I’ve seen businesses in similar niches, with similar resources at their disposal, and similar family lives who are in completely different places only 1 month into this quarantine.
One is falling apart. They’ve given up on their business, their family life is in shambles, and they’re scrambling to figure out their next move.
The other lost all of their upcoming projects, but they’ve decided to pivot their business to something they can still do remotely. Their family life, although stressful, is still healthy. They still have hope, and things are looking up.
Why is there such a big difference between these people?
It all comes down to mindset.
This is the foundation of all healthy businesses, and it’s the key to surviving this crisis.
Nothing else matters if your mindset is fucked.
In this episode you’ll discover:
- Why you need to work on eliminating negative mindsets
- Which negative mindsets might be affecting you
- 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
- Why if you aren’t growing, you’re dying
- How the scarcity mindset can negatively affect your outlook
- What an abundance mindset does to your creativity
- How you can find the silver lining of a bad situation
- How to turn weaknesses into strengths
- Why being unselfish boosts your business
- Why parables are easier to understand than technical books
- How serving others will create long-term success for you
Join The Discussion In Our Community
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Quotes
“The Growth Mindset is, pardon my French, ‘fuck you Mrs. Jones, I'm gonna get awesome at Math!’” – 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
456 Recordings – www.456recordings.com
Chris Graham – www.chrisgrahammastering.com
Filepass – https://filepass.com
Bounce Butler – http://bouncebutler.com
Home Studio Lessons – https://homestudiolessons.com/
Forbes – https://www.forbes.com/
Courses
The Profitable Producer Course – theprofitableproducer.com
The Home Studio Startup Course – www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/10k
Facebook Community
6FHS Facebook Community – http://thesixfigurehomestudio.com/community
@chris_graham – https://www.instagram.com/chris_graham/
@brianh00d – https://www.instagram.com/brianh00d/
YouTube Channels
The Six Figure Home Studio – 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 36: Sync Licensing: The Gateway To Passive Income For Audio Entrepreneurs – With Travis Terrell – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/sync-licensing-the-gateway-to-passive-income-for-audio-entrepreneurs-with-travis-terrell/
Episode 71: The Future Of Spotify And How It Will Affect Your Business – With Trevor Hinesley – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/the-future-of-spotify-and-how-it-will-effect-your-business-with-trevor-hinesley/
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 84: The Pricing Masterclass: How To Charge More, Add More Value, And Win More Projects – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/the-pricing-masterclass-how-to-charge-more-add-more-value-and-win-more-projects/
Episode 85: The Skill That Separates Those Who Succeed From Those Who Fail – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/the-skill-that-separates-those-who-succeed-from-those-who-fail/
Episode 93: How You Can Work ON Your Business Instead Of IN Your Business (Part 1) – https://www.thesixfigurehomestudio.com/how-you-can-work-on-your-business-instead-of-in-your-business-part-1/
Gear
MixPre 3 – https://www.sounddevices.com/product/mixpre-3/
Books
Misbehaving by Richard H. Thaler – https://www.amazon.com/Misbehaving-Behavioral-Economics-Richard-Thaler/dp/039335279X
The Go-Giver byJohn David Mann – https://www.amazon.com/dp/1591848288/
The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss – https://www.amazon.com/4-Hour-Workweek-Escape-Live-Anywhere/dp/0307465357
Breaking the Time Barrier by Mike McDerment and Donald Cowper – https://www.freshbooks.com/fbstaticprod-uploads/public-website-assets/other/Breaking-the-Time-Barrier.pdf
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber – https://www.amazon.com/Myth-Revisited-Small-Businesses-About/dp/0887307280/
The Automatic Customer by John Warrillow – https://www.amazon.com/Automatic-Customer-Creating-Subscription-Business/dp/159184746X
Built to Sell by John Warrillow – https://www.amazon.com/Built-Sell-Creating-Business-Without/dp/1591845823/
The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason – https://www.amazon.com/Richest-Man-Babylon-George-Clason-dp-1939438551/dp/1939438551/
People and Companies
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
Soundstripe – https://soundstripe.com/
Elon Musk – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
Space X – https://www.spacex.com/
PayPal – https://www.paypal.com/
Graham Cochrane – https://www.grahamcochrane.com/
Business Insider – https://www.businessinsider.com/
Andy J. Pizza – https://www.andyjpizza.com/
TV Shows and Entertainment
Peppa Pig – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peppa_Pig
Spanx – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanx
MacGyver – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacGyver
James Bond – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Bond
Stargate SG1 – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stargate_SG-1
The Wheel of Time – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wheel_of_Time
A Song of Fire and Ice (Game of Thrones series) – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire
Mistborn – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mistborn
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 home studio podcast, episode 128.
Welcome back to another episode of the six figure home studio podcast. I am your host Brian Hood, and I am not here with my podcast cohost, Christopher Jay Graham. He was unable to do anything with me this week, so I'm here solo today for this episode, at least for the intro. More on that in a second. So right now we are as deep as we've been into this whole quarantine situation.
I think all of us, I can speak for a lot of people at least, but a lot of us are stir-crazy get cabin fever. It's been probably a month for some people since you seem like an actual human being that isn't your family or your roommate. I'm sure all of us are ready for this kind of stuff to pass us right now.
And the whole coronavirus thing has just been beaten to death. We did a whole series on the podcast, and I'm kind of ready to get to move past this as far as podcast topics, but there is something that Chris and I talked about earlier this week. Uh, we still chatted this week. We just had, we weren't able to do an episode.
You were talking about how in times like this, in times of stress, especially in times of stress, this is when mindset comes into play more than anything and more so now than probably ever in our lifetime. The core of how we react, good or bad, comes down to our mindset. How do we perceive the events that are going on around us.
Because this is one of the few times in human history and definitely the probably the only time in our, our lifetime that the entire world, just about all of humanity is going through the same struggle right now. But not everyone is reacting the same way. We have people who are joining malicious here in America who are protesting the stay at home orders.
We have people who are. Absolutely paranoid for good or bad reason. We have people who are businesses usual. Their life hasn't changed much, surprisingly. We have people that are spotting opportunities and taking advantage of them both in good or bad ways in ethical and unethical ways. And I've just seen in my own life, people that are in very similar positions in life, both with their businesses and with their families.
And yet I see them taking two completely opposite approaches to this situation. One, an absolute train wreck, detrimental, in my opinion, in one extremely positive approach to everything in life, both business and family. And. I believe it all comes down to the mindset behind the individuals that are in these situations.
And if you go look at the home studio business hierarchy for a second, and if you go to our show notes@thesixfigurehomestudio.com slash one two eight slash one 28 there will be an image near the top somewhere in there of the home studio business hierarchy. This is essentially the hierarchy of needs for businesses.
At least audio businesses. The very bottom, the very foundational part of this is mindset and psychology, and that is because nothing else matters in life, in business. If our mindset, the way we perceive things, the way we'd react to things, our mindset influences all of this, and I know it sounds like, woo.
Eastern medicine, yoga, hippie nonsense, but it is not. I see people in very similar life positions. Their circumstances are the same, but their reactions are wildly different. It all comes down to mindset. So I wanted to go back to an episode series we did back on episode 96 and 97 where we talked about toxic mindsets that we have to eliminate if we want success and positive mindsets that we have to nurture if he wants success.
And I edited it down to the parts of those two episodes that I thought were most relevant to what we're going through right now in this Cove aid crisis. The quarantine where for some people, everything seems to be falling apart, and it is times like this that our mindset is most at risk. So this episode is as relevant now as it has ever been.
So that further delay here is my conversation with Chris covering some of the negative mindsets that we need to think about and eliminate if we want to make it through this crisis.
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, 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 followup emails.
This is more important than Facebook retargeting. This is more important than paid advertising. This is more important. Then.
Chris: [00:04:35] Your audio skills.
Brian: [00:04:37] 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 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 them and dig into it, and Chris, you probably have a better idea that is cause you do one on one coaching. I can trace it back to mindset.
