Ep.06 | Plans & Failures

Don't forget to fade it out this time.

I'm not. I got this.

Welcome to the Lead Fast podcast. My name is Daniel. I'm going to be your host today, and I'm joined with Tommy Wofford, our fearless leader. And we're gonna have fun today. I'm excited about what's about to happen. I mean, I don't even really know what's about to happen, but I'm excited. I'm excited about that.

So I have to carry all the content and work the board. By the way, I don't know if you noticed that on camera. I'm the one, like, trying to fade this out over here.

Because you're the best. You're the best for the job, Tommy. We only want the best for this. That's the Lead Fast.

I have buttons that make us sound really awesome.

Oh, they'll hear them. I think they'll hear them, right?

Oh, no, they're.

That's my favorite one. If you can hear that. That one's my favorite one. So I'm going to do things a little different today. I know we normally talk about conversations on the couch and we'll listen to one, we'll go through one, but what I want to do is I want to know about Tommy Wofford and maybe, I don't know, like.

Well, I'm a Sagittarius.

Okay. Yeah. And what's your favorite style of dancing?

The limbo.

Limbo. I was thinking party.

Limbo is my favorite.

I pegged you for a salsa guy, but. So we've used these cards in the past to kind of do some deep, emotional, thought provoking.

Do you remember Jack Candy from Center Ant?

Yes, I do.

Deep thoughts.

Did I just have some Jack Handy vibes?

Yeah. Yeah, it was weird.

I love the Jack Handy. So I'm gonna pull some Jack Handy out later.

Okay, cool.

So what I want to do, we're gonna edit that part out. No one's ever gonna hear that. Hopefully no one's gonna hear it. Justin. Edit that part out. So what I want to do is I want people to. And I do, too. I want to get to know you because I feel like I know you so well sometimes, and then you say some stuff. I'm like, my God, Tommy, do I even know who you are? Like, I'll hear stories about things you've done, and I'm like, wait, what?

I hope that's a good feeling.

No, it's not. It's a good feeling.

Who are you?

No, it was the other day on Carl's podcast. Like, I was. We were filming that, and, like, you and Carl were talking, and you knew Carl from, you know, way back. And you. And you guys were like, yeah, I don't think I've. I don't think I've seen you since Vegas. And Carl's like, yeah, oh, yeah. Kevin Hart's birthday party. And me and Justin look at each other like, what, Tommy? I mean, that's the thing, too. I mean, you do things that I hear about, and I'm like, I didn't even know you did that. You're just also, like, a walking treasure trove of wisdom. And that's cool, too, because, I mean, the last podcast we did, or maybe two podcasts, we were talking about childbirth. You know, like two grown dudes talking about childbirth and how much I didn't know about it. And it just turned into a really cool leadership moment. And I think that's what makes you. You. Is because you have all these things, like, your brain thinks like, that everything is a leadership. If something happens, good or bad, funny, whatever. I think you have this compartment in your brain that you're like, oh, let's. Okay, let's. Let's look at that from a leadership perspective. And I. I can't do that. Like, and I feel like that's the reason why people subscribe to Lead Fast and why they watch our stuff and why they, you know, like, take our classes, because you are that way. So what my goal is. And I don't know this is going to happen like this, but what my goal is, is to ask some of these questions and maybe get a little snapshot of Tommy, like. Like how you think maybe some developmental things, like, like when you're a kid. I mean, I'm not gonna ask you, when did you know that you were, you know, a leader? Yeah, I'm not gonna ask you stuff like that. But.

But your voice sounds really cool when you talk like that.

Maybe I might ask you something like that. Okay, it did sound cool. But I do want to get to these questions. I do want to kind of ask some stuff. And, you know, if. If something happens and we start talking about whatever, let's just talk about whatever.

Go where it goes.

But I think this will be fun. Sorry, I could be totally wrong. I've been known to do that, you know, from time to time. So I've got these blue cards, and I'm gonna shuffle them.

Oh, we're gonna do blue cards today.

