Latest / Live 100 Podcast with Jason Yarusi / Escape the Default Script: Steve Rolle's Mindset for Building Wealth & Success
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_01: The magic that happens is you realize there's a lot more within your control than you ever believed when you first got started.
- 0:08SPEAKER_01: You open up your eyes to what's possible and what the potential is out there.
- 0:12SPEAKER_00: So Steve is an entrepreneur, investor, and host of the Roll and Steve podcast.
- 0:17SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, before you get to a point that you feel stuck in the environment that you were grown up in, some wake-up call happens and there's an opportunity for you to break free from the default script and to live the life that you choose instead.
- 0:30SPEAKER_00: If you ask those questions repeatedly and put them into your mind, right?
- 0:33SPEAKER_00: Why not me?
- 0:33SPEAKER_00: And how can I, right?
- 0:35SPEAKER_00: You can change a lot of your journey very quickly.
- 0:38SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for just a very great conversation today.
- 0:47SPEAKER_00: All right, welcome back to the Little One Injure podcast.
- 0:50SPEAKER_00: I am super excited to have Steve Roll on the show today.
- 0:53SPEAKER_00: Steve, great to have you.
- 0:55SPEAKER_00: Jason, thanks for having me on.
- 0:56SPEAKER_00: Excited to be here.
- 0:57SPEAKER_00: Yeah, excited to have you.
- 0:58SPEAKER_00: So Steve is an entrepreneur, investor, and host of the Roll and Steve podcast, who has launched uh scaled, exited businesses generating over$100 million across e-commerce, manufacturing, and distribution, a focused conversation idea of your audience from operator to owner, right?
- 1:13SPEAKER_00: So he's built many companies that just scale without you, and which we're gonna dive into.
- 1:18SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it's just one thing that we pretty much started this conversation that you went to Bible college, right?
- 1:24SPEAKER_00: And you went to Bible college and then found yourself on a road into e-commerce.
- 1:29SPEAKER_00: So many times, you know, I found myself going to college, right?
- 1:33SPEAKER_00: And I went there and was kind of a little bit lost, right?
- 1:36SPEAKER_00: Had some losses in my formative years and just didn't have much direction and ended up getting a finance degree, but found very quickly after school I didn't want to do finance, right?
- 1:43SPEAKER_00: And I found myself into working in bars and restaurants, and then lo and behold, into different formats, construction, and then finally into real estate.
- 1:51SPEAKER_00: But for yourself, jumping into e-commerce from where you started here, give me a little bit more feedback of just how the mentality goes from really having your path, which seems to be set at one time, right?
- 2:02SPEAKER_00: Especially specifically when you go to college, just making such big changes.
- 2:05SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's interesting thought because it's not a straight line from Bible college to e-commerce.
- 2:09SPEAKER_01: And then you got the military in the middle of there, a couple of different colleges in the middle of there too.
- 2:12SPEAKER_01: And so a lot of us start off in life with what I call the default script.
- 2:17SPEAKER_01: And that's the environment, what your parents chose for you, the things that are all happening around you and where you grow up, it determines and predisposes for many people what your life looks like.
- 2:28SPEAKER_01: And it's easy to believe when you're younger that life is happening to you.
- 2:32SPEAKER_01: It's not happening for you.
- 2:34SPEAKER_01: And so you get to a point where you want to make decisions for yourself.
- 2:38SPEAKER_01: And hopefully, before you get to a point that you feel stuck in the environment that you were growing up in, some wake-up call happens and there's an opportunity for you to break free from the default script and to live the life that you choose instead.
- 2:51SPEAKER_01: And so I ultimately wanted to live a life that was in control because my parents lived a life that wasn't in control.
- 2:57SPEAKER_01: We grew up in an extremely low-income community.
- 3:00SPEAKER_01: And so everyone that was around us was the same as us.
- 3:03SPEAKER_01: They thought the same way.
- 3:04SPEAKER_01: The advice that you got from other broke people, it wasn't good.
- 3:07SPEAKER_01: And that's not just unique to me.
- 3:09SPEAKER_01: A lot of people find themselves in that scenario.
- 3:12SPEAKER_01: And the question is, how do you break free from a low-income community?
- 3:15SPEAKER_01: But more importantly, how do you break free from a low-income mindset?
- 3:18SPEAKER_01: Because that's far more important that you open up your eyes to what's possible and what the potential is out there.
- 3:24SPEAKER_01: And James Clear talks about this in atomic habits, and I love it.
- 3:27SPEAKER_01: Because if you want to change your mindset, it starts by changing your identity, which is just a two-step process.
- 3:33SPEAKER_01: Number one, determine who you want to be and then prove that to yourself.
- 3:38SPEAKER_01: Number two, with very simple small steps, one after another.
- 3:42SPEAKER_01: Build confidence, and then you change your identity.
- 3:44SPEAKER_01: See, our identity is what we believe about ourselves because we've proven it to ourselves over time.
- 3:50SPEAKER_01: And so if we want to change that, we have to start proving different things to ourselves.
- 3:53SPEAKER_01: And so, Bible college, military, e-commerce, I decided I wanted to be an entrepreneur.
- 3:59SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be a business owner.
- 4:01SPEAKER_01: I was looking for opportunity and I didn't care really where it came from.
- 4:04SPEAKER_01: I knew I wanted to own something.
- 4:06SPEAKER_01: And so while e-commerce became the one I was ultimately successful in, there were 11 other failures along the way of me trying out different industries and different businesses, some while I was still in the military, others while I was out of the military where I was going through the school of hard knocks and learning.
- 4:21SPEAKER_01: But ultimately, I was seeking for the same thing I wanted when I was a kid, which is I wanted control.
- 4:26SPEAKER_01: People want to be in control.
- 4:28SPEAKER_01: Being in business is an opportunity to be in control.
- 4:31SPEAKER_01: But it's not saying that nine to five can't give you control as well.
- 4:34SPEAKER_01: There's many paths to get there.
