How You’re Sabotaging Your Business With These 5 Toxic Mindsets

Episode art

You always struggle to make progress in your business.  

Everyone seems to be against you. 

You can’t hire anyone because they’ll never do it as well as you can.

You simply can’t bring yourself to leave the security of your day job.

These are all symptoms of negative mindsets that are holding you back from your full potential as an audio engineer and entrepreneur!

By working to defeat negative mindsets, you can be much more comfortable in your own shoes and teach yourself to succeed rather than waiting for someone to hand things to you on a platter. 

Listen to this episode now to find out how you can identify and eliminate five different toxic mindsets that are ruining your chances of success!

In this episode you’ll discover:

  • Why you need to work on eliminating negative mindsets
  • Which negative mindsets might be affecting you
  • How the “blue-collar” mindset can hold your business back
  • Why outsourcing low-paying tasks can increase your hourly earnings
  • Why reacting negatively to someone else’s success is a sign of a bad mindset
  • How playing the victim will stop you in your tracks
  • Why holding grudges steals your time and energy
  • How fear negatively affects your business
  • What mental blocks the fixed mindset causes… And why they’re wrong
  • How Chris and Brian both overcame a fixed mindset to become successful business owners

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Quotes 

“A victim mentality isolates you and keeps you rooted where you are. It’s tough to move, even laterally, with a victim mentality. You cower in a corner, ‘ugh everyone’s against me!’” – Chris Graham

 

“Every single shortcoming you have can be overcome if you’re willing to put in the work. But, before you even put in the work you have to have the mindset that it can work. If you don’t think it can work, you will sabotage yourself before you ever get any meaningful result.” – Brian Hood

Episode Links


Websites

Forbes – https://www.forbes.com/

Facebook Community

6FHS Facebook Community – http://thesixfigurehomestudio.com/community

 

Instagram

@chris_graham – https://www.instagram.com/chris_graham/

@brianh00d – https://www.instagram.com/brianh00d/

 

YouTube Channels 

6 Figure Creative – https://www.youtube.com/thesixfigurehomestudio

Send Us Your Feedback!

The Six Figure Home Studio Podcast – podcast@thesixfigurehomestudio.com

 

Related Podcast Episodes

Episode 1: The “Old Model” Is Dead – The Future Is In YOU And Your Home Recording Studio – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/the-future-is-in-you-and-your-home-recording-studio/

Episode 22: How Emily Got Hundreds Of Clients By Combining Two Passions To Create Her Niche – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/how-emily-got-hundreds-of-clients-by-combining-two-passions-to-create-her-niche/

Episode 78: Motivation, Mindset, And Getting Out Of Your Own Damn Way: With Andy J Pizza Of Creative Pep Talk – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/motivation-mindset-and-getting-out-of-your-own-damn-way-with-andy-j-pizza-of-creative-pep-talk/

Episode 173: Should You Just Quit? – https://6figurecreative.com/should-you-just-quit/

 

Books

Misbehaving by Richard H. Thaler – https://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X

 

People

Bernie Sanders – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernie_Sanders

Andrew Carnegie – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Carnegie

Billie Eilish – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billie_Eilish

Rick Rubin – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Rubin

Scott Doolan – https://www.spotlightnepal.com/2018/04/05/scott-doolan-became-first-australian-paraplegic-scale-everest-base-camp/

Emily Dolan Davies – https://www.emilydrums.com/

Sara Blakely – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sara_Blakely

 

TV Shows and Products

Peppa Pig – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppa_Pig

Spanx – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanx

 

Additional Listening

How I Built This – Sara Blakely – https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/national-public-radio/how-i-built-this/e/46340238

How I Built This – Jeni Britton Bauer – https://jenis.com/blog/listen-now-jeni-on-how-i-built-this/

Brian: [00:00:00] This is the six figure creative podcast episode 1 74. Welcome to the six figure creative podcast where our mission is to help you turn your creative passions into a stable, reliable income. If you're an audio video design photography, or really any other creative field, and you just want to learn from other successful creatives, you're in the right place.

Brian: Welcome back to another episode of the six figure creative podcast. I'm your host Brian Hood. And I am here with another blast from the past, pulling back from our volts of the six figure home studio podcast back with our old podcast name. And I'm doing it for the exact same reason that if you listen to last week's episode, I kind of addressed that there, but I picked this specific episode for a reason.

Brian: And that reason is that 2020 and into 2021. I think that these have probably been the two worst years for mental health in my lifetime. And I'm not just talking about for myself, although I think that is true. I think it's true as. [00:01:00] As a species on earth as humans, I believe the last two years have been the worst for mental health as a whole.

Brian: And so today's episode is a really good reminder of why it is so important for us to be mentally healthy. If we want to have successful businesses, because in business, we can't get away with some of the things we can get away with. As employees, as employees, you basically, in a lot of places, you can just do enough to not get noticed and keep turning away.

Brian: Day after day and business, you cannot do that. You have to be mentally sound in order to be successful. And a lot of these things you already know, and this is actually one of the other reasons I wanted to pull from the vaults today is that because I believe that we have more than enough information.

Brian: At our disposal. You've probably some of you listening right now. You've already binged through all of the episodes of the six figure home studio and the six-figure grade of podcast episodes. You've been watching my YouTube videos that have been putting out weekly for the past 11 weeks. So we don't need more information.

Brian: We simply need to be reminded of what we already know. And this is a really good episode, really [00:02:00] timely, I believe for so many people in our audience. And so when I listened to this episode again today, just to kind of review it, see if it's a good episode for pulling from the vault for a replay. It hit me hard because so many of these things are just things that I should be reminded of daily.

Brian: And this is something I'm trying to get more into the podcasts that I consume and the information sources I consume that goes for podcasts books, you do channels. Whatever my goal moving forward is to consume less sources of information, but consume those sources more often. That means rereading a book.

Brian: When I know that book is helpful for me or my. That means going back through the backlog of episodes and a podcast that I know is a great for me, especially for an area of, of something that I'm trying to work on specifically at that time in my life. And so with all that out of the way, this episode is the five toxic mindsets that will essentially ruin your chances of being successful as a freelancer or as an entrepreneur, as a business owner.

Brian: And these are five things that I need to be reminded at every so often. So without that, here is the backlog from the past blast, from the [00:03:00] past, from the vault episode with me anxious.

Brian: So, Chris, how are you doing my dude,

Chris: man? And I'm freaking great. I have been, I went to 20 yoga classes this month. We're recording this in August and I'm like a yoga addict. Now I like was in a class last night and I was like, I'm not going enough. I have not been going to enough

Brian: yoga classes. Our longtime listeners know how big of an actual hippie you are.

Brian: It's true. And you just need to have like a personal blog called the bald hippie.

Chris: The back, the big, bold hippie, most of these have long hair. I'm also a germaphobe and cannot tolerate long hair because it makes me feel dirty. Don't tell anyone that the tall, bald hippie, the tall bald hippie, I thought I'm not supposed to have literal business names.

Chris: Brian, what's up with that, man. But you hated that.

Brian: Talking about monetizing that I'm talking about, just having a blog about it,

Chris: maybe I will, maybe it will. I'll tell you about petrouli and CBD and vegetarianism,

Brian: which [00:04:00] of all those things that you embrace, which is hilarious. Actually, not for virtually though, right?

Chris: No, we don't do, but I don't have any hair though. So thank

Brian: God. I was going to judge you so hard. We do

Chris: love the CBD and

Brian: being it's fine. Everyone does right now. It's hot. There's a guy. His studio is named CBD CDB. I can't even say it CBD CDB recordings. And like, I'm like, dude, change your name. If you're listening right now, you're a great person.

Brian: But CBD has taken over the minds of people. You can't be CDB recordings. It just doesn't work anymore.

Chris: If we keep this in and don't edit it out. I'm sorry. If I were in your shoes and was listening to a podcast and heard that I would get all hot on my body, I'd be like, oh God, he's sick.

Brian: This is encouragement to change it.