Blue cards. I'll skim through some of these. And the yellow cards for Those of you who haven't watched before, these are like color. Color coded, and they have, like, different, like, topics about life. And then the yellow cards, which I think I put back in the box, the yellow cards ask, like, some really deep questions that make you want to cry. Like, when was. When did you. When was the last time you felt lonely and for what reason? And that's not what I want to. That's not what I want to talk about today.

Okay. So for people watching, you would think, like, with as much production as we've got going on here, I mean, we've, like, literally you can't see it, but there are people watching, taking show notes, and me and Daniel are here, and there's another person doing production. Justin's over there, and we've got lights and cameras everywhere. We don't prepare for this at all. You would think that we would because we put a lot of effort into, but we don't really prepare for this. So everything that you hear from me is just like, whatever. We're just kind of making it up as we go along.

And for those of you who don't know, you soon will if you stick around long enough. That's when Tommy's in his element, when he's. It's unscripted. I'm not so much like that, but I'm actually kind of surprised that from the second we hit record, this is gone, you know, like, I haven't derailed yet.

We haven't had to cut yet.

Yeah, no. So, like, putting time in his element is like catching him not off guard, but, like, let him like, like quick think. Like those quick fire responses and reactions, those ninja reflexes. They has business ninja over here. And so that's why we like to do this unscripted. Not so easy for me. Walk in the park for Tommy. But that's why I have these questions. And so, like, let's get to the first one here if we like it. Okay. I mean, what is keeping you up at night besides your redneck neighbors probably shooting off fireworks right now?

Okay, so speaking. I live in a very nice neighborhood. I don't have a whole lot of redneck neighbors. But you know, the. What's the neighborhood app?

Kid Rock doesn't live down the street.

Kid Rock does not live down the street. For me anyways, just call it Facebook. I don't remember what the neighborhood app. There's a neighborhood app. And somebody last night was like, who. Like sending out messages who's firing off fireworks at 10pm you know, literally five days after the July. So people are just getting ready. They're, you know, leftover fireworks. Some kid playing probably and like 10pm 10, not like 2 in the morning 10. And he was like, yes. And I'm the old guy. And he was like really like grumpy about it. And then he looked this guy up and he looks 27, like, oh, he responded to it. Yeah. Oh yeah.

What a power move. Yeah.

Like, I've got your fireworks. I'll come to your house and set off M80s in your. In your mailbox. So what keeps me up at night? You know, like when I decide to go to sleep, I go to sleep.

That's a superpower.

It is. And I've been like, I've been in a little twin, twin seater Cessna with a friend of mine and I was like, I'm gonna take a nap. He's like, you're gonna take a nap? Yep.

In a Cessna.

Oh yeah.

Of all the planes that feel uncomfortable.

And assessed a little 170, like little tiny coming back from D.C. and with flying with danger Dave. And I told him, I said, man, I can go to sleep anywhere. And two minutes later I was out. Like, I can just decide to go to sleep. What keeps me up is everything that's not sleep. I hate missing out. I don't want to miss anything and I don't want to miss a thought. And if I get on any sort of like rabbit trail of a thought, I will see it through and I will stay up thinking about it until it's done. Until I have to finally like chastise myself and like, dude, go to sleep. You've got to be up in four hours, you know, And I don't sleep a lot. I probably sleep on a good night, five and a half hours, like on a real long night.

That's normal. Like.

Yeah, yeah, that's pretty normal. And then I'll do that for three or four weeks and then I won't wake up for 12 hours, you know, like, yeah, I'll crash. But every night that's my, that's sort of my thing. Like I'm usually in bed by asleep by 1:32 o'. Clock. I'm usually up by 6:37 depending on. And it depends on how interrupted my sleep is. I've got three little kids at home, so they're still coming into the bedroom at night wanting to get in bed with mommy and daddy. So if I don't get woken in the middle of the night and get five hours of solid sleep, I'm up and ready to go.

I do notice sometimes I'll come into the office and you'll already be here. And I'm like, well, Tommy must have got to bed early last night and woke up early. But then you'll just say something like, oh, yeah, dude, I didn't go to bed like three hours ago. And then you're smiling. I'm like, how? What? Like, what are you even.