Chris: [00:05:02] Totally well, and to hop in there on 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, but how to build systems, how to do this marketing thing. No, no, dah, dah, dah, dah. And I've been blown away that virtually. Every coaching call I've done has primarily revolved around mindset.
The number one topic I talk about in a coaching call is addressing a mindset issue.
Brian: [00:05:27] Yeah. So if you go to the six figure home studio.com that's literally yet, there's no. Other URL six figure home studio.com can you scroll to the bottom? You will 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 this important that you go there and look at this at the very foundation of your business, the bottom of the pyramid, the foundational level mindset, like this is the thing that everything else stacks on top of. And if you have a shitty foundation. AK a shitty mindset. It is near Lee. Impossible to build a stable, sustainable business on top of that shitty 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. You can have perfect sales copy. You could have a perfect lead magnet or a perfect pricing. You can have perfect followup and perfect paid advertising. You can have all these things in place.
In a perfect way, and your business can still fail because of a shitty mindset. And there are several different mindsets, negative mindsets that are going to cover today. 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.
Chris: [00:06:44] Now, these are fun to talk about because when I'm on a coaching call with somebody, and again, it's like a side thing that I do, it's not the main thing. But it's a blast to do it about four times a week, about four coaching calls a week with different guys in 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, just because there's a mindset issue that undergirds that it's like the foundational problem in their business.
And it's a blast to talk about this because when you overcome a mindset, it is like a, 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.
Brian: [00:07:25] So let's move on now to our next mindset or next negative mindset. 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 a victim mentality because that's what I've always called it, but this is a mindset.
This is a state of mind that you are constantly in. 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 students. I see it everywhere. I see this all the time, and this is the mindset of that type of person.
This is what's going through their head. Oh, everything always goes wrong with me. I'm always the victim in the 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 C 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: [00:08:28] Super toxic back to this FOMO, scarcity, blue collar thing, but this idea of, Oh, somebody else who does the same thing I do just got a client. They took it from me. No, they didn't. Most of the time, and even if they did, letting that seep into your soul. And thinking about, Oh, someone did something to me. You know, 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 isolates you in a, 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 against me.
Brian: [00:09:17] 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 had the victim mentality. 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. Well, let me just sum this up real quick. The biggest issue with a victim mentality is it constantly 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. 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. 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.
Then 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 in. Furthermore, it's usually a direct result of some action they took that backfired on them. It's almost always their fault.
Chris: [00:10:31] 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 here's where it gets really scary. How many of you have ever fancied yourself the victim and kinda liked it? It gave you an out, it gave you an excuse.
Oh, it wasn't my fault. This guy came against me. Oh, it 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: [00:11:01] It gives you a little rush because you are now,
Chris: [00:11:04] Not responsible.
Brian: [00:11:05] you feel like you are owed something from someone and when you are owed something from somebody 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 good.
Chris: [00:11:21] Yeah. Here's where it gets really scary when your soul is infected. When this happens is that you feel like a victim and then you feel justified in doing something unethical.
Brian: [00:11:32] Ooh.
Chris: [00:11:33] We're calling out like the nasty shit here, but when you feel like a victim and you're like, well, they stole from me. So it's okay that I steal this when no one's looking.
Brian: [00:11:43] Yeah, that's one right there. 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.
So if you sent me a friend request, my bad. I just don't accept them anymore. I rarely do at least.
Chris: [00:12:04] There actually is a scarcity issue at play there. You only have 5,000 friends you can have on Facebook, so.
Brian: [00:12:09] Yeah, I don't.
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 out. 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.
Chris: [00:12:40] Yeah. . Not a good look. The pull the victim card. It's not a good look at all.
Brian: [00:12:45] Nope. 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. 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. Unfortunately.
Chris: [00:13:14] Yeah. 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 card. 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, this is years ago, and it went poorly. Promises were made and promises were broken, and I really struggled. Two, get out of that mindset and to not obsess about like, Oh, he was wrong and he LA, 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've been used for other things. 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 cause it's a waste of my time and I'm just wallowing in victim mentality.
walling is this term a pig wallows in the mud. He gets down in the mud and just rolls around in it gets 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 ago.
Brian: [00:14:28] 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.
Chris: [00:14:36] Oh.
Brian: [00:14:36] What do you just wallow in what someone has done to you? You're now letting them affect 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.
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.
Chris: [00:14:57] It became your identity.
Brian: [00:14:58] Yeah. 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.
So it's doing even more damage than was originally done.
Chris: [00:15:10] Yeah, man,
Brian: [00:15:11] Super, super terrible mindset to live in.
Chris: [00:15:15] toxic.
Brian: [00:15:16] 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 and he summited Mount Everest in a wheelchair. That is someone who did not let. 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 see people with way less than that.
Let victim mentality keep them from succeeding.
Chris: [00:15:52] I love that.
Brian: [00:15:53] So hats off to you, mr you get the six figure homes to be a salute to Scott Dolan,
Chris: [00:15:58] Speaking of Dolan, that reminds me of a friend of ours, Emily drums.
Brian: [00:16:03] Emily Dolan, dailies.
Chris: [00:16:05] I just mastered a song for her dad, and it's going to be in Peppa pig next year.
Brian: [00:16:09] Nah, my, so Emily, our community member, she was actually the first person to join the profitable bruiser course. Fun fact.
Chris: [00:16:16] In a freaking great interview. That episode with her was awesome.
Brian: [00:16:19] Yeah. She's back in episode 22 or 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 fun fact.
Chris: [00:16:29] super fun. He's been labeled as subversive in China because Peppa pig, it's incompatible with communism, which is super cool.
Brian: [00:16:38] I would love to be like banned in China,
Chris: [00:16:40] Seriously?
Brian: [00:16:41] the six figure I'm studio podcast banned in China.
Chris: [00:16:44] Oh my gosh. Is our podcast legal in China?
Brian: [00:16:46] I don't know how you check that stuff.
Chris: [00:16:48] If you're in China and listening to our podcast and breaking the law, please let us know because that would make us feel good.
Brian: [00:16:54] I have a student who's from China or he's in China now. He's from Atlanta, so I'll ask him if he can access our podcasts over there.
Chris: [00:16:59] I would doubt it.
Brian: [00:17:00] 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.
Chris: [00:17:09] This fear mindset is an intense one. 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 off 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 out and collaborating with people and creating new ideas and finding new clients, that's a problem.
Brian: [00:17:40] I've had people that want to bring in 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 nondisclosure agreement. 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. We are 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 the time.
Chris: [00:18:17] One of the great ways to look at the fear mindset is this defense versus off fence idea. And to make it really crystal clear, the opportunity cost of playing defense is that you aren't playing off fence. Offense is the way to go. There's a great saying that if your ideas are good, you'll have to shove them down people's throats.
This idea is that there's so many more ideas than there are executed ideas on earth. Calm down.
Brian: [00:18:47] 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, that's what creates a successful business. And that's why I laugh at the NDA thing. But anyways, move on.
Chris: [00:19:03] A 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 not being able to deal with the possibility that somebody might do something yucky to you in the future.
Brian: [00:19:18] Yeah. So if 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 you back.
Chris: [00:19:32] Steve driving in your Honda civic from 1991 looking at you, Steve.
Brian: [00:19:36] Are you trying to like call out that one person who's freaking out right now if there happens to be a Steve driving that one car? Yeah.
Chris: [00:19:42] Oh my gosh. I'm going to keep saying Steve, and I'm just hoping someday someone's going to be like, what.
Brian: [00:19:48] Okay.
Chris: [00:19:48] That was actually happening to
Brian: [00:19:50] 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 opportunities 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've made that work.
Instead, you just avoided it your entire life.
Chris: [00:20:14] Well, this comes back in a heavy way too. 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 then our customers. 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.
Because if you are a 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 rejection.
Brian: [00:20:49] 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 do
Chris: [00:20:55] The definition of an entrepreneur is someone who takes something of little value and one area and moves it to an area of higher value.
Brian: [00:21:04] sure. If that's maybe part of it that's 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.