Brian: We might edit this out. I don't know. Or we'll just embrace it and roll on throwing our listeners under the bus. So sorry.

Chris: He probably needs some CBD right now.

Brian: Ooh, we should sell CBD on the blog.

Chris: Dude. A lot of podcasts have CBD [00:05:00] sponsors and that's how I got into CBD CBD. Okay. Let's do this. Maybe it gets edited out.

Chris: Maybe not.

Brian: We're not going to edit it out because we're talking about CBD oil, but we're going to have a lot of people skipping through this section. Just skip ahead. Like five minutes. No, because

Chris: yes, totally. So CBD is made from hemp, AKA cannabis, AKA marijuana, however CBD doesn't get you high, but it does help significantly in a topical cream for pain.

Chris: And it's extremely relaxing if you take it internally, like with a gel cap or a

Brian: gummy or now caveat that's for some people don't do a damn thing to me, so I don't even bother with it.

Chris: Well, we can talk more about that later. A lot of it depends on the dosage as well. So like, I don't know, it's a mysterious thing, but my wife and I swear by it and we're hoping that some day a CBD company will send us everything because we have a podcast.

Chris: So that'd

Brian: be nice. You know what your dreams might just come true one day, Chris, that'd be amazing. Let's move on to something that actually [00:06:00] matters to our listeners, our non stoner, non hippy listeners that don't care about CBD oil or yoga or vegetarianism. Sorry, James. Our editor is a vegetarian actually

Chris: vegan.

Chris: He's a vegan. Okay. I get it right to pay the

Brian: price. Brian, a hardcore vegetarian vegetarian 2.0, so we've got to be careful about this sort of conversation here. I respected all today's. Is one that we've talked about, all the topics we're out of topics to talk about, but we're going to go into depth. We're going really deep into this topic, cause we're gonna have a two part series on this before I even tell you what this is.

Brian: I just want to paint the picture of how important this is. This is more important than your portfolio. This is more important than your website. This is more important than your follow-up emails. This is more important than Facebook retargeting. This is more important than paid advertising. This is more important than your audio skills.

Brian: Yeah. This is more important than all of that. That is how important this is. And this thing that we're talking about is your mindset. Before you turn it off, let me [00:07:00] explain why this is so important to you. This is the least sexy subject, but this is why I see anyone who fails. I'd say 80% of the time. If I have a conversation with the moon, dig into it.

Brian: And Chris, you probably have a better idea of this cause you do one-on-one coaching. I can trace it back to mindset. Totally

Chris: well, and to hop in there and the coaching thing, when I started doing the business coaching thing, I thought I'd be like, oh, I'll just be talking about tactical stuff with how to build systems, how to do this marketing thing, you know?

Chris: No dah, dah, dah. And I've been blown away that virtually every coaching call I've done has primarily revolved around mindset. Yes. The number one topic I talk about in a coaching call is addressing a mindset issue.

Brian: Yeah. So if you go to the six figure home studio.com, that's literally it, there's no other URL, six figure home studio.com and you scroll to the bottom.

Brian: You'll see something where I'm talking about the home studio business hierarchy, and this is kind of a pyramid shape. There's a whole image that goes along with it. So that's important that you go there [00:08:00] and look at this, but at the very foundation of your business, the bottom of the pyramid, the foundational level is mindset.

Brian: Like this is the thing that everything else stacks on top of. And if you have a foundation. AKA the mindset. It is nearly impossible to build a stable, sustainable business on top of that foundation. That is why it is infinitely more important than anything else that we talked about because you can have a perfect website, a perfect funnel.

Brian: You can have perfect sales copy. You can have a perfect lead magnet or a perfect pricing. You can have perfect follow-up and perfect pay to advertise. You can have all these things in place in a perfect way in your business can still fail because of the mindset. And there are several different mindsets, negative mindsets that we're going to cover today.

Brian: And then next week's episode, we're going to cover some positive mindsets that we are going to help nurture and talk about nurturing. So this week we're talking about things we want to eliminate next week. Things we want to actually grow and nurture as far as our mindset. Now,

Chris: these are fun to [00:09:00] talk about because when I'm on a coaching call with somebody, and again, it's like a side thing that I do.

Chris: It's not the main thing. But it's a blast. I do it about four times a week, about four coaching calls a week with different guys, different girls. And the mindset thing is fun to talk about because most of the time, the reason they're having a systems issue or an advertising issue or a client issue is because there's a mindset issue that under girds, that it's like the foundational problem in their business.

Chris: And it's a blast to talk about this because when you overcome a mindset, it is like, like a negative mindset. It's one of the most wonderful like releases that you get psychologically to be like, oh, it's like a burden comes off. You and I recently had a massive mindset epiphany about something that I've been doing totally wrong my entire life.

Chris: And there's a little bit of family issues. Well, my family struggles with this particular mindset, and we're going to lead off with this

Brian: one. This first mindset is something we call the blue collar [00:10:00] mindset. And this is something I think you and I probably made up. I don't know if this is something that's known is definitely not a term a psychologist would use, but can you really quickly before we actually talked through this story, can you talk through what a blue collar mindset is?

Brian: Yeah. Well,

Chris: I'm going to give you a really long explanation

Brian: so much for just a quick and dirty explanation to give some sort of context to the story.

Chris: Yeah. This will not be picking dirty. I think I have to give the long road, the scenic route, if you will. So I recently began reading a book and I wouldn't necessarily recommend this book.

Chris: It's a very heavy, intense, almost like academic book, but it's hilarious. And it's called misbehaving and it's by this guy, Richard failer Richard Faler is what you would call a behavioral economist. And I would sum up what a behavioral economist does as try to answer one question. And that question is why do humans not act in their own best interest all the time?

Chris: And this is a fascinating question because I see it in myself [00:11:00] constantly. I always make decisions where I'm like, that was stupid. You know, we talk about this in terms of walking past a small pile of money to get to a bigger pile of money. We struggle with walking past that small pile of money because there's mindset issues at play there.

Chris: But there's also part of the human condition that leads us to not even act selfishly in an efficient way. And a lot of times there's different things that come into play, where you get focused on the immediate future. And you don't look at the bigger picture and the blue collar mindset. I have to say first and foremost, that my dad's side of the family is extremely blue.

Chris: I would say quintessentially blue collar, and there are really positive aspects to that. So I don't want anyone to hear us the same, uh, blue collar people, all their bad. They're not,

Brian: well, let me actually interject here. I don't know if this is a term used outside of America. So actually I want to make sure everyone's on the same page here.

Brian: A blue collar job is like a mechanic or someone in a factory, someone, I guess in [00:12:00] determined, be someone who wear like a jumpsuit that was like these blue colors. And then they had a literal blue collar. Is that somewhat correct? Is the origination on that?

Chris: The opposite of that here in the United States is white collar.

Chris: So if you're like an executive or a manager and you wear a white collared shirt to work, you'd be called, you know, I have a white collar

Brian: job. Yeah. So the blue collar mindset, we're not trying to have a negative connotation to anyone that's blue collar, but there is a certain mindset attached with blue collar people that is not an entrepreneur mindset.

Brian: And so in the context of what we're talking about today is it is a negative mindset. If you're trying to be an entrepreneur. Yeah,

Chris: exactly. If you're trying to grow. And gain your own freedom where you are your own boss. A blue collar mindset is very challenging to get over. And I say that from experience, I have an intense blue collar mindset.

Chris: My lawnmower is from 1998, but is it a push mower? No, it is a riding lawnmower. It's an MTD with 26 and a half ponies, baby.

Brian: That is literally going to get you a gear sled alert, but for that's cutting [00:13:00] gear.

Chris: So I'm prideful about my lawn mower and I called up MTD the other day, that company that makes it, cause I was looking for parts and they're like, oh, you know, what's your serial number?

Chris: And they were like your mowers from 1998.

Brian: They're like, no, give us your money. We're not giving you any more parts. Come buy a new one from us.

Chris: Can we see it? How, how is it still running? So like I fixed it myself. Like I get underneath it and I'm like, you know, fixing polies and changing the oil and putting new parts on to replace old parts.

