Latest / The Vincere Project / Episode 7 - Better or Not?

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Episode 7 - Better or Not? · The Vincere Project

• Vincent: All right, we're back at it. Still podcasting, still making notes, trying to make improvements, better the product and deliver some better stuff to people. And part of that is again, trying to get guests on and I'm thinking through how to do that. I'm definitely gonna start with Mary as my first guest for all the right reasons. I think ⁓ has a good attitude about it and she understands what I'm trying to and how it connects to the bigger mission of H-Hour. Vincere project is distinct to Vince and it is my footprint or digital imprint or whatever the heck you want to call it. And I'm having fun doing it. It's forcing me to sort back through my notes and look at journal entries reflect on things, make them better. then verbalize some things that I have that are coherent that I have written and maybe not coherent and maybe there's not even good ideas they're just ideas that i'm sharing. I'm going to do here is keep growing the thing. But back to the guest thing. So Mary was like, well, what we talk about? And her initial instinct was like, we'll make it very formal and very teacher of the year-esque, because that's what she does. She's an elementary school teacher. uh And she was like, yeah, it'll be very regimented. And we'll cover these topics. And these issues will lead to this. And there's not really a flow into what she had in mind, because she wants to share the great stuff she's bringing over to training and events and operationalizing some of that stuff. real time. And I think that's good. I definitely definitely want her to do that at some point. But I think it's more fun as people get to know us in a playful way, because we're serious people, but we're playful. And we treat our professions that way. We do most things that way. ah You know, like in the past have been known when somebody struggling with anxiety or mental health, like I'll encourage them to do some pretty high risk things right to work through that stuff as a form of exposure therapy when appropriate. uh That's part of this too. In getting to that point, you have to war game for lack of a better term. Some people call it planning, preparation, modeling, rehearsing, discussing, talking through. We whiteboard a lot. We like the whiteboard. We have a small whiteboard in the house. We have a big whiteboard in the house. We like flow documents, like a Google doc or a note. We'll just go back and forth on a thing and go back and forth and iterate and kind of tease it over and process. What we find is that there's really not many decisions day to day that need to be made in a hurry. The greater majority of big decisions that matter significantly, that will have a massive impact on life. There's a whole series of choices that led to that particular decision. But there's maybe like two or three a year that I find are like that significant where you could measure over time the impact that they've had physically down through financially on my life. my family's life, the world around us and everything else that encompasses that. So I think we'll trend more towards a zombie apocalypse in terms of what we're planning and preparing for as opposed to an actual war. Because when we talk about that things were explicit and we're graphic and we kind of take the fun out of it because there's nothing fun about that stuff. But I think a zombie apocalypse will be fun. We use it as like a thought study scenario and kind of walk through that and discuss and share with people kind of how we think about things because When people reach out to us and clients or other professionals, colleagues, ⁓ just folks we work with closely, right? Those conversations are very forthright. And they mean this, when you call somebody that is a serious person, ⁓ you can be lighthearted for a bit, but you have to get right to what it is and be direct. And how we discern information is like that. That's the best way that we know how to do it. And I feel like many of the people that we work with appreciate that directness. as opposed to like your bigger box corporate entities that you deal with. They're very formalized. If you even do deal with the human being in many cases, think of any of the big companies, right? They have so much automation. It's not actually a human. It's just a matter of shareholders that own the software that run the particular thing. ⁓ but that's very much a different podcast. think so. Yeah, we'll do zombie apocalypse and we'll talk about how we would establish Ruizistan and, ⁓ what that would look like and feel like. know what it means to take account for all the stakeholders in that kind of planning and rhythm and stuff. you know, I think what happens in that story kind of leads to today's podcast is I take way too long to get to it because I'm sloppy and doing too many things at once right now. But I made a note here, you know, I've noted on this in journal on this extensively for at least 13, 14 years starting in rehab. So before 14 years this year, right. And ⁓ who gets better and who doesn't? All right, and the first time I posed the question to myself, right, it's an internal dialogue is, or monologue, I guess, right, is who gets better or don't. It was like, hey, whoever like isn't doing drugs or alcohol is going to get better. Whoever is doing drugs and alcohol, they may continue to struggle in some capacity, right? And it was very black or white thinking. It was all