Chris: [00:21:15] See. I totally disagree with that definition. Oh, adamantly.
Brian: [00:21:19] Well, let me just say this, whether you disagree or not, I agree with that because no matter what, by being an entrepreneur, you have taken on some amount of risk. It's on your shoulders now. 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.
If you have a recording 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 to, 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.
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 in. Once you leave your day job, you have to take one foot out of that into your business, and now you have both feets in your business.
So it's a scary thing. And all I'm trying to say in everything I'm saying right now. 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 a game.
Chris: [00:22:24] I think as we close up this fear topic, I want to call out just one of the coolest ladies on earth. Her name is Sarah Blakely. Sara Blakely did something really interesting a number of years ago. Sarah Blakely invented Spanx, and since 99% of our audience is men, you guys don't know what's bank SAR, and I barely do either.
It's kinda like a stretchy, like makes you look slimmer. stretchy pant thing. Anyways, Sarah invented these. Everyone thought they were stupid. She got a manufacturer to manufacturer them for them and then she got a deal, I want to say Macy's or Nordstrom or something. And it was like an experimental, like, Hey, we'll put a couple in the store and see if someone buys them.
So what Sarah did is she wasn't happy with how many people were buying her product. So she walked into the Nordstrom that was selling it, and without talking to the manager, she set up an aisle, end 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. She had this, like, I'll ask forgiveness rather than permission, and she went in and tried to make something happen. They sold a crapped on a Spanx and now she is a billionaire. awesome.
Brian: [00:23:43] forbes.com has her 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. 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. she struggled fear mentality or she didn't at least get past. Everyone has fear. I'm not gonna diminish that. We all have fear. But courage allows you to still have fear, but still take steps.
Chris: [00:24:14] If you guys want to hear more about Sarah 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. That's just incredible how I built this as like he interviews people who have built 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 Jenny Britton Bauer episode recorded live. Jenny Britton Bauer does Jenny's splendid ice creams. It's just one of my favorite things on earth. Jenny's from Columbus and that they recorded it here and it was so fun.
Brian: [00:24:44] Yeah, that's an NPR podcast. How I built this.
Chris: [00:24:46] Oh, it's so good.
Brian: [00:24:47] Just Google it and you'll find it. Or just look 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.
And then our final one here is a fixed mindset. Chris, what does a fixed mindset and how does this play in everything?
Chris: [00:25:12] We talked about this with Andy J pizza on episode 78 Andy J pizza is next door.
Brian: [00:25:16] Yeah. He shares an office with Andy just if everyone's listening and doesn't know what the hell that even means.
Chris: [00:25:21] Yeah, I've got my studio in the house and I've got an office down the street. It's fantastic and it lets me separate a place to work on my business from the dojo that is the mastering studio. 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 told me that I wasn't very good at writing.
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.
Or it could be that you thought at one time you're like, 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. That's some frickin bullshit. That's not how humans work. Human beings are the single most adaptable creatures of all time.
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 wildly different in different parts of the world because we're adaptable.
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: [00:27:00] Yeah, that's a great. Right there. 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 on it. 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 is a fixed thing about you that you cannot change. 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 to talk to people, your social skills are bad. 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. You can, you can adapt.
Chris: [00:27:58] Love this man. I think. One of the reasons you and I get along so well, is it some point over the past 10 years or so, we both had a fixed mindset epiphany and we learned that we could change and that we could grow and then we could self-educate. I think for both of us, it had a lot to do with reading. I picked up for our work week and was like, Oh, okay, good things in books.
Interesting. I'm going to make more money cause I 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. You can see, wow, a lot of people, Oh, he was terrible at this, 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: [00:28:49] Through my four years in high school, I had a 1.9 GPA.
Chris: [00:28:53] Mm. I had 1.8 freshman year. Ah.
Brian: [00:28:55] Nice. How did they average it out for the whole four years though?
Chris: [00:28:58] 2.7 probably 2.8
Brian: [00:29:00] Okay. That's not bad. At a 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 on my school. You would not think that I would be a cohost 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. I love to be on camera.
Chris: [00:29:23] he's a public figure.
Brian: [00:29:24] 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. If I wouldn't have listened to that sort of thing, my entire, cause 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. Depends on who you're surrounded with in your life. A lot different people will absolutely foster a fixed mindset.
And they will tell you that this is just what God get made you lock. 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 similar story in mind, but a different outcome because they were stuck in this.
I'm always going to have a 1.9 I'm not going to go to college and we've got a trade school. I'm gonna get a blue collar job, and I'm going to just work for my living every day. Train 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 skills, 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. But before you even put in the work, you have to have the mindset that it can work. Cause if you don't think it can work, you will sabotage yourself before you ever get any meaningful results.
Chris: [00:30:49] Preach freaking love this man. So think about that guys.
Brian: [00:30:53] And
Chris: [00:30:54] Fish fly, fish fly. I
Brian: [00:30:56] this fly. Wow.
Chris: [00:30:58] 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: [00:31:08] I was about to say, usually there's a work around to, here's the thing also with fixed mindset is sometimes it's better to find a work around than to fix the problem.
Chris: [00:31:16] Sometimes, 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 or not. I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on a podcast, but I was diagnosed with add at a young age and I was medicated.
Brian: [00:31:33] Same. They tried to put me on Ritalin in third grade.
Chris: [00:31:35] And I hated personal decision. I 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 thought 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. 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, 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, that made their experience different.
I don't know if you guys know this. But as far as back to American presidents, a ridiculously high of American presidents. I had a parent die at a young age, ridiculously high. It's multiples beyond what's normal in our society and what happened to these guys. Hopefully girls someday, soon. What happened to them?
It was a terrible thing happened to them. They worked through it and they've developed superhero abilities
Brian: [00:33:02] Like Batman.
Chris: [00:33:03] like Batman. Exactly. Batman. Lots of parents. Lots. Both parents. And they began to serve other people and developed skills that nobody else had and coping mechanisms that nobody else had. 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 pulled 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: [00:33:34] So one final story of this fixed mindset. Honestly, this story kind of goes hand in hand with fixed mindset and victim mentality. The team leader for one of our teams in accountability accelerator boot camp, 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.
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 actually. 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. 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 sing 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. No, you can just find a workaround.
Chris: [00:34:37] Love it, man. So as we kind of wrap up this 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. They've got a little less baggage, just a little easier to tell what's going on upstairs. particularly my daughter in Nora, who has a huge crush on Brian.
Brian is like her favorite
Brian: [00:34:58] She's adorable.
Chris: [00:34:59] 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 themself talking.
No, they were mean to me. Yeah. They took it from me. Oh, you know, like you can hear them whining and talking to themselves in the background. And we try to be really sensitive that when we hear this, that we try to address it. We go into the room, can I say a Nora? I love you, and nobody is yucky. Maya, Nora, especially you, this idea of she's being yucky to herself.
That's against the rules in the Graham household. When it comes to these negative mindsets, especially, I would say the victim mentality, the fear mentality and this fixed mentality. Stop being yucky to yourself, 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, and it does suck where you start to agree with yourself, we're more than one person starts to be home.
Brian: [00:36:09] There's a feedback loop.
Chris: [00:36:10] Yeah. You get this weird feedback loop where you start to agree with yourself on these negative things. 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: [00:36:25] Fish swim, birds fly.
Chris: [00:36:32] love you guys. Have a good day. We'll see you next
Brian: [00:36:34] Hi, bye. See you tomorrow.
So that's it for the first half of this episode. Those are the mindsets that I think right now are flaring up inside of us that are trying to come out. How will you react to things? How we perceive things? Those are the things that are making us want to just simply give up on our businesses. And throw our hands up and just blame everything on coven right now.
And if that's you, I just challenge you. Take step back. Think about those negative mindsets we just talked about, those toxic mindsets and think, am I just simply reacting in a negative way to the situation? And I'm ignoring all of the options that around me. And I promise you, this is something I've seen many, many home studio owners doing right now.
