Latest / Success Is Not Convenient / Success Requires Leaving Some People Behind
Transcript
- 0:00Hello, everybody, Bernie Gallarani bringing another episode of Success is Not Convenient.
- 0:05Love the title because success is never convenient.
- 0:09If you're an entrepreneur, you know exactly what I mean, right?
- 0:11You're chasing success, you're trying to find it, but you know what's cool about success is it's really, whether you find it or you don't find it, the cool part about that is it's actually all in your head.
- 0:22That's the best part.
- 0:23The solution to all of your problems in business and in life, financially or otherwise, is in your head.
- 0:31And so success is not convenient because you're actually the one preventing it from happening.
- 0:36I know that sounds crazy, but it is my belief, and I have proven it over and over again with people I've seen, my own experiences, that success lives within your head and nowhere else you make the decision.
- 0:47So success is not convenient because we're in the way.
- 0:49Our title today and what we want to talk about today is who you surround yourself with matters.
- 0:55Who you hang out with matters.
- 0:57Who you call a friend matters.
- 0:59And so we want to talk a lot about who you surround yourself today, and we want to talk about how those particular people and how they influence you.
- 1:07So you don't rise to the vision, you rise to the environment of people.
- 1:11Who is the people in your environment today that are they uplifting you or are they actually pulling you down?
- 1:19That's a real good question I think that everybody needs to answer is am I hanging out with the right people to put myself in a position for a high level of success?
- 1:28Entrepreneurs love to believe that they are independent thinkers, but they're not.
- 1:32They're not independent thinkers.
- 1:34Human beings normalize to their environment.
- 1:38They actually normalize to the people they hang out with.
- 1:42They normalize to the belief systems they have that's going on in your head.
- 1:46And as I just mentioned a minute ago, when we're looking for success, there's not anyone standing in our way of success.
- 1:53There's not one person in our way.
- 1:55Now I'm not saying that there's not friends or family that are naysayers and bringing us down.
- 2:00But if you're around people who are regular normal thinkers, and they're not big thinkers, big money people, big business people, you're subsequently just capping yourself to the people that you're hanging around with.
- 2:14It reminds me of a story of somebody who I work with, still work with, still works within my company.
- 2:20Really great start, did very well, and then I could kind of see this decline.
- 2:23She was telling me about these friends that she was hanging out with, and this went on for several months.
- 2:28And so one night, or one day actually, one weekend, they came out.
- 2:32I was on my boat, and they came out and met me, and she introduced me to her friends.
- 2:37And immediately I said, hmm, to myself, I know why her business is going down.
- 2:44So the next day at the office, I pulled her in and I said, hey, by the way, I figured out why your production is going so low.
- 2:50She says, well, why?
- 2:51I said, I just met your friends that you've been hanging out with, somewhat new relationships, right?
- 2:56And she's like, yes.
- 2:57I said, those are not good people to be hanging out with.
- 3:00They might be good people, but they're not good for you and your business.
- 3:04See, if you're hanging around people who are building a $100 million company, your total nervous system adjusts.
- 3:12If you're hanging out with people who are just partying and drinking and not doing anything, you become that person, and your nervous system adjusts to that.
- 3:22That actually becomes your very normal standard, right?
- 3:25Your standards become normal with people who you like but aren't doing anything.
- 3:29The question is, how do you pull yourself from that?
- 3:31Stop hanging out with people that don't have your goals.
- 3:35Your brain calibrates to what it sees and repeatedly sees.
- 3:40I know this is weird.
- 3:41Remember, success isn't convenient, not because you don't want to be successful, but you have the wrong people around you, and you're not strong enough to overcome that.
- 3:50And that's why when you surround yourself with high performers earlier in your career, when you do it early enough, you can adjust.
- 3:57I love it, because in the world that I lived in, I actually chased the biggest hitters.
- 4:02The biggest people that were doing the work that I wanted to do, I got in front of them, and I went and visited them, and I went to their offices.
- 4:09I flew no matter where it was I was going.
- 4:12I'll tell you an interesting story, and this was probably about a year into my professional business.