Chris: What a weird,

Brian: bizarre thing to take pride in Chris. Like you never cease to surprise me.

Chris: Well, it's a blue collar mentality. This obsession with like, I'm not going to spend more money on a new lawnmower. Even if my lawnmower is a death trap, that will probably kill me. Cause I have a giant hill in my backyard.

Chris: You ride this huge mower. It's like a 46 inch deck. See, I'm so blue collar. You ride it down the hill and

Brian: pray if you're listening and it's sped up, you might've heard something that you didn't hear it. He said dad, E C K D

Chris: E C K. [00:14:00] Yeah. It has three blades underneath it. And here's why go into it. I'm arrogant about my lawnmower.

Chris: I love that I'm on my own lawn. Well, we've started hiring a kid to mow the front of the lawn, but I'm on the back, which hasn't been mowed in over a month. Don't tell my wife, actually, she totally knows. And she bothers me about it all the time. But so here's the thing. I'm reading a Richard Taylor's book.

Chris: And there's the story in Richard Taylor's book where he's talking to his neighbor, Dennis, I think his name is Dennis, Dennis, Dennis, and Dennis comments to Richard. He says, man, hate mowing this freaking lawn. And they're just like talking, they're doing the neighbors. And Mr. Faler says, well, Hey, the kid down the street will mow your lawn for 10 bucks.

Chris: Why don't you just hire him instead? And Dennis says, no, I would never pay $10 to have someone mow my lawn. And Richard Baylor's lawn was about the same size as Dennis's. And he and Richard Thaler said, oh, well, will you mow my lawn for $10 then? And Dennis did not react well to that. Dennis got really [00:15:00] offended.

Chris: He was like, no, I will not mow your lawn for $10. And Richard landed the finish him, blow gut, punch the punchline and said, well, what's the difference? You valued your time at $10 by not hiring someone for $10 to do that thing yet you won't accept money for the equivalent value to do the same thing for

Brian: somebody else.

Brian: Chris, I think everyone's following what you're saying, but just to kind of clarify this, to make it simpler for people to kind of grasp here, brings us back to the studio real quick. All right.

Chris: So let's say that yesterday, you. Edited drums for three hours and you did a really good job. You're great at it, but here's the catch.

Chris: A lot of people are great editing drums. And the going rate for editing drums is probably, I don't know, $15 an hour. You can probably find someone who's good at editing drums for 15 bucks an hour. So you just edited drums yesterday. You spent three hours. You could have hired someone for $15 an hour, but because you have a blue [00:16:00] collar mentality, you want it to save that money.

Chris: You were really focused on keeping that money for yourself tomorrow. Let's say someone calls you up and says, Hey man, I've got some drums that need editing. It's probably about three hours of work. I'd like to hire you for $15 an hour now for some of you and our audience and no shame, if that's you, Hey, that's a great rate.

Chris: You know, you're trying to get your start, go for it. For many of you. You're making more like 30, 40, 50, 60, $70 an hour. And you would be super offended. If someone offered to pay you $15 an hour to edit drums, however, you just edited drums the day before, instead of hiring someone for $15 an hour, what

Brian: is the difference?

Chris: There's no difference. Here's the kicker. You would be offended if someone offered you $15 an hour, because quote unquote, you're worth more than that. Here's the problem you aren't. And the person who decided that you aren't worth more than $15 an hour is [00:17:00] freaking you, man.

Brian: Ooh, this hurts.

Chris: It does it

Brian: every day.

Brian: There is something I do that someone else could do for much, much cheaper, same. And I have like just diluted my, what I am worth. And it's no one's fault except my own.

Chris: This is in my opinion, probably one of the more challenging things, at least personally, to myself that we've ever talked about on the show.

Chris: This stings, this stings and this whole idea, you know what? We're really concerned in our industry about what we are quote, unquote worth, because what we're worth has some kind of it's tied into our personal value. It's sat into this like spiritual, it's a big concept, what you're worth. And it's really easy to get offended.

Chris: When someone offers you quote unquote, less than what you're worth.

Brian: Now you can have a real quick snarky response to somebody because you just got so offended. Oh, I'm not, I'm not going to do that. I'm insulted super

Chris: normal to get offended and you're offended because they have taken you down a [00:18:00] notch.

Chris: They've said no, no, no, you're not as cool as you think you are. You're only worth $15 an hour. That's super

Brian: offensive as humans, we like to progress to bigger and better things. It is real tough as a human being, especially as an American to go back to something, to a lower standard of living or existing or income, it's this really hard.

Brian: So this

Chris: is food for thought, and this is going to be the most uncomfortable thing we talk about. I think in this episode, it's not, I assure you, well, this might just be, this is the most uncomfortable for me. I'm arrogant about the fact that my mower still runs after 20 years. And I know 21 years, I know my grandpa, my dad's dad would be so proud of me.

Chris: Here's the problem though. That's a blue collar mindset and it would be much smarter. Cause here's the thing like what's, it cost someone to mow my lawn $15 an hour, 20 bucks an hour. I could hire somebody. I make way more than $20 an hour as a mastering engineer. And I make more than $20 an hour as a coach.

Chris: And I have this opportunity, [00:19:00] which is the bounce Butler thing and the home studio lessons. It's worth far more for me to put my time into other things than it is for me to put my time into all. I need to put a new belt on my mower and then mow it myself.

Brian: Yeah. So before I say what I'm about to say, I want to mention that I am just as bad, or maybe not as bad as you, but I am really bad still with the blue collar mindset.

Brian: It's certain things in my life that being said, I was talking to my mom yesterday, or this weekend, I went back home for my niece's one-year birthday. And we were talking through like lawn maintenance or something. Cause my parents have to actually, my dad mowed the lawn. He just got a new riding lawn mower for the house.

Brian: And I was thinking through, I was like in my adult life, I have never actually mowed my own line, but you don't have. That's part of it. However, there was two years that I lived with a roommate in west Nashville, why I was using this place that I'm in now as an Airbnb, maybe it's three years. And during that time over there, we just hired a lawn guy to come every two

Chris: weeks.

Chris: Well that's because your roommate, Brandon is a genius.

Brian: Yes, yes, [00:20:00] yes, yes, yes. So I will avoid it as long as I possibly can. But at the same time we made that decision, both of us. Cause we actually said, I don't want to cut the lawn. You're not going to cut the lawn. And we, our time is worth way more than that.

Brian: However, there still so many things in my business that I haven't taken that approach on that I'm like kicking myself right now because I'm so smog about not cutting the grass, but there's like so many other things that are like a 10th of what my hourly value is that I'm still doing. And that's like, that's, that is unacceptable.

Brian: That is insane.

Chris: Very, very, very challenging. And I told my mom about this book, I'm reading and I explained the scenario and my mom's an accountant. And she also struggles with this. She would tell you she struggles. But as an accountant, it was fun to watch her process this, because she's really good at mental accounting at like shifting value around in her head because she's like one of the best accountants in the state of Ohio, therefore, the country, she was telling me about how there's a lot of family history around this and that her grandma, my great grandma who I knew pretty well.

Chris: My [00:21:00] wife actually, where's my great grandma's wedding ring. That was what I gave Alison when I proposed. And she was telling me about how Ghana struggled with this, about how Ghana was worth a lot of money, tons of money, and would complain about like, not getting the special deal at the restaurant. And it would cost her an extra dollar.

Chris: And it's funny because Ghana, not the country, my great-grandmother's name was Ghana, but her husband was like a money expert so much so that the us government sent him to Berlin after world war II. And he created with two other guys, the. The new currency that Germany uses to this day. And he was so successful at it that Russia saw what he did and was like, oh no, you created a new, a new currency.

Chris: That is that's way to capitalist. And we're closing Berlin and you're going to have to airlift stuff and the Berlin from here on out. So it was like my great grandpa's fault because he was a money expert. He understood the way economies function. He understand the way currency [00:22:00] works. So you would think that like, in my family, at least on my mom's mom's side, that we would just be experts at this, but even there, there was a lot of inconsistency about like, I'm so mad that I didn't get the dollar off my meal at the restaurant and the way to vacation and be like, You'll be okay.