They just throw their hands up, they give up. And just let the victim mentality takeover. They can just blame everything on external circumstances. Or they just have the fixed mindset set in and say, Oh, I can't do this online thing. I can't shift my business online because of X, Y, and Z. The next half of this episode is the second part of the series, and that's where Chris and I talk about the positive mindsets that we need to nurture.
In order for us to have successful businesses. And now more than ever, these mindsets are important for us to get through this covet crisis and come out the other side as strong as ever. So here's Chris and I's conversation on the positive mindsets that we need to now nurture through this crisis.
So that episode last week, honestly, was probably one of the most important episodes we've done because it's all about toxic mindsets that we need to absolutely obliterate. got a new word today, a believer, eight not even going to say obliterate ever again. We need to obliterate negative mindsets from our lives because they, they are a detriment to our own businesses.
Chris: [00:38:21] Webster's dictionary defines, obliterate as to obliterate with a samurai sword.
Brian: [00:38:25] Correct. Anyways, that was an awful joke.
Chris: [00:38:28] It was not funny. Yeah.
Brian: [00:38:30] Okay. Anyways, we're going to move on and pretend that that didn't actually happen and we're not gonna let that out either, and people are gonna realize how bad your dad jokes actually are.
Chris: [00:38:38] Whether you're laughing at me or with me, I don't care.
Brian: [00:38:41] So. Last week. We talked about that. This week we're going to talk about positive mindsets that we need to nurture in order to accelerate the growth of our businesses.
Now here's the deal with this episode. We did a little research ahead of time. We were like looking up some different mindsets we want to cover, and Oh my God, the internet is full of trash around the subject. It's full of guys in suits and red ties and hair slicked back pedal and Newsome bullshit.
That's kind of a negative outlook on this. So I don't know if I maybe have a toxic mindset that I need to get over, but when I see that stuff, I cringe so hard. So we're going to try to make this as applicable to your business as possible, and we're going to try to skip all the cheesy crap surrounding positive mindset.
Chris: [00:39:20] Did you just say applicable? Not applicable.
Brian: [00:39:23] that's an applicable, yeah.
Chris: [00:39:24] Did you put an L in there?
Brian: [00:39:26] Applicable,
Chris: [00:39:27] Okay. I'm clickable. That's affordable.
Brian: [00:39:30] or applicable. Actually, I don't know which way you said applicable.
Chris: [00:39:34] I think it depends on what side of the Atlantic ocean you're from.
Brian: [00:39:37] Today on English with the bros. So let's move on to today's episode topic, and that is nurturing positive mindsets. Or here are four mindsets that you need to nurture in order to push your business forward.
Chris: [00:39:49] Let me launch into this, Brian.
Brian: [00:39:51] Yeah, go for it. My friend.
Chris: [00:39:52] I had a thought this morning and I've been working on this for the last week or so. I was thinking about this for our community about how important it is to make sure that you're doing work that grows you. And growing you in a lot of ways has to do with this kind of mindset mentality, my mentality, mentality, mindset, whatever.
But this idea that there are things that you need to nurture in your soul and your heart that will make you a better human being, and you need to find ways to do that day in and day out so that you grow. One of my good friends is really fond of this, saying that we used to be involved in this organization called young life.
It's a big part of my life. And one of the popular SANEs over in young life is if you're not growing, you're dying. So it's the same for us as business owners. If you're not growing, you're dying. And that's not just from a profit standpoint, but much more so from a mindset standpoint. If you're not growing as an individual, you're dying.
And it's really, really hard to build a business, let alone grow a business. If you are personally not growing all the time.
Brian: [00:40:53] And that's why this is the second part of the series because it's really hard to grow and nurture these positive mindsets. If you have those negative mindsets we talked about last week, eating away, that's your inner thinking and so make sure you go back to listen to episode 90. Six are we talking about the first part of this, which is eliminating the negative mindsets?
So the first positive mindset in our list today is an abundance mindset. We talked about last week, the scarcity mindset. This is the exact opposite, and this is what we need to nurture in order to have successful businesses. So Chris, you're going to give us a 45 minute answer on this, but what is an abundant mindset.
Chris: [00:41:28] All right, well, here's my story. When Alison and I were first married, we were shopping for a house, but our lease on where we were currently living was up and we met a friend who, quote unquote had an extra house on their property.
Brian: [00:41:44] I just got an extra house. If you
Chris: [00:41:45] it was, it was seriously like the story was men, you know, like he was in high school and I was his young life leader.
I was like his mentor. And he was like, yeah, you know, a couple of years ago, my parents' business started going really well, so they bought all the houses around our house and burned them down and build a really big house.
It gets better. And then we picked up all our stuff one day and we walked into the new big house and we don't use our old house anymore.
It's just sitting there empty. And I was like. Hmm. Well, my wife and I, our lease is up and we're trying to buy a house and we need somewhere to live for just a little bit of time while we shop for a house. Can we live in your house? He was like, we were talking to my mom, and she was like, yeah, go for it.
Just pay the utilities. And we were like, yes. It was a really nice area of town. It's in new Albany, Ohio, and this began a really amazing relationship for me with this family. And. It was amazing for me because they were successful entrepreneurs. I think I've mentioned them on the show in the past, but I was living in this house.
Brian: [00:42:47] This is the dentist.
Chris: [00:42:48] This is the dentist. So what happened was I came upstairs to take a break and I looked out my back window on a Wednesday afternoon, and he was in our backyard. We had a pool in the backyard. It was a great house, and he was playing with his kids on a Wednesday afternoon at the pool. And I froze in my tracks and I thought to myself, is he allowed to do that?
Doesn't he have a job? Why hasn't he had his business right now? He was demonstrating an abundance mindset. Mark and Shane blew our minds one day when we were talking about this and they said, well, the first thing you've got to understand is you've got to have an abundance mindset. There's so much money on earth, there's so much, there are so many resources, and this is completely the opposite of this mentality that we talked about last week.
This idea that there's a very limited amount of it. They make a lot of money. And they were sharing with us this idea that you can't look at the world as a scarce environment. It's not. At one point it was, but it ain't anymore. And it was a life changing moment for us to think about. It's the opposite of FOMO.
When he was hanging out with his kids on a Wednesday afternoon, he wasn't thinking like, Oh, I'm going to miss opportunities. He was thinking, yeah, screw that. I'm going to do what will be good for me and what will be healthy for me for the longterm. I'm going to go hang out with my kids at the pool on a Wednesday afternoon.
He did that every Wednesday afternoon. It was freaking amazing, and that's where I learned the most about business was in that moment of looking at Mark and being like, Whoa, that's a totally different mentality than I have about my own work.
Brian: [00:44:17] So just to kind of really paint the picture. Sure here between the scarcity mindset and the abundance mindset, cause these are two opposite sides of the spectrum here. A scarcity mindset is if you are an entrepreneur, even a successful entrepreneur can still struggle with this. If you are an entrepreneur, you can never take time off.
You always have to hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, grind. Because you're always missing out on opportunities because if you miss out on this opportunity, you won't have another chance. Again, that's a scarcity mindset. And if you're a fan of Gary V. I love a lot of what he talks about, but that dude has a scarcity mindset.
He encourages a scarcity mindset when it comes to opportunity because it's always on, always on, never off. Because if you're ever off, you'll miss out on massive opportunities. That is again, the scarcity mindset. An abundance mindset does. This right here is this dentist in his backyard on a Wednesday afternoon in a pool with his kids enjoying life because he knows he can always find ways to make enough money.
He only has so much time that he can have with this kid that is truly a scarce resource, is the amount of time he has with his child, especially that age. So the way we look at our businesses, there's a lot of ways this sort of stuff plays out. If you have a scarcity mindset, which we talked about last week in the last episode, not going to go too into depth with this year.
If you have a scarcity mindset, all of your competitors in your area are now your enemy. Do you have a scarcity mindset. Every single band or artists in your area you're fighting over. If you have an abundance mindset, every single competitor in your area is actually your friend. Someone to collaborate with, someone to trade ideas off of, to build a community around every single band in your area.