- 4:17I was in the real estate business, still am.
- 4:19And I remember I wanted to go meet a couple of people that were on the West Coast in California.
- 4:24Living in Tennessee is where I live now, and that's where I lived then.
- 4:26And so I remember getting on an airplane, and it was on a Sunday, and it was Super Bowl Sunday, let's just call it 20 years ago, and I remember exactly who was playing.
- 4:37And I remember people telling me, you're actually going to be on an airplane when the Super Bowl's on?
- 4:40I don't care about the Super Bowl.
- 4:41Who cares?
- 4:42I'm building a life.
- 4:44See, here's the problem, I think, with a lot of us, is we think, well, that should be fun.
- 4:48I'm going to do that.
- 4:49No, no, no, no, no.
- 4:50Let me understand.
- 4:50Success in business is much more fun.
- 4:52Making money and being able to do whatever you want is way more fun than watching the Super Bowl, which you have no participation in.
- 4:59Yeah, you watch the Super Bowl, you drank, you partied, and you had a good time with your friends, but how did that benefit your life?
- 5:04It doesn't.
- 5:06You get to put something in your memory bank, and that's okay, but does your business suffer because you hang out with the wrong people, or you're not making the right choices?
- 5:13Environments set your expectation of life, who you hang out with.
- 5:17And expectations set behavior, and behavior sets the result.
- 5:21Most people don't understand that.
- 5:23What are you giving up?
- 5:25See, most people will not even understand the vision you have, and so what happens is you're so weak that we are not so solid in our goals that we give in to other people and what they feel we should be doing.
- 5:37Most entrepreneurs, they feel misunderstood for a reason, because they think differently than everybody else.
- 5:44They see opportunity where others see risk.
- 5:47They do things that most people won't do.
- 5:50Are you a person that shows up because your friends tell you to?
- 5:53Are you one that stays home and works on your craft?
- 5:55There's a great one.
- 5:56I saw this podcast once, and it talked about this young man who, they were all young, they were in their 20s, and this guy had started this landscaping business, and every time they wanted to go out and party, the friend that started the landscaping business said, no, no, no, man, I got to work on my business tonight.
- 6:09I got to work on my business, man.
- 6:10I just got to keep working on my business.
- 6:13And the guy went on to be a multi, multi, multi, multi, multimillionaire because he worked on his craft.
- 6:18What craft are you working on?
- 6:20See, this young person who started this business, when his friends asked him to go out, he saw growth where others saw comfort.
- 6:27He wasn't looking for comfort.
- 6:29He was looking for growth.
- 6:30Now, it might have been fun to go hang out with his buddies, but he was building a dynasty.
- 6:34Entrepreneurs see discipline where others see obsession.
- 6:37Entrepreneurs see discipline where others see obsession.
- 6:42See average thinkers protect comfort.
- 6:45That's what they do.
- 6:45They want to go have fun.
- 6:47Entrepreneurs chase expansion.
- 6:50I might be talking to you guys, and you're like, yeah, Bernie, I can't relate.
- 6:53Awesome.
- 6:54I'm not talking to you.
- 6:56But if you're a person who says, man, I just want growth, right?
- 7:00I just want growth.
- 7:01If you constantly explain your ambition to people who don't operate that way, they will absolutely sabotage and question you on why you're not partying and having a good time like they are.
- 7:15They'll joke about you.
- 7:16They'll tell stories about you.
- 7:18You don't need that.
- 7:19You know, listen, being an entrepreneur sometimes is very lonely.
- 7:22They might think that you're too obsessed.
- 7:24I heard that one, by the way.
- 7:26Oh, all you want to do is work, man.
- 7:27It's like, no.
- 7:29I want to have a great, beautiful life.
- 7:31And you scan all of your friends, and you look at them all, and you go, yeah, I probably, if I hang out with you, I'm going to end up with what you have, which is probably not anything.
- 7:41That's very dangerous for you, for your family, and for the goals that you set.
- 7:44They're not bad people because they're in the wrong spot that you're in.