No, I just got bored at home in the morning. I was up long enough. No one else is up yet. I'll guess I'll go to the office.

Real quick on the firework thing.

Oh, boy.

I've noticed this about. I've got one neighbor that lives directly behind me. I just feel like I need to put this on the public because if you're this neighbor, I'm calling you out. And it's so strange. Like, I get it if you have extra fireworks, you want to shoot those off. And you know, I'm not even mad. Like, it doesn't bother me. Like, it was not going to wake my kids up. But what's like baffling to me is like, it's the big, like the big mortar ones, you know, I mean, so it'll go off and I'm like, oh, that's cool. And like, I'll run outside and I like, looks. I'm like, I want to see them, you know, if they're in my backyard, like over my house, I think it's cool. And then, like, I won't hear from him again. Like, he won't shoot them off. This is like 10 o' clock at 2. So he'll like, fire one off at 10 o' clock. And then, like, I'll go back in my house and just, you know, play video games or, you know, watch Netflix. And about 10:30, you know, 30 minutes, I'm like, what, did you just drive somewhere? Go get another one, come back. But I don't understand the half hour gap. That's what confused me. Like, so do you have 10 of them sitting there and you just decided, I'm gonna shoot these off. I'm space these out because I want them to last, you know, or, hey.

Okay, so here's, here's immediately. You said this earlier, but this is really what just happened. Immediately when you said that, you said he shoots it off and then he goes in for like half an hour and then comes back out and. And then shoots another one off. Like, immediately I went, that's just how people act about everything else in life. Like, I have this cool thing and I'm going to go do it. And they don't like really go after it. They don't deploy all their resources because they'd rather scatter it out over like bits and bits of time.

And then they're afraid to run out.

They're afraid, like, you know, resource scarcity comes into play and they're scared at a run out. And then what ends up happening is they don't get any like major effect. And then their, their impact on other people is they make some sort of big loud noise and people come out to look and then they don't see anything. And then they just, they, you get into. Everybody understands that now there's a pattern. So now when you see a mortar, you don't go back out. So now they don't get any, they don't get any impact on what they do subsequently because they've taught people that they're not gonna continue the show.

That's so crazy. I literally go out for the first one every time and I'm like, there's gonna be a firework explode over my house. I know it. And then like when I hear it again, like, I don't go back, I'm not going back outside. The six year old in me that wants to see the fireworks, like runs out and is really happy and then I'm lost. Like, you lose me. Like you can shoot off one 30 minutes later and then shoot a cluster of like three or four. I'm like, I'm not going out there because I know what's gonna happen.

It's gonna end. And so like if you are an entrepreneur or you're just somebody listening and you, and people's, you want to make an impact in someone's life, it's, you can't like show up once. You got to continuously show up. You've got to be able to like produce when they show up too, because you, anybody can go out and make a lot of noise. Like I tell you what, go to the mall. Go to the mall. Go stand in the middle of the mall and have a meltdown. Start screaming at the top of your lungs for 30 full seconds. You'll get the attention of a thousand people. You just will, you'll get the attention of a thousand people once and then the next time you come into the mall, they're going to know that's you and they're going to arrest you immediately. People don't. Like, you can get anyone's attention just by making a scene. And that's what your neighbor's doing. He goes out, he Fires one big mortar off and like, boom, Everybody comes out to look and see what it is. But he's not. He doesn't. He doesn't even have the ability to make a consistent impact.

Yeah.

Because he's not consistent with his actions.

Right.

And so that's. That's leadership.

Number one, frequency of what you talk.

About frequency, one on one. Like, you've got to be. If you're going to be relevant and attractive if you're going to have fireworks at the right time of year where people are looking for fireworks. Like, he built attraction. He knows what he's doing, but he doesn't have frequency. He loses interest immediately.

Yeah. No, now I relate to that, you know, like, I'm not the business owner in that.

Right, right.

I'm the guy waiting for the fireworks. So I know. And again, that was case in point of how unscripted Tommy can just make a leadership out of my dumb neighbor getting my hopes up for fireworks. But also frequency, what we're talking about is part of our course that this is a shameless plug here. I guess. This is our podcast. Why not?