If they don't go with you and they go with someone else, that's fine. That person might be actually be a better fit. If they come to me, that's great. I can do a great job on them. It's just a completely different way to approach the same exact scenario. It's looking at it through two completely different lenses, and if you have an abundance mindset.
You can look through kind of a negative scenario. There was a much more positive mindset, and this is so much more healthy than a scarcity mindset.
Chris: [00:46:11] Yeah. An abundance mindset is essentially a positive outlook. On your ability to make ends meet. A scarcity mindset is fear driven and it's fascinating. This is complicated stuff. I don't claim to completely understand an abundance mindset. Brian, I think you'd probably agree with that. I think you probably have a little bit more of an abundance mindset than I do.
I'm not bragging like I'm complaining right now.
Yeah. It's something that's difficult to work through, but it's an extremely healthy thing. And here's the catch. Here's the really, really important catch. If you're a creative, if you work in the arts, and if you listen to this podcast, you probably do. It's very hard to make good art without an abundance mindset if you are fear-driven.
So will your work be, that was a weird sentence.
Brian: [00:47:03] Awful wording, but I get what you're saying. This is like a route that will go deep into your life. Whichever way you do it. If you have an abundance mindset affects all aspects of your life, your relationships, your business, everything, your money. If you have a scarcity mindset, it affects all areas of your business, your money, your relationships, your everything.
Everything.
Chris: [00:47:23] I want to underline this idea that your creativity is affected by a scarcity mindset and your creativity is enhanced and increased by having an abundance mindset. And so I think one of the questions we're probably going to get from people on this, and one of the questions I kind of still have about these mindsets is how do you change your mindset?
How do you do that?
Brian: [00:47:45] I don't know if there is a perfect answer to this. I think just being aware of, it's one thing, having the self-awareness to know which type of mindset you have, whether it's abundance or scarcity. I don't think anyone is either way 100%.
Chris: [00:47:56] I agree.
Brian: [00:47:57] Like, I like to think, I don't struggle with scarcity mindset, but there are still a certain things in my life that I'll catch myself on.
Like I might be jealous if someone has success at something that I want to have success in, that I don't have success in. You know? And that scarcity mindset. And then there's times where something should bother me, something I should be mad about, but I'm not because of a healthy abundance mindset and down the road, that can lead to a lot of great things because instead of burning a bridge because someone copied you or someone.
Took inspiration from you or something. Instead, you foster that relationship and there's going to be so much more that comes from that. Then you know what I'm talking about too, Chris, you got that look in your eye. Yeah. We're not gonna talk about it here, but yeah.
Chris: [00:48:36] Yeah. We had a situation with a friend where they did something that irked us. Work me a little bit. And Brian didn't care, and Brian's outlook was healthier. I took offense because of my scarcity mindset, and let me share a story related to this. When I was a little kid, we had a garden in my backyard, huge garden.
It was probably like a quarter of an acre, and we'd grow like pumpkins and carrots and corn. One year we grew giant pumpkins.
Brian: [00:49:02] I'm so jealous cause like this one thing I want, I've never cut my own grass because both places I've lived in this place that I have now has no land. It's just downtown Nashville. I have a concrete
Chris: [00:49:13] The only land it has is beneath the foundation.
Brian: [00:49:15] Yeah. And then the place I lived before my studio in Alabama, it was on 10 acres, but the landlord cut the grass with the tractor. So like I have no responsibility, but I also, I've never had a place to be able to plant a garden.
Chris: [00:49:26] Yeah. So I grew up with a garden and there was a lot of benefits to that side. Note on that story real quick. We grew giant pumpkins one year. The pumpkin's were over a hundred pounds, and we made a jack-o-lantern for Halloween out of one of these pumpkins. And we made it. And then when my parents weren't looking, I went under the front porch where we put it, and I lifted the lid off and I climbed completely inside of it and put the lid back on.
And it was like one of the coolest things I've ever done as a kid loved it. But one of the kind of like really important moments in my life was we were learning about gardening and our garden, and I forget it was my mom or my dad. But I was really into carrots. I love carrots, and the carrots were starting to sprout up and my parents were teaching me about weeds.
Like that is a carrot. That's a baby carrot right there. So don't pick that, but that thing next to it, that's a weed. You don't want the weeds. You do want the carrots, so you want to pull the weeds and leave the carrots. I think this mindset shift is sort of the same when you begin to identify these different mindsets and start to recognize that one is bad.
This one is good. You start to notice that in your own life and be like, Oh, this happened 10 seconds to go in the podcast for me. Or Brian was saying something. I was like, Oh gosh, I did have it scary. That was a weed. Uh, I had been thinking in a bad way. So I think that's the benefit of learning about these different mindsets.
Brian: [00:50:48] Yeah. And another thing is, I think if you just heard what Chris is talking about, how he had that aha moment of just having a scarcity mindset moment. I think a lot of it comes down to who we associate ourselves with. We've talked about this so many times in the podcast, but if you surround yourself with.
People that are absolutely toxic, you are going to, as a byproduct, be a much more toxic person. It's so hard to break out from your social circle.
Chris: [00:51:11] Weeds beget weeds. If you don't pick them. They have babies and those babies have babies.
Brian: [00:51:17] So I don't remember what episode we talked about this in the past, but we have talked about in the past. How to surround yourself with better people, what to do with the people in your life that you shouldn't really have in your life, and how to kind of assess your circle. I don't know what episode that was.
I don't know if you've even had a full episode about this, but somewhere in the past 95 episodes,
Chris: [00:51:34] I love that concept that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So for me, I am a combination of Alison Graham, Brian Hood, and Andy J. Pizza.
Brian: [00:51:46] as I say, Andy J pizza has got to be in that list.
Chris: [00:51:48] In December regard to a lesser degree cause I don't like share an office with them, a house with them or a podcast with them. I've got a friend, Brandon rake and another friend, John zapping and another friend, Colin Rigsby, all awesome dudes.
And we hang out and they normalize awesomeness for me.
Brian: [00:52:04] Yes, exactly. And it's really hard, especially as an entrepreneur. Like I had dinner with Sean last night. Hopefully it doesn't mind me mentioning this, but he was just saying how it was great to be around. He had lunch with Trevor yesterday, or coffee with Trevor, my, uh, friend and cofounder on file pass. He had lunch with him and Sean was just like, man, it was so good to be able to sit down and just talk business with you and Trevor all day, you know, because he's like my circle in where I'm from up in Canada, land Vancouver.
I think it's just so hard to find people to connect with it, care about business. Cause when I talk about business to my friends, their eyes just kind of glaze over. So it's not just mindset, it's anything that you have interest in. If your circle is not interested in it, it's really hard to foster growth in those areas.
Chris: [00:52:42] With the guys I'm coaching, I've been calling that entrepreneurial loneliness. It can be very lonely to be an entrepreneur, especially when everyone around you is like, why don't you just go get a job at the bank? We all got jobs at the bank. Why are you taking this crazy risk? But anyways, yeah.
Entrepreneurial loneliness is real, and I'm sure some of you listening to the podcast that there's been a little bit of a bitter sweetness thing happened where you've been like, Oh, I'm growing awesome and learning to grow a business. And some of my friends think that's dumb and I'm processing. So yeah.
Well, let's move on to the next one, Brian. What's the next positive mindset.
Brian: [00:53:18] X positive mindset, and our list is the growth mindset. This is actually the exact opposite of. What we talked about last week, the fixed mindset. Chris, do you want to talk about what the growth mindset is? Give people a quick overview.
Chris: [00:53:30] Well, never a good amount of talking about mindsets. You know, it's, I don't think I could because it's just not something I'm good at. That's the fixed mindset. Mrs. Jones told me in fourth grade that I was bad at math, so I still believe to this day that I'm bad at math. The growth mindset. Is, pardon my French.
Fuck you, Mrs. Jones. I'm going to get awesome at math. That's a growth mindset. I don't care what you have to say. I'm going to go do my thing, and that's rock and roll, man.