Chris: Calm down.

Brian: Yeah. Just to clarify. So people don't send us a bunch of messages that are hateful. They stop using the doge mark and 2002 and Nelson's 99. They've been using the

Chris: Euro. Oh, gotcha. Well, until 1999, you can thank Colonel Emory

Brian: Stoker. So before we move on to the next mindset that we need to discuss and work on eliminating, I want to take a second to try and get someone hired here.

Brian: I need a personal assistant. Anyone in Nashville. This goes hand in hand with what we're just talking about now, because let me just tell you my situation. There are certain things that I'm really good at not being blue collar mindset. About one of those things is like car maintenance. My wife's car is broken down, sitting outside my house right now.

Brian: My car needs tires, rotated and balanced [00:23:00] air put in it. I need like maintenance done on my car. I need like my back left window repaired and hasn't been done in months now I'll do it for $15 an hour simply because. Of me knowing that anytime I spend on that as time I can spend with my wife or my business.

Brian: And so if you are interested in just doing mundane, personal assistant type stuff for a fair wage and no offense to those, if you're taken on contact me, I'm not going to tell you how you can figure it out, but contact me, let me know if you're interested, move on Chris. Do you have any last minute tips of things that we can talk about as far as getting past blue collar mindset, other than being aware of it and understanding the mathematics behind it?

Brian: Yeah.

Chris: You said something interesting just now that you understood that, Hey, anytime I spend on this task is something anybody could take care of. Yeah.

Brian: Anybody can take my car to get the tires, reten bounced. Anyone can take my wife's car to go get the engine fixed on it. The

Chris: opportunity. Yes. The opportunity cost for you is time on your business or now time with your wife.[00:24:00]

Chris: Yeah. When you are a young single guy, which is, I think is a pretty sizeable part of our. And you don't have opportunity costs of, oh, you could go hang out with your kids or you could go on a date with your spouse or dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. It gets harder to think about this blue collar mentality because there's not a whole lot of immediate downside.

Chris: Yeah. However you need to think about if you're in a position where you can afford to pay someone $15 an hour, even a few hours a week to start with, and then you can turn around and make $25 an hour with the time that you now have leftover. That is one of the paths to success. It's an important component to not dilute your time.

Chris: Because when you look at your hourly, what you're actually making per hour, you have to average in how much you made for every hour that you worked. And if some of the hours you worked were only worth quote unquote $15 an hour, even if you had other hours that you're worth a hundred dollars an hour. [00:25:00] You have to average those $15 an hour hours in, and it messes up what you're worth and it puts a cap on how much you can make.

Brian: Yeah. So think about it like an investment, because that is really what it is. You're investing 15 bucks an hour so that you don't have to do the work so that you can use that time to do bigger and better tasks that will immediately, or eventually earn you more than $15 an hour. If you don't handle it that way, if you just use that time to squander and play video games or to do something that is not a monetary thing, or at least bring great joy to your life, like a date with your wife or whatever, or hanging out with your kids, then it's not worth the hiring out of things because a lot of people have more time than they have money.

Brian: So there is a slight balance to it, but you still need to have this sort of stuff in the back of. As you are building your business. So let's move on now to our next mindset, our next negative mindset. And that is the scarcity mindset. Scarcity mindset is everything being a zero sum game. One example would be, if I'm a recording studio, [00:26:00] then I am competing with all the other studios in the city.

Brian: They are all my competition because we're all competing for the same bands. And so I can't be friends with them because if someone else is talking to another studio, I gotta make sure I win that client because then I won't get them. The scarcity mindset is one of those dangerous things, because everything becomes a competition and an unhealthy competition and a scarcity mindset can lead to burn bridges between people that you really should have a good relationship with.

Brian: How else would you define a scarcity mindset,

Chris: Chris? Well, scarcity mindset. It's interesting. I would say when you have a scarcity mindset, anyone's success. Equals your failure.

Brian: Yeah, absolutely. That's a huge one. Is when you negatively react to someone else's success, either you're jealous or it makes you feel like a failure or actually that might be a different type of mindset.

Brian: If you feel like a failure, anytime someone else succeeds. I think,

Chris: I think it's the same thing because it's the idea that, oh crap, they were successful and I could have had, and that's success.

Brian: Yeah. So one area I [00:27:00] see this all the time as an entrepreneur is I see people, a lot of people just come to me. I have lunches with people, or I'm just talking in Hangouts or whatever, and people.

Brian: We're talking about new businesses, they're looking to launch. And one of the biggest things I hear from people all the time is yo, I was going to this business. Then I start looking into it. And there's already so many businesses that were successful. And so I just decided not to. And that's the scarcity mindset getting the better of you.

Brian: People think that because there's already businesses that are already established, they're already further, along than you, that you cannot start a business. That is the scarcity mindset holding you back from achieving what you want. And it's the same in the studio world. People are like, I can't do my studio.

Brian: Full-time because there's already studios in my area that are artist successful. And if I would've started five years ago, I could have done it. That is not the case. What I tell every single person that comes to me with that sort of mindset, especially for a new business where they back out of a potential business, because it's already too crowded to me.

Brian: When I see a lot of competition that tells me one thing, there is demand for it. And if there's demand. Then I want to be in that market. If there is [00:28:00] no other business doing what you're looking to do out there, that is a horrible sign because there's no market for it. Nine times out of 10, actually 99 times out of a hundred.

Brian: One of the

Chris: things, you know, we try to be really careful to not get into politics.

Brian: No, we don't waste to be talking about that. Come on.

Chris: Well, I'm going to preface this by sharing a little bit about my own views.

Brian: Here, here comes capitalistic,

Chris: Chris, here we go. And some ways I'm fiscally as conservative as they come, but when it comes to the social side of things, justice reform being one of those things.

Chris: I am wildly liberal in the United States. We incarcerate people at five times the global rate think about that. So if there's a hundred people in America, Five times more of them will have been to jail. Then the average of the globe, which is a problem

Brian: and easier way to say that would be if there's a hundred inmates in America, there's only 20 anywhere else.

Chris: That's an excellent way to put it. There's only 20 in the average country, outside of America, which is funny because [00:29:00] we in our country love to call ourself the land of the free. Not necessarily true though. That's

Brian: debatable. I hope you're going somewhere

Chris: with this. I am going somewhere with this. So I'm saying that if I were president, I would let 80% of our prisoners go.

Chris: Especially if they're non-violent

Brian: I would move out of this country if you were president.

Chris: So I'm excessively,

Brian: socially liberal, stop prefacing, whatever you're about to say and say it. Okay. I

Chris: just want to make sure, I don't know if in tune, if you will. Bernie Sanders is an interesting case of the scarcity mentality.

Chris: Okay. I like Bernie. I would rather hang out with Bernie than anybody else. However, Bernie loves to talk about the billionaire. The billionaires. And here's the problem with that? This idea that the 1% is hoarding. The money is a scarcity mentality because it presupposes that there's only a certain amount of money on

Brian: earth.

Brian: That's the only good point. You said you just heard Chris Graham's version of all this. He [00:30:00] just said, please simplify. Let me tell you the Brian Hood version of what he just said. Here's the branded version. I'm fiscally conservative, but I am socially liberal. And here's my example. I'm going to stop the voice because I do have more to say socialists, like to say that the 1% of hoarding all the money and that is a scarcity mindset period, because that assumes that there is a set amount of money in the world and that the 1% is taking it all that is not.

Brian: Value works. That's not how currency works. That's not how money works. And if you have that sort of mindset for money, the scarcity mindset for money, it is going to be infinitely more difficult to ever get out of the 99%. That's our political rant. And that's a lot less dancy than yours. Chris. I feel like I did a better job there.