- 7:49They're just in the spot that they're in.
- 7:51Their belief system is different, and that's okay.
- 7:53But see, your friends are important for your growth, so I think choosing your friends are super important, right?
- 7:59They always say one of the most important things you can ever do is choose a spouse.
- 8:03God, what a blessing.
- 8:04I've been married to my wife for 35 years, and what a great partner.
- 8:08It's who you surround yourself with.
- 8:10I have a very supportive wife who allows me to be creative and take risks.
- 8:16Who do you surround yourself with?
- 8:18Because energy is contagious, my friends, but so is mediocrity.
- 8:21And mediocrity is actually rampant.
- 8:23You don't need toxic people around you.
- 8:25You just need to be with people that think like you, and you're going to have to find them.
- 8:30Remember, success is not convenient, so it doesn't just show up everywhere.
- 8:34You have to find good people like that.
- 8:36You need people like that.
- 8:37You need people that don't make excuses, that don't rationalize or want an average performance in life.
- 8:45They push themselves to the limit, and the kind of people we want is people that think big and that don't blame others, people that don't avoid growth.
- 8:55They want growth.
- 8:56They're not afraid of growth, right?
- 8:58You don't need energy drainers.
- 9:00You need high achievers, high performers, people who speak differently, people that say, how do we solve this problem?
- 9:07Where am I the most weak?
- 9:08I love that, by the way.
- 9:09That is probably one of the things.
- 9:10I want everyone to write that down.
- 9:12Where am I the most weak?
- 9:13Where do I lack the ability to push myself forward?
- 9:17Where's my thinking?
- 9:18Who do I need to become?
- 9:20We need to just raise the standards.
- 9:22Our group protects identity.
- 9:24Others build capacity.
- 9:27The question for you is, which one are you?
- 9:29If you want to build at a higher level, you must be in rooms that stretch you to a higher level.
- 9:35Entrepreneurs should constantly ask, who intimidates me?
- 9:40Who is ahead of me?
- 9:42Who forces me to grow?
- 9:43Who won't tolerate my excuses?
- 9:46I'll never forget about, I say accountability slash role play relationship that I had with a business associate, Ira, and I'll give Ira a little shout out.
- 9:56I'll never forget.
- 9:57I was new in my business and he wanted to role play and do some accountability.
- 10:01He scared the heck out of me.
- 10:02Matter of fact, I literally wouldn't call him at times because I was just afraid of the level of accountability.
- 10:08But you know what?
- 10:09He kept staying on me and he molded me and he made me a much more confident person.
- 10:14But I ran from that guy in the beginning.
- 10:17Comfortable rooms kill your ambition.
- 10:19You don't want comfortable people.
- 10:20My mentor always says, the most that you grow is you have to embrace change in your life and you have to embrace being uncomfortable all the time.
- 10:28You need high producing mentors, big time mastermind groups.
- 10:32People that just challenge you and don't put up with your excuses.
- 10:36See we all have them and that's the fun part.
- 10:38I'm not sitting here telling you that I didn't have them.
- 10:40I'm the king of excuses.
- 10:43But I learned that when I hung out with really powerful people through mastermind groups and mentors, accountability partners, they will not tolerate that.
- 10:50Do your friends tolerate your lack of focus and behavior because you don't have the strength and the accountability partners that you need?
- 10:58Operators move faster than you.
- 11:01Big time people push you.
- 11:03If you're pushing people, you have the wrong people.
- 11:07You grow when you're around people operating at a much bigger standard.
- 11:11That pattern is not random.
- 11:13It's the law for these people.
- 11:15I'm telling you and anybody who knows me who watches and a lot of people do because they watch the podcast and they know me personally, I'm going to tell you, I am not a person that lets people get away with their excuses.
- 11:23Your life is way too important.
- 11:25If you're always the strongest, sharpest, most driven person in the circle, you're going to plateau.
- 11:31You need to find people that make you uncomfortable.
- 11:33Absolutely do not be comfortable with anybody that you have accountability partners with.