Brian: [00:53:57] Yeah. Growth mindset is basically not accepting your limitations. It's not having this. Mindset that I can only go so far in this skill and I can't go any higher. Growth mindset is saying, if I put in the work, I can actually break through this self-imposed ceiling. I will say there's very few things in our lives that are fixed.
I'd say your height is a probably a fixed thing. You can't do a lot past puberty to really improve your chances for getting taller.
Chris: [00:54:22] That's next week's episode. Ways to get taller.
Brian: [00:54:26] you could figure that out. That'd be a lot of people.
But when it comes to certain skills and abilities and even mindsets, a growth mindset is the better approach because there are very few things that you cannot improve in your life.
Chris: [00:54:39] So one of the aspects of this growth mentality, this growth mindset is trying to find ways where someone's complaining about something. There's an attitude that part of your personality or part of what you're into is lame. Or is not good, and finding a way to make it work. This growth mentality, this is subtly related, but I think important to bring up.
I'm thinking more about like elementary school from the quote I just had a minute ago.
Brian: [00:55:04] It was Ms. Jones, actually a teacher. You had.
Chris: [00:55:06] No, I should have said Mrs. Newton fifth grade. Oh my gosh. Did she give me hell? And one of the things Ms. Newton would have said an awful lot as well as all my other teachers is he talks too much.
Brian: [00:55:18] Same here.
Chris: [00:55:19] Look at me now. You crazy old Coots.
I'm a podcaster.
Brian: [00:55:24] We literally do this. I wouldn't say for living, we haven't really monetize this podcast. Maybe we will in the future, who knows? But. We talk a lot. Videos, podcasts, interviews. We're on. This is a vital part of our businesses. Well, we haven't monetize the podcast. We do have other businesses. File pass.com bounce butler.com the six figure home studio.
I have courses I sell. Chris has Chris Graham, mastering.com he does mastering services. Chris does coaching. We talk a lot. So I think that's honestly, that's probably closer to the, what would that be?
Chris: [00:55:55] I think that we just totally made a mistake. That's a separate mindset. I don't know what you would call that, but it is this idea of like someone said something was bad and you took them at face value. It's kind of a fixed mindset of like, Oh, talking, you shouldn't talk. You should sit in your chair and be quiet and listen.
Brian: [00:56:13] That's actually, yeah, so I think it is part of the growth mindset. If you have a fixed mindset, someone tells you you shouldn't talk, you talk too much, then your mindset is, well, that's something that's wrong with me. A growth mindset is looking at something that someone has done, a problem that you have, and you've actually found a way to make it a strength in your life.
So that's another part of growth mindset versus fixed mindset. You're taking a problem and actually turning it into a power in your life. So look at all the things in your life that people tell you that is something wrong with you. And then think about ways that you can actually use that as honestly an unfair advantage in your business.
If that's a strength you have, you can turn that weakness into a strength in some way, shape, or form.
Chris: [00:56:53] I think we should call that the MacGyver mindset. That's what my guy ever would do. He would take, you know, what appeals. You're to be a weakness or a, or didn't appear to be a strength, and he would turn it into a way to save the day, and there's just something so cool about that. I'm obsessed with that idea, the MacGyver mindset.
Oh, I'm so happy to put that. That's awesome.
Brian: [00:57:12] I don't know how to actually spell MacGyver.
Chris: [00:57:13] pretty hard.
Brian: [00:57:14] Google. So we have. The abundance mindset. We have the gratitude mindset. We have the growth mindset. So what are some ways that we can actually foster a growth mindset?
Chris: [00:57:25] One of the biggest ways and kudos for you guys listening to us ramble on and on about businesses. If you're listening to this podcast, you probably have a growth mindset.
Brian: [00:57:34] It's true.
Chris: [00:57:35] If you found this podcast, and I'm like, ah, whatever. I'm just not good at business stuff and I'll never will be. Like you probably weren't interested in this show to start with.
Brian: [00:57:45] That's true. So I would say this is probably not the area most people struggle with.
Chris: [00:57:48] Yeah. You're listening to his self-improvement podcast and you're probably in that regard, don't have a fixed mindset. You probably have a growth mindset and that's massively powerful cause here's the thing. If you have a growth mindset, you heard like your school teachers talk about like, you know you're special, you can do it or you won't.
If you put your mind to it, all of this is true. If you have a growth mindset. If you have a growth mindset, you can do whatever you want, and you could look at people throughout history and look at their growth mindset and say, yeah, Holy crap. That was the magic bean there. Perfect example is Elon Musk. He took on big banking and said, I'm gonna make an internet bank.
Long story short, PayPal, and everyone was like, you're crazy. That'll never work out. It's too much regulation. Uh, you know, you're not smart enough. It's not going to work. worked a lot, and then afterwards he was like, I really want wanna. Bye. Send rockets into outer space and eventually Mars, and everyone was like, you're crazy.
And there's a great story in his biography about, he was at a party reading a moldy Russian rocket book, a book about rocket science
in Russian with mold on it. It was like sitting off by himself, and that's such an amazing growth mindset that Elon Musk was like, no, no, no. I'm going to make this work. I'm going to acquire the knowledge, wisdom, and skills.
To be awesome at this. Oh, guess what? A space X number one rocketry company in the world and better probably than any other government in the world at sending rockets in space at this point.
Brian: [00:59:18] I want to point out two things. One, your old teacher voice sounded like Pinocchio. And too little fun fact, the COO of PayPal as a venture capitalist firm that just invested 2 million in tips. Sound Stripe.
Chris: [00:59:33] I read about that.
Brian: [00:59:34] Yeah. So if you go back to episode 36 where we interviewed Travis Darell, he's the CEO of sound Stripe, and then again, Trevor, the CTO, one of the cofounders of sound Stripe.
Was episode 71 so kudos. And they actually raised 6 million total, but that was just one of their investors. That same venture firm has invested in space X as well, so that's a some fun business to be associated with.
Chris: [00:59:54] You would think we're sponsored by sound Stripe. We're not. We're customers of sound.
Brian: [00:59:59] I actually pay yearly for sound Stripe because I use it so much.
Chris: [01:00:03] Yeah. I just wrapped like a week ago. Good stuff.
Brian: [01:00:05] Yup. And they're our friends, so we're going to spread the word about them all. You know what? Let's do a quick ad spot for sound Stripe. If you need royalty free music. Go to sound stripe.com they have an unlimited plan. You pay monthly or yearly flat rate and you have access to their full library.
Thousands and thousands of songs. Almost all of it made right here in the heart of the music city, Nashville, and it's fantastic. We use it all the time, so for videos, advertisements, radio, TV, all that sort of stuff, just use it. They have Tesla as customers. They have whole foods, they have Apple, they have a lot of big customers using it,
Chris: [01:00:37] The music's good.
Brian: [01:00:38] and the music's good.
That's the big selling point. A lot of my friends are composers are engineers. My old personal assistant actually is on-staff salaried engineer at sound Stripe. How many guys mixing music do you know that are on salary? That's a good
Chris: [01:00:50] Seriously. That's funny. I was talking to our friend Bryant, who's a composer.
Brian: [01:00:55] He's one of the composers. Yeah,
Chris: [01:00:56] Yeah. I just set him up with a bounce Butler, fun story. Mid-roll ad for bounced Butler. Hey,
Brian: [01:01:01] there we go.
Chris: [01:01:02] Brian. Compose is about a lot of songs each month for sound Stripe, and then he has to bounce stems for mixing, and that takes a lot of time and bounce.
Butler is now helping him do that.
Brian: [01:01:13] It's great. So. Sound. Stripe is powered by bounce Butler. Sorry, you're trying to claim one day. All right, so let's move on to the final mindset on our list of your positive mindsets to foster in order to grow your business and honestly have a better life. This is not just going to help your business is going to help you enjoy your life a lot more.
This final one, honestly, is probably one of the most favorite on this list because it's a book we've talked about all the time, but this is the go giver mindset.
Chris: [01:01:38] Brian, what would you say is the number one book on mindset shift that you've ever read in your entire life?