- 4:36SPEAKER_01: So for me, it was going through a process of trial and error and failure that ultimately led me into multiple businesses that led me into e-commerce where I ultimately found success.
- 4:46SPEAKER_00: So when you made this identity shift, right, what were some of the hesitations in your mind or some of the roadblocks that you first put up, right?
- 4:54SPEAKER_00: You talked about your upbringing, right?
- 4:56SPEAKER_00: So coming from potentially low income, just not many people that had gone on this path before.
- 5:01SPEAKER_00: So here you are setting your own road, many different from most others.
- 5:05SPEAKER_00: What were some of the roadblocks or mental challenges that you faced and had to overcome them?
- 5:09SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the environment that you grow up in is so important.
- 5:12SPEAKER_01: And the people that you surround yourself with is so important.
- 5:15SPEAKER_01: For me to change my mindset against the low income mentality, it required me to change my location.
- 5:22SPEAKER_01: And that's true for a lot of people.
- 5:23SPEAKER_01: When you grow up in the environment that your parents chose for you that you can't control, if you're poor, you grow up poor.
- 5:29SPEAKER_01: That's completely outside your control.
- 5:30SPEAKER_01: The people who are around you who are giving you advice are living lives of desperation, also out of control.
- 5:36SPEAKER_01: And so to change that, it's so important that environment changes.
- 5:40SPEAKER_01: Because I wanted to be around people who were going to give me good advice, who had been somewhere that I wanted to go, who had seen a big world and made a decision of what they wanted to do with their lives.
- 5:50SPEAKER_01: And I think for a lot of people, they get stuck in that same mindset of like, well, this is the rut I was born into.
- 5:55SPEAKER_01: I'm going to live this default script.
- 5:57SPEAKER_01: If you can change your environment, change the people that you're around where the things that you want in life are considered normal to the people that you're around, ultimately you're going to find success through osmosis, if nothing else, but by trial and error.
- 6:11SPEAKER_01: And so for me, it was getting out of my community.
- 6:14SPEAKER_01: It was getting away from my friends and my family who were holding me right where I was.
- 6:18SPEAKER_00: And how'd you know to do that though?
- 6:20SPEAKER_00: Like, you know, how did you, you know, many times most people just get stuck and that's they just think this is it, right?
- 6:25SPEAKER_00: So, like, yeah, like where was it that you had this idea?
- 6:27SPEAKER_00: Because I'm I'm sure there's people listening right now that have been on the same path forever, right?
- 6:31SPEAKER_00: And just figured this is my path, right?
- 6:33SPEAKER_00: I'm born in this, this is my upbringing, this is this school, this, you know, everybody else has done this, so I this is what I'm destined to do.
- 6:39SPEAKER_00: Like, how did you reframe your mind here when everybody else, right, is going in the opposite direction?
- 6:45SPEAKER_01: I had someone who shook me up.
- 6:46SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of us need someone to shake us and give us that wake-up call because we don't always see what we're capable of or what our potential is, but it's very obvious to others who are around us.
- 6:57SPEAKER_01: And so I had a friend's dad pull me aside one day at a graduation party.
- 7:02SPEAKER_01: I'm two years out of school.
- 7:03SPEAKER_01: I'd finished Bible college, and now I'm wallowing, going to community college.
- 7:06SPEAKER_01: He pulls me onto a park bench and he goes, Man, what are you doing with your life?
- 7:10SPEAKER_01: And at first I wasn't offended by it.
- 7:11SPEAKER_01: It was just like, well, I'm gonna study physical therapy.
- 7:14SPEAKER_01: I'm not doing the Bible college thing.
- 7:15SPEAKER_01: I want to go and I want to figure out how to start businesses.
- 7:18SPEAKER_01: And he goes, Man, you need to go and challenge yourself.
- 7:21SPEAKER_01: You have great scores in math and science.
- 7:23SPEAKER_01: You're brilliant, but go and apply that somewhere where it's gonna be difficult for you.
- 7:27SPEAKER_01: And you got to get out of the environment that you're in and get around people who want to go and do things, go somewhere new, form all new habits.
- 7:34SPEAKER_01: That was a wake-up call for me because had it not been for that friend's dad who pulled me aside on the park bench and goes, What are you doing with your life?
- 7:41SPEAKER_01: And I go through this emotional journey of I'm thinking about it.
- 7:44SPEAKER_01: Now I'm actually offended that he said that to me.
- 7:46SPEAKER_01: And then I realized he has my best interest in mind and he knows what he's talking about.
- 7:50SPEAKER_01: And then it's an unlock for me to start to think, okay, like there is more for me out there.
- 7:56SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of the world that I haven't seen yet.
- 7:58SPEAKER_01: And then if I know what my options are, I can choose from those options and begin to reverse engineer.
- 8:03SPEAKER_01: That wake up call goes to our environment.
- 8:06SPEAKER_01: If you're not in an environment where you have someone who can shake you, it's so easy to stay inside the default script, living in the same mindset that you were born into.
- 8:16SPEAKER_01: And so part of it in my case, there was a little bit of luck involved of someone deciding to go out of their way and say, hey, like, do you realize the trajectory that the life that you're on right now?
- 8:28SPEAKER_01: Is that what you want?
- 8:29SPEAKER_01: And that's part of the message now that I begin to understand the life trajectory that people are on.
- 8:34SPEAKER_01: It's not a question of is it good or is it bad?
- 8:36SPEAKER_01: My question is, is that the life trajectory that you chose or the one that was handed to you instead?
- 8:42SPEAKER_01: And so I do think it's incumbent on people who have escaped from the low-income community and the low-income mindset to be the one who's shaking other people now to wake them up and help them to see more than what they can see their own potential and capabilities are.
- 8:56SPEAKER_01: But there's there is a bit of luck involved.
- 8:58SPEAKER_01: And we say pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
- 9:01SPEAKER_01: If it was that simple, then you'd have a lot more people going from low income to the upper middle class or to the upper class.
- 9:07SPEAKER_01: It is a difficult thing when you're born into something to separate yourself from it.
