Mindset

Robert Plank: Today's guest is Antonia Hall. She's a renowned, award wining author, self-improvement guide and multi-orgasmic living expert. Her teachings offer ways to bring more pleasure, joy, creative flow and meaning into one's life in and out of the bedroom. This interview can go all kinds of different directions. How are things today, Antonia?

Antonia Hall: Things are wonderful. How about yourself?

Robert Plank: Super fantastic. Looking forward to the cool weekend but also had a great week. Could you tell us about who you are and what you do and what makes you different and special?

Antonia Hall: I am an entrepreneur myself. I run a communications business and I am an award winning, best selling author.

Robert Plank: Awesome. About what?

Antonia Hall: Well, my book is the "Ultimate Guide to the a Multi-Orgasmic Life" and it's how to bring that joyful, creative juiciness that is there for the taking into every area of your life.

Robert Plank: How do you do that?

Antonia Hall: Well, you know, because your focused on entrepreneurs and it's wonderful. When you are an entrepreneur, it's ... hopefully, you're living your dream. You're doing what you love, you get to create for yourself, which is amazing. It also requires wearing a lot of hats and that can keep you super busy, so there are a lot of techniques in my book that help with balancing and mindset. Mindset and visualization are critical tools to use.

Robert Plank: I agree with that and I think, I don't know, I didn't realize how important the mindset stuff was, especially in working from home and setting your own goals and motivating yourself. I didn't realize how important that was until maybe a few years ago. I just thought that it was either built in or I just had to wait until the productivity and the flow state and all the kind of stuff would click. Could you tell us about that mindset stuff and what's important specifically for happiness and for flow state and all that kind of cool stuff?

Antonia Hall: Yeah, absolutely. For me, I find it so intriguing the physics behind it is that physicists have told us that the universe is comprised of a unifying substance of which we're all apart. The Eastern philosophy has told us that for thousands and thousands of years. That's important because thoughts are information carrying energy. David Bohm's hologram concept all tells us that every part of that whole is within each piece of us. We are apart of that and that means that if we can see ourselves as the co-creators that we are, you'll see how what you're thinking and what you believe to be true is mirrored in your everyday life.

Robert Plank: In what kind of way?

Antonia Hall: You've got to look at what's going right. There are a lot of things that can get thrown at you when you're an entrepreneur. Seeing those challenges as opportunities for growth will completely shift everything and put you back in the place of power.

Robert Plank: Can you give me an example of that? Either with maybe your self or someone else where maybe you or they were stuck in a certain kind of way of thinking or certain kind of state or just couldn't crack a problem, and then you used some of these tools to get them to where it needs to go?

Antonia Hall: Absolutely. If you have a mindset that tells you that life is going to be full of challenges, you're more apt to create challenges in your life. If you have the mindset that says even the little bumps in the road are just opportunities for growth, then you can shift the way that you see and perceive, everything is perception, the way that things come into your life. You can see it and say oh, hey. This is an opportunity for me to learn how I'm relating with people, for example. We can come into contact with people that have a negative attitude and that brings us down. Is that someone that we want to be doing business with?

Robert Plank: Okay. That makes sense. Is this the kind of thing that you've been using in your own life? Is this something that you use day to day?

Antonia Hall: Absolutely. It's so important to look at your own mindset and to use visualization tools. Top athletes paid experts to take them through visualization. Business managers have people use visualization tools because they work. Being able to see your end goal and stepping into it is a really, really good tool to have.

Robert Plank: Can you walk me through an example of this visualization thing?

Antonia Hall: Sure. If you know where you're going, you're more apt to be able to get there. Being able to everyday just spend a couple of minutes seeing your end goal, everything is created from the inside and it's reflected on the outside. That's our thinking and the way that we communicate with people. If we constantly are telling people oh, this isn't working, this isn't working, guess what? It's not going to be likely to work out. Being able to shift that is going to empower you to create what you want and knowing where you want to go is an important part of that.

Robert Plank: Okay. Say that my goal is to double my income or to maintain the same income with half the time or something like that. What would I do, specifically, as far as this visualization thing. Is it a daily thing every time I wake up in the morning? Is it multiple times a day? Do I have to create a dream board or a vision board? What do I do?

Antonia Hall: All of that is helpful. I would at least spend a couple of times a day going into your own mind and seeing yourself already there. What does that look like? What does that feel like? See yourself already in that accomplished goal.

Robert Plank: Then what?

Antonia Hall: Then take actions and know that you're going to get there. Know that the road may not look like what you think it should look like to get there but trust that you will get there. You got to have that success mindset within yourself.

Robert Plank: That makes sense. Is that the only tool? Is that the main tool? Is that one of many tools?

Antonia Hall: One of many tools.

Robert Plank: Okay.

Antonia Hall: I would recommend getting in touch with Breathwork. Breathwork is one of the most powerful underused tools because we think the body's breathing for me. I don't need to think about breathing, it's happening. If you're stressed out, some really slow, deep breaths will help bring that balance back and balance, especially when your entrepreneur, is really, really crucial. You've got to be able to stay in your point of power which is always in the present moment. Anchoring yourself in with breath ... it seems so simple, right? It's actually incredibly powerful.

If you are totally wiped out and you've hit that lull in the afternoon, using short, quick breaths in and out through the nose will actually energize you in a minute. Bam.

Robert Plank: If I'm hearing this right, as far as this breath work kind of stuff goes. If I want to ... if I breathe like the real fast nose breaths, that's to get me to alert, get me energized. What does the deep breaths give me? Does that calm me down or what is that?

Antonia Hall: Calms you down. You know how when you're all stressed out and people say take a few deep breaths?

Robert Plank: Oh yeah.

Antonia Hall: It works. If you're not in that chaos state of being tripped out, oh my God, all this stuff is happening right now. If you just stop and take a few deep breaths and say okay, this is what's happening. How can I deal with it? You're going to be able to deal with it much better.

Robert Plank: How do I, if I have these tools and things like that with the visualization and the breath work, how do I know if I can be at my best. I think that, I don't know, if I'm too relaxed or I'm too happy or I'm too chilled out then I won't be worked up enough to actually be productive but knock out the things that I need to knock out but then I feel like if I'm too productive for too long or too intense, then I get really unhappy and that hurts me over time. Have you come across something like that? Do you have a solution for that kind of problem?

Antonia Hall: What you're describing is really an important question we all ask ourselves when we're running a business. Those two energy's, the masculine and the feminine energy ... that masculine, out in the world, make it happen, do it, do it, do it and that feminine I'm happy, I'm relaxed, I'm trusting, I'm receptive. Being able to balance the two, of using that feminine wisdom and intuition place and the out in the world place of masculine energy is when you can blend the two, that's when you're going to be at your best.

Robert Plank: How do you blend those two things?

Antonia Hall: You have to continually come into balance with yourself and check in with yourself. Where is my mindset? Where is my body? What am I thinking and feeling right now? Is this of service to my end goal? Back to that visualization point, right?

Robert Plank: Right?

Antonia Hall: Knowing what you want and where you want to go and then asking yourself am I on that path or am I letting myself get tripped up over things.

Robert Plank: What do I do if I'm not on track? What do I do if I'm not where I want to be?

Antonia Hall: Right. Then you have to reset yourself and ask what's going on with the mental state? What am I believing? Where am I getting myself tripped up? This doesn't feel in balance. Where am I not trusting the process? It's so important to be able to trust yourself and the process, because you're not the boss. You're the ... right? That's part of entrepreneurship. It's now up to you.

Being able to trust yourself to get you there and trusting the process. Are you doing the best that you can? Are you working towards goals and then are you allowing for? That's that feminine energy again. It can't be all the masculine go go go. There has to be that balance of okay, I've put a lot out there and I'm going to trust that it comes back to me. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Robert Plank: Yeah. I think so. Just retaking inventory and reassessing, I guess.

Antonia Hall: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Robert Plank: Is there any kind of big secret or is it just a matter of using these tools and repeating this and doing the important things every day?

Antonia Hall: I think that it is ... the more tools you have in the tool chest, the more you're going to be able to live to your greatest potential. Then remembering to rely on them. We get so busy and in that accomplishment type space. Am I getting there? Am I getting there? That can throw you off balance if you're not giving yourself the self-care. Stopping and treating yourself right, because boy, when you're running a business, you can get so caught up in the doing, the do do do do, that you're not taking care of yourself and then you're really not going to have the long haul of getting to that end goal.

Robert Plank: That makes sense and when you mentioned that, it made me think to 10-15 years ago, when I was in college and I would have the college lifestyle. I would stay up all night, overnight and I would do homework assignments at the last minute. I thought I was having fun just flying by the seat of my pants but doing that and doing the business stuff, it really caught up to me after awhile. It was the weirdest thing because I always thought that if I just wanted to be productive or I wanted to power through some project, I could just put in 20 hours straight or put in over night straight.

I noticed that might of worked maybe when I was 20, but then now that I'm in my 30's, I've noticed that every time I try to do that, I might be able to do that all nighter or might be able to put in 12 hours at a time but then the next several days are just dead days, are just days where I'm just totally burned out and I have to almost work for 2 or 3 days afterwards just to get back on track. Then I calculate, if only I had put in 2 hours, 4 hours a day times x number of days, then I would've gotten to my goal or I would've finished what I needed to finish and it would have been more careful. It would have been more attention to detail and I wouldn't have felt like I had to go through this huge ordeal of pushing myself to hard, having to recover and then having to get back.

Antonia Hall: Exactly. It's so important to stay in balance with yourself and just stop and say alright, I've done everything I can for now and I need to go back to taking care of myself.

Robert Plank: Have you ... is this the kind of thing you work with entrepreneurs? Is that right?

Antonia Hall: I tend to work with visionaries and entrepreneurs, yes.

Robert Plank: With those people that you work with, what common problem are you seeing that they all have? What's the number one problem?

Antonia Hall: It's usually the lack of self-care. It's usually not stopping to do things that bring pleasure into your life. The reason that my book is based on, "The Ultimate Guide to a Multi-Orgasmic Life" on our sexuality is sexuality is one of the most potent energies that we can tap into. It's not just the one on one sexual or by yourself. It's tapping into pleasure through all of your senses. When you are able to go back to finding pleasure in the way that it feels when you're laying in a hot bath or when your in the shower. Instead of being caught up in how did that meeting go yesterday or oh my God, I have this meeting coming up and I hope, you know, whatever you're letting your mind trick go. Coming back to that present moment of taking care of yourself, of feeling the water on your skin and just being present with that is so powerful. Then, learning to bring your own energy up through your body, will charge and invigorate you because sexual energy is creative and it's juicy and the more you're moving it through your body, the more energy you'll have.

Robert Plank: That makes sense, especially like you mentioned there ... at the end of a long day and I'm having a bath, I need to kind of forget or put aside or just shrug off the baggage of the day. Those kinds of things help me to unwind, reset and reflect ... just kind of turn off all the outside crap.

Antonia Hall: Self-care. It is so underrate and it will ... the more that you give that to yourself. That moment of relaxation, like you just said. The moment of really being present with I'm eating this food and you're tasting it and you're there in that moment with it, the more you feel taken care of and the more energy you'll have to give to your projects in getting to those end goals.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense and as I'm hearing you explain this, it's almost like the ... I might make myself blush or something here, but it's almost like if you're in a sexual moment, again if it's with someone else or with yourself, there's that really important factor or just being there and not being somewhere else and not letting whatever outside stuff or whatever stuff that's running in the back of your head distract you from the current situation in the same way that if I'm at the computer or I'm doing something that needs doing. Writing, programming, messing with a webpage, something like that, it's almost like there's that same quality that's required there of just having that 100% focus, be in the moment, not let the other stuff distract you. At least, that's how I feel.

Antonia Hall: Yes, Robert. That's so, so important and it will keep you in your point of power and the more that you stay balanced in that moment and just okay, this is what I need to do right now and trusting that it unfolds right, because mindset, again, is so important, the more that you're going to be able to get through things and find that it moves through faster and with greater ease.

Robert Plank: At first glance, when we first started talking today, it almost sounded like spiritual, almost hippie kind of stuff, but the more you talk about it, the more it makes sense. The more I'm hearing that it's this really important thing that a lot of people need to either do or discover for the first time or be reminded of. I just keep thinking back to all the times when I thought that things were okay or I thought that things were in balance. I thought that things were handled and so many times if things were just out of whack, I would think things would be okay in the moment but then I might have a whole week of just zero productivity or just feel really sad or feel really run down because of the lack of that self-care and the lack of fixing problems before they became problems

Antonia Hall: Mm-hmm (affirmative)

Robert Plank: Can you tell us about this book? You mentioned it a couple times. You have this Multi-Orgasmic book. Ca you tell us ... it's different from our usual topics, but that's perfectly okay. Can you tell us what this book's about and what led you to create it.

Antonia Hall: I was living in Los Angeles and it's very crazy place to live. I was stressed out from all the traffic and that hurried energy around me all the time. I started trying to find tools to help me find balance and my inner peace because I knew that I was better if I was coming from that place. The more I started using these tools and learning about new ones, I was like how do people not know this? This is amazing. It's transformative. When I went back to Grad school, they said what do you want to study and I said I want to help people make peace with their sexuality and these tools around are inherent sexuality because it's a part of nature of which we're all apart, and give people these tools so that they can find that balance and joy and boy, it really puts you in the zone. I think we've, hopefully, all had experiences where we've gotten in touch with our sexuality and then we just feel so in the zone the next day. We're happy and we're in the zone and we're creative and we're juicy. That's there for the taking all the time. That's how I came up with the "Ultimate Guide to a Multi-Orgasmic Life."