Brian: [01:01:44] I can say the Go-Giver now because it's appropriate for the Go-Giver mindset, and it's a great book, but I'm not a person you can ever ask what my favorite anything was. I don't have answers for favorites.
Chris: [01:01:54] We're not the same in that regard. I have many times been accused by all of my friends that more than anyone they know. I use superlatives. See what I just did there. I constantly am like, this is the best pad Thai I've ever had. This is the best pair of glasses I've ever owned. Let's just kind of, my personality.
Brian: [01:02:13] Every time you get a new pair of headphones, it's the best pair of headphones you've ever
Chris: [01:02:17] Stay tuned for more on that, but the Go-Giver mindset is great. The go giver is a book that I just think all of you should read. Just go out and buy it. We probably should have like an Amazon affiliate link to give you, but we don't.
Brian: [01:02:28] I actually do
Chris: [01:02:31] I should too. But the Go-Giver, it's short. What is it like 90 pages? Like you can probably read it in an hour. . It's amazing. And the Go-Giver mindset, Brian, you tell us what is the Go-Giver mindset.
Brian: [01:02:45] So first and foremost go by the book. It's a parable. So this is a great kind of book for audible as an audio book because they're just talking to a story. It's easier for your brain to stay hold. They're not giving a bunch of technical information. The Go-Giver mindset is. Doing things in your life, in your business, in your surroundings, and never having a condition set to it.
Never asks me what's in it for me. A go giver. We'll do things for other people that they don't see any immediate benefit for themselves in it. And this has a bunch of effects, a bunch of side effects, one of which is you're going to have more people that like you. Second of all, it builds reciprocity for people.
And if you have a mindset of just always saying yes to people to an extent, by the way, that can get toxic as well. If you say yes too much to where it is a detriment to your life,
Chris: [01:03:29] There's a difference between saying yes to every project and saying yes to serving people.
Brian: [01:03:33] it's the opposite of being selfish, basically, as someone that has probably a scarcity mindset. In a fear mindset. Every single project they take on every single task to take on every single person they help, they're not doing it less or something in it. For me, I'm not going to help you unless there's something in it.
For me, the Go-Giver mindset is, I will help you just because I want to, just because I want you to succeed. So a Go-Giver mindset is kind of a combination of an abundance mindset, a growth mindset. MacGyver mindset, you'll do whatever you can to help people. And again, the result is very intangible. It's hard to put a measurable result on the Go-Giver mindset.
Here's what I tell people. If you have this sort of approach to life, you're going to have a 10 X return on what you put in. It may not be 10 X every time, but in aggregate, amongst all the things you do and all the people you help, it will be a 10 X return as long as you're not doing it for that 10 X return.
So it's this really weird.
Chris: [01:04:23] It has to be pure.
Brian: [01:04:24] Yeah, it's so strange. But Chris, do you have any stories or any thoughts on the go giver mindset?
Chris: [01:04:29] Yes.
Brian: [01:04:29] And before you get into that, I want to point out that people can't see this because Chris and I are in video chat here. Chris has taken to just carrying around a baseball bat and just swinging around his office as we're talking on calls now, and it's really weird to watch.
Chris: [01:04:43] It is weird. But yeah, I have this baseball bat that was my grandpas and I, I've had it since I was like five and, uh, I brought her to the office I like walk around and swing it all day lately and it's been really fun. Gives me something to distract my add with so I can be like, Hey, add, look at bat.
Okay, the rest of you focus on work and it's really virtually well, but go giver C, my add is being diverted towards the bat. Now I can stay on focus. Stay on focus. Anyways, this book is thinner than my pinky. It's a very thin book. We've talked about it before, but my story with this book is I read an article in business insider.
There was an interview with Graham Cochrane from before when I had met Graham Cochrane. And Graham Cochrane credited it as like the most important part of his business and the Go-Giver mentality is this idea. It's basically karma. If you send good vibes out in the world, if you serve people, good things will happen to you.
Brian: [01:05:41] Which it does sound like. Kind of stupid and hippie, but as a super logical person, I have seen this played out too many times in my own life to not believe it.
Chris: [01:05:50] Well, and here's the thing, you know, karma is like a Buddhist thing I think. I don't really know, but this idea that like if you do good, good will happen to you or Jesus Christ. It says that the greatest is the last and the servant of all. So whether you're a Christian, a Buddhist, or just a person who reads business books, this is a great life philosophy.
A good example for my own life was when my business started to really take off. Probably 2011 2012 is when stuff started to really hit for me. I thought, Oh my gosh, I've, Oh, this business knowledge. I've read all these books. I'm on them. So humming along, I'm doing great, and I'm going to keep all of it secret.
I won't tell anyone of the business wisdom which I have acquired.
Brian: [01:06:35] That was kind of one of your fears come on the podcast, wasn't it?
Chris: [01:06:38] Yeah. I was like, well, what if I tell a bunch of people about all my business secrets and their competitors? They're mastering engineers. And then they take my clients scarcity mindset right there. But luckily I had read the go giver at that point and this idea of, well, just tell everybody for free. It doesn't make a lot of business sense.
Right. Except that my business is growing at least three times faster than it ever had at any point before. Mostly because we give away this stuff for free on the podcast.
Brian: [01:07:08] Yeah. So the Go-Giver mindset is kind of like an offshoot from the abundance mindset. I'd say the abundance mindset is a pretty broad thing, but the Go-Giver mindset is a very specific part of that. And so that's why we kind of made it a separate thing in this episode. People are. I want to say inherently selfish.
That sounds bad, but people tend to look out for number one and that seems to be the advice that gets thrown around more than anything in the world. I just checked out the audio book on my phone. It's literally a three hour audio book. It's two hours, 54 minutes. If you speed that up to 1.5 which is what a lot of people listen, this podcast app that is literally like a two hour episode, I have a podcast, which is doable.
Chris: [01:07:43] Side note, if you are a reader, if you like reading, you probably read a lot faster than you can listen.
Brian: [01:07:50] Yeah, I don't. I'm one of the weird people that is like a slow reader. I started a fantasy series. I'm a big fantasy reader, by the way. I don't know if you knew that stuff. I've read like mega series, like 10 1213 book series will a time read the whole game of throne series.
Chris: [01:08:02] Interesting.
Brian: [01:08:03] Real nerdy stuff. I read real slow.
So like I'm on the book, three of the miss Bourne series right now, and I started on my honeymoon in March. So these are like 800 page books, Maria, every night before I go to bed. And this is how long it takes me to read. Yeah. So there's a little nerd alert. If we ever have a second like alarm, it'll be the nerd alert and maybe James will throw it in there.
Anyways, I'm a slow reader, so I actually can get through content faster. If I listen to it, it's better for me if I actually watch a video at like two and a half X speed. So whatever it is, pick your poison. It doesn't really matter how you listen to this book or read this book. The point is that you do consume the content in some way, shape, or form, and then practice the content because some of the stuff, like people don't practice a Go-Giver mindset because they haven't read the Go-Giver yet.
They don't know what the abundance mindset is. They don't know how to be generous or why to even be generous. Why would you share something with your competitor. It just doesn't make sense logically, but I think whenever you have a big mind shift moment, which maybe this podcast episode, it might be that book.
I don't know. Until you have that big aha moment, it's kind of like the entrepreneur's spark until something lights that little flame in your heart that you want to be an entrepreneur. It's really hard to build a business, and I think it's the same way with this mindset stuff.
Chris: [01:09:09] Yeah. This is such powerful stuff. When I read Go-Giver, I liked, I grasped, I was like, this is going to change everything. This is huge. I don't know why I had such an unhealthy outlook about hoarding my ability to serve others or my knowledge or whatever, you know? And this book is so effective. We could go on and on and on about it forever.
But there's a couple reasons I think it works. These are theories. One, you look at Jesus talking about this, the Buddha talking about this. There's some element of like it's part of the base code of humanity. I think there's something about the way that humans are wired. It's compatible, very, very compatible with this.