- 9:12SPEAKER_01: And it's not always something you can do independently.
- 9:14SPEAKER_01: A lot of people will say things like, Oh, well, just read books, you know, expand your mind, change your environment.
- 9:19SPEAKER_01: And I go, Well, isn't it more difficult to just change your environment and go get around people that are doing big things?
- 9:25SPEAKER_01: If you're a low-income kid where the average income is$40,000 a year for a household of four, how do you get into a room of millionaires?
- 9:33SPEAKER_01: Like it ain't gonna happen unless you bring something to the table that's of value to them.
- 9:39SPEAKER_01: So you can't just decide to go hang out with people who are above your level.
- 9:43SPEAKER_01: You have to become the person that they want to be around.
- 9:47SPEAKER_01: I call it a potluck dinner.
- 9:48SPEAKER_01: If you want to partake, you must bring something to the table in order to be around the people that are doing the things that you want to do.
- 9:55SPEAKER_01: You don't have to become a millionaire to get in that room, but who is the person that they want to hang out with?
- 10:00SPEAKER_01: What unique perspective do you have?
- 10:02SPEAKER_01: What skill set do you have that helps them get where they want to go?
- 10:06SPEAKER_01: And they ultimately will help you along that way.
- 10:08SPEAKER_01: But I'm curious your thoughts on this because it's not always a simple, oh, pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.
- 10:14SPEAKER_01: There is a bit of a luck of the draw of someone getting woken up when you don't have the stars aligned for you in where you're born.
- 10:20SPEAKER_00: You said it directly when you said many times we have to look at it.
- 10:24SPEAKER_00: Is this the path I chose or the path that was given to me?
- 10:28SPEAKER_00: And that's a prime example that many times people can't imagine the possibilities that exist in a life because they've been set on such a path that's been not forced upon them, but it's just been the path that's been surrounded with them, right?
- 10:42SPEAKER_00: And so you say, Yes, can you just pull yourself up by your bootstraps?
- 10:46SPEAKER_00: You can improve yourself, right?
- 10:47SPEAKER_00: Now it doesn't mean you're gonna have all the possibilities, right?
- 10:49SPEAKER_00: But you could start to look at things from a different way, right?
- 10:52SPEAKER_00: Because you know, you you see it all around you all the time, right?
- 10:55SPEAKER_00: You walk into, you know, a convenience store and say, Oh, how you doing?
- 10:58SPEAKER_00: And the person behind the counter says, Well, at least I'm not dead, right?
- 11:00SPEAKER_00: Or something like that.
- 11:01SPEAKER_00: And you think that their minds so set in a frame that, you know what, like this is the worst thing ever, but I'm not dead.
- 11:07SPEAKER_00: So I guess it's okay for me just because I'm not dead, right?
- 11:10SPEAKER_00: Or you see other people, right, that you walk in and they just have a grin, they're happy with life, they're easygoing, they're ready to, they're ready to just take on more in life and they're open for it, right?
- 11:20SPEAKER_00: Because their eyes are open to just everything around them, right?
- 11:22SPEAKER_00: All the goodness around them.
- 11:24SPEAKER_00: And you can ask yourself, okay, first step is that how can I reduce the negativity that's in front of me?
- 11:29SPEAKER_00: Because you have negativity that surrounds you, right?
- 11:31SPEAKER_00: That's constantly beating on you, right?
- 11:33SPEAKER_00: From everything, right?
- 11:34SPEAKER_00: Could be, could be family, could be friends, could be your job, just could be, you know, um injuries, could be sicknesses, right?
- 11:40SPEAKER_00: But if you have that and it gets inside, then you have to go over your own combatant, right?
- 11:45SPEAKER_00: Of your own mental negativities, right?
- 11:47SPEAKER_00: And that's the first thing that you have to conquer in your life is that each and every day you wake up, you're gonna have negative thoughts, right?
- 11:52SPEAKER_00: You're gonna have something that you have to push back on.
- 11:54SPEAKER_00: It's gonna, even if you have the best day in the world, the next day you might have some doubts, right?
- 11:58SPEAKER_00: We all do.
- 11:58SPEAKER_00: And you still have to reframe that.
- 12:00SPEAKER_00: So the first thing you do is work on your mind to just see things in a different way.
- 12:04SPEAKER_00: Okay, I live in a horrible house.
- 12:06SPEAKER_00: Well, at least you live in a house, right?
- 12:07SPEAKER_00: Oh, you know, I have this, you know, old car.
- 12:10SPEAKER_00: Well, at least you have transportation, right?
- 12:11SPEAKER_00: Oh man, you know, we don't have a lot to eat.
- 12:13SPEAKER_00: Well, at least you have something to eat, right?
- 12:14SPEAKER_00: You you can look at this from a way, you just start thinking of things in a positive nature because then it starts to show you that I have something and I can build upon that.
- 12:23SPEAKER_00: And what's possible is something I have to learn.
- 12:26SPEAKER_00: And the hardest thing when you have lacking or you don't have is that just to understand that possibilities are all around us, but we just have to open our eyes, right?
- 12:34SPEAKER_00: And your, I'll say your friend's dad who came up and and gave you that, right?
- 12:38SPEAKER_00: That was fantastic, right?
- 12:39SPEAKER_00: Would you have found your way?
- 12:40SPEAKER_00: Probably, it would probably take you longer.
- 12:42SPEAKER_00: You would have found your way in in some other way because you were motivated to do so.
- 12:45SPEAKER_00: But for us, you know, I have a friend who said it pretty well.
- 12:48SPEAKER_00: Many times, you know, it's hard to see the label when you're stuck in a jar.
- 12:52SPEAKER_00: Is that we can't see our talents and everything that we have because we're so stuck in our own way of thinking, and other people can see it clearly.
- 12:59SPEAKER_00: But then you have to find the people that are trustworthy to give you the good feedback.
- 13:02SPEAKER_00: And it might not be what you want to hear.