Robert Plank: Awesome. You have the book and then do you do any other kind of stuff as far as the business you've built? Do you do coaching and stuff like that?

Antonia Hall: I do sometimes do coaching. I just turned the book into an audio book so you can have me read the book to you, if you're commuting or something like that. It's very accessible. It's just a couple of pages and then an exercise, a couple pages, an exercise. It'll give you tools that the more you implement, the more it will empower you and help you get through this as a better version of you.

Robert Plank: Awesome. I know that's what I want and so, about some of the tools that you mentioned so far and that you mentioned in this talk, there's that visualization thing, there's the breath work stuff, the self-care. Is there any one last tool you want to throw there in to the mix so people have different tools or are those 3 things enough for now?

Antonia Hall: I think just remember that you deserve the best in life and you're creating it as you go along, so stay in your power and trust yourself and take care of yourself so that you can be at your best.

Robert Plank: Awesome. That's a good message and I think that as we were talking, what I was trying to think of is there have been times when I've been way to stressed out at home and then I go on vacation to Hawaii or to the beach and get really relaxed but then not want to go back or have a hard time getting back into the flow state. What you've described here is that maybe the problem was instead of letting things go get super bad so that we need a vacation or a break or a reset, to use these tools to have the balance and to manage things so that we can have everyday be one of those days that has not only the happiness but the flow state and the productivity as well. That complete fulfillment. Is that right?

Antonia Hall: Yes. That is absolutely right.

Robert Plank: Awesome. Glad to hear it and I like these tools that you shared with us. Could you tell us where people can find your book, find your audio book and find the websites that you create so they can find out more about you/

Antonia Hall: "The Ultimate Guide to a Multi-Orgasmic Life" at AntoniaHall.com.

Robert Plank: Perfect. Short and to the point and gets you there. AntoniaHall.com. Thanks for stopping by the show, Antonia ...

Antonia Hall: Thank you.

Robert Plank: ... and for telling us about not just how to ... I guess the multi-orgasmic component is for people to go and get your book but as far as the simple stuff to get back on that track to have a more self aware life, visualization, breath work, self-care and the book is "The Ultimate Guide to a Multi-Orgasmic Life." AntoniaHall.com and thanks Antonia for stopping by the show.

Antonia Hall: Thank you, Robert.

Robert Plank: Our very special guest today is Jay Roberts. Jay's the founder of this thing called Deboxing. It's a revolutionary self-help method that will free your mind from trauma, anxiety and emotional hangups and stress, leaving you free to live your life, have inner peace and be the real, more confident, happier you. I'm down for all of those things. Those things all sound awesome. How are things today, Jay?

Jay Roberts: They're really good, Robert, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Robert Plank: I'm glad you're here. Could you tell everyone who you are and what makes you different and special?

Jay Roberts: Wow, yes. Us English, normally not very good at sort of tooting our horn so to speak.

Robert Plank: You're all about the self-aggrandizing, right? Self-deprecation.

Jay Roberts: That's kind of our way isn't it, the Brits. We tend to hide behind screens a little more. My name is Jay Roberts. I am 44, currently as we're recording this. I'm married. I've got two children. A son who's nine and a daughter who is seven. I've kind of ended up in this field not by design actually, but I was in the home business field for a long time. The fact that you're kind of talking to home business owners resonates with me because I've done a lot of that stuff. Really, over the years, have ... I always kind of fell short. I was kind of pushing. I had some mini-successes, but kind of always fell short, like invisible shackles holding me back. It was that that lead me to kind of stumble upon this natural ability that we all have that's kind of changed everything for me in a short space of time.

Robert Plank: What natural ability is that?

Jay Roberts: We all have a natural ability to psychologically self-heal. An ability to remove the root cause of our emotional struggle. Let's face it, as home business entrepreneurs trying to make a go of it, the self-doubt, the naysayers, the peer group, the wife or the husband don't quite believe what you believe. There's always those elements of doubt where you just keep on doing yourself, almost like you're proving everybody right.

I think in the end when you're looking to try and to make a go of something, make a success, of course, we talk about mindset. The moment I used to hear mindset, I used to switch off. I don't know how you feel about like the term mindset. What do you feel about the term?

Robert Plank: It was something for where, I don't know, like five or ten years at least I would always hear about this mindset thing. I'd think, "Oh great, that's like Tony Robin stuff or there's going to be some guy shouting at me or telling me to jump up and down." As soon as I started listening to some of it a little bit, I didn't go crazy, I just kind of used it like every couple of weeks. If I felt like I was kind of in a little bit of a slump or could use a boost, it was crazy. I think that what I had to do was get to the point where I could accept all the ... almost like the borderline hokey stuff, the foofy-doofy stuff. Once I was able to kind of take that in, then it's something where I go back to that, not everyday, but every few weeks if I need either a boost or to get back to being a happy person I guess.

Jay Roberts: I think the problem is a lot of it ... like I call it woo-woo fluffy stuff. A lot of in this kind of law of attraction, thoughts become things. This whole genre that's kind of swept the home business, the network marketing or multilevel marketing, whatever you call it, the entire industry has become consumed by a lot of this mindset stuff that really for most people doesn't really make any difference. They end up feeling more frustrated. Of course, positive thinking. Research now proves that it actually does more harm than good for most people.

Robert Plank: Why is that?

Jay Roberts: Because you've got a conscious mind and an unconscious mind. The unconscious is where everything is stored, your past events, all the things that have affected you are stored in the unconscious. If those things are too big, you can't just positively talk over the top of them and expect it to take. It just doesn't work, so people are using affirmations, and then it's not really making them feel any better. There kind of this dialogue with themselves is, "Well, what's wrong with me? Why aren't I feeling any better? Why is this working for other people and it's not working for me?"

The truth of it is that most people are going out with an overly positive persona, and it isn't really working for them. They're just kind of pretending that it is and pushing through. The research now just shows that more people go backwards than they do go forwards when they're using positive affirmations because their unconscious baggage just doesn't believe what you're saying to it.

Robert Plank: It's like they have the anchoring wrong or whatever? They have the affirmations as maybe at first to kind of put a band-aid on the problem.

Jay Roberts: If you take a look at it, what I've learned is that we all experience lots of things. We're all born with a core box. Brené Brown did a fantastic TED Talk on vulnerability and another one on shame. What she did after eight years of research, she discovered everyone feels that same shame, feeling that they're not good enough and not worthy. We're all ordinary people are born with a core box if you will that says, "I'm not good enough. I'm not worthy." You're experiences, events, comments from parents, comments from peer group, losses on the sports fields, all of these things, these events, these negative events that support the core box delusion of not being good enough. Now they embed in your unconscious brain and they stay there. They continue to play you.

Over time, these things mount up and mount up. In the end, your belief in yourself just gets worse and worse. You keep trying to push through it, but you can't because these unconscious baggage boxes, they're going to stay there until you actually find out how you get rid of them. You can't just write over the top of them.

Robert Plank: Could you explain the box concept and how that works?

Jay Roberts: For me, I always found it difficult with a lot of personal development and therapy. I've had hundreds of therapy sessions over the years, couples and individual. Spent thousands of thousands of pounds. The thing that struck me was that nothing really seemed very easy to understand. It was very complicated. Psychologists used a lot of long terms. I found myself getting confused. In the end, you know what? I just wanted it simple.

What I wanted is I feel this way, I want to feel that way. How do I get there quickly and easily? I came up with the term of boxes. I wrote it down two years ago, the summer of two years ago on a single sheet of paper. Just what it felt like when I was letting go because I'd already begun letting go of these boxes. I was writing down what it felt like and how I visualized it. The visual for me was that my brain, my unconscious brain was made up of corridors, cupboards, and in each cupboard were boxes. In the boxes were stored past events that were continuing to affect my life.

You could find it ... Imagine walking down a corridor and you go into a cupboard. There's boxes there associated with insecure about your girlfriend or boyfriend, and then it's a way of actually releasing that emotion in those boxes. You then are free of the reactions that are linked to it. Boxes was just a way to make something more tangible and easier to understand, mainly for myself because I'm quite simple to be fair.

Robert Plank: I like simple. Nothing wrong at all with simple. Would you say that ... You have these boxes, and they're different issues to get rid of. Would you say that having all these things arranged in boxes helps you to have more focus. You could just solve just one of the boxes, solve just one of the problems, as opposed to trying to fix your whole entire self? Is that the advantage to it?

Jay Roberts: Yeah, you just kind of ... Once you kind of get the front end, I can cover that in a second, but your emotional reactions. This was the kicker, the bit that really like I worked really hard to find, the everyday way that we can just identify when we've got a box being triggered. What happened was that from experimenting on myself, and then sharing it with lots of other people is your daily emotional reactions ... A negative emotional reaction is linked to your boxes. Psychologists actually go as far to say that up to 90% or more of your emotional reactions are linked to your past.

I don't have a number. I don't know how they could necessarily quantify up to 90%. I just know that either a large portion or all of my reactions that were negative were linked to the boxes. That was kind of my direct line to get straight into them. You can go in now and literally ... Let's say you have a conversation with a friend on the phone. That friend says something to you. It annoys you. They kind of put you down, and it makes you feel a little bit anxious, a little bit annoyed at what they've said. Most people just kind of brush that off or have an argument or whatever, but what you can do now is just stop and say, "Hang on a minute. There's an emotional reaction. That's a box."

It's like you have this dialogue with yourself, so your consciously saying to your unconscious brain, "Okay, that's a box. Bring it on through." That acknowledgment that it is a box, it's kind of like letting the unconscious area of your brain say, "Okay, could you bring this up for me?" All of a sudden, it starts to come through for you, and then you get an opportunity to create a trigger release, which we can talk about in a second. Actually, then you can let go of the box or boxes that are associated to that reaction. When you've done that, you go back. If that friend does the same thing to you again the following week, you'll find that you won't be affected by it at all. You've removed the root cause of your reaction.

Robert Plank: Interesting, and I like that a lot because we were talking a few minutes ago about the mindset stuff. A lot of it is not very concrete, even like a lot of the law of attraction stuff. It's either not concrete or it's this so ... You've got to figure out all these terms and this whole kind of system. I like that, like you said, this whole box thing, it's simple. It's something where I can actually see like, "Okay, before I made this change, before I fixed this problem, I reacted in X way. After I ran through this process, now I reacted in Y way." That's kind of like I think with all this mindset stuff, there's like the intangible, the nebulous stuff, but then when it actually gets down to, here the couple of tools, now it's couple of tools. That's something that really helps me because now that's something that I could use over and over again, as opposed to just having some kind of vague idea there.

Jay Roberts: Exactly, and I think that's one of the other things is that it just makes something more tangible because you've got a reaction on one day. You've deployed Debox protocol, and follow that process. You create the emotional release, and then your system kind of reboots almost it feels like. You look where have my reaction changed? You suddenly see, "Wow, that actually worked. That actually got rid of that. I'm no longer feeling anxious about that particular thing or that particular even or what that person said to me."

Robert Plank: I like that. It's almost kind of like if you feel a certain way or you do certain things, it's tough to attack that problem because you have nothing to attack. As opposed to like if you said, "Okay, I feel a certain way. Now I'm diagnosed with this," then you say, "Now I know the thing that I have. Now I can attack it." Obviously, it's not the same thing. We're not talking about like a medical diagnosis, but that whole idea of there's actually a name for this thing. There's actually a pattern that I can identify of the way that I'm acting.

I know that I for sure have this. I'll have something random to me happen in a day, and it'll make me think back to like some random time when I was like ten years old, five years old when something happen. I end up kind of like having that resentment or whatever you describe. It's cool that now that I can kind of label it in a box. Now that's a thing that I can kind of attack.

You mention this trigger release thing. I hope it doesn't get too dirty, but what is this trigger release process?

Jay Roberts: The trigger is creating an emotional release. An emotional release for some may be crying. This has been an interesting one because of course for men especially, there's this kind of thing about men crying, but the good thing is that you can do this in a room on your own and no one needs to know. Actually, there's an art to crying. There's a way to do it that can bring about the removal of these emotional baggage boxes from the past. Brené Brown said in her talk, it's leaning into the discomfort instead of managing it and trying to positively override it. That's exactly true.

This is where it was counter intuitive. When I kind of stumbled upon it, it didn't make sense to me because everything I learned from being mentored by a psychotherapist for eight or ten years and all the sessions I had was that you kind of ... you didn't necessarily head into the big storms. By leaning into the discomfort, and then staying with the sobbing feeling, staying with it until it's completely emptied, what you're actually doing is getting rid of old trauma. That's one of the ways that you can create a trigger. Let me just ask you a question. Do you ever watch a movie and it moves you to tears, like you get a lump in your throat and watery eyes?

Robert Plank: Sure. Yes, sometimes, not often, but every now and then.