- 11:38You need someone that will challenge all of your thinking, stretch your vision, and expose your blind spots.
- 11:44I love this one.
- 11:45I had a coach.
- 11:46I don't want to say it was a coach.
- 11:47It was more like an accountability kind of coach where I wasn't really paying this particular person but I learned a lot from this person.
- 11:54He challenged me with something and then I tried to kind of squirrel out of it.
- 11:58I was a little squirrely.
- 12:01You've heard that saying.
- 12:03Hey, I'm going to come up with a reason why I'm not going to do what you told me to do.
- 12:06I was uncomfortable.
- 12:07Finally, I got forced because this particular individual challenged me.
- 12:12He's like, Bernie, I don't understand why you're doing this.
- 12:16I came up with a really good excuse.
- 12:17I actually was really proud of the excuse that I came up with because I had a reason.
- 12:20I had a reason.
- 12:21I had a belief system.
- 12:22Here's what he said, Bernie, if you just try it and you find that it isn't in alignment a month from now, you can always go back to what you had.
- 12:31But what if you just did it for a month and you realized how much growth you got out of it?
- 12:37He says, why don't you just try it and stop resisting it?
- 12:39I did.
- 12:40I called him a month later.
- 12:41I'll just say his name is Ron and I'll just say this to Ron.
- 12:44Thank you, Ron.
- 12:45I called him.
- 12:45I'm like, man, I can't believe it.
- 12:48I wish you had forced me to do it six months earlier.
- 12:53Here's what he said.
- 12:54Don't worry about it, buddy.
- 12:55It's just a blind spot in your life you didn't see.
- 12:58How many blind spots do we have in our life that we just don't see?
- 13:01But if you don't have anybody that calls you out for the way you think, how are you ever going to grow?
- 13:06See, the ego likes being the biggest player in the room.
- 13:09Your ego says, I'm right.
- 13:10And that's what my ego was that day.
- 13:12My ego is like, no, no, no, man, I'm going to justify the situation.
- 13:14Having growth requires you to be the smallest and most open to growth.
- 13:20Your ego, as my mentor Mike Ferry always says, if you just drop the E of ego, you get to go.
- 13:27And your E in ego is what's preventing you from growing because you're vulnerable, you're uncomfortable and you don't want to look bad.
- 13:34You don't want people telling you what to do and you don't even want to share your goals and your dreams with those particular people because you're too afraid of your lack of commitment to change.
- 13:42Misalignment creates internal conflict with yourself.
- 13:44Your inner circle, just your inner being just doesn't align with it all.
- 13:50And you look at growth and you say to yourself about growth, hey, listen, I want to grow, but I don't want to be uncomfortable.
- 13:56I want to grow but I like my friends.
- 13:58I want to grow, but I like my schedule.
- 14:00I want to grow, but I like sleeping in.
- 14:02I want to grow, but I have to read books to be disciplined.
- 14:06I want to grow, but I want to grow, but I can't.
- 14:09I want to grow, but it's too uncomfortable.
- 14:11I want to grow.
- 14:12I want to grow.
- 14:12I want to grow but you don't really do anything different.
- 14:15And what we're trying to do with this podcast is give everybody an idea of all the things you have to do.
- 14:19If there was a better way, we would try to find it.
- 14:23And so what happens is you try to flee or get away from any sort of discomfort.
- 14:29And sometimes discomfort is your friends saying, no, you don't want that in your life.
- 14:33You don't need any of that.
- 14:35You just need to be so focused on what it is that you need to get done.
- 14:38You need to stay focused on what you need to do.
- 14:41Your friends are irrelevant.
- 14:43Entrepreneurship is always an isolating job.
- 14:45You don't need to have people in your life that are naysayers.
- 14:49You need to have people pulling you, right?
- 14:52And I love this one.
- 14:53And I've got, I've found this painful at times to say, and the reality to it is it's the reality to it, in that you cannot uplift the downtrodden.
- 15:03You cannot motivate people to be motivated.
- 15:06You can't change your friend's mind if they have a belief in that.