It is our podcast, but this is.

Something I learned too, by filming these. Just about these pillars in business. And what time is referring to about frequency. What I brought up is something that, you know, like, it's one of the foundational pillars of business and leadership and stuff. And if you don't know, you know about that, if you're not, if you don't have a system for success. That's what this is. And so I would encourage you to go to our website, leadfastcode.com I'm going to plug this to the end. I don't know why. I guess this is the perfect time for it.

It's a good time.

But. But leadfastco.com and that's where all these good resources are. And of course, these podcasts where you get these tidbits of knowledge that come from my neighbor who shoots off fireworks like an idiot. But we also. We do more than just firework talk, too. So I think you'll be really impressed with what content we got up there.

Yeah, no, I'm so proud of Leadfast and what we've done, you know, and it's like, I am, too. Yeah, we've moved really far, really quickly, so super excited. Also, like, you know, one of the things that we talk about here in the office is how we're always sort of like pushing the envelope of what's going on. Leadfast has some big announcements coming up. We've We've, we've closed some stuff this week and in the next year, in 2021 is going to be 2020 to 2021 is going to be a pretty exciting couple of years for us.

No, I agree. And it feels like normally if I was in a situation, it feel really awkward because I'm like bragging about my company to my boss. I mean, Tommy's my boss if y' all hadn't picked that up. But like, I'm I excited because when I joined this, you know, when I came on, I thought I was just going to be filming some content. And I've done this hundreds of thousands of times where I'll go for a client or somebody and I'll film something. At the end of the day, I don't necessarily even really care about what you're doing. Like, my job isn't there to understand or to learn or whatever. But when I'm sitting here listening you talk about stuff, you know, like, it's always the way that I create to relate to just like the fireworks stuff. And that's what was cool. So like I'm like sitting there filming, but I'm like, like not watching the monitor and I'm like watching you and learning stuff like that. So I'm really excited about Lead Fast.

Just because you know that not watching the monitor things probably not good.

Yeah, I shouldn't tell my boss that. But I'm so good at how I said it now. But the thing is, is like, if you can appeal to me, you know who is. I don't run my own business, obviously. Yeah, but I do. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like, I have goals and. Which I also learn from Lead Fast. But I mean like, that is. That was just so cool. That was the first thing that ever really stuck out to me and so, yeah, I love it. I believe it.

All right, let's do another card.

So I kind of cheated. I saw this card. I want to know this answer. Anyways. I snuck this to the top.

Okay.

It's not a hard one.

It's just by the way, I snuck it to the top means I moved it under the table where you couldn't see it. But I watched him do it.

Well, I mean, plus I was just going to own up to it. I mean, like.

All right, so what's the question?

The question is describe your earliest memory. What is. What was baby Tommy's first memory? I'm gonna switch colors here. Just throw things up.

Alright.

So doesn't have to be business related, but it probably is.

No. Yeah. That three or whatever. All right, so we lived in, we lived in a little single lot. Like just so I don't come from like means I'm not like a second generation wealthy person or virgin. I just don't. That wasn't my family story. My grandparents were, you know, grew up on a tobacco farm in Kentucky. My dad grew up hanging tobacco. All my uncles and my dad at some point in time were like plumbers. And so we just blue collar family. We lived in a little single wide trailer in this trailer park in Kentucky outside of Lexington. And I remember it being a snowy day and we had this little like 8 by 8 porch on the front of our, you know, basically three stairs up to the trailer and had a little 8 by 8 porch. And I couldn't get out in the snow or anything, but I had a big wheel and, and I was like riding my big wheel. Eight feet, eight feet, eight feet, eight feet. And I caught an icy patch and fell off and caught my forehead on some of the underpinning of the trailer and split my head. And that's what I remember. I only, I think I only remember that from that far ago because it was so traumatic. But I vividly remember like red in the snow. Like that's what I remember.

That's horrifying.

Yeah, it's a traumatized kid.

Was this like one of a rookie of the year moment, you know, where you did that and all of a sudden when you healed up, your brain was just business minded or business focused?