- 13:04SPEAKER_00: At first, you're like, okay, cool.
- 13:05SPEAKER_00: And then after that, you're like, wow, you're offending me.
- 13:07SPEAKER_00: And then third, you're like, okay, he does have my right interest.
- 13:10SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we we're offended to hear what is the truth, right?
- 13:13SPEAKER_00: Because if it's the truth, then it's on us to stop negotiating with ourselves for all the ways that we can act, right?
- 13:19SPEAKER_00: And then start actually going after what should be done.
- 13:23SPEAKER_00: Because in the end of the day, right, you could go and break every promise you have with yourself.
- 13:29SPEAKER_00: You could say, Oh, I'm gonna get up early tomorrow, then you don't.
- 13:31SPEAKER_00: You should say, I'm gonna make that call, then you don't.
- 13:33SPEAKER_00: You say, Hey, I should have that hard conversation, right?
- 13:35SPEAKER_00: Or fix that relationship that I pushed off, right?
- 13:38SPEAKER_00: You could say that you do all those things and just not do them.
- 13:41SPEAKER_00: And is the punishment bad?
- 13:43SPEAKER_00: Well, in the long run, yeah, it's gonna, you're gonna suffer.
- 13:45SPEAKER_00: But in the moment, it's not bad.
- 13:47SPEAKER_00: But if your friend said, Hey, I'm gonna meet you for lunch and doesn't show up and tomorrow does the same thing, you you be livid with them.
- 13:52SPEAKER_00: But we let ourselves off the hook each and every day for these things that we should be doing.
- 13:56SPEAKER_00: And so when someone points this out, right, we get offended because we think, oh man, how dare you, you know, show me who I actually am.
- 14:03SPEAKER_00: If you are, we'll say, wise enough or in the right mind frame, then you take it like you did and you say, You're right, I have to make changes because if I don't, honestly, I already see what the life is going to be.
- 14:15SPEAKER_00: But many times people get offended to hear that because their mind is set up in that negative nature that, oh, I know better.
- 14:22SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a really interesting point because, you know, the person who can receive hard instruction, a hard conversation of saying, what are you doing with your life?
- 14:31SPEAKER_01: Wake up.
- 14:32SPEAKER_01: That's a person who, to your point, is already motivated, already has belief that they have agency, that their actions can have an effect.
- 14:42SPEAKER_01: And one of the most dangerous spots to be is for someone who doesn't believe that they're in control of anything in their life, complete victimhood status, where they believe that life is just happening to them and their actions don't have an impact.
- 14:55SPEAKER_01: That's where you get extreme depression because you don't believe that you have any control at all.
- 15:00SPEAKER_01: Then I think that when someone gets that way and they say, Well, other people are motivated, I'm depressed because I'm a victim and all this stuff is happening to me, you say, really, nothing is in your control?
- 15:10SPEAKER_01: Like you can't decide to go make your bed, you can't decide to go make that call, you can't decide to go and drive yourself to the gym.
- 15:16SPEAKER_01: Like you can make that decision and then follow through and prove to yourself you're the type of person that can decide you're gonna do something and you do it.
- 15:23SPEAKER_01: Okay, if that's in your control, then what else is maybe in your control?
- 15:27SPEAKER_01: And by progressively increasing those steps and the difficulty and gaining confidence as you go through that, you begin to have these unlocks of man, if I'm capable of that, everything in life is compound interest.
- 15:39SPEAKER_01: It builds upon one another.
- 15:40SPEAKER_01: And that's where our confidence comes from.
- 15:42SPEAKER_01: And the fastest way to get out of depression is to take something really small that you set a goal to accomplish, go and do that, and then tack on something else on top of that.
- 15:52SPEAKER_01: You start stacking those wins.
- 15:53SPEAKER_01: And before you know it, you think, well, what are the limitations of my own ability?
- 15:58SPEAKER_01: That's a man who has agency.
- 16:00SPEAKER_01: And when you have agency, you believe that the world is yours if you're willing to try things, experiment, and continue to do things repetitiously through life.
- 16:08SPEAKER_01: But it does require that wake-up call and it requires the mindset being right.
- 16:12SPEAKER_01: So when someone's mindset isn't right and someone has a hard conversation with them and says, you're capable of so much more, and it puts them into this wall of where they go, What an asshole to go and tell me that when all these things are happening in my life that aren't even inside of my control and they haven't even woken themselves up.
- 16:29SPEAKER_01: The question is, how does that person get to the point that they're ready to receive a difficult conversation?
- 16:35SPEAKER_01: Because I think that's a spot that a lot of people find themselves in right now.
- 16:39SPEAKER_00: I like to think about when people tell me your problems or people say they have all these problems.
- 16:43SPEAKER_00: The Socrates quote is that if the world took all their problems and put them into one big pile and split them up evenly and gave it back to each person, the majority of the people in the world will be begging for their original problems back, right?
- 16:53SPEAKER_00: And that's twofold is that we all have issues, some more, some less, right?
- 16:57SPEAKER_00: But in the same front, if you're living in the United States, you have it pretty good.
- 17:02SPEAKER_00: You've come out on top.
- 17:03SPEAKER_00: And because there is opportunity to go and improve, but in that same front, you have to be open to the experience.
- 17:11SPEAKER_00: Nobody can force you to go and improve yourself.
- 17:14SPEAKER_00: You can be put in a position, right?
- 17:17SPEAKER_00: You can come from, you know, a great family, you can find your way into great school, you can find your way into a great job or just into the right circle of people.
- 17:24SPEAKER_00: But if you are not mentally focused on using that as positive steps, you're ultimately going to derail yourself, right?
- 17:31SPEAKER_00: It's like when you see actors who have all the things and, you know, lose everything because they get into drugs, or you see someone, you know, who's got a great business and for whichever reason just continues to just go and do things that sacrifices the business, right?
- 17:44SPEAKER_00: Because they find themselves in their own way.
- 17:46SPEAKER_00: We, at many points in our life, right, we are our roadblock, right?