Jay Roberts: Here's the thing. If you're moved to tears by an event or something happening, this is where people need to lay down an preconceived ideas and just go with it, but tears, you being moved to tears, watery eyes, lump in the throat, that's boxes ready to come out. Movies has been amazing for me because I've been able to trigger so much baggage release by watching a movie that they movie me to tears. For anybody that remembers the '70s film, The Champ with Ricky Schroder and Jon Voight, that was one that just got me, father son stuff. Ended up being a fantastic trigger for me to get rid of quite of a lot of baggage that I was carrying around, feelings of inadequacy around my father when I was younger.

Robert Plank: You mention that, so like there's your father stuff. There's like you watch this sad movie and brings to light a box that you might have not otherwise known that was there. Is this the matter of kind of seeing what comes your way or is there like an inventory taking process where you figure out your boxes? Where do you start with all this?

Jay Roberts: The main thing is never try and figure it out on the front end. I've watched this so many times. The way that I can visualize it is our conscious mind, the thing that we do all our thinking with is like a pea, and the unconscious part of our brain where everything is stored, filed and hidden is like the galaxy. We can't figure out a galaxy issue with a pea brain. It's just not possible. I don't try and figure out what the issue is. To quote Bruce Lee, who's heavily influenced me and my life, it's kind of, "Don't think, feel." You follow the feeling. You don't think about what it could be. You're not trying to figure it out in the front. You just know you've been impacted. You know you've got an emotional reaction. You deploy box protocol. You follow the feeling. You look for the trigger to get the emotional release.

What often happens is as you're kind of having a bit of an emotional release, whether that be by sobbing or a bit of discomfort, it suddenly pops into your head exactly what it was about. Suddenly, it tells you on the way through. That's what that was. I found that when you try and figure it out in the front, you get caught in thinking, and you lose the speed and impact that you can actually get rid of this stuff with.

Robert Plank: When these boxes come in, is this just a matter of there's a box that you discover is there, you go through the process, you do the release. Is the box gone? Do some boxes take a while to go away? Is it end up being like a bunch of boxes? What happens there?

Jay Roberts: It could be one or two. It could be a whole stack of boxes. The main thing is is that when you've been moved into this emotional release, for most people, it does tend to be a little bit of either light crying or people can go into a real proper sob to let go. That's not the only way to release. I can talk about that in a second. The main thing is is that you stay with it. You stay with the feeling.

I think too many people kind of ... They may have a little bit of upset, and then they feel a bit better because they've released a little bit of the top pressure. They leave the cupboard and go on with their day. When actually, you want to stay with the thought. What created the upset? What created the trigger? You just give yourself half an hour, 40 minutes, an hour where you just sit with it and just let it keep coming through.

You'll find that each wave of emotion or each kind of reaction then it comes is kind of like one box. That's how I kind of found a way to count the boxes. If I had a little bit of discomfort and a few tears, then it stopped, that's one little box gone, but stay with the feeling. Stay with what triggered me. Keep thinking it over and over just laying on the bed, running it through my mind, and then I'd feel another one coming. There's a bit more emotion. It was kind of like they stack and rack sometimes. You get one release. It dies down for a few minutes, and then suddenly because you've stayed in the cupboard, up comes the next one. You just got to stay there until you feel it's all gone.

You do feel, suddenly, you kind of ... People talk about you feel like a weight's gone. That's what it feels like when you've got rid of the associated boxes to that particular event. It's like almost a breathe out and ... You feel a bit tired, but it's gone. You know you got it all because you will sleep like a baby that night. That's how you know you got all that cupboard out. If you have an anxious night's sleep, if you have a rough night's sleep, you didn't get it all. You need to revisit it.

Robert Plank: I keep hearing that from you that I guess the thing to keep in mind is to let it all happen. What it reminds me of is just like I think when I first got a cell phone, and I first got a smartphone in particular like an iPhone, I would just always be being interrupted constantly. I'd always be like, "Oh, phone's going off. Got to check a text. Got to send a text." For those few months, I didn't really feel much of anything in the way of emotions because I didn't have time to think. Every time that I started to have a thought about myself, something else would pop up to distract me. I think that what I've heard maybe five or ten times from you now is that you have to like keep going with that and keep letting it happen. Would you say that that's like a common problem that a lot of people they kind of just dip their toe in the water and they get a little bit of a result. They kind of back off and go into this safe, comfortable area?

Jay Roberts: Yeah, I think they do. I think also people like ladies, women more so than men, I think would admit to crying. They'll say they have a good cry and let it all out. They feel better for it. What it is is then they then leave the cupboard and don't stay with the feeling to actually get rid of the root of the issue. You've kind of got rid of the initial pressure, but not stayed with it.

I think it's people starting to get in-tune and understand their emotional reactions, and then starting to use your emotions in order to get rid of the root cause of the negative emotion. You reboot stronger. You're evolving inside. You're internal mechanisms are evolving and you're becoming freer with every cupboard that you remove. There's that popular phrase, "Fuel the fear and do it anyway." This kind of redefines that a little. It's like fuel the fear, use the fear, remove the fear, and then move on with comfort. I can give you a couple of examples of just that actually.

With phobias and things, they're passed on. If we have a fear of spiders or something, it's because we would've seen ... normally we've seen somebody that had a fear of spiders. They did it in front of us when we were younger, and suddenly, we adopted that fear.

Robert Plank: Makes sense.

Jay Roberts: I was in Spain. It would be the summer of 2014. No, 2015, sorry. There was a water slide. It was very high. It was a eight flights of stairs. It must've been a good 50, 60 foot up, big water slide. You come down on this kind of inflatable ring together, and then it kind of ... It's almost like a ... It goes up the other side like one sort of big kind of seesaw type of thing on this water slide. My son who was then seven said, "Should we go on that big slide, daddy?" My wife said to him, "You know Daddy's scared of heights. You'll have to go on your own."

I did. I had a massive fear of heights. I said, "Go on. You're going to go." He looked at me and he said, "No, I'm scared." I'm looking at my seven year old son and I'm right there. I'm like, he's going to take my fear because I've just put that in him. I've just put my box in my son. That would stay with him then. I'm like, "Right. Okay, no. I'm going to go." Natalie's asking, "Are you sure?" My wife said, "Are you sure?" I'm like, "No, no. I'm going to ..." If amplifying the sobbing releases the boxes, I wonder if amplifying my fear and my anxiety gets rid of the phobia.

We went. We got a couple of flights up the stairs. We're only sort of five or six foot off that ground. I'm holding my son's hand. I close my eyes. I imagine myself walking up to the top. I imagine myself leaning over the edge and looking down the 50 feet or whatever it was. I imagine myself hanging off of the end with one hand with just holding the bar. I'm pushing myself to the absolute extreme in my mind, but the anxiety I was feeling inside was exactly the same as it would've been if I was doing it. It's the great thing about visualizing is that it seems so real that the feeling is real.

I stayed with it. I just didn't try and calm myself down. I didn't try and, "I've got to manage." I just stayed with it. I let it just come through me and take me. All of a sudden, it started to die down. I felt a little pop like almost like it went from really amplified to like ... and then it dropped.

By the time I got to the top, bare in mind I've had this phobia since I was a little boy, it was about 50% less than it was at the start. We went down the water slide. We came around again, and I did exactly the same thing again. I felt, came through. I stayed with it, then it passed through, died down. Literally within 10 or 15 minutes and three goes on that water slide with my son, my phobia, by staying with the feeling and allowing it to come through me, I'd got rid of my fear of heights I've had for 37, 38 years. I got rid of it in 15 minutes. From that point on, I'd actually stopped that going into my son.

Robert Plank: It didn't just help you, but it helped your son too.

Jay Roberts: That's our responsibility as well. We're entrepreneurs, and we're trying to make a go of a business, a home business or whatever, but you're passing your stuff on unconsciously to your children. All of your unconscious behaviors, their unconscious is picking up on it, and they're taking it in. None of this, everyone's oblivious to it. It's no one's fault. It just is the way it is. The more you can kind of recognize this and get this connection with your two selves, your little conscious self and your huge unconscious self, and start to remove your emotional baggage boxes, then actually what happens is the great consequence of that is that you're not passing that stuff onto the people you love the most, your own children.

Robert Plank: That's some pretty powerful stuff. Could you tell us about ... I mean, we've been talking this whole time about this method, the Debox way and all of this kind of stuff. Could you tell us about how you've put this all into a book and about all that kind of stuff?

Jay Roberts: Yeah, sure. I mean, the book title, the book is called The Debox Revolution. I've got the book is just about finished. It's going to go for a release on October the 1st. I've got a coaching support form, so I can be there personally to help people get the idea and get them into this new level of emotional awareness, ultimately emotional self-reliance.

What I also wanted to do with the book is I wanted to kind of do good with it as well, and because Bruce Lee was a heavy influence to me, not just in the martial art, but in his philosophies, but his belief was ... He created his own fighting system that you should be able to win a fight really quickly. Be direct, no wasted energy, no fancy moves, just get the job done. Really, from a mindset personal development point of view, that's exactly what Deboxing is. It's that Bruce Lee. It's just win it quickly. Get the job done. Be direct.

I've actually partnered up with the Bruce Lee Foundation for book sales for the USA and the rest of the world. All of the book profits are going to be going to the Bruce Lee Foundation because they are dedicated to helping people become the best they can be and honestly express themselves. That's a perfect fit for me for somewhere to take the book profits.

Robert Plank: Could you tell everyone where to find that book and tell them about ... and if you have any other websites, all that good stuff?

Jay Roberts: You'll find everything now it's kind of come into one website. Literally, I've just finished, and I can take ... We're in beginning of September. I can take pre-orders for the book now. It's debox.co. That's debox like detox, so D-E-B-O-X, dot, C-O. You literally will find everything there. The book is there. I've got an online course with quizzes and everything coming within the next couple of weeks as well. The coaching forum is there. Actually, anybody can find anything out about me from that site.

Robert Plank: Debox.co, so thanks for coming by the show Jay. As we've said, I think we're both kind of on the same page about this. A lot of the mindset stuff like learning it, trying to go about and find out the old way of fixing your inner stuff kind of just for me and everyone else I know, it leads to this whole rabbit hole of confusion, just not really getting to the root of the problem as you say. I think that this Deboxing thing is a really cool life skill that everyone needs. The water slide example especially, that was super crazy. It all makes sense. I think that from what we've been hearing is just everyone is just afraid to let things play out and afraid to embrace the fear, embrace the anxiety, embrace the doubt, all that stuff, so this Deboxing thing, even though at first look it seems really simplistic, the more you get into it, it seems super powerful. Freaking awesome stuff. Debox Revolution, debox.co. Thanks for coming by the show Jay.

Jay Roberts: Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Robert Plank: Our guest today is Mike Veeny. Now, have you known someone who lives with mental health challenges or do you want to learn to better manage your own mental health challenges or even better, how do you really transform the stigma surrounding mental health? Well, our very important, special, VIP guest is going to take care of all that and more. How are things today Mike?

Mike Veny: I'm doing wonderful. How are you Robert?

Robert Plank: Better than ever. Just getting kicked back on this Monday morning. Ready to do some of the entrepreneurial life style stuff.

Mike Veny: Cool, and hello to your listeners out there.

Robert Plank: I'm super glad that they're listening and that you're here. Could you tell us about yourself, Mike, and what makes you different and special?

Mike Veny: What makes me different and special ...

Robert Plank: Oh yeah.

Mike Veny: I'm Mike! That's what makes me different and special. No, I am a mental health speaker and I'm also a drummer and I have a very unique business that really helps people who are struggling with mental health issues, a big topic in this country right now. At the same time, I work with corporate America with drumming to teach adults how to work better together in the workplace like me.

Robert Plank: Interesting. Cool, so I mean out of all the stuff you've listed, the drumming sounds like super crazy and out there, which is something I love, so can you tell us about that drumming stuff?

Mike Veny: Well, I started playing drums in the fifth grade and the reason I started drumming was because I heard it on Sesame Street and I always just liked the sounds of the drums and for some reason I was struggling with mental health issues and behavioral health issues. In fact, I was hospitalized three times in a psychiatric hospital and expelled from three schools for behavior problems and actually tried to take my own life at age ten. Drumming was the only thing that calmed me down and made me feel good. It worked better than the other medication they were giving me. I decided to become a professional drummer, not just because it is cool. I mean, it is pretty cool if you're a drummer, but also because it was my medication. I'm thirty-seven years old and it's still my medication that I use and what I love about it is, I'm able to share it with others.

I do a very advanced form of what we call drum circles, and a drum circle is typically when you have people in a circle drumming and jamming along to grooves, but I have created a lot of activities and games for adults to use with drumming to not only play great music, but to learn some lessons about working with each other.

Robert Plank: That's awesome. Did I hear that right that you don't medicate or anything like that? It's all just these drumming exercises?

Mike Veny: Yeah and when it comes to mental health, and for any of you listening out there, seek the guidance of a doctor whenever you have any kind of issue. I worked with my therapist and just basically came to the conclusion that I was going to try what we call alternative medication, which is exercise, meditation, good friends and music.

Robert Plank: Cool, so instead of maybe like the short cut way, which seems easy, but seems to have these other side effects, you kind of found your own way to make this thing work.

Mike Veny: Yeah, can I say something about that? That we, as a society, are short cut people sometimes. If we're single and we want to be in a relationship, we can just quickly download a certain app and just start swiping away at different profiles and I'm learning more and more that in order to move forward in your life, sometimes things involve real difficult work and you have to see certain things as a process, not a destination. Such as building your business or building your career.