- 15:10But there's so many great people out there today that will be a fit for you.
- 15:15But it's like success.
- 15:17They're not really showing themselves to you because you're not showing yourself to them.
- 15:22Because big time thinkers don't hang out with average people.
- 15:26Being an entrepreneur is a very isolated place to be.
- 15:30If your environment doesn't understand the sacrifice, it doesn't understand delayed gratification, it doesn't understand obsession, it doesn't understand vision.
- 15:40If you don't have people like that in your life, you are never going to be able to achieve at a higher level.
- 15:47You will either shrink to fit the people you hang out with, or you'll isolate emotionally because what happens is your dreams get squashed.
- 15:55And you know what happens when our dreams get squashed?
- 15:57We get squashed.
- 15:58The healthiest option is build a circle that speaks your language.
- 16:02You have to have people in your life.
- 16:05You're like, well, Bernie, how do you find those people?
- 16:07There's a bunch of them.
- 16:09I've got hundreds of them.
- 16:10But they're going to hide from you just like success because they don't know who you are.
- 16:16Are you having lip action?
- 16:19Are you creating results?
- 16:21And I promise you this, the better you move forward, people that you want in your life will notice.
- 16:28The more you move forward, those people will start paying attention to who you are.
- 16:32Who you're really looking for is this, people who increase your ambition, and people who take your standards and push you to a higher level.
- 16:42People that want to sharpen you, right?
- 16:45Like people that want to make you better.
- 16:47You don't want people who drain your momentum.
- 16:49You want people to encourage all of your comfort.
- 16:51We want people to like say, hey, listen, man, keep moving forward.
- 16:54Keep upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, upgrading, upgrading your friends, upgrading your life, upgrading your business.
- 16:59Thinking bigger.
- 17:00You have to protect yourself, protect your vision.
- 17:03Don't ever explain it.
- 17:05You never have to explain anything to anybody.
- 17:07As I've said in other podcasts before, I've had people that have tried to explain things to me and I think that their ideas are dumb.
- 17:12And I've had that shoved in my face a million times.
- 17:15They don't ever have to explain it to me because I don't see that vision.
- 17:19People aren't going to see your vision.
- 17:20You try to explain your vision and you have a bunch of people that nag you out.
- 17:23It's not good.
- 17:24Always continue to be a person who seeks other people at a high level that encourages them at a high level.
- 17:32Find good friends.
- 17:33The better friends you find, the better you're going to be at achieving the goals you want to achieve.
- 17:39And I just want to say this to you as we end this podcast today.
- 17:43If you don't take this seriously on the people you hang out with, and I am a believer.
- 17:48I just was sharing with one of my folks that I coach inside of my company and he's going to an event on Sunday for the next week.
- 17:56And I said, listen, man, go to the event.
- 17:57It's really great.
- 17:58This is what you have to expect.
- 17:59I've been there several times, but it's the people that you really want to get to know.
- 18:04Don't allow yourself to go there thinking you're going there just for this.
- 18:08I'm going to tell you the inside.
- 18:09I want you to take the next two days because he's going for two days and I want you to find the biggest, heaviest hitters at this event.
- 18:16It's a small event, very small actually, but there's still some really great people there.
- 18:20And I'm like, I want you to go to dinners with them.
- 18:22I want you to go to lunches with them.
- 18:23I want you to go, want to go have a drink with them, have a drink with them.
- 18:26I don't care if you ever go to sleep.
- 18:27You do everything you can to hang out with those people because those people are going to push you to a higher level.
- 18:32You'll get some sleep when you get back, but take the opportunity to be around all of these powerful people and don't let it escape you because your friends are either going to push you up or pull you down.
- 18:45It's completely up to you.
- 18:47I hope you guys found value in this.
- 18:49Please hit the like button if you love it.
- 18:51If you don't, I totally understand.
- 18:52It's not for everybody, but if you liked it, give me a thumbs up, hit the subscribe button.
- 18:57I'd like the opportunity to continue to keep bringing these great topics and ideas to you.
- 19:01Everybody have a great day.