equal title, and equal time on the job— remember, all these things have to be on par— and there's a man getting paid more than you are, well, you've got a case there. You've got a case there. You gotta stand up for it. That's illegal. There's just no way around it. So When we're talking about the wage gap now, it's largely a matter of choice. And anyway, that's how I responded. And here's the comment that I posted up in response to that. I said— first of all, I pointed to our Think Like a Black Belt for Entrepreneurial Women event, and we've got one coming up in Freeport, Maine on May 16th, if you're listening to this before. I'm going to talk about that in just a minute. But you know, at those things, you'll network with other women entrepreneurs, discuss ways to deal with your unique challenges, and most of all, talk about how to improve and expand opportunities for entrepreneurial women. Now, since I started doing this program— I'm talking about entrepreneurial women now— I've done extensive research on the wage gap, and largely it is exactly that, a wage gap. To be blunt, the most consistent reason for this widely publicized disparity is simply that women who are employed tend to choose jobs that pay less but fulfill other desires, particularly in social service areas. The woman entrepreneur is free to set her own financial goals and determine her own rewards, No limits, and we celebrate adversity as an opportunity to become stronger, more focused, and more determined to succeed. That's, that's really what we're covering at those events. Now, Linda Riddell, obviously a powerful entrepreneurial woman, she chimed back in and she said, and I'm going to quote her here, as a female entrepreneur, I am responsible for what I get paid. Women who are employed have somewhat less choice in the matter, although they could refuse to settle for lower wages. And as we said before, of course, yes, all other things being equal, absolutely you refuse to settle for lower wages. She continues, "Overall, women are probably less confident to demand more money, or as Jim says, women choose lower-paying work anyway." Well, here's my response. Again, I'm just going to read this verbatim for you. Both confidence and fear of appearing too aggressive to male counterparts and employers are often talked about in our groups. There are ways to overcome both challenges. As I say, we celebrate adversity. Every challenge is an opportunity to grow, develop, and expand your potential. Here's a great story. Julie Clark was the first woman to earn the rank of a captain on a major airline. Now she's one of the country's leading aerobatic pilots. Talk about shattering the glass ceiling— she did it at 35,000 feet. Julie faced enormous challenges in her life, including losing both her parents at an early age, Her father was a pilot who was killed in the first terrorist hijacking in American airspace that caused a crash. In her airline career, she faced one of the most entrenched old boys clubs in any industry, and she kicked it in the tail. I'm proud to call her a friend, and she's a great inspiration to me. And as I said, you really want to listen to that interview with her. She's got a great way to tell the story, and I can't do it justice, so I'm going to leave it to her. And that's really what we talk about in these, uh, these, uh, Think Like a Black Belt for the Entrepreneurial Woman events. I hope you can make it to one of these at some point. They're fantastic events, and in just a minute I'm going to tell you all about the one that we've got coming up in Freeport. But the basic message is this, you know, no matter who you are, you're going to suffer some adversity. We all do. Let's celebrate adversity. We say in martial arts that a champion is only tested by the mettle of his— and we'll add— or her opponent, right? If you're going to achieve, if you're going to rise up through it, then you've got to face the challenges. You've got to face continually tougher opponents in order to develop and improve on your skills. So that's what it's all about. In just a second, we're going to tell you all about those events. So I'll be back with you. This is Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt, and you're listening to Think Like a Black Belt Week in Review. I'm Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt. You're listening to Think Like a Black Belt Week in Review. I started playing golf a week or two ago, and I blogged on that, and I found a direct parallel between golf and the samurai sword I'm going to talk about in just a minute. But first, a look at upcoming events. As we've been talking about throughout the show, we've got Think for the Entrepreneurial Woman— Think Like a Black Belt for the Entrepreneurial Woman. We're coming back to Freeport, Maine. This is going to be