Robert Plank: Let's talk about that because you took us up to about eight to ten or so and you discovered this drum circle thing and I mean obviously it's been a couple decades since that. How did you get from point A to point B I guess?

Mike Veny: Well, in my mind, I think ... my vision when I was sixteen was that I just wanted to play drums in a jazz club with drunk people in the audience. That's what I wanted to do. I told my parents that and I think they really were very concerned, but they still supported me. They understood and supported me. When I started drumming and playing professionally, I also started teaching privately and there was an organization that asked me to come in one day and work with a group of kids. Said, "Can you teach drums to a group of kids," and I said, "Okay, I'll see if I can figure it out," and I did that and it worked so well that they started asking me to work with adults. I thought, "This is weird."

Then, more companies started asking me and I realized that I had a problem on my hands that I could either surrender to or run away from and a lot of times ... What I've learned Robert, is that when we have opportunities in life, sometimes we can surrender to them or run away from them, but if you let your ego get caught up in, "This is how I want to look to the world," and don't allow yourself to surrender to opportunities, sometimes that can be a lost career changing thing in your life. I surrendered to it and next thing I know, I was booked doing interactive drumming events around New York state and now I'm doing it around the country. In fact, I'm going to be in Haiti in October doing it with a company, so I'm loving it.

Robert Plank: That's awesome and I know that we kind of have two sides of the coin to talk about today. There's the part of the business that you've built and then there's this message you have and these techniques you have for solving this problem. The thing I like about that and I guess the common thread I keep hearing from entrepreneur after entrepreneur is that they kind of have some kind of an idea of what they want to do and they kind of like do it and they put all their energy into it and then it leads to this next logical step, it leads to this next logical step, but it's one of those things where it's like you wouldn't of ... like you said, you wouldn't of come across the becoming a public speaker or teaching this drum circle stuff to adults if you hadn't first just tried it with kids. Even that wouldn't of happened if you hadn't first had this dream of being a drummer and stuff like that. Is that right?

Mike Veny: Yeah, absolutely and I love that you just said that because it's like literally you take you and me right now. We're doing this podcast interview. Next time in California, I might ask you to meet up for coffee, we go to a really cool coffee shop and discover that you and I both want to go into the coffee business and building a coffee business that's even bigger than Starbucks. That's just kind of how life works, but you and I would both have to surrender to that at some level if it were to happen. The other thing I want to bring up is the importance of mission statement in life. Mission statement is a thing that sometimes, when people are building businesses, they see that little spot in the business plan and struggle to find powerful words that can go in there.

A mission statement is so important to life and it's something that you discover with time. It's nothing you can go out and get tomorrow. I discovered that my mission life was to empower people to connect authentically. That's, if you hang out with me as a friend, that's when I work on the mental health stuff. I'm empowering people to connect with themselves and when I do the drumming, I'm empowering people to connect. It's actually really just one theme that I basically express in several different ways.

Robert Plank: Is there a reason why the drum circle stuff works? Or do you have a theory on that? Is it a matter of like people having a way to express themselves? Is it some kind of a outlet? Is it the group aspect, is it a focus, is it in the zone aspect? What do you think makes this drumming thing work?

Mike Veny: Well, it's everything you just said actually. My initial thought was, "It's 'cause drumming is just cool!" That's why it works, but no, it works for several reasons. One of the things that I'm learning is that people are tribal. We all are tribal people and even if you're listening to this right now and you are an introvert, we still have a need, at some deep level, to be part of a group. When I do a drumming event, every single person involved is part of that group and we all get to bond. The other thing that happens is when you have people in a circle, it really allows people to take off their mask, their social shell and just be themselves. If you think about kindergartners, how they sit in a circle and do things. They get to just kind of be themselves.

Even twelve step programs like alcoholics anonymous are very successful because people are sitting in a circle. It makes everyone an equal and it immediately allows everyone to feel good. The other thing is the pent up aggression that we all carry. I mean all of us have stress, different issues that we're walking around with and to be in a safe environment where you can just hit stuff and make noise and act like a fool is something that people just never get to do at all. That's some of the short answer as to why I believe the drum circles are successful.

Robert Plank: Even when you describe that, it almost sounds like kind of with the drumming, it's almost like going back to that kindergarten kind of age when things were simpler or you were happier and all the weight of being an adult didn't kind of weigh you down. You know what that reminds me of? You know what I always wanted to try was that thing where you pay five bucks and you get to have a bat and you get to beat the crap out of a car. It's almost like that kind of thing-

Mike Veny: Yep.

Robert Plank: ... But safer I guess, because you're using drums.

Mike Veny: Yes, no absolutely and that's the thing. Think about the world we live in. With all the news around violence. How many people are living with pent up aggression that they need to let out in a healthy way? That's why I think it's just important for all of us, whether it's drumming or something else to find healthy ways to let out your aggression, especially if you're an entrepreneur building a business. Because you know what? It's a lovely thing to be an entrepreneur, but really difficult to get your project off the ground. Really difficult.

Robert Plank: Let's talk about that. What are your thoughts about that? What have you found that ... out of all your years of entrepreneurship, what do you think people need to be doing differently? Not just as far as like their actions, but also as far as their inner game and their inner voice and all that stuff. What should people be doing differently as entrepreneurs as opposed to just employees?

Mike Veny: Wow, that's a great, great question and I'm going to try to answer this as quickly as I can out of respect for everyone's time. There's two things. Number one, talking to the people who are listening, who are just thinking about starting a business or in that beginning phase. One thing I always suggest to people starting out is to not spend much time talking about your idea, but executing your idea. Because a lot of times in today's entrepreneurship world, people really just get caught up in the idea of just going to business plan competitions and just talking about their idea to their friends, but very little time on action. Action is uncomfortable, action is difficult. Action makes you feel vulnerable, you actually have to go out and sell whatever it is that you are trying to make. I think it's really important to do that.

For those that are in business like myself, one thing I suggest that has really helped me increase my income, is the importance of writing down all of the processes in your business into an operations manual. This way, you can run a business from a checklist. My business is very easy for me to run because I just go to the checklist. My assistant goes to the checklist. Everyone on my team has a checklist. This way if I'm not around, there's a predictable way for this machine to run and so a lot of people never get to that point because they say it feels too corporate or it feels like they're in the regular job that they were trying to leave, but that actually is one of the reasons that a business like UPS is so successful, because all of the drivers have a checklist for different things that they have to do. That's why they are, I'm going to say, predictable for the most part with delivering what they deliver. It's very important for entrepreneurs to hear.

Robert Plank: Do you have a specific checklist you can kind of walk us through that you use in your business?

Mike Veny: Absolutely. One of my favorite checklists to use is my budgeting checklist. Each month I have to deliver a budget for the upcoming month. I have to do this on the twenty-fifth and if it's not done by the twenty-fifth, believe it or not, my assistant has a checklist item to email me and remind me, because we have to upload that into Quick books because there needs to be a budget before the first of the month for the following month. Part of that checklist and making a budget includes listing all the income that I project coming in, but doing that on the conservative side. Because a lot of times when we project income, we get all excited and like to put what we hope the income will be and one thing I've learned, as a business owner, is it's really important to yes, have goals, but also be realistic.

At the same time, with expenses, be very aggressive looking at worse case scenarios and this has allowed me to make the finances of the business actually very predictable for the most part, which is a very important goal that I achieved.

Robert Plank: Instead of flying by the seat of your pants, you actually are treating it like a real business, a real machine, not just something where you're playing around as a hobby.

Mike Veny: Absolutely, absolutely. You have to treat it like a real machine. You know what? If you don't, you're not going to make money from it. One of the things that I've learned the hard way, and maybe you've experienced this too with people that are just starting out. A lot of people start businesses because they want to get out of the corporate world. They don't like feeling controlled or held down or like they have to be under someone else.

When they get into business, they get really excited, but they eventually discover that the only way to grow their business is to actually become more corporate like in the sense that you have to run things with predictable systems and processes and policies. That's just very painful, so for a lot of you listening, what I'm saying might be very, very painful, but I promise you, for those of you that really make an attempt to develop these processes, you are going to see an immediate change in your income.

Robert Plank: I think that that was a pretty tough lesson to learn. For me, it took many, many years to have that realization and I think that a lot of us, or a lot of people who are employees, they want to just quit and have the freedom and they just want to wake up and stay in their pajamas all day, click the button and the money comes out of the computer and it's like, if only it worked that way right? If only there was a way to do that. We both kind of laugh about it, but I think at some point or another, we have kind of all secretly hoped that was true right?

Mike Veny: Absolutely, and one of the reasons for that, I believe, is television and what we see in the media about business. There's so many shows out on television about business and Shark Tank. A lot of times, we are creatures of what we see in society. We develop skewed perspectives about what business is. One thing I always tell people, if you want to see one of the most successful businesses in the country, go down to your local laundromat. It's one of the most successful businesses in the country, is a laundromat, but most people don't even think of that because it's like, "Oh, that's boring." A lot of times we get caught up more in the sexiness behind the idea and our idea versus just running a solid machine.

Robert Plank: That's pretty powerful because if you think about it, it's like which would you rather ... The whole point of having your own business is to make money, so which would you rather have? A really sexy idea that makes zero dollars or a boring idea that makes a good amount of money.

Mike Veny: Yeah, I'm going to take the boring idea.

Robert Plank: Yeah and there's so many stories like that of people who they had a really good idea in the back of their head and they went ahead and created the money making business first and then they were able to go ahead and do the dream. You look at your Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk or something. They all kind of did the ... I don't necessarily want to say practical, but they did the, like you said, the unsexy path first and once they were able to get that running, then they could go and play around and have fun.

Mike Veny: Yes, no absolutely. Can I just actually circle back to the mental health thing for a moment?

Robert Plank: Let's do it.

Mike Veny: I still live with mental health issues. I struggle with depression, anxiety and obsessive compulsive disorder. I actually struggle with it so painfully that my entire body is affected by it. Yesterday, I couldn't move practically because of the depression. I really wanted to move, but I just couldn't. I'm not being lazy, I exercise and all that stuff, but having the checklist in place made it so much easier to get certain things done when I was depressed. The beautiful thing about process is, is that if you're a person like me who struggles with mental health issues it actually makes it a lot easier to get your work done. Even if you're not in business for yourself and you're just working a regular job, creating processes for yourself is going to make your life easier.

Robert Plank: I love that and the whole thing about those checklists that I found is that as I'm creating them or if I do that, I feel like it's almost kind of a waste of time until those days when there's just so many things to do. Like my focus is so split or there's such a deadline where I have to get a bunch of stuff done. For those times when I'm in a rush, there's all those things that I intuitively think I could've handled, but I always end up missing steps or doing something in the wrong order. Or like you said, I think that's pretty cool that even if you can't show up or you don't show up on a certain day to get a certain thing finished, then someone else can just kind of pick up that checklist and do it for you.

Mike Veny: Exactly, exactly, and I agree with you so much too. Setting them up is a pain. I get stressed out setting up these checklists. It's like why am I wasting my time thinking through this? But when you have days where there's a lot of things going on, you will feel very grateful for this simple, ancient form of entrepreneurial technology. The checklist.

Robert Plank: Whoever invented it, I mean, they are centuries, thousands of years dead, but what a genius, whoever that person was.

Mike Veny: Yeah.

Robert Plank: Cool, so kind of along those lines of your business and checklists and stuff like that. Could you tell us about everything that you do from the ... I know that you do, you have like a podcast, you do speaking, you have some websites. Can you tell us about all that cool stuff you do?

Mike Veny: Sure, I have a podcast. It's called the Mike Veeny Show and it only has three episodes, but it's people like yourself that are inspiring me to get a little more disciplined in that. Actually, I need to revisit my process for that. Producing the podcast to make it a little smoother to fit my life. In addition, I write for a website called Health Central. I write a lot of mental health articles that are there to help people. I write for Corporate Wellness magazine and I also have two websites. One is called UnleashYourGroove.com. That is my interactive drumming website and the other for mental health is called TransformingStigma.com. I invite anyone to just reach out to me if they ever have any questions about any of this stuff.

Robert Plank: Awesome, they should definitely do that and I want to thank you Mike for coming by and telling us, in our little compressed window of time, first of all, how you were able to overcome this common and kind of scary and sometimes even life threatening problem. That was cool and also to tell us about just like your philosophy and this whole checklist thing and how you have the mission statement and operations manual. It was all very helpful so thanks for coming by and sharing all that stuff. One more time, just to make sure that everyone for sure 100% has it, where can they go, what website, to find out more about you? One more time.

Mike Veny: I'm going to just send everyone to TransformingStigma.com. That's the mental health one because I think that's the more important one actually. Check out TransformingStigma.com.

Robert Plank: Today's guest is Marc Hoberman. He's a test prep expert and teen illness survivor, and he's going to be talking to us about teen illness, education, SAT prep, dealing with stress, speed reading and study skills, creating success in school and a whole lot more. How are things today, Mr. Marc?

Marc Hoberman: Doing very well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Robert Plank: Cool. No problem. I'm glad that you're here, so could you tell us a little bit about what it is that you do, and what makes you unique and special?