Brian: It's funny. Cause

Chris: like on the one hand I'm more liberal than all my liberal friends in many ways, but I'm also terrified to [00:31:00] be seen as not liberal enough for some reason, which is its own weird thing

Brian: and Graham eight. So you shouldn't give about what anyone thinks about you. So that's a weird little quirky got

Chris: yeah, but so here's the thing.

Chris: What I want to say about this is the value on earth continues to go up. You know, when I was a teenager, we had an a 32 inch TV in our basement and it was huge and it was for ADP 480 pixels, I think squared or whatever. Now we have a 65 inch TV. That costs less than the 32 inch TV and is so much better. I don't even know how many more pixels this thing has and the thing that's important to underscore there.

Chris: Andrew Carnegie that's right. Carnegie. It's not pronounced Carnegie. It's Carnegie. What's

Brian: funny is you used to say the opposite of that. I probably just messed it

Chris: up. You did. But anyways, he says something really, really interesting. He said that what capitalism does is it makes available to even the poor, that which was previously unavailable to [00:32:00] even the rich.

Chris: And so case in point my 65 inch, 10 80 PTV, which isn't super nice would have cost a billion dollars. When I was a teenager, it didn't even exist. Capitalism has created an incentive to drive the price down. And so value increases on earth because everyone is trying to make something bigger and better and improve the quality of life so that they get paid.

Chris: So as value goes up, so does money because money is a proxy for value, or to put it in audio terms, an analog for value. Oh my God. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

Brian: So quick story. I didn't hear anything you just said, Chris, I ignored it because I was on Google trying to find a story that I heard once that I thought was a really good example of what we were talking about.

Brian: I don't know what you just said. It wasn't that good. Don't worry about it. Okay. Maybe we'll edit it out then. So it's really hard to grasp the concept of the 1% or hoarding on the money when they're really not. It's hard to grasp that concept of adding value and creating more value in the world. But I heard a story recently that gives you a better [00:33:00] visual of that and helps you remove the scarcity mindset, especially when it comes to money.

Brian: And it's not just money. We're focusing on money right now and the economy, and we're getting a little too political. In my opinion, these are gray areas. There's a ton of different areas that you can apply the scarcity mindset to clients, relationships, popularity, quality gear. But so coming back to this to put like a clear thing on what we're talking about here, creating value specifically, if you take a piece of steel, the value is what, what would you think 30 pounds of steel costs are 10 pounds of steel.

Chris: Unfortunately, I'm not blue collar enough to know the answer to

Brian: that. Let's say a pound of steel costs, 10 bucks or something it sounds about, right? Yeah. So you take somebody who has forged and shape that into like some sort of insane samurai sword. They have added a ton of value. And so when they sell that same pound of steel, And the free market they're going to get maybe a thousand, maybe $10,000 for that same pound of steel they have just created.

Brian: They just [00:34:00] generated new value in the market. Same pound of steel. It's now worth 10,000 instead of $10. That's cool. And there are millions of ways. This looks throughout the market, not just with raw materials, but if you take, for example, music, you are taking raw materials, which is a guitar, a bass, a thousand dollar drum set, a thousand dollar bass guitar, a $20,000 studio.

Brian: And you're putting out millions of dollars, potentially millions of dollars of recordings out into the world at a high end studio.

Chris: Look at Billy Eilish, perfect example, home studio, her and her brother hanging out in the bedroom. Making jams they've created value.

Brian: Let's just look at like a producer out there.

Brian: Someone who's like the top of the game, who is like the highest earning producer right now in recent times. Probably Rick Rubin. Sure. I don't know. I don't know this world well enough. I'm very biased. And like the producers that I follow let's just look at Rick Ruben. You could say that he's the 1% hoarding, everything.

Brian: Or you can say that he is someone that has created a massive amount of value in the market [00:35:00] and has probably wisely invested it as well. Hopefully he has got a house in Malibu, probably that's what everyone else on like the wall street protests, he would be considered the 1%. So just think about that next time you have the scarcity mindset.

Brian: Think about that sort of illustration of adding value in very few circumstances. Is there a limited number of something, even in an area where there truly is a limited number that is a zero sum game in your area and your clients, and you're all competing for the same clients, really though. You can't all service those clients at the end of the day, you're not fighting each other.

Brian: You can still have a abundance mindset. We'll talk. Next week and not have a scarcity mindset. And even if you lose a client, it's still going to work out better for you, if you didn't burn that bridge with your

Chris: competitor. Yeah. And so I would say two things to that one. We're in an interesting industry.

Chris: As far as the recording studio revolution goes, what percentage of earth liens would you say want their own record Scott, to be a hundred

Brian: percent? It's like 25% of Americans want to write a book. [00:36:00] They're desirous to write a book. I'm sure there's a large percentage of people in the world who want to put out their music in the world.

Chris: Yeah. There's plenty of value there. And this is tied into the blue collar mentality because the blue collar mentality is terrified of leaving money on the table. And that makes it really hard. To leave that table to go get

Brian: more money. Yeah. They're scared to let go of money. That's the big thing scarcity and the blue

Chris: collar mentality, both of these mentalities are rooted in FOMO, fear of missing out that's the common thread that they have.

Brian: Yeah. So I'd actually say that blue collar mentality or blue collar mindset that we just talked about before is a result of the scarcity mindset, which makes really scarcity mindset is the core issue here. So let's move on now to our third mindset, the third mindset that is detrimental to your career, the third mindset that we need to work on, eliminate.

Brian: And that is something called the victim mindset. I like to call it the victim mentality, but we looked up the definitions of mentality and mindset, basically the same thing. I'm going to call it victim mentality. Cause that's what I've always called it. But this is a mindset. [00:37:00] This is a state of mind that you are constantly.

Brian: And if you have the victim mentality and I'm going to try to sum it up with some things I've seen, I've even seen in our own community, which is a bummer, but I've definitely seen it in other communities. And I've seen it in students. I see it everywhere. I see this all the time and this is the mindset of that type of person.

Brian: This is what's going through their head. Oh, everything always goes wrong with me. I'm always the victim in this situation. People are trying to hold me back. If only this would happen, I could be successful, but you know what? I'm never going to be successful because of these circumstances. Point a point B point.

Brian: And because of these three things, I just can't do this. And also my significant other just left me. And so now I can't do this because I'm so sad. Like victim mentality is toxic,

Chris: super toxic back to this FOMO scarcity blue collar thing. But this idea of all somebody else who does the same thing I do just got a client.

Chris: They took it from me. No, they didn't [00:38:00] most of the time. And even if they did letting that seep into your soul and thinking about all this, someone did something to me. Oh, it's limited my potential. That's bad news, man. You've got to get over that. The victim mentality, I would say is almost probably, and certainly more toxic than a blue collar mentality or a scarcity mentality because a victim mentality.

Chris: Isolates you and keeps you rooted where you are. It's tough to move even laterally with a victim mentality because it's just like you cower in a corner and like, oh, I'm, everyone's

Brian: against me. Here's one of the biggest dangers of victim mentality. And to me, this is the most potentially offensive one for people because there's so many people that I see that have this mentality, and they're going to see this section of the podcast as an attack on them because they have the victim mentality.

Brian: If any of this offends you, by the way, you probably have the victim mentality. So if you're easily offended, you probably had the victim mentality. But let me just sum this up real quick. The biggest issue with the victim mentality. It constantly [00:39:00] puts your fate in the hands of some external source. So if it's someone else's fault, it is some health condition that you have.

Brian: It is some external factor, money time, your family, your kids, your day job, something else is holding you back from actually doing something. And so therefore you have no chance at this. Now there are some circumstances where this may be true, but playing the victim is still not helping you at the end of the day.

Brian: And this can always be changed. So I will add a caveat that there are truly victims out there for sure. But I don't know if I've ever seen someone that I would say has the victim mentality. That was truly a victim. It's almost always someone that is just bitching and complaining about whatever scenario that life has dealt them.

Brian: And furthermore, it's usually a direct result of some action. They took that backfired on them. It's almost

Chris: always their fault. Well, and here's where it gets intense. Uncomfortable. I've experienced this in my own life as a little kid. It's really easy to take on that victim mentality. And [00:40:00] here's where it gets really scary.