or none. And it took out some of the nuance. Yet in the beginning of my process and changing my mindset about what I wanted to be in the future and how do I want to package that up, I had to go to that place to kind of start with some polarization, who gets better and who doesn't. You know, in all my professional work and counseling now at this point, 11,000 ish hours of counseling, direct and indirect services and teaching the stuff, working with people closely, ⁓ a ton of executive coaching at this point and being in the classroom with students, especially informed this stuff in last few years, you who gets better and doesn't. I would say it just comes down to the super, super small things. And two core competencies is be a little bit humble and assume everybody you meet and everything you do. is serving you and has something to teach you. In terms of law reciprocity, that first part, that service is you want to reciprocate that service, right? Hey, this person knows something I don't know. I want to be able to give them my cognition, perception, attention. It doesn't matter if I agree, disagree. I just want to share the space with them and demonstrate the utmost empathy that I can. Common courtesy or baseline level respect, really just being a decent human. And not at nauseam and not at waste, right? That willingness to do that is a good indicator. The second part, I would say, is when people, ⁓ they present like a great enthusiasm to the learning process and changing how they think about particular things, right? That's who gets better and who doesn't. And I think the easiest examples are people that have come from situations where they were ⁓ battling the odds or they weren't the favorites necessarily. And I think that happens throughout people's lives where they have to make a concerted decision to decide whether they want to play or not. But I think it comes down to ⁓ ultimately will free will. I don't necessarily think it's a willpower. I don't think it is something that is outside of our control or anything love that nature. I think I shared a few episodes ago, some of the rules when it comes to competition and things to pay attention to and. Part of that was the rules, right? And once somebody commits to reading the rule book of the particular thing, we start to rule out, eliminate and cover some of the things that can or can't happen in that particular game. And I think that's what separates an expert from a novice is really just knowing the rules and the functionality of what they're allowed to do versus what they don't do. So back to who wins and who doesn't win though, I'd say throughout life I've observed and seen it's not always the most talented person that wins that that can. greatly help somebody in their circumstance. Picking the right thing to do with the right requisite talents is a force multiplier in a very, very special way. And that's what we see with ⁓ world class surgeons, ⁓ brilliant minds in business, sports performers and things of that nature, anybody that sticks out. Yet they are singularly focused on that particular thing. So again, who gets better, who doesn't? man, is it generally the person that singularly focuses on a particular thing to become the best at that particular thing? I think there's something to that. The generalist in many cases can achieve levels of success that are relative to whatever they're trying to do and to the greater population and masses. The expert though has shed the ability to compete in some of those other entities and things, right? And so I think that's it is whoever gets better and who doesn't has just self-selected. They've decided that they're going to make a market improvement or get better at a particular task for a long enough period of time. Then it becomes inevitable that they're trying to win. For me and my journey or purpose, and this happened long before I started the doctorate, it probably happened when I was finishing my master's in counseling, but I realized for myself, I was learning how to give things away and give it all away. And it's not absent with competition. does. It's not always received well and people can struggle to conceptualize what I'm trying to do. And that's, you know, it ties back to me emailing to other professionals like, I'm doing a free CEO, something, something, And then people's minds, well, there's nothing that's free. And I guess technically I'd agree. Your attention would be a part of that story. We're going to give you lunch and you're going to trade attention for what we're doing and maybe give us some feedback on how we can improve. So, you know, that's maybe the selfish part of it. The selfless part of it is we still have to rent the space. We still have to buy the food. We still have to pay the people that are working it for us or with us, right? And so operationally, right, we know that doing those things over a long enough period of time, meaning twice a year for the next 30 years, we're gonna do 60 more free events. So we don't get too wrapped up in who comes or attends or doesn't. We just keep making notes and keep going throughout the time because those two people I referenced that didn't respond that you figure would just give the courtesy email. back, yes, no, whatever. Those two people are going to be in those positions in the future, right? Maybe one or two more years that are in that position or below and then they're gone and then it's somebody else and we're going to send the same exact email to that particular person. So when you're playing the long game, I think