Marc Hoberman: I've been a teacher for 33 years, and I've had a tutoring business for about 25. I do a lot of tutoring in person and online. I have tutors who work for me. We do a lot of educational consulting for parents as well, for kids who are stressed out over school, and things of that nature. I've been in the camp training industry for many years, so I deal with a lot of children different ages, teens also. Because of an illness I had as a child. As a teen at the age of about 17, I was diagnosed with epilepsy at the age of 17 after having a seizure, grand mal seizure unfortunately, behind the wheel of a car, I wrote my book, "Search and Seizure, Overcoming Illness and Adversity".

Robert Plank: It sounds like because you've gone through it, you have these messages to help other people, too.

Marc Hoberman: That's exactly right. I started the book a while ago and stopped it. Then, about three years ago, my son came down with irritable bowel syndrome, IBS. That and a couple of skin issues, and he started getting a little depressed. I was very methodical about looking into it and fixing it, and finding him the right people. My wife said, "How come you're handling this so well? I'm a wreck." And I said, "You know, I think it's because I went through it, and I realized as a teacher, I could certainly help other people." A lot of times the emotionality of the illness is worse than the physicality of the illness.

Robert Plank: Interesting. As far as these illnesses and these things that hit us, is there a catchall or a one-size-fits-all, or a thing that we should all do no matter what hits us, or is it more of a case by case basis?

Marc Hoberman: It's a little of both. My big mantra in the book is I didn't let my illness define me. I defined it. I else didn't become who I am in spite of my illness, I am who I am because of my illness. You really want to embrace illness, stress, anything that you have, and deal with it that way instead of fighting it in other ways.

Robert Plank: As far as like what happened to you and what happened to your son, what happens to the people that you help out, do you look at it in terms of whatever gets in the way, is this something to be minimized, or do we roll with the punches? What happened with you from when you first came across this epilepsy thing into what happened now. what kind of breakthroughs and obstacles did you go through for that?

Marc Hoberman: Minimizing it, absolutely not. My hope is that in dealing with it a certain way, it minimizes itself on its own. Certainly not to minimize it, for the person to minimize it. To be honest, I'm 54 years old and until I wrote the book, there weren't 10 people in the world who knew I had epilepsy. I had family members who called in were shocked that I had this. There's a stigma attached to it, I was embarrassed, I did lose some friends, not a lot luckily, but there was so much more involved with it than just the illness.

I guess the turnaround was when I did open up about it, and I think that that's what you need to do, I think again - I'm an English teacher, so it comes with Julius Caesar. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." Your illness, your issues that you have, that might be the enemy, but you have to keep that close. You have to embrace it and you have to deal with it. It can't be minimized, you have to deal with it head-on. You have to grow into who you are and realize that any stressful situation that you have, that's part of who you are.

Robert Plank: It's part of the adversity you're going through, I guess.

Marc Hoberman: Correct.

Robert Plank: You came down with epilepsy. What have you been doing about make it work for you, I guess, this thing that's part of your life?

Marc Hoberman: I will tell you that from diagnosis of 17 to 19, that was the awful time. I did not have good medical care in Florida. My parents handled things well medically as far as getting me help and moving back to New York where we originated. Found a great doctor, Eli Goldensohn, who was an expert at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital. Those two years were very rough Robert, because I was not controlled in the least.

First of all, I had a brand new 1977 Ford Mustang, which is on the cover of the book Search and Seizure, and everyone thinks, "Oh, search and seizure." They thought it could be about a drug bust because of the car, but the car is the car that I had the actual seizure in. To have a car for two or three months that was that beautiful, playing all the great music of the 70s, and being told I couldn't drive for six months was devastating for a teenager at that time. That was very rough.

There's petit mal seizures, which a lot of times people don't diagnose in time, because they could just be like dazing. Then there's grand mal seizures, and unfortunately, I had grand mal seizures always. A good thing quite honestly, was that I had petit mal seizures always preceding the grand mal, so my parents knew what a grand mal was going to happen because they could see me dazed and get very incoherent. I couldn't answer questions properly at all. I knew that being trapped in your own body, I knew that it was about to come on and I couldn't explain it or say anything.

Oddly enough, you see TV shows and you remember certain things. The only reason I started to watch Johnny Carson is that one of the medications I was on back in '78, dilantin, was too toxic for me. After about 9:00 at night, after I took it, I became so dizzy I couldn't walk. I wouldn't go to sleep until after my parents went to sleep because I couldn't walk into the bedroom. I didn't want to tell them, so I had to crawl back into bed for a good two months until we realized that it was too toxic for me. I wouldn't even be honest about what was going on because of what my parents were going through.

Robert Plank: That's pretty rough. Then what happened? Are you still unable to drive, or how did your life continue from that point?

Marc Hoberman: I was able to drive after six months. After that I was kind of controlled. When you have the seizure, at least for me, I start to remember two or three days later things that happened either during the seizure or shortly thereafter. This is in the book also. Although there is some humor in the book, obviously it was a very difficult situation. There was one time my father said, "You had a seizure in the doctor's office yesterday." I said, No I didn't." He said, "Yeah, you did," and he took out his wallet and my teeth marks were in it because when I went through the grand mal I was biting down, he put the wallet in my mouth, which is not something you do anymore. This is way back when.

Luckily, we moved to New York and I'm telling you, I walked into the doctor's office and talked into a tape recorder for 40 minutes, asked me at least 60 questions that I'd never heard before, gave me a new pill which back then was called valproic acid, which then changed the name to Depakine and Depakote. He gave me that pill and I never had a seizure after that for 28 years.

Robert Plank: Amazing.

Marc Hoberman: I would say maybe 10 or 15 years into it I was teaching in the Bronx, and he said, "Listen, you have no kids yet, we're going to experiment with taking you off, you may have grown out of it. If you can go about 18 months without a seizure, I think you're all good." Sixteen months later I had my worst seizure ever in the hallway of school, walking to class. It was in the Bronx, it was a tough neighborhood, they shut the school down because I fell, I chipped my tooth, I was bleeding. They didn't know if I was stabbed or shot or what happened. That was really bad, and I said, "You know what, if medication is going to fix it, I'm going to have to stick on the medication."

I have children I want to have, and things I want to do, and cars I want to drive, so I stayed on that medication up until actually a week ago. We just switched my meds, I had not an episode, but I had was called the perfect storm. I had an infection and I was on prednisone and I was on cough medicine, and I started to get incoherent. I really knew I was incoherent, which is unlike an epileptic petit mal seizure.

According to the doctors, they did an EEG, and they said there was no seizure activity so, they really think it's just that because I'm seizure-prone, it hampered my immune system a little bit, and manifested itself as almost like a haze, sort of like a petit mal, but they're not willing to call it a petit mal seizure. I guess since I started that other pill 28 years ago, they came out with a new pill. This is called Keppra. You don't have to test your blood levels. It's supposed to be a really good pill.

I must say, even as an educator and adult, I had to make a medical decision versus an emotional decision, because being seizure-free for 28 years is really quite wonderful and to know that I'm going to switch medications while I'm standing in front of a classroom. It's a humbling experience as I say in the book. Even though I was controlled, I speak in front of 300 people at camp conferences and reading conferences, at PTA meetings. It's in the back of my mind, what would happen if? That's something that's always there as well.

Robert Plank: In hearing about your story and your son's story and all these different things like that, would you say that - we all to one extent or another, we have that moment in life I guess, where something unexpected and permanent happens. Maybe for some of us it's not as drastic as having these lifelong seizures, but would you say we've all come across this point where there's something that came out of left field and something that will never go away? Something that we'll always have to manage and deal with. Would you say that everyone comes across that?

Marc Hoberman: Of course. Let's talk about parents getting divorced, the death of a loved one. An illness. Kids in school being bullied. Falling in love. All these things. There's no one who could possibly be untouched by these things.

Robert Plank: I guess that you brought up there, there's good and bad stuff, it's not just all unexpected, deaths, accidents, there are good and bad unexpected things coming across. Did you go through with both your situation with your parents, and then with your own son with his issues. Did you go through that point where you got the news, you know something's wrong, but you're uncertain about to do next? Have you gone through that kind of phase?

Marc Hoberman: Yes. Excellent question because luckily I've gotten many 5-star reviews and there's a company that gave me a 5-star review and he said that something my mother told me, this was two hours after I had the seizure in the car and I was back to the condo in Florida. She came in the room, very emotional woman, this is someone who was as I say in the book, cried at game shows. She sat down and said, "Look, this is the deal. You are a good-looking boy, you are funny, people like you, you're nice, you're kind, you're intelligent. This is something that's going to have to keep you grounded. This is something that's going to make you stronger and better, and we're going to deal with it together."

The reviewer I remember, wrote that this is - my mother's advice was advice that every parent should give every child at any moment of adversity. From that moment and discussion, that's how I moved forward.

Robert Plank: That's interesting. I like that, how this thing that might have been random, or it would be easy to take the victim way out, you assigned meaning to it. It's a thing that keeps you grounded.

Marc Hoberman: Make no mistake, there was a time period though, of victimization that I probably put on myself. More because of the stigma. Kids can be mean, and kids want intensely, to me a lot of people didn't know it, but I didn't want to tell my teachers. I went to school, I played in the school band, the clarinet and saxophone. The band director called me in and said, "Listen, your parents called. What should I do if you have a seizure?" First of all, I didn't know the answer to the question. Second of all, I was embarrassed that he knew, and I didn't tell very many people.

That part of it is that I didn't want it to define me, and I'm not going to lie. As a teenager part of it was the stigma that was attached. It seems a weakness, and I've learned through the years, especially as an educator for so long, that it's not me weakness, it's my strength.

Robert Plank: I like that. What's even more interesting about your case is that you grew up to become a teacher, so the same thing that you were worried about as a kid with the seizures, you're worried about again as an adult when you switching your medication or trying to get off your medication. There was the thing, ridicule possibilities there.

Marc Hoberman: Absolutely, and I don't care about it as much, I'd be lying if I said I didn't care at all, but that's not what I'm about any more. It was more about my own decisions. I said it was a medical and emotional decision as an educator, it should be a no-brainer. It should be, I'm doing the medical correct thing, but you have so many years, and such a history of freedom, you wouldn't know it, and I wouldn't know it if there was no side effects to the medication I was taking. There are side effects, I just never had them, thank God.

I had to make that decision, but there are so many kids that I teach who have diabetes, and some who do have epilepsy. Be it obesity, or any of these things, and the teen stress, and the teen suicides and so much going on. I really thought that this book would help a lot of the people, even the people that I tutor. I become very close with the families and I try to help with these issues.

Speaking from experience, even though it was a bad experience, I'd have to say at the end right now, it was a good experience. If I can help other people, that's a wonderful thing.

Robert Plank: Are you noticing with the people that you're helping, whether they have diabetes, or seizures, or obesity like you said, no matter what condition they have are the psychological parts - are there similarities, or are there some kind of steps that anyone could take, no matter what condition they see themselves in?

Marc Hoberman: I would say there's absolutely something they can do no matter what condition they see themselves in. I have what I think is a very powerful saying in the prologue of the book that after the seizure, it's like your own personal earthquake, but you have no memory of the seizure. It's a blessing and a curse. It a blessing because you don't remember, but it's a curse that you don't because I want to remember. I want to be able to embrace it and I want to be able to research it.

I don't know how old you are, I know you're a lot younger than I am, so I might a say a word that'll make you laugh, but microfiche. That' how I first had to research it because I was diagnosed 37 years ago. Now, you pop in the internet and forget about it. Side effects, and what can you do, I'm part of 15 groups, epilepsy groups, one of them is in Hungary, all over the place. There are so many lesson to be learned and if you can't learn from everything to me.

I gain strength from other epileptics. I am shocked and embarrassed that I only know now how many people are not controlled. I'm talking about babies, I'm conversing with people on the internet who it's beyond tragic. There's a light at the end of the tunnel. They're bringing families together, there's learning about your illness and saying, "Is it going to define me, or am I going to grow and be who I'm going to be because I have this."

Robert Plank: Would you say that it is helpful if someone researches and knows as much as possible about what they have?

Marc Hoberman: I would say 98% yes. Here's the only 2% no. When I first met my doctor in Columbia-Presbyterian, I said, "What are the side effects of this medicine?" He said, "Call me when you think you have something, because if I tell you ten side effects, you're going to feel nine." While it's true that too much information could be a little harmful, absolutely, positively research everything. You have to seek out the experts, you have to ask questions, but you have to educate yourself. I went to the library when I first was diagnosed and then read many books on it. Not so much the pharmacology, but just the illness itself.

The different tests, I took five tests when I was in the hospital. One was a CAT scan with contrast. No test showed that I had any seizure activity except for the EEG. The least invasive test, the test that hurt the least, that's the only thing that showed it. You're coming more knowledgeable about it, and about other people who have it now. That's your strength.

Robert Plank: I hadn't even thought about that, like there's two sides of the knowledge coin there, is that there's the medical part and all the facts, and there's also you mentioned, a little bit there, the stories and all about other people who you know you're not alone in this condition. That was important.

Marc Hoberman: I had two close friends in Florida, a close friend or two that I had left behind in New York, and they were very, very, very helpful. You don't need 50. You need whatever your support network is. Family, friends, doctor, whoever. You need that set number and you need to lean on that and embrace that constantly.

Robert Plank: It's not just a one-shot deal, you have to keep going back to that.