- 17:50SPEAKER_00: Because we think the world's against us, right?
- 17:52SPEAKER_00: But it's like the stocks is like, you know, you control your actions, you control how you respond, right?
- 17:56SPEAKER_00: Those are the things.
- 17:57SPEAKER_00: So if you think that the world has you down, you still control your actions, right?
- 18:02SPEAKER_00: And what you talked about was stacking, right?
- 18:05SPEAKER_00: That's the most important part.
- 18:07SPEAKER_00: We all want to have this magic transformation, right?
- 18:10SPEAKER_00: We all want the end picture to say, oh, look what I did.
- 18:13SPEAKER_00: I lost 30 pounds, or, you know, I did, I built this company and, you know, with revenues and, you know, that are$10 million, right?
- 18:19SPEAKER_00: But we forget 99% of the time is you on that path there.
- 18:24SPEAKER_00: And so if you're so focused on the end result, you missed the entire time, your entire life on your trajectory.
- 18:29SPEAKER_00: But each of those moments and days and weeks that you're on that journey, right, there's gonna be wins and losses.
- 18:35SPEAKER_00: But you just have to find a way to just keep making more wins and reducing the losses.
- 18:41SPEAKER_01: I think that's why repetition is so important.
- 18:43SPEAKER_01: I know you talk about a rule of a hundred miles.
- 18:46SPEAKER_01: I have a rule of a hundred in my own book as well.
- 18:49SPEAKER_01: That if you choose to do anything a hundred times, you may not become world class, but you can become top 10% in really anything in life through repetition and through hard work.
- 19:01SPEAKER_01: That's an unlock for some people to understand you've heard this idea from Silicon Valley, you need to fail quickly.
- 19:09SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's not gonna work.
- 19:10SPEAKER_01: Move to the next thing.
- 19:11SPEAKER_01: And say more broadly, okay, what was I really trying to accomplish with this?
- 19:16SPEAKER_01: If I go too deep and too niche and say, I'm going to teleprompt and script a hundred videos and I'm gonna read them off of the teleprompter, and I'm terrible at reading.
- 19:25SPEAKER_01: I do that a hundred times, I get zero results the entire time.
- 19:27SPEAKER_01: And then I say, Well, why did I do it a hundred times?
- 19:29SPEAKER_01: I could have found out after three that that wasn't working.
- 19:32SPEAKER_01: More broadly, the idea is I want to be a media personality.
- 19:37SPEAKER_01: I want to learn to get good on camera.
- 19:39SPEAKER_01: Okay, let me do that a hundred times instead of being so niche down to say, I'm going to do a video on a teleprompter a hundred times instead.
- 19:47SPEAKER_01: And so you have to start with that right frame to say, I'm going to do this a hundred times, but not be too niche down with it.
- 19:53SPEAKER_01: When you get into that environment, it allows you to experiment with new things.
- 19:57SPEAKER_01: I'm going to do seven iterations of reading off of a teleprompter.
- 20:00SPEAKER_01: That didn't work.
- 20:01SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm going to go just raw and sit down with someone and have a conversation.
- 20:04SPEAKER_01: Hey, that got a little bit better engagement.
- 20:06SPEAKER_01: But you're experimenting with different things inside of a broader ecosystem of the goal that you want to accomplish of getting good on camera.
- 20:14SPEAKER_01: You do that a hundred times, you're going to learn a lot of stuff that doesn't work.
- 20:18SPEAKER_01: That's what the first 30 is all about.
- 20:20SPEAKER_01: And you're going to get a couple ideas from 30 to 50 of, well, that worked a little bit more than the other ones.
- 20:25SPEAKER_01: From 50 to 100, there's no way to get to 100 and not be have more ideas of what doesn't work, a little bit of what does work, and know how to double down on the things that do work.
- 20:35SPEAKER_01: So you ultimately start to stack those wins.
- 20:38SPEAKER_01: But it's not fail quickly, it's make sure you don't quit too early on the broad goal that you have and be open to experimentation and failure along the way to that goal to make sure that you're always getting yourself closer to it.
- 20:52SPEAKER_01: But repetition and hard work and determination can get you so far in life.
- 20:56SPEAKER_01: And people don't really believe that they want to do it three times.
- 20:59SPEAKER_01: Oh, it didn't work.
- 21:00SPEAKER_01: And they move on to the next thing.
- 21:01SPEAKER_00: It's that, you know, two feet from gold philosophy, but you touched on experimentation.
- 21:06SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you have young kids, right?
- 21:07SPEAKER_00: I have some young kids, and they're constantly experimenting, right?
- 21:11SPEAKER_00: They're doing all these things, they're building, they're creating, right?
- 21:13SPEAKER_00: They're just thinking about things like in their whole day.
- 21:16SPEAKER_00: But as we grow, we lose that capability or in our mind to go and experiment because we we create these risks.
- 21:23SPEAKER_00: We think these risks are too great, right?
- 21:25SPEAKER_00: If I go out there and try, right, what are they gonna think, right?
- 21:28SPEAKER_00: Or all these other points.
- 21:29SPEAKER_00: If I go out there and and look at starting a business, but what if I fail, right?
- 21:33SPEAKER_00: You set up the result before you take the action.
- 21:35SPEAKER_00: And you stack in those wins and just constantly looking forward at the next step in front of you, put you in a position where you have the opportunity for something to happen, right?
- 21:45SPEAKER_00: And when we think of the plan up front, right?
- 21:48SPEAKER_00: It's like Mike Tyson, right?
- 21:49SPEAKER_00: You know, everybody has the perfect plans, you get punched in the face, right?
- 21:51SPEAKER_00: We we we constantly want to set up this perfect path.
- 21:55SPEAKER_00: When in the back of our mind, we know the path is never perfect, we know the road is never straight.
- 22:00SPEAKER_00: Straight, right?
- 22:00SPEAKER_00: But we want to have everything set up and we waste so much time trying to get everything perfect that we never get started.
- 22:06SPEAKER_00: When in fact, if you just started, you would find the perfect path for you, right?