Thursday, May 16th, 7:30 to 9:30 at the 2G Couture Boutique Photo in the Mallet Building on Mill Street in Freeport. Register before Monday, May 13th, and you'll be in the drawing for a free Think Like a Black Belt business or mindset coaching package worth $1,500. You heard that right, $1,500. On May 29th, half-day boot camp for Marketing Your Mastery. We're awful proud of this program. We're helping businesses, any business, any size, understand the power of expert position marketing. And that's how I took my speaking business literally from a folding table, which I'm looking at in the next room, to being able to tour nationally and teach people How to Think Like a Black Belt all over the country, and in the coming year, all over the world. You can apply it to any business, like I said, any size, and these half-day boot camps are what it's all about. That's also going to be at the 2G Couture Boutique Photo in the Mallet Building on Mill Street in Freeport, Maine. And then we're going to be taking it down to New York and New Jersey in the next few weeks as well, and hopefully in Boston, and then back to Maine again. Marketing Your Mastery is also available on Udemy now. U-D-E-M-Y, that's udemy.com. Just go there and you'll see hundreds and hundreds of different courses in business, all kinds of technical things, hobbies, lifestyle, personal development, everything you can think of. It's a wonderful, wonderful platform. So go to udemy.com, U-D-E-M-Y dot com, and just search for Marketing Your Mastery and you'll find the complete online course there. And we're We're really blessed to have some bonus materials on there, including a great interview with another one of my mentors, Dr. John Tantillo, America's Marketing Doctor, and Ken Lazotte, the author of The Expert's Edge. So some really incredible things there, and the whole thing only costs $49. Would you invest $49 to grow your business over the next week? If so, that's the place to be. All right, let's get into the final segment of the show, the final episode if you will, the final whatever it is. I'm stalling for time looking for my papers. Here we go. Yeah, I took my first golf lesson. Actually, it was a couple weeks ago, but when the blog post was written, I would say last week. And I'll tell you what a blast I had. But immediately I saw a connection between practicing golf and practicing the art of the Japanese sword. Now that doesn't mean I'm running around with my golf clubs trying to chop people's heads off, although I can see where a golf club can be pretty effective in that application. But at any rate, there's a few things that just drew me exactly to the concepts that we teach in all our Think Like a Black Belt programs and live events. The first one was this: Simple, not easy. Golf is about the simplest game you're ever going to play in your life. The object of the thing is to take this little ball and stick it in a hole. Of course, They put the hole about 300 yards away from you and put trees and sand and water in the way. But at any rate, the concept is very simple. It's just not easy. A lot of things in life are simple, not easy. And everything you can do with a sword is dependent on one simple technique, right? Your ability to make a clean, precise cut. Well, I learned very, very quickly that that's exactly what it's like on the driving range, right? I remember I only hit my first bucket of balls on the first day. It sure felt like thousands. I knew right away I'd need thousands more before I perfect my swing. And that's exactly what happens when you start taking lessons with a sword. Thousands and thousands of times you do that very, very simple cutting motion. The second one is something we say all the time. You'll hear it again at the end of the show. Perfection is not a destination. It's a never-ending process. Well, at one point last week I bit the bullet and I went to the local golf club and I signed up and got out on the range again. I drew my club back exactly the way the instructor showed me, you know, head over the ball, relax, breathe, smooth down. I should be a natural at this, right? I'm a martial artist. Hit it, beautiful drive. Oh man, it was great. Felt good. Then I set up again and I knew something didn't feel quite right. And I'm trying to swing and I realize what I'm doing now. I was trying to swing too hard and I sliced it, right? I set up again. I heard a noise behind me. I lost my focus, you know, poof! And that was a little bit of that distraction was caused by someone who was even worse than me behind me launching balls about 3 feet in front of my face across the driving range. Anyway, after a few tries, I hit another good one. You see, in everything you do, perfection is not a set point in time or space. Just like there's no perfect cut with the Japanese sword, there's