Yeah. So, yeah, so like I started my next business the next day. It was really weird. I was four. I sold it like a week later.

You liquidated all your toys. I was waiting for it to happen though.

I started flipping he man out of the back of my one wheel.

You know, I wouldn't be surprised. I think you probably have a lot of rich dad, poor dad esque stories from when they were a kid growing up. So.

No, I don't mean, you know, that's the thing. Like my, my parents and I didn't really have a lot of like financial literacy talks or anything like that. I mean they just, they come from the school. They grew up thinking, work hard, work hard, work hard, save a lot, save a lot, save a lot. Right. And so they've done extremely well for themselves, but they weren't obviously trying to build wealth. It was like, I'm trying to build. My parents really lived for that. Back third, right? Like back third of your life where it's like, all right now I'm 60 and that last 30 years, I'm gonna, like, my parents have, you know, times here in Maui, and, like, they go to Hawaii once a year, and. And they've been. They've been doing that for a long time. And, like, that's one of those things where it's like, they really lived for, you know, 45 to whenever, you know, and are in a great position. And they've done, like, they're the reason I've done so well in life because they've taught me how to work so hard. But they weren't like, oh, let's build, you know, generational wealth. They didn't understand that. No one ever had those conversations with them. It's one of the reasons that I know mentorship works so well, because I don't have any reason to believe that that can be possible. Except that.

Because you've never seen it.

I've never seen it, but I know that mentorship has taught me that it's possible and taught me how to do it. And that's why I know that without mentorship, my kids don't stand a chance. And I want those people that are watching to understand that, like, if you don't have a mentor in your life and you don't need a physical mentor, you can let other people's mistakes be your mentors if you just go learn about them. When I read, I read autobiographies and biographies because I want to know other people's mistakes. When I read business books, I don't read tactical business books. I'm not out there reading on corporate structure and how to do those things. Some of the best books I've ever read. The E. Myth Revisited. Shoe Dog, Phil Knight story about Nike and how he, like, had to fight for that company. Shoe Dog is an amazing business book, but you have to be able to make that jump from a metaphor jump. You have to be able to take his story and turn it into actual, actual practical, tactical things.

No, I get that.

But that was, you know, because I believe in mentorship, and I know that mentorship is the way to success. I always want to have other people's mistakes mentoring me. And so that when I'm reading, that's what I'm reading. I'm reading other people's stories. Because outside of the tactical, if I just. If I just read tactical, if I'm. If I'm completely execution and everybody wants a silver bullet, like, everybody out there in the business world, like, if you had a system that was a silver bullet that helped me fix everything, then that mean you'd make a billion dollars. That would be like if you whatever. But if I just give you execution, then the only way that you learn is by messing that up, like not executing. And then you fail. But if I give you my story and you take execution out of it, then you get to see where I failed and avoid that. And so that's why I just think Andrew said the other day, he said stories are more powerful than claims. Because we were like, you know, making some claims about us. And he was like, no, you gotta tie that to our story somehow because stories are more powerful than claims. I think stories win. I think stories are more practical than tactical. Like, you know. Yeah, no, I agree because you get the experience along with the execution. And that for me has made all the difference. It's just a little bit of a mindset shift. But it's crucial.