- 22:10SPEAKER_00: From your path, right, to my path, right?
- 22:12SPEAKER_00: Neither are linear, but we found an avenue, right?
- 22:16SPEAKER_00: But it wasn't from sitting back trying to think through it of how it would go, right?
- 22:20SPEAKER_00: I like um the acronym force, right?
- 22:22SPEAKER_00: You you have the fact, the fact is this truth of where you stand today, right?
- 22:26SPEAKER_00: Then you have the O, which is the option, right?
- 22:28SPEAKER_00: So the truth is where you are, right?
- 22:30SPEAKER_00: Which, you know, when your friend's dad was talking to you, that was a fact.
- 22:32SPEAKER_00: There's where you are.
- 22:33SPEAKER_00: You had the option, right?
- 22:34SPEAKER_00: The option is you could have been mad, just like whatever, right?
- 22:36SPEAKER_00: Or you could go and take action, right?
- 22:39SPEAKER_00: You took action, right?
- 22:40SPEAKER_00: So then there's that result of the action, right?
- 22:42SPEAKER_00: The result of you, if you didn't do anything, right, could have been you in that same spot, right, where you started.
- 22:48SPEAKER_00: Or you take action and you start to find that result, right?
- 22:51SPEAKER_00: And then the C is the consequence, right?
- 22:52SPEAKER_00: What's the consequence of your actions, right?
- 22:54SPEAKER_00: If you stayed the same, maybe you're not living in Las Vegas.
- 22:58SPEAKER_00: Maybe you're not a successful entrepreneur with a successful podcast, right?
- 23:01SPEAKER_00: Because you had a consequence of staying the same, right?
- 23:04SPEAKER_00: And then there's the evolution, right?
- 23:05SPEAKER_00: The person you become, right?
- 23:07SPEAKER_00: The person you become, it transforms based on your actions.
- 23:10SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's super interesting.
- 23:11SPEAKER_01: And I think a lot of people want to wait until they know exactly what that outcome is gonna be before they take that first step.
- 23:19SPEAKER_01: Anyone who's done anything successful in life understands that let me take step one.
- 23:24SPEAKER_01: Step two begins to illuminate itself after I take step one because I learned something in step one.
- 23:31SPEAKER_01: The compound interest is what I learned on step one that now tells me what to do on step two.
- 23:35SPEAKER_01: I take to step two, and three, four, five, six start to accumulate in my mind and I understand where I'm supposed to go.
- 23:41SPEAKER_01: That leads us to the paths that we're on.
- 23:43SPEAKER_01: And that's why successful people rarely have a straight line from where they started to where they ended up.
- 23:48SPEAKER_01: It's all over the place because they got step one, they failed, they tried something new, step two, and they move on and continue to go towards that goal.
- 23:55SPEAKER_01: And it's funny how that works out because the knowledge that you have by step 17, you had no idea even existed when you were on step three.
- 24:02SPEAKER_01: You've got to go one step at a time and gain that compound interest.
- 24:06SPEAKER_00: Yes, because sometimes step one is literally the opposite way, and you're like, never do that again, right?
- 24:11SPEAKER_00: But you need to do that, right?
- 24:12SPEAKER_00: Because in this little part, you're building this whole plan and going the wrong way, right?
- 24:15SPEAKER_00: Just to start and find out you're in the wrong way.
- 24:17SPEAKER_00: You take the step and you say, you know, is it's usually you have four options, right?
- 24:21SPEAKER_00: The first one is you never take the step.
- 24:23SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, you know, from listening today and from you and you're here, you're really want to take action in your life, you're gonna take a step.
- 24:28SPEAKER_00: Well, then the three options are, right?
- 24:30SPEAKER_00: You take a step and you find out it's in the wrong direction.
- 24:33SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're not gonna do that anymore.
- 24:35SPEAKER_00: So you've eliminated that, or you take the next step and you find it's kind of in the right direction, but not exactly.
- 24:39SPEAKER_00: Well, now you have to pivot.
- 24:40SPEAKER_00: Or you get to that 17 step, right?
- 24:43SPEAKER_00: Now you find you're on the right step.
- 24:44SPEAKER_00: But you have to take the wrong steps and the steps that are close but not but not right to get to the right step.
- 24:49SPEAKER_00: And that's the journey, right?
- 24:50SPEAKER_00: That's every part of the journey is trial and error, the experimentation, right?
- 24:54SPEAKER_00: Is that you have to keep going after what you want.
- 24:59SPEAKER_00: And eventually it's gonna pop up.
- 25:01SPEAKER_00: But usually when you get there, which you know, you're like myself, right here, is that our goals continue to expand, right?
- 25:06SPEAKER_00: Because our possibilities continue to get bigger and brighter because we learn more about the possibilities that exist in front of us as we take the steps along the journey to our goal.
- 25:16SPEAKER_01: I love that idea that each step just illuminates the next one for us.
- 25:21SPEAKER_01: So of course the goalpost is always moving.
- 25:23SPEAKER_01: People think that the goalpost moving is always a bad thing.
- 25:25SPEAKER_01: They always assume that, oh, the goalpost moved, that person's just going after and they're chasing money and they don't know what's important in life.
- 25:31SPEAKER_01: And it's like, no, I got to step four and I realized look at all the opportunity in front of me now.
- 25:38SPEAKER_01: Two things.
- 25:39SPEAKER_01: If I can figure that piece out, what else is possible?
- 25:43SPEAKER_01: But now that I'm here, I see all the different areas I want to go.
- 25:46SPEAKER_01: Where do I want to go now?
- 25:48SPEAKER_01: And see, living a life that you choose means that it's not I chose this, and then 20 years goes by and I still have to be where I chose.
- 25:55SPEAKER_01: It's I chose this path, I started on the path, I learned new information, and now I'm choosing the next step each time.
- 26:02SPEAKER_01: I always talk about this when you think about the jobs that people get and they think I'm gonna go worth this job for 30 years.