Marc Hoberman: Absolutely. This is your support staff, and your support system. It's as important as you being your own support. A lot of people are not their own support system, and that's where I think that I differ from some. My sense of humor comes across in the book a bit, and I try to keep that and that also helped me in my, I don't want to call it recovery, but in my management of my illness.

Robert Plank: Let's talk a little about that. Let's talk about you and your book and the things you do, because we mentioned the book a few times, and I understand that you also do online tutoring and cool stuff like that. Is that right?

Marc Hoberman: Right. It's funny. I only started to do the online tutoring because it was one year, four years ago where it snowed every Tuesday, and I lost all my Tuesday clients, and I was kind of booked and really had no place else to put them, so they started to get pretty upset. I found this online platform, and it's outstanding, because it's a live whiteboard and I write on it and they see it in real time. They write an essay, I see it in real time. My tutors being chemistry and math, they have pads that they use. It goes right online and they love that. I can seem them, they can see me. I

f you walked in the room with your eyes closed, you would think they were in the room with you. It really helps me also in my educational consulting because when I talk to parents about how to organize their children, and do successful studying skills, I can show them together as a family right online. It really has helped a lot. We do a lot of college advisement also. It connects me to people, it's not just about the tutoring, it's about the connecting to people and helping them.

Some people are great study skills, some have no organization skills and time management which many of the colleges say, that one of the major problems of the freshmen certainly, that come in, would be the time management. We help with all that, and I said I have tutors who work for me, so the internet has been a Godsend for many reasons.

Robert Plank: As far as the tutoring goes, is that just something where you get those students from local from you, or are you using the internet to get new people?

Marc Hoberman: It was local, and it branched out, because now people are be able to tell their cousins, who are in, could be Alaska. This guy's good with ACT prep or SAT prep, or he helped Johnny with this, or your cousin had very bad test anxiety and he's helped with that. I also have an expert I work with with test anxiety. I'm able to reach out more, which is the reason I'm doing the radios show, because I want to reach out to people that way too.

It started by accident locally, but I have local kids who were refusing to come back. They live a mile away and they said this is the best. It's technology, I watch you, I turn you off, I go back to bed. It works locally, but I really want to widen the reach, especially for educational consulting. I think that there's a lot frustration and stress on the parents.

I think some parents stress their kids, of course unintentionally, and I've been doing this a long time, and teaching a long time, so I've been a dean of students, the behavioral issues also for six years, so I feel it gives me an opportunity to help them along with their kids' growth academically.

Robert Plank: That's a really important thing it sounds like. Is there a place where people can find out about you and your tutoring online, is there a website for that?

Marc Hoberman: Yes. The website for that is www.gradesuccess.com. The author site for the book is marchoberman.com.

Robert Plank: Okay. MarcHoberman.com and it looks like the search and seizure book is right there. Is the book on Amazon as well?

Marc Hoberman: The book is on Amazon, it's on Kindle, it's going to be available on the iBooks soon. If people go online I could also send them an ebook form, so it's available in many different forms. Certainly Amazon is great, Kindle is instantaneous obviously.

Robert Plank: Yes. Search and Seizure looks a great bookmark, and what I've been hearing over and over from our talk today, the common thread that I keep hearing is that you found something that worked for you, whether that's the tutoring, or managing this illness that you did not expect. It's like in all these situations you find something that works good for you, and then you did a little bit of playing around, or experimenting, or research and it grew on its own, whether it was the speaking about the seizures, or it was about the tutoring, I think there's something really cool to that. To not have any of these big huge plans, but just get a handle on yourself, try some new things, and then grows on its own, especially with the way that this online tutoring has picked up for you.

Marc Hoberman: It's a lifetime commitment. I never stop learning, as i said I've been teaching 33 years. I'm coming out with a book in a couple of months teaching strategies and it teach other teachers. I still go into classrooms where I know teachers have great reputations and I sit and watch them also. You cannot stop learning. You have to always be open to learning and getting more information. Knowledge is power. Period.

Robert Plank: I agree about a billion percent. Thanks for coming on the show Marc, and sharing what you have to share with us. MarcHoberman.com and Search and Seizure is the book. Thanks again.

Marc Hoberman: My pleasure. Thanks.

Robert Plank: Dr. Reggie Padin is the author of an Amazon best selling book called Get Out of the Dumpster, a true story about overcoming limitations, and includes the story of how Reggie went from being a high school dropout, hauling garbage out of a dumpster by hand, to become a PhD, dean of a corporate university at a billion dollar company, a professor, an author, an executive coach, and a spiritual leader. Lots of cool stuff. Welcome to the store Dr. Reggie.

Reggie Padin: Thank you for having me, Robert, it's a pleasure.

Robert Plank: Cool. I'm glad that we have this cool story in front of us that I can't wait to unpack. The thing about this show and the people that I have on, lately I feel like I've had a lot of guests on and what's the most interesting part for me with anyone's story are the places they've failed, the places they've struggled. It seems like lately with my guests I've said where was your low point? Where did you struggle? I've been hearing a lot of, "I've never struggled. It's always come easy for me."

Reggie Padin: What?

Robert Plank: I'm thinking, "What are you talking about?"

Reggie Padin: Wow.

Robert Plank: I love the stories where people get stuck. Can you tell us a little bit about your story personally?

Reggie Padin: I'm going to go in a completely opposite direction because I've struggled a lot. The title of the book, Get Out of the Dumpster is an actual real life story. I was in a dumpster because of the choices I've made as a young man. Primarily the biggest mistake I made as a young person was dropping out of high school. I dropped out of high school, married very young, started having kids right away. It's a recipe for financial disaster when you don't have an education. It so happens that during that time we were experiencing one of the worst recessions ever. It was tough. I had to dig deep and dig myself out of that situation, out of that dumpster which was a big struggle. I'm glad to hear that people that have not faced struggled in their lives. I have. The good thing in what I've learned personally is it doesn't matter the dumpster you're in. I was literally in a dumpster. What I found out is we all face dumpster moments. It doesn't matter the dumpster you're in, you can dig yourself out. It doesn't matter the struggle, you can do it, you can get out.

Robert Plank: Cool, that's a pretty cool message. Tell us about a little bit what happened. You said that you dropped out of high school, you had the kid. What was the situation there?

Reggie Padin: It was a tough situation. Again, I made the mistake of dropping out. The only jobs that I could find without a high school diploma, without an education, was really as a gopher, as a janitor, doing odd things here and there. I ended up working for a company that I didn't know at the time was experiencing financial difficulties, in fact they were going bankrupt. When a company's going bankrupt they have to make cuts. One of the things they cut was the waste management company. I got a call in from my boss one day and he called me to his office and he said, "I need you to do something." In fact he didn't say I need a favor he said, "I need you to do this. Go get one of the company trucks and back it up to every single dumpster around the company and I need you to go in there and haul all that garbage by hand, place it in the back of that truck and drive it to the landfill. That became my job. Can you imagine? I don't know if you've ever walked by a dumpster in the middle of the summer, but it's not a pleasant situation.

Robert Plank: Sounds gross, yeah.

Reggie Padin: It was pretty bad. I was chest deep inside a dumpster. I had to drive it to a landfill which was not a very pleasant thing either, and get in the back of that box truck and dump it in there and leave it in the landfill. Day in and day out for an entire summer I had to do that. I had a wake up call. It was an aha moment for me, it was a moment of questioning is this what I want to do for the rest of my life? I couldn't bear the thought of providing that type of life for my children when I knew I could give them more. There's where I began to journey out of that original dumpster. I created a plan for myself, a long term plan, and found a purpose for life on what I wanted to do, and executed that plan. I've been working at that plan for over 20 years.

It's brought me to this point where I no longer have to do that kind of work. I work in a very good environment and I have a very good situation going on. Probably more importantly than all of that, now I have the opportunity to help other people come out of their dumpster moments. In my book I identified dumpster moments as anything that limits you from getting to the next level. We all have those limitations, they are self-imposed sometimes. Most of the times they're self-imposed, and that we need to overcome. Today I get to help a lot of people identify what those limitations are and devise a plan of action that will get them out of that situation.

Robert Plank: In that kind of situation what was the plan? How did you get yourself out of that?

Reggie Padin: You do a lot of soul searching. Whenever you hit bottom you do a lot of soul searching. I started looking for what was the teaching moment here for me? One of the things that I began asking myself in that situation was what is my purpose? For me, I found out pretty quickly that I was going to use that story and my experiences to help other people. My purpose became helping other people come out of their dumpsters. For me it meant I wanted to be a professor, I wanted to be an instructor, I wanted to be a coach. That meant I had to go back and begin the journey of going to school. I had to go back and get my GED and then go to college. I was the first person in my family to graduate from college. It involved getting 2 master's degrees, it involved getting a doctorate degree. It was a very methodical plan to get from point A to Z.

That means, and this is where a lot of people make the mistake ... A lot of people, especially in today's age of instant gratification and what you see on the internet and television, seems like those are overnight success stories. When you look deep down, they're not overnight success stories. They've worked hard at it for many, many years. I devised a plan for myself that involved almost 18 years of formal education. Probably more importantly, with every step that I took my life got better, my income got better, the opportunities got better, I started meeting the right people and the right situation and going in the right direction, and my income grew.

Today I tell people, look, you look at my life and yes I drive the car of my dreams, I live in South with a multi-million dollar view, I have a pretty comfortable live, but you too can enjoy that kind of life if you want it, if that's what you want. What you have to do is make sure that you find your purpose, create a plan of action, execute that plan over and over and over again. There's other things of course that I mention in the book that help people achieve what it is that they want to achieve in their lives.

Robert Plank: I know that it might be kind of simplifying it here but what's the difference between now and then? When you say the difference is like before you didn't have a real plan and a goal, you were drifting through and being boxed into situations. What would you say is the biggest difference between now and your failure?

Reggie Padin: For me, it's mindset. That's what I tell people, that's the first thing in fact. It's chapter 2 of the book. You have to develop a different mindset. When I look at my life now and I look at that young guy in that dumpster. By the way, I'm not only by any stretch of the imagination. When I look at that guy back then, he had a different mindset, he had a limiting mindset, he had a self-defeating mindset, he had a doubtful mindset. He had a victim mentality, he made excuses, he looked at the problem and not for the solutions. Today the biggest difference is not that I don't experience those things, I still experience doubt and fear and insecurities and real life problems, stuff that I overcome. My mindset is different. Once you have that different, that winning mindset, that mindset that limitations to, can what I can ... Until you develop that you're not going to win.

With that mindset comes a different work ethic, it comes a mindset of execution, of excellence, of keeping momentum, of surrounding yourself with the right people, with the right situations, with the right crowd, with the right resources, but it all starts right there in your mind. If you can overcome that, that's what I tell people if you can overcome whatever limitations you have in your head. I tell people this, it's an illusion. Your mind can't tell the difference between sometimes between reality and what's not real, that's where you take action and say, "This is not going to be a limitation for me."

Robert Plank: How does someone start that process? How does someone get the ball rolling towards fixing all those little things, the limited believe, the self-defeating, self the victim, what's the low hanging fruit there?

Reggie Padin: The biggest thing that people can start working on is finding out what their purpose is. Purpose is going to give you the fuel that you need to make every other kind of change in your life. Until you find your purpose in life you're not going to have enough passion to work on any of those things, to change any of those. For me, of course the purpose, my motivation became my purpose is to be out of here and to help other people, of course help my family, help my children, help myself get out of this situation. That gave me the fuel, it was the catalyst to move me in the right direction. The other thing that you find is once you have your purpose I tell people there's nothing new under the sun. You have experiences out there. You have examples out there of people who have been able to accomplish whatever it is that you want to accomplish.

In my case as an educator, as a coach, whatever you want to call me, motivational speaker, whatever you want to call me. There are already examples of that, of very successful people who have done that in the past. My job at that point becomes what is it that I can learn from these people that have already walked the path. I'll try not to make the same mistakes so I can learn the skills that they've learned, so I can to the resources that they've gone to. Back when I started the internet was non-existent. In fact, it wasn't even in its infancy. Today we have so many resources at our disposal that all you have to do is Google something and you'll find enough information there, enough tools, resources there to get you started going in the right direction.

You talk about a low hanging fruit ... You find out what it is that you want to do in life and then find great examples and mimic and follow those examples until you create your own style, your own way of doing things. That to me as been revolutionary, that I didn't have to reinvent the wheel, the wheel was already out there. All I have to do is take those examples and apply them in my life.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. On one side of it it's like why put yourself through all the same problems that everyone who came before you had.

Reggie Padin: Exactly.

Robert Plank: Then you have to live your own life. There's that matter where you find the case studies, you find the role models.

Reggie Padin: Of course. I tell people, look, there are virtual mentors, partners, and coaches out there. When I first started I had no contacts. I had no partners, no mentors, nobody to really point me in the right direction. I had to do the research. Once I found the examples that I wanted to follow I read everything they put out. I went to their conferences, I went to their conferences, I would go to their workshops, listen to their tapes. This is back in the days where there were actually cassette tapes and VHS tapes, and you would watch them. Today it's even better. They can listen to podcasts. I tell this to people that make the excuse, "I don't have an education, or I don't have money for an education." You can actually go to school, you can go to Stanford right now for free. You won't get the diploma necessarily, but you'll get the knowledge, you'll get that. You can just go and take classes at Stanford or MIT or Harvard, or any of these schools, for free. There's no excuse. There's no excuse for people to really better themselves and to find the tools and the knowledge and the skills necessary to succeed.