who gets better is the person that self-selects and has a long enough vision of themselves going into the future. I mean, for me, I think running a small business and being an investor have been the two greatest gifts in the world and doing them simultaneously. It did a lot of things for me. think for me, I made a note here, building H-Hour has reminded me of all of my character flaws. It reminded me in the most deep, meaningful way as I'm trying to build a business and trade my skills and knowledge for money with other people to an audience that doesn't exist in 2019. And I'm like, all right, I'm just going to cultivate this thing. I think that revealed all of my character flaws to myself. It was like the advanced level education of what the steps in the NA rooms did for me. I came aware of some of my things and tried to make amends for some things and some of the things other people didn't want to make amends for or weren't ready to. Right. And so that goes back to who will get better and who will not. Right. Hey, I will get better in spite of these people not accepting my apology. And there people that didn't. They were like, hey, like you're dead wrong what you did or whatever. And we needed to part ways. And there's nothing wrong with that. They do what was in their best interest to protect them. ⁓ You know, so then who doesn't, right? I think for me, the guy that doesn't get better there and that says, just the guy that will just hold on to that. Well, they didn't accept my apology. Well, the lack of awareness would be, you're not mindful about maybe the damage that had been created during that period of time that your behavior was beyond what was acceptable. radical acceptance. So in that story, I think that's who gets better and who doesn't get better is coming up with a mindset and understanding, right, that we don't want to get caught in between and banished to purgatory. You know, so building a small business is the natural accelerator to reveal your character flaws to yourself. If you have insecurities of any kind, they will come out at some point because it's either going to be about your actual work itself and your skills and talent that you've worked so hard. It'll be a business thing that comes up along the way, dealing with some sort of entity or company or protocol procedure or another human being. And when you're trying to build a team, it's even more dynamic because people have very unique things that are very important and special to them. And I think, you know, when I partner with people, it's sole intent of giving it away to them to help them get what they want, need or to get better. And in part of that, people are like, aren't you afraid they're going to take your stuff or whatever? Yeah, like take it, use it. It's free. Make it better. Like I don't have any strain on that. The strain for me, what I've learned for myself in those relationships over the last decade or so is that when somebody doesn't let me bet on their best idea, like, I'm working on this best idea, but I don't want to share it with you. I want to tell you about it. I'm telling you what my best ideas are and how we're serving people. We're now an S-Core and by 2028, we're going to be offering selling a piece of H-Hour. Okay. Like, know, do you want a limited partnership anywhere from 10 to $25,000 to have access and control and get your dividend payment every quarter? Yeah, great. Hey, you want a general partnership? It's probably closer to a hundred grand and we'll form those general partnerships. And I already gotten verbals from people of ones, he twos, he's the one to do that. Does it gonna work? I don't know if it's gonna work or not, right? It better work, right? I have to ensure it. have to back it up. I'm building a business and we may never get to that because it's still, know, it's 500 something days away in my clock, right? And so we're not even at that point. Those are just good ideas. There's so much stuff we have to operationalize and get done in the meantime to get to that point. but doesn't mean that we deviate from that vision because if my role and function to me in connection to me is to get better, I got to continue doing that. So alternatively, what do we do at HOUT? Well, that's it. We deliver services to people. We help people become more skilled, more competent so they can be more brave facing those difficult circumstances. Myself, broke in the team, that is what we do. At a personal level, it has revealed all of my character flaws. Every single one of them has come up at some point. Red flags, total red flags and... working closely with Brooke and of course my wife observing that she, they're both aware of who and what that is. Just as I of other people we work with, who is this person relationship to me? That's not what I'm talking about. So, character flows and then investing. ⁓ Man, it invited all of my psychological demons to stalk me. fear, greed, insecurity, jealousy, envy, ⁓ beliefs about luck. But every psychological demon that I have deep down inside has come up to the surface and been revealed at some point. And I must say it has been the most important self-education I've ever done, not only because of the freedom that has created in my life, but I've learned the math to it is not as crazy as it seems on the outside in the beginning. But at beginning, it's hard, right? Because it's like, hey, like, I don't know what I'm doing. This is my last 500 bucks. That's a real story, by the way. I don't know. I don't want to lose my money because I need this 500 to pay