- 26:08SPEAKER_01: And for some people, that's fine as long as you continue to choose that job and you're not stuck in that job, you're not dependent on that job.
- 26:17SPEAKER_01: But do you still choose the job five years later?
- 26:20SPEAKER_01: If you wake up one day after having a job that you chose in an interview process and they offered it to you and you said, Yes, I accept, five years later, you wake up and you go, I don't like this anymore.
- 26:29SPEAKER_01: Why do I feel stuck?
- 26:31SPEAKER_01: That's a sign that you're not choosing that job anymore.
- 26:35SPEAKER_01: And that the decisions that you have made have put you onto a different path where either you feel stuck because you want something more, you're not growing anymore, there's not opportunity there anymore.
- 26:45SPEAKER_01: We got to give ourselves the ability to change our minds over time.
- 26:49SPEAKER_01: What 20-year-old wants the same things at 40 that they wanted at 20?
- 26:54SPEAKER_01: It doesn't really exist.
- 26:55SPEAKER_01: Like we're going to change.
- 26:57SPEAKER_01: And that's why it's important to have a broad goal that we're going after and not be too isolated because you might get five years down the road and realize, I don't really want that anymore.
- 27:06SPEAKER_01: Our priorities change over time when we get married, when we have children.
- 27:10SPEAKER_01: It's a different mindset that we're in than when we're coming out of college and the whole world is our oyster to go and do whatever we want.
- 27:16SPEAKER_01: And so, by giving ourselves a broad goal to say, I want to live a life in control, I want to be financially independent, I want to have a career that I'm excited to wake up every day.
- 27:26SPEAKER_01: That's a much broader goal than specifically saying, I want to go be a VP at IBM by the time that I'm 40.
- 27:33SPEAKER_01: What if you don't want that at 35?
- 27:35SPEAKER_01: And now you've wasted all this time and you think that was it a waste?
- 27:38SPEAKER_01: Or do you give yourself the opportunity to choose and to re-choose what it is that you want with the information that you have at your disposal today?
- 27:46SPEAKER_01: I think that's so important to not lock yourself into something because that's a recipe for you to feel like you failed when in reality it's you did the best you could with the information you had at the time.
- 27:56SPEAKER_01: You gain new information as you go through life.
- 27:59SPEAKER_01: You're allowed to change your mind.
- 28:00SPEAKER_01: You're allowed to iterate the plan.
- 28:02SPEAKER_01: And the broad goal still stays central of a wanting to live a life in control, wanting to be financially independent, wanting to live a career that you're excited to wake up every single day.
- 28:10SPEAKER_01: The goal should stay very broad, in my opinion.
- 28:12SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's not failure, it's growth.
- 28:14SPEAKER_00: And when we can think about in our own mind, right, is that you know, you changing your mind can be a superpower.
- 28:21SPEAKER_00: But having a broad goal, right, you can call it like a lighthouse, right?
- 28:25SPEAKER_00: And saying that control, right?
- 28:26SPEAKER_00: Then you can look at that as how you curb your adjustments in your mind to where you're going, right?
- 28:32SPEAKER_00: Because if you said, like you said, I want to be, you know, a high-level executive at IBM, right?
- 28:37SPEAKER_00: That's very particular, right?
- 28:38SPEAKER_00: Well, in fact, maybe IBM goes out of business, right?
- 28:41SPEAKER_00: Let's just say on that point or something happens in the midtime where everything changes in front of you, then you're gonna feel like it's been a waste of time.
- 28:49SPEAKER_00: But if you look back at it saying, well, I want to control my life, right?
- 28:53SPEAKER_00: At that point, you say, Well, that's no longer available.
- 28:55SPEAKER_00: Okay, so what can I control now?
- 28:57SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm interested in, you know, anything, you know, working on a ranch.
- 29:01SPEAKER_00: Great.
- 29:01SPEAKER_00: Okay, how can I control that element?
- 29:03SPEAKER_00: When you start taking back control of your life and noting, like very easy thing was like the rain, right?
- 29:09SPEAKER_00: You see people's moods change all the time because it rains, right?
- 29:12SPEAKER_00: In like most states, it rains like 30% of the time.
- 29:15SPEAKER_00: You can't be affected by things that really are so far outside of your control, right?
- 29:19SPEAKER_00: You may have to change, you know, now you control it, but you might have to change your plans for that day, right?
- 29:23SPEAKER_00: Or your path for that day, right?
- 29:25SPEAKER_00: But you still control your actions.
- 29:28SPEAKER_00: And as you look at each and every day and break it down into, you know, just winnable steps, you find the path gets, it's never easy, but gets easier to take that first step because now you know that that first step was something you chose.
- 29:40SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's something magical that happens when you make the decision to live a life in control and you start to prove to yourself that you're in control.
- 29:48SPEAKER_01: The magic that happens is you realize there's a lot more within your control than you ever believed when you first got started.
- 29:57SPEAKER_01: You know, stoicism, people talk about Marcus Aurelius and the idea that, you know, you prepare for the battle, you show up to the battle, and then the gods will decide who lives and dies.
- 30:06SPEAKER_01: And I tell people, you know, isn't it interesting that as time goes on, you have the ability to become more of a god?
- 30:13SPEAKER_01: Because the more preparation that you do, the more men that you bring to the battle, you are now taking control of things that used to be left up to just the gods.
- 30:22SPEAKER_01: I learned this when I was in the military.
- 30:24SPEAKER_01: We would use overwhelming force on two people, three people, and we were in our training.
- 30:30SPEAKER_01: We would bring 40 men to the fight to fight three.
- 30:33SPEAKER_01: It was never like, oh, they have three guys, we're gonna bring guys, we're gonna duke it out in town.
- 30:37SPEAKER_01: No, we're gonna turn ourselves into gods.
- 30:39SPEAKER_01: We're gonna control the battlefield with overwhelming force.
- 30:42SPEAKER_01: We bring in the air raids, we bring in the tanks, and then the men come in walking behind the tanks because we've learned that we can be gods and we can control it.