Robert Plank: I agree with that about a million percent. I know you have your experiences and you have your book. You mentioned a little bit that you have a little bit of speaking ... Can you tell me about the rest of your business and how your message and your story and your training and you book all kind of relates to that?

Reggie Padin: Right now what I've given myself to is really to teach people, to coach people. I am the dean of a corporate university for a multi-billion dollar company. If you would want to call it my day job, that's what I do. Also, I work as an adjunct professor at several universities where I'm teaching. Primarily freshmen coming in, business skills and communication skills. What I'm really, really passionate about is to be able to take that to the masses. That's the reason why I wrote the book and put it out there for people, that's why I do these kinds of interviews, for people ... Whether it's my book or somebody else's book. If there's something that I say that can help one person overcome their limitations, I've done my job.

A few years ago I started the process of starting an online school that will teach business and technology courses. I'm going through the licencing and certification right now for that school. It's going to be completely online. Very affordable compared to other types of programs out there. That's what I do. Almost 24/7 I'm constantly looking for ways to help people come out of their limiting situations. I have a personal goal. My goal is before I check out of this planet earth I would want to help at least a million people overcome at least one limitation in their lives. That is my goal, that is my purpose, that is my life's mission, that's what I've given myself to.

Robert Plank: Cool. I think that's a pretty good goal and a pretty good message there. As we're winding this down today, is there, I don't even know how to ask this, but a quick exercise or a quick activity, something somebody could do today even in 10-20 minutes to just get over the hump or get one little thing fixed as far as overcoming their limitations?

Reggie Padin: I would be lying in telling people there's a quick fix here. There really isn't. You've been watching the Olympics and probably your audience has been watching the Olympics. These are people who are winning medals and they prepare over 4 years, maybe sometimes for a 10 second race. It's a lot of hard work. The reason why they prepare for 4 years for a 10 second race is because they have found their purpose, they have found their passion. What I can tell people is I can give you some exercises that you can do to find your purpose. Once you find your purpose you'll find the resources. You'll find the fuel that you need in order to get it done.

I tell people, look, get a piece of paper, a notebook, a pen, go to a quiet place. We live in such a noisy world. We live in a world where other people tell us what we are supposed to be and what we're supposed to do. Our parents, and grandparents, and aunts, and uncles, and ministers, and teachers, and so many other people have told us what we need to do. What is it that we want to do? What is it that we feel called to do? That's the other thing. Look, I've a very spiritual person. I believe that every person on this earth has a purpose, has a plan. Find out what that plan is and for that, in order for you to do that you have to quiet yourself and just write all, anything that comes to mind, those things that bring you joy, those things that bring you happiness, those things that bring you fulfillment, those things that bring you satisfaction, those things that motivate you. Write down all those things.

What you're going to see if you spend enough time. That's more than 20 minutes. You'll probably have to spend 3 months doing this, maybe taking one day a week, one night a week and doing this by yourself with nobody else around you. What you're going to find out is after writing and writing you're going to see some patterns. After you create those patterns you're going to see. In my case, what the theme that kept coming back was teaching people, helping people, teaching people, helping people ... My journey has taken me in different directions. I started as a youth worker and then I worked in the inner city and then I was a minister, then I became a professor and a dean of a corporate university. What do all those things have in common? They all are about helping people overcome things in heir lives.

I have felt satisfaction in doing all those things even though one door closed and another opened. They were all aligned with the same purpose because I started moving in that direction. That is probably the one tidbit that I can give people. Find out what your purpose is, the rest will take care of itself.

Robert Plank: Interesting. I like that. I like especially, I'm totally okay with it might take a few weeks or a few months, but I like the idea of don't just. It's one thing to write things down and list stuff. I like that you said see what, as you're making this list see what the connections are and see what the patterns are.

Reggie Padin: Absolutely.

Robert Plank: What comes up over and over again.

Reggie Padin: They will come. If you're patient enough. Listen, what do you have to lose?

Robert Plank: Nothing.

Reggie Padin: If you're in a dumpster anyway, whether it's a real dumpster or an emotional dumpster or a career dumpster or a relationship dumpster, whatever the dumpster is, what do you have to lose? You already, you've hit bottom. Find out, take some time with yourself, with your thoughts. You will be guided, trust me, you will be guided, you will find the connections. Steve Jobs talks about this when he gave that speech at Stanford before passing a few years ago. He says, "What you're going to see is you have to find what you love to do, and go through life. Just keep going in that direction of what you like to do. Then you will be able to connect the dots. You never are able to connect the dots looking forward, it's always looking backwards." My life took me here, here, everywhere. I've lived in so many states and I've done various things. Now connecting the dots looking backwards I've seen that yeah, it's all part of the same purpose, it's all part of the same plan.

Robert Plank: Interesting. That's a pretty good insight there. Along those lines, along the lines of people getting out of the dumpster and staying out of the dumpster could you tell everyone where to find out more about you and get your book and all that good stuff?

Reggie Padin: They can visit my website, reggiepadin.com. They can see more about what we do, or they can go to Amazon to get my book Get Out of the Dumpster. They're going to have the information there. Basically they'll see my page. The book is available right now on Kindle and on paperback. I encourage everybody, every listener to get it. I know that there's something in there for everybody.

Robert Plank: Listening to you I agree too. Thanks for coming on the show, Dr. Reggie. Everyone should go there and get a copy of the book or even get 100 copies. Lots of good stuff, lots of cool breakthroughs. Thanks for the awesome show, Doctor.

Reggie Padin: Thanks for having me, it's been a pleasure.

Robert Plank: Today we're going to talk to a author, speaker, entrepreneur and mother of five. Her name is Kim Ades. She is the president and founder of Frame of Mind coaching and she's recognized as one of North America's foremost experts on performance through thought mastery. So Kim, I'm Robert, welcome to the show.

Kim Ades: I'm really, super excited to be talking to you today. Thank you for having me on your show.

Robert Plank: Heck yeah, I am right there with you. I know nothing about you, so can you fill us in on your website, yourself, what you do, what makes you unique and special?

Kim Ades: I live in Toronto. I have five kids, as you mentioned. I run a coaching company called Frame of Mind coaching, we coach the highly driven population that is moving and shaking and highly frustrated. That's who we coach and we really look at their thinking and how their thinking is impacting their results. One of the big things we do when we coach people is we ask them to journal every single day for the duration of the coaching period and they share their journals with their coach. We go back and forth every single day. It's pretty intense and it's very very intimate.

Robert Plank: Cool, so how did you come across this? What's basically your journey been? How were things out of balanced or misaligned years ago versus where you've come, where you are now?

Kim Ades: I mean, historically, I used to own a software company. We used to build simulation-based assessments and the purpose of those assessments were to help companies make better hiring decisions. One of the pieces of my past is that we conducted hundreds of thousands of assessments and collected a lot of interesting data. The data said to us that there was really one main distinction between top performers and others. It didn't matter what field, it didn't matter what level of job we were looking at or what industry and that one distinction was if that person had a higher degree of emotional resilience, their likelihood of success was dramatically higher than the rest of the population. So that's one part of my past. The other part of my past is more personal. I was married, had a tough marriage towards the end, ended up getting divorced and my life exploded.

I owned my last company with my ex-husband, ended up having to sell my shares and I had to recreate my life and one of the ways I did it was through the process of journaling. I journaled just to get everything out of my brain, all the worries, all the fears, all the anger, all the frustration, all the anxiety, all of it. I started to realized that journaling is very very powerful tool to help people move to a new place. That's how I, when I started Frame of Mind Coaching, I incorporated journaling from the get-go.

Robert Plank: I mean, with all this journaling stuff, I kind of go back to it every now and then. I always hear about it, I hear it's this good thing to do, but I don't have a very good system or structure to do it consistently. Do you have some kind of formula like is there a set like a time of day you do it, is there a set prompt or is it a set length of wordage, length of time? What's the process for this journaling stuff for you?

Kim Ades: There's so many different things. When we journal with our clients, they journal every day. They can pick whatever time of day they like. A lot of my clients journal right before bed. It's a funny thing, but that's when they journal. Their whole day is past and now they're doing a download so I have that. I have another set of clients that journal right in the morning, but remember this is journaling with your coach, so every time they journal, their journal comes to me as their coach and I read and respond to the journal. So imagine a journal that talks back. It's like you're in this dialogue every single day, so it's a very very rich experience. Let's say you don't have a coach, let's say you're just journaling. One of the things that we do is we provide people with the opportunity to journal on a regular process and we give them journaling prompts, so that's a program called FOM or Frame of Mind Essentials.

Every three days you get a new journaling prompt and why every three days? Because we give you a little bit of time to process what you're writing on the first day because sometimes you need to think about the question you're being asked. I encourage you to access prompt somehow, through Frame of Mind Coaching or otherwise there's lots out there, lots available. If you don't want to do any of those things and you just want to do free flow journaling, here's the formula I recommend and you guys can write this down. It's one sentence. It's very easy. It's dump, dump, and dump the dump. So what is that? You have a lot going on, you have a lot on your mind so you want to write it down. You want to unload. When you think you're done, keep going, keep dumping, right?

Robert Plank: Right.

Kim Ades: At the very end of your dumping, what you want to do is literally write down one sentence down that says, it's time to turn myself around. At that point what you want to do is say okay, so what do I want? Where am I going? What am I hoping for? What am I grateful for? At that point, you're literally turning your mindset, your thinking, your orientation towards what you want. Your journal needs to be a tool. What is the tool supposed to do? Always help you point in the right direction.

Robert Plank: Well cool, so would you say all this journaling stuff, is this just one piece of many or is journaling your main focus for this kind of stuff?

Kim Ades: Well, what I do is I help people start to become aware of their thinking. When I coach people, I coach them for six months, but the first ten weeks are the most important. That's the foundation so there's a call once a week and I record every call, so that's a piece of it too. Why? Because when people can listen to themselves and hear how they show up, they can hear the language they use, the stories they tell, the perspective they have. They can tell what they're repeating over and over again. They start to pick up the patterns of their thinking and how some of those patterns keep them trapped and stuck. It's listening to yourself, it's writing, it's re-reading what you wrote, it's answering questions, it's doing some reflection, it's challenging your beliefs, it's all of that.

Robert Plank: So would you say that for some people going through this process is pretty tough, pretty painful if they haven't done it before?

Kim Ades: No, actually, I mean there are some painful moments, but it's generally not painful. It's kind of like being unleashed from self-imprisonment. That's what it is, so that's not painful at all. It's really actually a really joyous, exciting, freeing journey. It's remarkable. People feel lighter, happier. Almost all of the clients report one thing in common and it's at the end of their first ten weeks, people look at them and say, "You look different. Did you get a haircut? You look taller" or something. They start to physically look different because they're so much lighter.

Robert Plank: Well cool, so it looks like a lot of what you do to help people is get them to be self aware, right, I guess. By doing the journaling ... Oh, go ahead.

Kim Ades: It's more than being self aware, it's identifying the thinking that is keeping them trapped or stuck or causing them problems. I'll give you a perfect example. I have a client who has a belief and the belief is that everybody, he works in a small city, and he believe everybody in his city does not want his success. That belief slows him down. That belief causes him to be defensive and experience a lot of friction with other business owners in his neighborhood. It doesn't help him succeed. It hurts him. I'll give you another example. Another client of mine has the belief that he'll never match up to his parent's level of success and no matter how hard he tries that he just doesn't have what it takes in order to succeed. That kind of thinking also erodes his likelihood of success.

Robert Plank: Interesting. It seems like, with the right tools, it could be something that could be easy to fix, but if we don't even know that that problem's there, but it will just block everything it sounds like.

Kim Ades: It blocks everything. It's funny that you use the word tool. It's not so much of that "tools to fix it," it's about challenging your fundamental thinking. We operate with thinking, but a lot of that thinking is kind of self conscientious. We're not aware of it. The question is first becoming aware of it, putting it on the table, and then challenging the heck out of it. You used the word heck, I like that word, I'm going to take it.

Robert Plank: Go for it.

Kim Ades: Challenging the heck out of the thoughts that you have that simply don't make sense. We invent our view of the world. We make things up. We make stories up and if we have the ability to make stories up, why are we making stories up that make it harder for us to succeed? I mean, it could be that I'm not lovable. It could be like I had a call with a client the other day that said, "I'm terrified that I'm going to be poor. I'm afraid of poverty. I saw what happened to my parents and that scares the living daylights out of me, so I'm very cheap and I'm constantly living with the fear of loss." Well, I don't know. How does that manifest, right, how does that show up? It means that he's not making decisions that propel him forward. He's always tight-fisted and not taking any valuable risks and he's always scared. That's not going to lead him to success.

Robert Plank: So with these different clients that you work with, do they all have a common problem or is there a common threat with all these people that you're helping out?

Kim Ades: Everybody has a different story or set of stories. One person may have a conflict with their partner, another person may have had a really tough childhood, another person may be very very health conscious and that's all he thinks about. Another person might be a perfectionist, another person might get annoyed easily, another person might have a problem with rage. Actually I had a client recently who started off his coaching process by saying, I'm a rager. I said what does that mean and he said that means I get really really mad. I throw things when I'm mad, I punch things, I break things, I get mad and I yell and I scream and the house shakes. I've never hurt anybody, but I'm a rager.