You know, I think tactical is, I mean it has its place and I don't think you're undermining that. But tactical leaves room like for questions like you don't know what mistakes you'll make. But when you start reading about people's failures and apply that to your life, you do know those things. So not to say that you won't make those same mistakes because like you believe that failure can be a pathway to success in a lot of ways. Maybe not your failure, but failure in general. But like, I just really think that that's because I've learned from like I listened to you and Andrew, you guys did a story. I don't know if we've even released that yet, but about some of the things you did, starting up, that fell, that didn't get off the ground. And the whole time, like I know you as Tommy, the successful person, this, you know, like, like this, this business minded person. And I don't ever see your confidence really shaking. And that's good. But I know that you've been to places where you have failed. And so when I hear that, it's also like because you know the person who did Nike and the Disney and these people who like pioneered these big corporations, big businesses had to have failed lots along the way. But you don't ever see them and think about failure. You only see them and think about the business that's hugely successful. And I think for me it's, you know, obviously I'm not trying to start my own business, but like I take your yet, but I can take this. The failures that you've had, but the failures though that you have talked about lets me see you like as a Human person who's made mistakes, but not just where you were when you failed, but where you're at now and how that failures contributed to that. And man, that's. That I've looked at when I go to do stuff where I normally be, like, well, man, I just don't know if I want to do this because it could just whatever. I almost have like a leg up on that. Almost feel like I'm more equipped to handle that. But okay, yeah, you know, I could, I could. And instead of me being like, well, that failed, look at what you did. And like, okay, why did that fail? And you picked that apart. Like, man, you just go in there and just like micro assess everything to a degree to make yourself better, not to like re build that up from the ashes. But I've noticed that, like, when you went like a company fell and you may have done this, I don't know.

We did it last week.

What's that?

We had a failure last week.

That's right.

Yeah. So we had it. So. And it just. It usually takes me a second to like, so just for. So everybody knows. We did a initial call to tell some people about our program last week, about Lead Fast and what it does. And the point of that call was to have a group of affiliates on and people who have never heard about Lead Fast and potentially pitch it to them. What we ended up on that call was a group of people who had been invited to. And they're the ones that actually came. We had 25 committed and said they were coming. 11 people showed up for lots of reasons. We're doing another call to take care of the rest. But the people who showed up had been invited to come, like, give critique about the program and about the call and that kind of thing. And when you invite criticism, you get criticism.

Sure.

Like, that's. It's sort of like the nature of the invitation. And so we got off the call and there was just our staff here and we kind of like ended the zoom call and we had. It was full production. It was great and we had done a great job. And I was like, guys, seriously, 10 out of 10 could not have gone better. I felt like that was great. And then we got a sort of like immediate sort of roundup some folks and did a follow up. And the feedback wasn't stellar.

Yeah. It wasn't glowing.

It was. It wasn't glowing. It wasn't. It did not obviously match my expectations. And so it really, like, it took the wind out. Like, everybody here in the office knew it. You could see it on my face. My countenance changed, my tone changed. It really took the wind out of me.

I was in the bathroom when this happened. So I came out from happy 10 out of 10, Tommy to seeing Tommy now reassessing things. And, like, what just happened.

Yeah, no, I mean, and it's obvious. Like, I wear all my emotions on my sleeve, and you always know where you stand with me 100% of the time, because I can't doubt it. And it was obvious. And so what happened for us was that we didn't. I thought everybody was going to come away from that meeting going, where do I sign up? Like, this is the most amazing thing ever. And that was not the reaction that we actually got. And so that took a lot of the wind out of my cells and then. And I just needed to step away for a moment, so I was like, hang on. And so I walked out of the room, and I came back and I said, all right, so here's. Here's the deal. Here's. Here's what actually happened. We invited criticism. We got exactly what we asked for. We should be grateful for. For that, and was able to reassess immediately and pivot and change and make adjustments. But there's a lot of reasons that you do that. You do that. One maybe the most important is that you've got to be able to tie your emotional state to some buoy that doesn't move. Right. Because if it would have crashed me and my emotions went down, then the rest of the team follows me down, and I'm responsible for. As a leader, for the emotional state of our team. Like, that's maybe the first thing that you have to do, because you have to be able to maintain progress. Progress is all emotional, not executional. Executable execution. That's the word I'm looking. Yeah, all three of those words. But progress is more about emotion than it is anything else. It just always is, because your emotion will keep you going. It'll keep you learning as you figure out the execution part. You can fail at execution and keep going if you feel good about it, but you cannot fail at the emotional part. And any other hurdle come. It just makes you so fragile. It makes you too fragile. So you've got to be able to maintain a healthy mindset during everything. And so for us, I had to go pivot immediately and go, all right, so I don't want anyone to take away from this that it was a failure. Here's what happened. It wasn't the audience that we thought it was. And so we set up, for one thing, got something differently and then so we got different results than we anticipated. But different anticipated results does not mean failure. It means you got exactly what you should have got out of what the subset out of the data that you had.