I think another reason this works is it keeps you top of mind for a lot of people. You know, my decision to join you, Brian, on this podcast, um, has kept me top of mind every week for thousands and thousands of professional audio engineers as a mastering engineer. That's pretty nice. I like that. That's helped with my business.
Brian: [01:10:15] I will also mention though that this podcast probably wouldn't be very effective for you if you had a non Go-Giver scarcity mindset and didn't share all of your dirty secrets with us.
Chris: [01:10:25] This is true. Yeah. If I were less honest as it were, yeah, it wouldn't be as effective.
Brian: [01:10:30] Or if you held a lot back from like the, Oh, I can't talk about that cause that's my secret sauce. If you were like that, people would probably hesitate to work with you a little bit more.
Chris: [01:10:38] That's true. Granted, there is some secret sauce. There's some stuff I've held that.
Brian: [01:10:43] Really
Chris: [01:10:44] Well of course. No.
Brian: [01:10:48] I don't hold back anything. That's the thing. I feel like there's a little scarcity mindset still in there. Chris.
Chris: [01:10:52] Well, I was talking to a guy that I'm going to be doing business coaching with. I think today we'll see if it materializes. This one guy I've been talking to, and I mentioned this to him, I was like, you know, Brian and I get to understand our mass market guys. We're trying to make content that appeals to a lot of people and to help a lot of people.
But there's a lot of stuff that we could talk about that only applies to a small subset. And so inevitably, whenever you're doing any kind of coaching, you were helping curate the, the Fay of advice that we have. But you're also like, why don't we wouldn't mention this in the show because it doesn't apply to that many people.
But to you, it does this tactic or this technique or this philosophy is really important. Or if you're like me, there's probably some gaps in what you understand and, and what you know. And having a coach is really useful. Two, address those issues specifically to spot and be like, Oh yeah, you struggle with this one thing, or you don't know this one truth.
Or you, Andy J pizza has a word he uses all the time. Creative mythologies. You believe a creative mythology that is just that, a mythology. It's not real. An example of that could be like, Oh, you can't make good quality audio using plugins on a computer. You have to use analog gear.
Brian: [01:12:08] That might've been true 10 15 years ago, but it definitely is not true now.
Chris: [01:12:12] yeah. Tons of hit records completely in the box, so there's plenty of stuff for us to talk about that doesn't make good fodder for a podcast.
We're kind of off topic the Go-Giver mindset's incredible and that book is awesome. If you're one of these guys, let's listen to the podcast. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just tell me, I've grown my business. I'm not going to read anything. Are you kidding me? Books are terrible. I went to school.
Brian: [01:12:34] That's a fixed mindset.
Chris: [01:12:35] Yeah, it's a fixed mindset.
My first reaction when I finished my first business book, which was the four hour work week, was Holy crap. Why didn't my teachers tell me that books could be useful? Which is hilarious cause it's almost the only thing they told me. You know.
Brian: [01:12:49] Yeah. I was the guy back in my early twenties that would brag about not having read a books in high school books were so don't need to read a book.
Chris: [01:12:57] I've been too busy vaping.
Brian: [01:12:58] That's a fixed mindset. I used to have a massive fixed mindset back then.
Chris: [01:13:01] Yeah, totally. Same thing. So the reason I bring this up with Go-Giver is it, this is the easiest first business book to read. It's very, very easy to read because it's a story. And stories are fun and it's not so much like, first you're gonna wanna access your MX restaurants and your DNS settings on your domain registrar.
It's not stuff like that. It's a great story that you'll love and can apply to your life.
Brian: [01:13:23] It kind of like when we went back to episode 84 and 85 where we talked through that ebook from the FreshBooks founder, the breaking the time barrier free. Ebook PDF that we went through as a podcast together with our community. Those two episodes are awesome, but that book is so good because it is a parable.
It's a story based book. It's not a bunch of tactical information. It's like here is a fake scenario that feels real and because it feels real, I can place myself in the shoes of that person way more easily than I can. Another article on like the top five things you need to do in your business.
Chris: [01:13:55] So that's the thing you've got to keep in mind with business books, and we're kind of off topic again, but there are multiple kinds of business books. There aren't. What are essentially textbooks that are super tactical, like first do this and then do that, and then make sure this study, new sub towed off, blah, blah, blah.
Then there are books that are parables. The E myth revisited as a parable. The Go-Giver is a parable. There's a whole lot of other ones that are a story and they sneak the truth in by hooking you with the great story. But there's no tactical stuff in there. Two books that Brian and I love that aren't necessarily super applicable to us as an audience would be automatic customer and built to sell by John Warlow.
We're both obsessed with those books.
Brian: [01:14:32] Those are not parables though.
Chris: [01:14:33] Oh, wait, no. Built a sales. A parable. Automatic customer is not.
Brian: [01:14:37] Yeah, I heard automatic customer build to sell is a great parable book. Automatic customer is not, so I just Googled real quick business parable books to see what came up because why not? We're here. We're way off topics. I'm going to go here first one, go give her second one. The richest man in Babylon.
Great book. It's kind of written in old English, so it's a little jarring, but you kind of get used to it. Especially the audio book. Yeah. Built the cells on the list and the rest of these I've never heard of.
Chris: [01:14:59] Is the EMF on there?
Brian: [01:15:01] He must not on there. Actually.
Chris: [01:15:02] Okay.
Brian: [01:15:03] This is just like Google's results at the top, so
Chris: [01:15:05] That's hilarious because E-Myth has probably sold more copies than any other small business book ever. With the exception, probably a four hour work week. It was like the only small business book in the nineties sort of, you know, it was like the only really like breakaway viral hit, but it's great.
Anyways, we're way off topic, so
Brian: [01:15:22] we are. We
Chris: [01:15:23] let's bring it home for you guys. The go giver mindset is the idea. It's serving other people and making that your priority ahead of all their considerations will eventually make you successful. I completely endorse that and there's a piece of me that's like, that can't possibly be true, and another piece of me that's like, bro, look around you.
It's like you're living it and it fricking works, man. So experiment with this. Try doing something for somebody. Just to serve them with no plan on how to get paid for that. You know, obviously you don't spend the next month with the same guy, but like is there something you can do that would improve someone's life and that would serve them and then you have no plan to recoup on that.
Maybe some of that takes you an hour. Try that. See how it feels. experiment with it. That's basically what the book says. Like the guy that's on this journey with this coach, he has a business coach in the book. And he challenges him to start doing this on a small scale first, and man, it's so great. I freaking love that book, man.
Brian: [01:16:27] I'll say one more thing about this. If you make your entire life about you and nothing by you, it's a very unfulfilling life. And a lot of that is a result of not having a Go-Giver mindset. So I really challenge people, make sure your life is not set up to only serve you, to only help you and screw everybody else.
You know? Like if that's the life you live, that's a quick path to depression, to be honest.
Chris: [01:16:48] Yeah. That and you're probably not going to be good at art. You're going to have a hard life to be like, yeah. I'm just like, share what's in my soul with my art for like when I mix, I'm just trying to create this world and get away from me. This is mine. Like that's not gonna work, man. It's not. Those two things are inherently incompatible.
Music is so funny because it's kind of like you're showing off your beautiful soul. Right? It's this idea of like this came from somewhere deep within me, this beautiful pure place that I don't nurture and that's full of cobwebs and stuff because I'm so selfish and self consumed. So moving away from that in this direction of like help people, help people, help people, and figure out how to be the servant of all Mandy.
That's some interesting stuff. It makes me nervous talking about it cause this is freaking plutonium. Like nitroglycerin. For your business. It is so freaking powerful. It's like crazy stuff, man. It's not to be underestimated of all the things we've talked about on the podcast. There's plenty of stuff that we talk about.
All this advice, buffet, all this advice, buffet. How with the Go-Giver, not with the Go-Giver. I mean, I'm sure you can be successful in the short term by having essentially a bad attitude, but being a Dick about it, but a longterm sustainable success. That can scale beyond your wildest dreams. Generally it's going to come from being a go giver.
Brian: [01:18:16] So that is it for this episode of the six figure home studio podcast. Tune in next week, bright and early 6:00 AM.