Chris: How many of you have ever fancied yourself the victim and kind of liked it gave you an out, gave you an excuse. Oh, it wasn't my fault. This guy came against me. Uh, wasn't my fault. This person, you know, oh, they treated me a certain way and they really took the wind out of my sails.

Brian: It gives you a little, little rush because you are now not responsible.

Brian: You feel like you are owed something from someone and when you were owed something in title, body entitled, that's the word you are entitled to some sort of repayment or apology or some sort of thing from that person that makes you feel yeah.

Chris: Here's where it gets really scary when your soul is infected.

Chris: When this happens is that you feel like a victim. And then you feel justified in doing something unethical. Ooh, we're calling out like the nasty here, but when you feel like a victim and you're like, well, they stole from me. So it's okay [00:41:00] that I steal this when no one's looking.

Brian: Yeah. That's one right there.

Brian: It can really go down this really dark hole and it can lead to a lot of burn bridges and it can honestly make you look stupid publicly. I see this on Facebook all the time, because anyone that sends me a friend request, I used to just accept now. I don't because I'm not on Facebook really anymore, except for our community.

Brian: So if you sent me a friend request my bad, I just don't accept them anymore. I rarely do. At least surely

Chris: is a scarcity issue would play there. You only have 5,000 friends you can have on Facebook. So

Brian: yeah. So again, victim mentality, I see this all the time. Someone will do something to a person and then that person will post a long post on Facebook, either passive, aggressively, or just aggressively calling that person.

Brian: That sort of stuff makes me laugh so hard, but it really comes down to the victim mentality. I was wronged by this one person. So I'm going to put them on blast on social media that makes you look weak, that burns a bridge. And if you have a business, no one wants to hire you now because you're petty.

Brian: Yeah. [00:42:00]

Chris: It's not a good look to pull the victim card. It's not a good look at all. Nope.

Brian: So this is actually one of my absolute biggest pet peeves is when I see people with a victim mentality, because they refuse to look at anything that could solve a problem. All they want to do is paint the picture of how they're the victim.

Brian: And they usually expect someone else to fix the problem. It's someone else's thing to fix. It's not their fault. They can't do anything about it in their minds at least. And so therefore they'll just wallow in sorrow until someone comes along and rescues them. That is not the way the world works.

Brian: Unfortunately. Yeah.

Chris: I think one of the things that's valuable here, we've talked about opportunity cost a lot recently on the show you have to consider what's the opportunity cost of spending time playing the victim. And man, dude, I am not innocent when it comes to this victim card. I have mightily struggled with this to be really transparent, you know, in the past, like I had worked as a worship leader at churches.

Chris: This is years ago and it went poorly, promises, [00:43:00] remained, and promises were broken. And I really struggled to get out of that mindset and to not obsess about like, oh, he was wrong and he laughed and it really filled up a lot of my life with time that could have been used elsewhere. It stole energy for me that could have been used for other things.

Chris: And I wish I had just had a switch in my brain that topically record be like, I don't ever want to think about this thing again, flip it cause it's a waste of my time. And I'm just wallowing in victim mentality. When walling is this term, a pig wallows in the. He gets down in the mud and just rolls around in it.

Chris: It's all stinky and stuff. And just stays there. Don't wallow in a victim mentality and I'm preaching to myself for much more recently than 16 years

Brian: ago. Yeah. And this is also, even if you truly are the victim of someone else, you still can't let them live rent free in your head. Oh, when you just wallow in what someone has done to you, you're now letting them affect [00:44:00] you after the fact, no matter what they did to you, they still are affecting you after the fact because you can't let it go.

Brian: And so I'm not saying that they're justified or whatever they did to you and whatever they did to you, wasn't absolutely wrong or maybe even horrible, but the fact that you still let it stay there. Day in day out, I became your identity. Yeah. It becomes your identity. And because you refuse to release it and move on, they are living rent free in your head and you're letting it hold you back from actually accomplishing what your goals are.

Brian: So it's doing even more damage than was originally done. Yeah, man, super, super terrible mindset to live in toxic. Yeah. Toxic, absolutely toxic. When we live in a world where a paraplegic, who, I don't know what happened. I don't know how he lost the use of his legs, where he's born or some crazy accident, but it's easy to, if you have a hand dealt to you like that, you can play the victim your entire life, or you can do what Scott Dolan did from Australia.

Brian: And he summited Mount Everest in a wheelchair. That is someone who did not like. [00:45:00] Victim mentality, hold him back his entire life. And when I see people like that, I can't let some insignificant thing hold me back either. I've seen people with way less than that. Let victim mentality, keep them from succeeding.

Brian: I love that. So hats off to you, Mr. You get the six figure home studio salute to Scott Dolan. Speaking

Chris: of Dolan, that reminds me of a friend of ours, Emily drums, Emily

Brian: Dolan Davis.

Chris: I just mastered a song for her dad and it's going to be in Peppa pig next

Brian: year nine. So Emily, our community member, she was actually the first person to join the profitable producer course fun fact and a fricking

Chris: great interview.

Chris: That episode with her was awesome.

Brian: Yeah. She's back in episode 22, where she talks about how she got hundreds of clients by combining two passions to create her niche, her dad's the creator of Peppa pig. In fact, super fun.

Chris: He's been labeled as subversive in China because pepper. It's incompatible with communism, which is super cool.

Brian: I would love to be like banned in China. [00:46:00] Seriously. The six-figure I'm studio podcast banned in China. Oh my gosh. Is

Chris: our podcast legal

Brian: in China? I don't know how you check

Chris: that stuff. You're in China and listening to our podcast and breaking the law. Please let us know because that would make us, I feel good.

Chris: I have

Brian: a student who's from China. He's in China. Now he's from Atlanta. So I'll ask him if he can access our podcast over there. I would doubt it. I'm not going to say a name for obvious reasons. Let's move on to our next negative mindset that needs to be eliminated. That is the fear mindset. This

Chris: fear mindset is an intense one.

Chris: We were talking about this idea before we recorded the episode and the way we summed it up was a fear mindset is always playing defense and never playing offense or playing too much defense and not enough offense. We would bring that home for the recording studio world, by saying, if you're constantly obsessed that no one steals your ideas or that no one steals your clients instead of going.

Chris: And collaborating with people and creating new ideas and finding new clients. That's a,

Brian: I've had [00:47:00] people that want to bring an idea to me from their business and just chat about it and like, get my input on something they haven't even created yet. And they asked me to sign an NDA. And for those who don't know, it's a non-disclosure agreement.

Brian: It's like a legally binding document that says I will not steal their idea or tell anyone about their idea. There is so few instances of anyone ever stealing an idea to where like there's no need for this sort of stuff. And what ends up happening is people do all of these weird things, like make you sign an NDA and they have this, it's a scarcity mindset really, but it's this fear thing, holding them back from actually moving forward because they're trying to play defense all

Chris: the time.

Chris: One of the great ways to look at the fear mindset is this defense versus offense idea. And to make it really crystal clear, the opportunity cost of playing defense is that you aren't playing off. Offense in 2019 is the way to go. There's a great saying that if your ideas are good, you'll have to shove them down.

Chris: People's throats. [00:48:00] This idea is that there's so many more ideas than there are executed ideas on earth, calm

Brian: down. That's why I laugh. Anytime someone asked me to sign an NDA, I'm like your idea's not that special. I'm so sorry. It's all about execution. Ideas are nothing. Ideas are a dime, a dozen, but executing on that idea.

Brian: That's what creates a successful business. And that's why I laugh at the NDA thing. But anyways, move on, uh,

Chris: victim mentality is not being able to get over the fact that someone took something from you or did something to you. A fear mentality is not being able to deal with the possibility that somebody might do something yucky to you in the future.

Chris: Yeah.

Brian: So you're the type of person that has binged every one of our episodes. And still hasn't taken steps to building your studio. Or leaving your day job or doing something scary. Fear mentality is holding

Chris: you back. Steve, driving in your Honda civic from 1991. We're going to use,

Brian: are you trying to like call out that one person who's freaking out right now?