Right.

And so we repented. We said, all right, well now since we didn't get what we actually wanted, let's make the most out of what we got. We got criticism. So now let's use that criticism to make ourselves better. And we redeemed, we redeemed the emotional win out of that without having to change anything, without having to lie to ourselves or, you know, make anything up, which is what too many people do because like there are some completely like schizophrenics, probably a bad word to describe it, but there are some, there are some entrepreneurs out there that like any kind of setback, they just, they lie to themselves. They get caught up in this idea that like, oh, well, you know, this is what's really happening. And that like, no, you've got to be able to accept truth. You've got to be able to like accurately assess a situation. I always go back to that Napoleon Bonaparte quote, A leader's job is to assess the situation and offer hope. And so you've got to be able to accurately assess the situation and find a way to offer hope in it. And we were able to do that in that situation. And it's made us better over the last seven days.

Yeah, I mean, it made us better like within a day because I remember, I mean, I was out the next day and just what you guys talked about before we did our family meeting, the things that I heard in there and then the conversations after just in that one day was like, man, you know, if we were off track, we were slightly off track because we are back on track now as far as progress goes and stuff. But no, that's good. I mean, like, that is, that's what I'm learning to do. And I think that's what a lot of people, business wise and even any really any part of your life, this applies to that. But I mean, I'm learning to do those things like that, you know, like moving forward. And I think when you say people lie to themselves about, you know, like where they're at, I personally believe, and you can speak in on this, that probably comes from the fact that they know without a doubt that emotions are part of the progress journey. And I think accepting that or not is not going to change, you know, like where you're at Obviously, but in your mindset, like, if you can convince yourself you're okay, you. You can kind of keep trucking along. And that's where it fails, because you may. You may have your emotion, but emotions are a good guide for you. You know what I mean?

Like, so here's. So here's what happens, and this is the dangerous part. And you can lie to yourself. That's fine.

That's.

A lot of people do. Like, you, like, a lot of major, like, professional athletes, they do that on the regular basis. Like, you know, I like. Everybody that goes out on the field, that plays in the NFL, tells themselves I'm the best wide receiver in the NFL. You know, that's part of the mental. I'm. You know, everybody that stepped into the ring with Mike Tyson told themselves before the fight, I've got everything necessary to beat Mike Tyson. They were all wrong, right? Well, for the most part, they were all wrong because he's an animal. Like, everybody has. You know, he's famous for saying everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth. Like Mike Tyson said to himself. Like, it doesn't matter what they've said to themselves, the moment I hit them, they're going to doubt everything because they were liars. Like, if you don't know it's true, if you think it's a lie, but you're telling yourself it's a lie, it gives you an emotional bump and psychs you up. But the moment something contradicts that, all that your belief falls apart, and now you're weaker than if you'd have walked in. So, like, if I would have walked in, it would have been much better for them to say, mike Tyson is an animal. But I have trained, I've been hit. I've been hit hard. I think I can take anything he throws at me. I'm confident that I can take anything he throws at me. Instead of saying, mike Tyson can't touch me, I'm the fastest guy in the world. And the moment you get touched in the face, like, hard now, you go.

Oh, wait, that's not true.

That's not true anymore. And all the mental preparation you've done goes right out the window. But if what you've said is, I'm prepared to take what's coming and you get hit, then what you have is the truth. I'm still standing.

So you fall back to your training.

You fall back to your mental training, but it has to be rooted in truth. Because if you're lying to yourself, the moment something truth, the Moment truth comes into a situation and contradicts a lie, everything that is built on that lie falls.

Wow.

So you doubt everything else. That's where in the entrepreneurial world we get pretend pioneers, because you get, and we talk about this a lot, but like you get people who get so caught up in the, in the rat race of doing that to themselves that that becomes now a win. Because, because you say, well, I was in the ring with Mike Tyson and you weren't, right? Yeah, but we had the same results. And I didn't have to get into the ring with Mike Tyson. I didn't have to get my face tore up like to be a loser, Like, I didn't have to get in because I knew what would happen. You just found out for the both.