- 30:52SPEAKER_01: But if you zoom all the way back out and you think, okay, it's not within our control to decide who wins and dies on the battlefield, you go back to the Marcus Aurelius days, the gods will decide who wins and who loses, who lives and who dies.
- 31:04SPEAKER_01: And you go, well, we've kind of figured that out now.
- 31:07SPEAKER_01: It actually is within our control.
- 31:08SPEAKER_01: And the same thing is true for us in our lives.
- 31:10SPEAKER_01: As we learn more, as we equip ourselves better, as we prepare more, we realize the things that I thought were outside my control are actually within my control now.
- 31:20SPEAKER_01: I have become a God compared to what I knew 20 years ago.
- 31:25SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love that.
- 31:26SPEAKER_00: And you know, if you continue to just keep a thought in your mind that you say, well, how can I?
- 31:35SPEAKER_00: You find a lot of life unravels for you in a positive way.
- 31:39SPEAKER_00: And if you just constantly just think about those words, oh, you know, oh man, this happened today.
- 31:43SPEAKER_00: Well, how can I fix it?
- 31:44SPEAKER_00: Right.
- 31:45SPEAKER_00: If you constantly look at yourself as a problem solver instead of just someone who just has problems, especially as an entrepreneur, I mean, that's exactly what we do, right?
- 31:53SPEAKER_00: All we do is solve one problem to the next, but that's the path, right?
- 31:57SPEAKER_00: And that's the path we want to be on.
- 31:58SPEAKER_00: But if you can implement that in any part of your life, right?
- 32:01SPEAKER_00: Like, how can I?
- 32:02SPEAKER_00: You find that things get easier to have in front of you because it's no longer you think of them as a negative option that's been in front of you.
- 32:09SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you got to believe it's possible.
- 32:10SPEAKER_01: I love that.
- 32:11SPEAKER_01: How can I?
- 32:12SPEAKER_01: That's a great question.
- 32:12SPEAKER_01: I would throw one more question into the mix.
- 32:14SPEAKER_01: And this is a question that I think people that grow up in low-income communities that see others around them that are doing better than them, they should be asking this question.
- 32:23SPEAKER_01: Why not me?
- 32:25SPEAKER_01: Why not me?
- 32:26SPEAKER_01: How can I ghost to it as well?
- 32:28SPEAKER_01: But I like the question of why not me?
- 32:31SPEAKER_01: How come that person has that and I don't?
- 32:35SPEAKER_01: They think that, oh, comparison is the thief of joy.
- 32:38SPEAKER_01: Envy is a thief of joy.
- 32:40SPEAKER_01: And I go, well, maybe we can reframe envy and comparison into, well, how did that person figure that out?
- 32:48SPEAKER_01: I want those things.
- 32:49SPEAKER_01: I want to be able to achieve the things that they're achieving.
- 32:52SPEAKER_01: Why not me?
- 32:53SPEAKER_01: Okay, how can I?
- 32:55SPEAKER_01: You pick those two questions back to back, but start with the belief that, well, they're not smarter than me, they're not better than me, they might have had a better leg up.
- 33:05SPEAKER_01: I might have more to go through, but guess what?
- 33:07SPEAKER_01: Good for me that I have more to go through.
- 33:08SPEAKER_01: I have more obstacles to overcome than that person.
- 33:11SPEAKER_01: That's not holding me back, it's making me a better person on my journey to achieving that.
- 33:17SPEAKER_01: Not everyone's going to have the same opportunities.
- 33:19SPEAKER_01: We shouldn't want the same opportunities.
- 33:21SPEAKER_01: We have to go through our own battle, our own obstacles, and that's what makes us who we become.
- 33:26SPEAKER_01: But I love the idea of looking at what other people have and having a little bit of envy, having a little bit of comparison.
- 33:32SPEAKER_01: If that steals your joy away, that's because you believe that you're not capable of going to get that.
- 33:37SPEAKER_01: Well, now ask the questions why not me?
- 33:39SPEAKER_01: And how can I become the one who's capable of going after those same things?
- 33:43SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying become materialistic.
- 33:45SPEAKER_01: I'm saying you can reframe envy and comparison as a tool to understand that, oh, there's a mindset shift here.
- 33:51SPEAKER_01: Wait, if they figured it out, I'm as smart as they are.
- 33:54SPEAKER_01: Like I can go and figure that out too.
- 33:56SPEAKER_01: Maybe my past is a little bit harder, but that's okay.
- 33:58SPEAKER_01: I like the reframe there.
- 34:00SPEAKER_00: That's a perfect path for us to wrap things up, Steve.
- 34:04SPEAKER_00: It's been incredible to have you on.
- 34:05SPEAKER_00: Remember, you just listened to just some very what sounds like simple advice, but if you ask those questions repeatedly and put them into your mind, right?
- 34:15SPEAKER_00: Why not me?
- 34:15SPEAKER_00: And how can I, right?
- 34:17SPEAKER_00: You can change a lot of your journey very quickly and very rapidly.
- 34:21SPEAKER_00: So, Steve, thank you so much for just a very great conversation today for people listening, right?
- 34:26SPEAKER_00: Um, how can they connect?
- 34:27SPEAKER_00: How can they find you and where to find the podcast?
- 34:29SPEAKER_01: Well, thanks, Jason, for having me on.
- 34:30SPEAKER_01: Love what you're doing with the Live 100 podcast.
- 34:32SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm Roll with Steve on all platforms.
- 34:35SPEAKER_01: My last name, R-O-L-L-E with Steve on all platforms, the Roll with Steve podcast.
- 34:40SPEAKER_01: And you can go to my website, steveroll.com, to engage with me there.
- 34:44SPEAKER_00: I love it.
- 34:45SPEAKER_00: I love it.
- 34:45SPEAKER_00: Well, Steve, thank you so much for joining us in the show.
- 34:48SPEAKER_00: Everyone listening today, that's a podcast.
- 34:50SPEAKER_00: Let's do this.