Brian: [00:49:00] If there happens to be a Steve driving that one car?

Chris: Yeah. Oh my God. I'm going to keep saying Steve. And I'm just hoping someday someone's going to be like what actually happened. I

Brian: mean, to me, they're going to get offended because they're like, whoa, to throw me under the bus dude. Like, but again, if you have a fear mentality issue, then you let it hold you back from ever taking off too.

Brian: It's like the guy who refuses to ask the girl out his entire life and gets friend zoned, instead of getting past the fear and facing rejection, you would rather have a life of not having ever known. If you could have made that work instead, you just avoided it your entire

Chris: life. Well, this comes back in a heavy way too.

Chris: We talk about funnels on this podcast all the time. This idea that if you want to have a successful business, you need to have way more people. That are leads than our customer. If you want 10 customers, you probably need a hundred or more leads. Fear keeps people from doing this essential thing to grow any business in any industry.

Chris: Because if you are a [00:50:00] frayed of rejection, you will never put yourself in a position to take any risk to potentially land a customer. If it involves a potential region.

Brian: Yeah. Being an entrepreneur. I think if you look at the original definition, which I'll try to pull up as I'm talking, but I probably won't successfully

Chris: do the, the mission of an entrepreneur is someone who takes something of little value in one area and moves it to an area of higher value.

Brian: Sure. That's maybe part of that is creating value, but here's the definition on Google, a person who organizes and operates a business or businesses taking on greater than normal financial risk in order to do so. See, I

Chris: totally disagree with that definition. Oh, adamantly,

Brian: well, let me just say this, whether you disagree or not.

Brian: I agree with that because no matter what, by being an entrepreneur, you have taken on some amount of risk it's on your shoulder. You are the captain of your ship instead of the CEO, you're not just collecting paychecks. And we argue about this on episode, one of the podcast where we talk about, like, if you have a day job, you have one source of income.

Brian: If you have a recording [00:51:00] studio, you have hundreds of sources of income. That is the counter argument, but it still takes getting past a fear in order to do so, because you don't start with hundreds of clients, you start with one and then you get two and then you get three. And so as you build that up, you have to face down the fear that it won't work, because there's going to be fear of rejection.

Brian: There's going to be a fear that maybe the client stopped coming to you. There's gonna be the fear that maybe you ruin your reputation in some way, and then you can't get any more clients. And once you leave your day job, you have to take one foot out of that into your business. And now you have both feats in your business.

Brian: So it's a scary thing. And all I'm trying to say in everything that I'm saying, Is that the fear mindset will constantly hold you back because like Chris said earlier, you will be constantly playing defense. And if you play defense, you cannot win

Chris: game. I think as we close up this fear topic, I want to call out just one of the coolest ladies on earth.

Chris: Her name is Sara Blakely. Sara Blakely did something really interesting. A number of years ago, Sarah Blakely invented Spanx. [00:52:00] And since 99% of our audience is man, you guys don't know what Spanx are. And I barely do either.

Brian: I know what they are, but I think most men probably know what

Chris: that is. It's kind of like a stretchy, like makes you look slimmer, stretchy pants thing.

Chris: Anyways, Sarah invented these everyone thought they were stupid. She got a manufacturer to manufacture them for them. And then she got a deal. I don't want to say Macy's or Nordstrom or something. And it was like a experimental, like, Hey, we'll put a couple in the store and see if I'm going to buy. So what Sarah did is she wasn't happy with how many people were buying her product.

Chris: So she walked into the Nordstrom that was selling it. And without talking to the manager, she set up an aisle in cap at the checkout of the register. She moved stuff around in the store to try and sell more of it without permission. She did not have a fear mindset. No, she had this, like, I'll ask forgiveness rather than permission.

Chris: And she went in and tried to make something happen. They sold a crap ton, a Spanx, and now [00:53:00] she is a billionaire she's

Brian: awesome. forbes.com hazard on the billionaire list. So she is an incredible success story. And I don't know her full story. So there could be some stuff in there that's not great. I don't know.

Brian: It could be a full American dream type story with no negative things in there. So whether you agree with her business and her model or not, that's not the point. The point is she would have never become a billionaire ever if she struggled fear mentality, or if she didn't at least get past, everyone has fear.

Brian: I'm not going to diminish that. We all have fear, but courage allows you to still have fear, but still take steps.

Chris: You guys want to hear more about Sara Blakely, check out the, how I made this podcast with guy Raz. There's an episode. We'll link to it in the show notes. It's just incredible how I built this as like he interviews people who have.

Chris: Really successful businesses. And it's exactly what it sounds like. They explain how they built it. It's dope. I got to watch the Jeni Britton Bauer episode recorded live Jeni Britton Bauer does Jeni's splendid ice creams. This is one of my favorite things on earth. [00:54:00] Jenny's from Columbus and they recorded it here and it was so fun.

Brian: Yeah. That's an NPR podcast. How I built this? Oh, it's so good. Just Google it and you'll find it or just look on it on your podcast app. So let's move on to our last mindset that needs to be absolutely destroyed. We're going to destroy all these mindsets. This is the fixed mindset. So just to recap, we had blue collar mindset, scarcity mindset, victim mentality, or victim mindset, fear mindset.

Brian: And then our final one here is a fixed mindset. Chris, what does a fixed mindset? And how does this play in every,

Chris: we talked about this with Andy J pizza on episode 78. Andy J pizza's next door.

Brian: Yeah. He shares an office with Andy. Just if everyone's listening and doesn't know what the hell that even

Chris: means at my studio in the house.

Chris: And I've got an office down the street. It's fantastic. And it lets me set up. A place to work on my business from the dojo. That is the mastering studio. Yes. Anyways, Andy talked about fixed mindset and fixed mindset. Is this idea. Let me give you an example. When I was in elementary school, my teachers [00:55:00] told me that I wasn't very good at writing.

Chris: And I said, oh, I guess I must not be good at writing. And years later, I still believed that I was not good at writing because someone told me at one point you're not good at writing. So a fixed mindset can come because someone told you something and you believed well that can't be changed. This is inherent to who I am.

Chris: Or it could be that you thought at one time, you're like, oh, well I guess I'm just not good at writing. And then you believed it. You figured, Hey, I can't grow out of this. This is part of my makeup part of my DNA. And that's some freaking bowl. That's not how humans work. Human beings are the single most adaptable creatures of all time.

Chris: We live on the equator. We live in the Arctic. We live in Europe. We live in China. We live on islands. We even freaking live. There are humans who live on houses that are built on stilts in the ocean, and they jump out of their houses, into the ocean, swim under the water, catch a fish and eat it. We are [00:56:00] wildly different in different parts of the world because we're adaptable.

Chris: So when someone says I'm just not good at writing, I'm just not good at business. I'm just not good at marketing. You're a freaking human humans. Adapt. It is literally what we do. Fish swim, birds, fly humans. Adapt.

Brian: Yeah. That's a great rant right there. You even got me encouraged. If there's something in your life that you feel like you're bad at it's because you haven't worked.

Brian: You haven't put in the work you haven't put in the effort yet. And if you fully believe that you cannot change something about yourself, other than like your height, obviously certain physical attributes, but not all physical attributes, by the way, if you constantly believe that it is a fixed thing about you, that you cannot change.

Brian: That is the fixed mindset. And that is detrimental to your business for obvious reasons. If you feel like you can't get any better at marketing, you'll constantly sabotage your marketing attempts or you won't do it at all. If you feel like you can't improve your ability [00:57:00] to talk to people, your social skills are bad.

Brian: You will constantly sabotage any ability to connect with people on a one-to-one basis or in a group basis. It's really hard to run a studio without social skills, by the way. So if that's one of the things you have a fixed mindset on is I'm just an awkward person. I'm just shy. I can't get past it. Stop.