Of us and had to pay for reconstruction and surgery.

Yeah, exactly. But pretend pioneers would rather, by and large fail with a good excuse, you know, than succeed through effort.

Right.

And so they, they, if you lie to yourself, what ends up happening is that you get to excuse away the loss and then socially you get credit for the try. Right. And so, and so then it's like everybody pats you on the back for being in the ring with Mike Tyson. But there were one of a hundred thousand guys that could have gotten the ring with Mike Tyson in any of those fights, Right.

I mean, I could crawl in the ring with him, get the same results.

Yeah, you get the exact same results. The only reason that that person was in the ring was because the promoters thought they would make more money on somebody who looked like they had a chance.

Yeah, but they really didn't, Right.

They had the same exact odds I.

Would have, man, that's.

So the promoter was the person who made the money. They're not you like that. That had nothing to do with the, the opponent's skill set. Right. So much so that they, even in boxing, they have that, they call it a tune up fight. Like they're just tuning him up like for the, for the actual championship. The guys that fight against them are called stepping stone guys. Like, they know you're gonna walk through this person, it's just so that they can make a little bit of money, get a little bit more hype for the fight. That's what it's there for. It's got a purpose, but it's not so that you can beat Mike Tyson.

Yeah, they went off your unpreparedness. Yeah, that's. I mean, for me, you know, I was in the military and one thing that, when I first went to basic training, we just did stuff over and over and over again. It's like, it felt so stupid and, you know, like, some things I was glad that I just wasn't getting yelled at for. But, I mean, we spent, like, I don't know, a couple of weeks on the range just shooting and shooting, shooting. And I'm thinking, how effective is this? You know what I mean? Like, how much does this really help? And as it went on, we had all these, like. Each phase would culminate in what we call the ftx, like a field training exercise where we kind of go out in the field, simulate, like, battle. And even then, it didn't really make sense as much as it does now. But we learned that you can always have a plan and everybody should have a plan. This is not against making plans, but you should also train, too, and have training and be prepared, like what you're talking about. Because the second somebody shoots at you, the first time you hear a bullet fly over your head, you're just stuck. They call it the fog of war. You were just like, what do I do? And the only thing that you know to do in those stressful, extreme moments is the thing you've practiced over and over. And it's weird to have, like, if you've ever done that or you've ever been to that place where all of a sudden you don't know what's happening, but your body's on autopilot. It's fascinating. It's fascinating to see your body do something that you've tried to do, and in the moment, you're like, this is stupid. Why am I doing it? And it just makes sense. So I'm 100% one of our.

One of our generals. I think it was Eisenhower. He's quoted as saying, plans are useless. Planning is crucial. Yeah, like, plans are. Plans are useless. You're going to pivot, you're going to change. It's the act of planning that makes you consider the possibilities, that makes you.

Prepared for all the possibilities, that increases your adaptivity to.

Yeah, yeah. So. And then, like, you know, you've also got this. What you're talking about being on autopilot. But that's also. That's the whole idea that, like, when I'm. There's a. There's a. I live on quotes. Like, I just do. Everybody that knows me, like, I'll throw quotes out. I remember so much. But there's a great quote that says, amateurs practice till they get it right. Professionals practice till they can't get it wrong. And there's a level of like, I've done this so many times. It's autopilot. I will not get this wrong. And that's the major difference between amateurs and professionals. And on that note, we've been talking 35 minutes. It's probably time to get out of this thing.

Hit that music for me. All right, guys, that's gonna wrap it up. That was a good one. Again, you know, like, if you haven't liked our Instagram or follow us Instagram, do that. Subscribe to us. So you see, when we do new posts and check out our website, leadfastco.com also, our Instagram, before I skip over that, is Lead Fastco. We're also on Facebook. Yeah, there's some cheers there. And you're on button probation now. And leadfastco.com that's where our classes are. That's where less content is. Like, if you are just liking what we're saying, liking the things that you're hearing, there's so much more of that at our website. So it's the Treasure Trove resources. Leadfastco.com check it out, and we'll see you guys next time.