only the practice to perfect the cut. I'm learning really quickly in golf there won't be any perfect drive either, just the drive to perfect my drive. Works in real life and business too. And that led me to the third real strong parallel between golf and my training with the Japanese arts is no mind, or you could say another way, overcoming too many minds. There's a great scene in the movie The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise. Cruise plays Nathan Algren. He's a Civil War hero turned mercenary, and he's in Japan to quell the last of the samurai resistance to modern culture and the new rule. Algren is captured by a samurai leader, and he's being held prisoner of sorts in their village, and his captors are pretty hospitable. They gave Algren free range of the village, and they even allowed him to train with the other warriors, and this is where he really gets himself into trouble. They're training with the wooden swords. We call it bokken. And Algren quickly finds himself— he's completely outmatched. He was outmatched by a little kid and then by one of the samurai. So Nobunaga, the son of the warlord Katsumoto, takes a shine to Algren, and after seeing him whacked over the head for a few hundred times, he steps in. And he says one thing. He says, "Too many minds." And Algren looks at him puzzled, you know, and so Nobunaga continues. He says, "You mind the sword." You mind your opponent. You mind the people watching. No mind. Well, I thought about that, you know, as I was on the range. I mind the other people on the range. I mind what an idiot I must look like to the seasoned players. I mind that ball whizzing by my head from that person who was behind me. I mind the pro I just took a lesson from who just stopped in to check on me and see if I'm sticking to what he told me to do. See, too many minds. So, I can see very quickly that the trick with the golf club, just like with the sword, is to adopt what the Japanese called mushin—no mind. Now, all that means is a clear head, free from distractions, fully engaged in the present moment. I know it translates poorly, but no mind doesn't mean an empty head, as we might say it. It means clarity. It means that you've let go of the distractions, let go of the troubles of the day, and you just allow yourself to be in the present moment, to be fully engaged in the task at hand. That's probably why we go play golf, I suppose. I wonder how the other golfers are going to react though if I show up with my samurai sword in my golf bag, just to remind me of Mushin. We'll see what happens. We'll see how that goes. Anyway, quick reminder as we wrap things up. We're going to keep these shows to about a half hour. And hey, feel free to download them and take them with you. Share them with your friends. Make sure that that if you enjoy it, make sure that they know about us as well. And also make sure you come and visit the blog itself at thinklikeablackbelt.org. That's thinklikeablackbelt.org. So as we're broadcasting here on May 10th, coming events— Think Like a Black Belt for Entrepreneurial Women, that's in Freeport, Maine, Thursday, May 16th. Just go to JimBouchard.org, hit the Services button, you'll see Special Events, hit that tab, and that'll take you right where you need to go. And you can also register there for Marketing Your Mastery. That's Wednesday, May 29th, half-day boot camp, half price when you register early, so make sure you do. And you can find that the same place, or go to either of these. You can go to eventbee.com, eventbee.com, that's event, the word event, bee.com, and just search for these events, Think Like a Black Belt for the Entrepreneurial Woman or Marketing Your Mastery, and those will come up for you there. Remember also, Marketing Your Mastery is available now on Udemy, that's U-D-E-M Again, just search Marketing Your Mastery and you'll find that there. So anyway, I certainly hope that you enjoyed the show today. I really had a lot of fun doing it. The first, first episode here on Spreaker. We were on BlogTalkRadio for a long time and we're going to continue that show as well, but I really like this platform and looking forward to visiting with you every week with these black belt thoughts, if you will. So if you got something you'd like me to cover, or you'd like to share your remarkable achievements, make sure you let me know through the show or send an email to jim@jimbouchard.org. That's B-O-U-C-H-A-R-D for people that don't live in the French-speaking provinces. And meanwhile, like I said, visit the blog at thinklikeablackbelt.org. Remember, perfection is not a destination, it's a never-ending journey. Process. Enjoy it. I'm Jim Bouchard, the guy who teaches you how to think like a black belt. See you next week. Until then, best thoughts for success and happiness.