rent. Right. And I don't want to be homeless again. And all those scarcity mindset things came back down to who gets better and who doesn't. And at that point, I started to callous myself to like, wait a second. Like my superpower is that I've been homeless. I've been strung out on drugs. I've been in wars, gun battles. People have tried to kill me the other way around something, whatever. Me and my friends, know. And ⁓ Once you kind of know yourself in a way like that, you just self-select in a way, I'm going to get better over the long haul over the rest of my lifespan, the remaining days, whatever that is. It's not going to be a straight line. It's not going to be linear. But the last thing I want to do is I don't want to end up in purgatory. And so I want to use two examples to kind of wrap up the podcast today. This is where you don't want to end up is when the zombie apocalypse comes up, Mary and I will discuss at some point. You don't want to end up in a space of purgatory. So let's use physical space, right? is, you know, if you use like CrossFit workouts as the modality or the methodology in this sense, right? And you do a really intense workout in a short time domain, a five minute workout as fast as you can. That's intensity. It also means though, that maybe you're doing a longer form workout for an hour, right? You have to read a certain threshold where you can form a different kind of intensity, right? But they're equally intense and they're just different expressions of that. Same thing in the classroom when we struggle to learn something, reading a page over and over again. But the outcomes of it are what other people will see because you'll be aware of it and it'll be expressed through how you walk, talk and see the world. In the fitness space, what happens is people will get, they'll play it so safe that they never put themselves into a position where there may be a potential to fail, right? And now we're not talking about severe injury or threat of peril, but their ego, right? Like, ⁓ this person's faster than me. The 70 year old Harold is faster than me at the 5k, even though I've trained for this thing for a year, right? But what we failed to disclose in story is that Harold was also an Olympic runner. He ran in Olympics. So 70 year old Olympic Harold is probably gonna be a better runner at the 5k than Vince, right? And so we use that as an example, but if you in your mind, right? In your intentions and your thoughts and your behaviors are maxing out your intensity and you're being true to your word, having a longer vision of yourself, right? That is where you start to get better. because you're removing Harold from the equation. Alternatively, finance is the other part of it. There are times where, unfortunately, people get caught up in a thing of appearances where they need to present a particular way for social status, their family, their friends, their profession, whatever the reasons. I've yet to see that help many people in the long run, ⁓ but I would say that ⁓ America is still a system that works and favors people that are willing to play ⁓ and get better. Right? Because it goes back to that first 500 I started with many years ago. If I wouldn't have been willing to totally commit myself to play, then I would never had a chance to reap the reward and benefit of the magic of compounding. So whether we're using physical fitness and or finance or learning and intellectual capacity or emotional management, they are all subject to the laws of compounding over time. Right? So whatever those daily habits, rituals and practices are that you are engaging in or half-assing your way through, those things would be exactly the versions of compounding interest in the long run. What happens is on our daily tab, rituals and practices, when we're making a determination of getting better or not, is we're just always giving consideration to our future self that the race hasn't even started yet at this point. We're just operating and behaving in a way that's in accordance with our beliefs. Hey, I'm on a journey and process of getting better. But the outcomes look at that appearance of sport. or running that 5k race in a particular way, is maxing out their effort. Alternative side of it would be the finance and to enjoy the compound, ⁓ grow old and rich and quietly where nobody knows your name and what you're doing and what you're about. ⁓ think that's always the goal and intent of all of this stuff. So no, rather not get caught in purgatory where you're getting underpaid and overburdened out in stress. I would rather at H-Hour do it for nothing or charge a premium. but we don't want to get caught in between because that's not good for our clients and it's not good for Dr. Vince. It's definitely not good for Brooke or Rachel or Elena as they're seeing clients or Ali for that matter and any future interns or folks that are going to have to do. We want them to max out their value because they worked hard at developing the skills, talents and tools just like myself because we self-selected. We put our hand up at some point and said, I am in the business of getting better and becoming a better version and our clients deserve that. And I that's who gets better. We don't want to get stuck in purgatory. And next time, or maybe whenever Mary jumps on, we'll chit chat in the zombie apocalypse. And yeah, she was S4, she was supply in the army. It was more S3-ish operation kind of thing. yeah, we'll create Ruizistan in the middle of the apocalypse. It'll be awesome. So yeah, cool. Enjoy. Have a great day.