Brian: You can, you can

Chris: adapt. I love this. Oh man. I think one of the reasons you and I get along so well is at some point over the past 10 years or so, we both had a fixed mindset of. And we learned that we could change and that we could grow. And then we can self-educate I think for both of us, it had a lot to do with reading.

Chris: I picked up for our workweek and was like, oh, okay, good things in books. Interesting. I'm going to make more money. Cause I'd read this and I'm going to learn these new skills. One of the reasons you should read one of the reasons you should listen to podcasts. One of the reasons you should know a little bit about human history is that humans adapt.

Chris: You can see wow. A lot of people, oh, he was terrible at this. [00:58:00] And now he's amazing at this. How did that even freaking happen? Humans are amazing if they don't have a fixed mindset

Brian: through my four years in high school, I had a 1.9 GPA.

Chris: I had a 1.8 freshman

Brian: year. Oh, nice. How did that average it out for the whole four years

Chris: now?

Chris: 2.7, probably 2.8.

Brian: Okay. That's not bad. I, at 1.9 GPA, I was not popular. I was this weird metal kid in a preppy school. And I had a Southern accent, just like everyone else in my school. You would not think that I would be a co-host on a podcast that has thousands of listeners and I shoot videos and I talk to people and I'm like a person that likes to talk.

Brian: I love to be on camera. He was a public figure. You could say that. And I've built my own businesses and I've done a lot of work and learned a lot of things. All my teachers back then actually did what most schools don't do. And they said, Brian, you get bad grades, but you're a smart boy. If you would just apply yourself.[00:59:00]

Brian: If I wouldn't have listened to that sort of thing, my entire, because my parents were great about fostering me not having a fixed mindset, but a lot of parents, a lot of schools, a lot of different people. It depends on who you're surrounded with in your life. A lot of them people will absolutely foster a fixed mindset and they will tell you that this is just what God made you.

Brian: Like. This is just the cards you've been dealt, and you're going to have to learn to live with it. If that's what you're told your whole life, it's really hard to get past this fixed mindset. So I really have a lot of empathy for people who grew up and it's similar story to mine, but a different outcome because they were stuck in this.

Brian: I'm always going to have a 1.9. I'm not going to go to college and we go to trade school. I'm gonna get a blue collar job. And I'm going to just work for my living every day, trade dollars for hours, if that's you. Absolutely. I understand why you're there, but just know that that is not how it has to be because you do not have fixed scale.

Brian: Especially in business, especially in business, everything you can adapt in every single thing related to business. Every single shortcoming you have can be overcome if you're willing to put in the work. [01:00:00] But before you even put in the work, you have to have the mindset that it can work. Because if you don't think it can work, you will sabotage yourself before you ever get any meaningful

Chris: result.

Chris: Breach fricking love this man. So think about that guys and girls fish, fly fish fly. Wow. Birds, fly fish, swim, humans adapt. So whether you're thinking, well, I don't know. I'm just not a very good reader. That's a fixed mindset. Also. You can listen to audible.

Brian: Usually there's a workaround too. Here's the thing also with fixed mindset is sometimes it's better to find a work around than to fix the problem

Chris: sometimes.

Chris: And that's one of the things that's so cool. When you start to read history is you learn about people who had an issue and who worked around it. And I was debating whether to share this. I'm not a doctor nor do I play one on a podcast. But I was diagnosed with ADHD at a young age. And I was

Brian: medicated saying they tried to put me on Ritalin in third grade and

Chris: I hated personal decision.

Chris: I [01:01:00] hated being on medication. I hated it because it made me someone. I was not, it normalized me to act like all the other kids. I felt that it made me less creative. One of the things about having an issue and, you know, we talked about a paraplegic. If you only have one working arm, let's say only your right arm works.

Chris: I'm never going to be willing to arm wrestle you because your right arm, your one right arm will freaking demolish my wimpy right arm because I got two arms and I use them about 50% of the time. And the thing about the fixed mindset. That's so interesting is if you can find ways to work around, let's say you do have some serious issues like a learning disability, or even a physical disability.

Chris: You can develop superhero powers in other areas when you're forced to use those in other ways. And that's one of the ways that people grow and become amazing individuals is because something weird happened to them that made them different than made their experience different. I don't know if you guys know this, but as far as back to American presidents, a [01:02:00] ridiculously high of American presidents had a parent die at a young age, ridiculously high it's multiples beyond what's normal in our society.

Chris: And what happened to these guys? Hopefully girls someday soon, what happened to them was a terrible thing, happened to them. They worked through it and they've developed superhero abilities like Batman, like Batman to work. Exactly Batman, lots of parents. And they began to serve other people and developed skills that nobody else had and coping mechanisms that nobody else had.

Chris: And I would definitely say the same is true for me though, in a much smaller regard in that my add is much to my benefit. Now it's a superhero ability and I can think in weird creative, disparate ways and pull bizarre ideas out of my bum that I wouldn't be able to do if I didn't have add. I'm so thankful for my disability.

Brian: So one final story, this fixed mindset, and honestly, this story kind of goes hand-in-hand with fixed mindset [01:03:00] and victim mentality, the team leader for one of our teams in the accountability accelerator bootcamp. One of the things we do just a few times a year, one of the team leaders of that is blind and he has a successful recording studio and he's built a website.

Brian: He's got like a studio. I don't even know how it all works, how he does everything. He does like a screen reader of some sort like I would love to. Pick his brain on how he makes everything work. The key is, first of all, he probably has better hearing than any of us because the adaptability factor, when you don't have sight, your other senses are enhanced, but at least to some degree, like you have to listen for things more closely than someone with vision.

Brian: But second of all, like he has worked around all of those things to make it work for him. He didn't just say I am blind. So I can't do anything that requires seeing a screen. And half of the things we do everyday requires a seeing a screen, and yet he still makes this work. So that's just one of the things that I like to think about when you have some sort of thing holding you back from being as good as someone else.

Brian: No, you can just find a

Chris: workaround. Love it, man. So as we kind of wrap up this [01:04:00] episode, I want to share one story about my kids. Kids are amazing to watch because they're a pure version of our own psychology and they've got a little less bag, just a little easier to tell what's going on upstairs. And particularly my daughter and Nora, who has a huge crush on Brian.

Chris: Brian's like her favorite person. She's adorable. She's so cute. And, uh, Nora is interesting. She's three, she's a girl, obviously. Sometimes a Nora starts to be what we would call yucky to herself. And my other kids have gone through phases like this as well, where something will happen to them and they'll run into the room and then you can hear them self-talking they were mean to me, they took it from me, you know, like you can hear them whining and talking to themselves in the background.

Chris: And we try to be really sensitive that when we hear this, that we try to address it, we go into the room and I say, a Nora, I love you. And nobody is yucky to Maya, Nora, [01:05:00] especially you, this idea of she's being yucky to herself, that's against the rules in the Graham house. When it comes to these negative mindsets, especially I would say the victim mentality, the fear mentality in this fixed mentality, stop being yucky to yourself.

Chris: Man, stop giving yourself this weird self-talk thing where you say this happened to me and it sucks. Yeah, this did happen to me. It does suck where you start to agree with yourself where more than one person starts to be. Home is a feedback loop. You get this weird feedback loop where you start to agree with yourself on these negative things.

Chris: Watch out for that. That's super dangerous. That's super toxic and you aren't adaptable human and you can overcome it and turn that into a superhero power

Brian: fish, swim birds, fly humans adapt.

Brian: So that is it for this episode of the six figure creative [01:06:00] podcast. Thanks again for listening. I, even though this week was just a replay, but again, I have four interviews. And the next couple of weeks. So I'm trying to get ahead for the holidays and just get back to where I am well ahead of the curve.

Brian: Just like I am on my YouTube videos. I'm like three or four weeks ahead on those. I want to get back ahead of the curve on this podcast. And again, if you listened to last week on, should you just quit? I talked a lot about, uh, kind of what I'm working through for this podcast, as it means to get it back on track and exactly where I want it to go for you, the listener moving forward.

Brian: So that's it for this week as always remember the new motto for six figure creative is it takes more than passion.

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