Well, ten weeks later, that just doesn't exist. It's gone, it's finished, it's over and the question is what caused his rage? The cause of his rage was he believed that other people's behaviors were a good reason for him to lose it all the time. He always, constantly felt offended by the actions and behaviors of others. He started to learn that the actions of others had very little to do with him. So yes, what we see is different stories and we also see a different set of beliefs. However, at the core of it, the issue is, what does someone believe to be true about themselves and the world around them and others? In a sense, everybody's journey is very unique, but it's parallel, it's similar.

Robert Plank: Okay, that makes a lot of sense. With all these people that you've been helping and all these different techniques that you have, do you have anything lately that's been very excite- ... Either a technique to help people or a current project you're working on? I mean, what kind of new and cutting edge thing has you excited right now?

Kim Ades: Well, there's a couple things. Number one is I'm doing a lot of speaking. I'm out there working with organizations and teaching leaders that acquiring coaching skills is a really critical part of being a great leader. So, I'm working with a lot of leaders on their coaching skills. That's kind of cool and exciting. The other thing is, you asked for techniques or tools, and if your listeners are up for it, I'll give them an assignment. Do I have permission from you to do that?

Robert Plank: Yeah, go for it. Heck yeah.

Kim Ades: Heck yeah! So the assignment is this. It's a journaling assignment. So write this down. Grab a piece of paper and a pen and write this down. It's three questions. Question number one, what do you really really want more than anything? The reason I ask for two really's is because it's what do you want opposed to what anybody else wants. So think about it, what do you really really want? Question two is, how would your life be different if you had what you really really wanted? What does it mean to you and would it be okay if you didn't ever get what you really really wanted? Question number three is, so what's stopping you from having what you really really want right now? What I want you to do is when you answer those three questions, I want you to send them to me, Kim@Frameofmindcoaching.com and what I will do is assign your journal to one of my coaches and that coach will reach out to you and schedule a time to review your journal. That exercise has a profound impact on anybody who does it.

Robert Plank: That's cool. I mean, I'll fill that in, I'll send that over to you too.

Kim Ades: Perfect and if you do that then I will schedule myself with you, how about that?

Robert Plank: That's the VIP treatment. That's the red carpet treatment right there.

Kim Ades: That's right.

Robert Plank: Cool, so how about we switch gears a little bit and I'm glad you brought that up actually because you have basically this skill you have and you have this problem that you're using to help people. Now you set up this website so is that technique just mentioned there where you get on podcast, you ask people to send in the three answers to these things, is that a way you have to generate leads and kind of build your business online?

Kim Ades: Yeah, I mean definitely podcasts is a lead generation tool. If you go to frameofmindcoaching.com, we also have an assessment that people fill in and those assessments get distributed to our coaches and people get the opportunity to talk to a coach and review their assessments. It's a powerful call, but that also gives our coaches an opportunity to share the coaching program and enroll people into coaching. There's another lead generation tool as well. Yeah, we do podcasts, I do speaking engagements. When I'm in front of people and I'm talking to them, I offer them a white paper at which point I send it to them later so they have to give me their contact information. I add them to our database, we send them newsletters on a weekly basis and so those newsletters involve client testimonials, history, stories, and all kinds of things.

Robert Plank: I'm kind of looking at the website and you're mentioning that there are different coaches and like a team and stuff and so what's the reason for that? What's the reason for having a group as opposed to just you doing the coaching?

Kim Ades: Well I never wanted to just be a single person service provider. I think of myself as a business owner and so how do I leverage me, right? If I'm the only one doing the coaching, I have a ceiling in terms of time. How much time can I give? It's kind of like being a dentist or a doctor or a lawyer, I'm trading my time for money. I never wanted to do that, I always wanted to grow a business. So how you leverage yourself as a business owner, A. You can have other people who do it too. That's a form of leverage. Another form of leverage is to have products and services that don't require your physical involvement. For example, FoM essentials is a self guided journaling program where people come on, they purchase a monthly, what do you call it, recurring fee, and they get journaling prompts and they submit their journals to a coach up to twice a month for review. Now I have this combination of leverage, right?

The other thing that we have is, we built a journaling software, journaling platform to serve out clients. Well, that journaling platform is a independent unit and we license out that product and white label it for other speakers, coaches, trainers, membership groups, anyone who wants to incorporate journaling in their training or culture building process.

Robert Plank: Did you come across any difficulty like getting anyone else involved with this? Was there any amount of chicken and the egg kind of thing or because you made the software, was that like easier to get people on board?

Kim Ades: What do you mean by that? Did I have trouble getting people to journal?

Robert Plank: I mean like the other coaches like why would other coaches jump in as opposed to just doing it themselves?

Kim Ades: Oh yeah, this is my story, this is my kind of path is that what's happened for me is that people have gone through coaching and they've had such an extraordinary experience with the brand, the process, the methodology, the philosophy, all of that. They've had such an overwhelmingly positive personal experience that at the end of their coaching, they say, man, I want more. How do I become a coach? Can you train me? So we literally certify coaches in the Frame of Mind coaching method and then at the end of that process there are some of them that are just superstars and we want to keep them as part of the team. That's how you see those coaches. I don't just go find coaches out there in the world and say hey, do you want to join me? I don't do that.

Robert Plank: So that's cool. There's actually a path for your students to become their own coaches?

Kim Ades: Yes, exactly. I hand pick the ones that will stay with the group and the rest go off and do their own thing.

Robert Plank: With this certification program thing that you have, is there any amount of like a testing process or a probationary period? Do you have any kind of work flow for that?

Kim Ades: Yeah, of course. First they, every one of my coaches go through coaching first. It's mandatory. There's no discussion around that and then they come into Toronto, where I live, for training. They come in for four days for a pretty intense training where they learn the mechanics of coaching, like the methods. It's called FoM methods. There's another piece called foundations which is the philosophy, the meaning, how it got built. After that, if they are selected because I'm watching the whole time, I see how they show up, I see their ability to absorb the information and the approach, I see how they read and respond to journals because we give them that as exercises and practice. I see how well they get it. I see whether it's a natural fit for them or if it's really a stretch. I see all of that. I see their level of commitment too and their dedication and how badly they want it and those are the people I work with. If those people show up, then they have to coach a certain number of hours and then have an exam and then they get certified with me in my company.

Robert Plank: That's cool and I always like thinking about that kind of stuff. We all have this kind of raw talent or kind of almost like an artistic way of looking at something and thinking it through. I really like just taking what it is what you do and systematizing it, stepping it out, and replicating it and scaling it. I think that's pretty awesome.

Kim Ades: Yeah, it's not that usual in the coaching industry to do that, but most of what we do, we try to build it in such a way that it's scalable. Eventually, even certification, I'll get someone else to step in for training. It won't have to be exclusively me.

Robert Plank: Okay, cool, yeah. I like everything that you've been sharing today about taking this thing that's been around for every like coaching or therapy in whatever kind of way you want to put it in and just putting a new spin on it and using teamwork and using this whole internet thing to get more eyeballs on your business and stuff like that.

Kim Ades: That's right.

Robert Plank: Before I let you go and before we wind down and before we ask where people can find out about you, is there just one thing or one message you should tell everyone who's looking to turn things around and fix stuff? Is there one universal message you tell to anyone who's just trying to be better?

Kim Ades: Can I give you two universal concepts?

Robert Plank: Perfect, let's do it.

Kim Ades: For people who are in business and they're trying to grow their businesses, and they're trying to do ten million things at the same time, what I would suggest to you is, don't do ten million things. Do three and just narrow it down. There are a million ways somebody can generate leads, but if you attempt to do those million things right up front, you only have so much energy and resources to apply to those million things. Pick a few and be amazing in those things. For example, with me, I really do a lot of podcasts. I enjoy them, they're fun, they're easy, they're low stress and I get to be in my zone. I choose that as my method of lead generation. Choose one thing and stick to it.

On a personal level, so if anybody wants to change, my suggestion is this and it's a pretty big one, don't look out there to do something different in order to change. People often think that they have to take massive order to change and I would say to you that if you take massive action without first figuring out what your orientation is, like where are you standing, where are you heading, where are you facing? What's going on with you? You have to do the personal work first before you take massive action. I can't express that enough. Most coaches move you to action and I would say don't stop, don't go crazy, don't take massive action. Stop and figure out how your thinking is either propelling you forward or holding you back and if it's holding you back, change your orientation and then take massive action. Do that work first.

Robert Plank: That's some pretty powerful stuff. It kind of makes you think a little bit. Thanks for being on the show, Kim. Thanks for sharing everything that you have to share with us. Could you tell us about your websites, where people can find you, all that good stuff?

Kim Ades: FrameofMindCoaching.com, there's a free downloadable book there. There's an assessment that I encourage everybody to take and again that will help you identify what your orientation is. Where are you standing right now? How are things going in your life? It will give you an opportunity to talk to one of our coaches who will review the assessment with you. Lots and lots of things to look at. We've got plogs, past podcasts, lots of cool things on the site so please visit us.

Robert Plank: Awesome. FrameOfMindCoaching.com. So thanks again Kim for being on the show and for sharing what you have to share with us.

Robert Plank: We're here with Tasha Scott and she has a new book that has ignited a movement, the "Don't Limit Me" movement. The movement challenges women who feel stuck, living their lives on other people's terms to take action and stop self-living. Tasha, welcome to the show. I'm excited to hear about how everyone can become their best selves and kick some butt.

Tasha Scott: Thank you Robert, I'm excited to be here.

Robert Plank: Tell me about yourself. Tell me about this "Don't Limit Me" and what makes you special.

Tasha Scott: Sure, sure. Well I tell people all the time that I have been an entrepreneur all my life, literally it feels like because my first business was a paper route when I was in the eighth grade. Fast forward after just going through life, growing up, I ended up enrolling in court reporting school and learning how to be a court reporter. That's literally where my business was born, right after I graduated from court reporting school. In this journey, Robert, I was married. The first year of business was really good. In fact, I hit six figures my first year as a court reporter. What people didn't know though was that in the midst of business looking really good, my personal life was a mess. There was a huge disconnect between what looked like a public success and a private failure.

There was a lot of lessons that I learned that year because one, I didn't have a plan for the growth of the business. All I knew was that I had a dream to be an entrepreneur. I had my goals and my vision, and I was ready to go. I accomplished everything that I wanted to do that first year, but I felt empty because of all of the turmoil that was happening at home in the form of marriage problems, financial problems, insecurity, all of those things that you would've thought money would've been the solution, but it wasn't. One of the things that I did, Robert, is I reached out for help. For me, help came in the form of a life coach.

This life coach, when I reached out to her, she literally took me for six months. We had sessions over the phone, we met every other week. What I found out was that I was hiding behind a mask. I knew how to perform. I knew how to function, but I didn't know how to live. That's why I had the huge disconnect. I didn't really know Tasha outside of the business, outside of the role. What she did is she literally just walked with me and helped me to face some fears, and some of those fears had even stemmed from childhood. Fear of rejection, fear of failure, fear of success. All of those things we had to walk through and I had to learn to take responsibility for me. I had to get out of victim mode and stop thinking that it was everybody else's fault why I wasn't happy, why I was miserable, all those things including my husband.

She really helped me to get my want-to back from life because when I faced my fears, I realized that it wasn't as bad as it seems. It literally just meant me owning it. It took me owning it, facing it, and moving forward. What happened, and I'm giving you the Reader's Digest version, was as I started owning my stuff basically, facing my fears, I started gaining confidence again. I started taking responsibility. I started to get to know Tasha. Literally what happened is as a result of my journaling, that's where my book was born, the "Don't Limit Me" book because one day I looked myself in the mirror, Robert, and I said, "Tasha, don't limit me." I realized for the first time I was the only one holding me back. I had some good opportunities ahead, but I was self-sabotaging. For the first time, I said, "No, don't limit me Tasha." With the help of this life coach, my life started turning around. In fact, my marriage was restored. My business started growing because it was growing under a healthier leadership, which was me.

Robert Plank: I love all that about that story, especially because what we usually hear is like someone struggling, someone struggling, they don't quite make it. It sounds like you jumped ahead pretty quickly but then it turned into, what's that saying? "Money makes you more of what you are." We always think that having a bunch of money, like you said, is the key to all our problems. It'll fix everything, but then you get to that point and it's almost like a combination of "now what?" and then all these other problems that were just really tiny now are 10 times, 20 times the size. "Now what the heck am I going to do about it?"

Tasha Scott: That's right. What happened in my case is the money that I was making, the business growth really exposed my fears more than anything. It was like because of the fear of success, I was afraid. "Can I really handle this?"

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. Speaking along those lines about the fear of failure, the fear of success, one that I like that you mentioned a couple minutes ago was about you owning your problems.

Tasha Scott: Right.

Robert Plank: I think that I struggle with that many times and I have to remind myself too that if things aren't ideal with the partner or with the job or with whatever kind of relationship, it's really easy, almost natural, to blame the other person.

Tasha Scott: Oh yeah.

Robert Plank: Then I think, "Well, whatever economic situation, whatever relationship, I put myself there and I'm choosing to keep myself there." Can you talk a little bit about that, about how you overcame the blaming and the self-sabotage and becoming more aware?

Tasha Scott: Oh absolutely. You're talking to somebody who is a recovering victim.

Robert Plank: I like that term.

Tasha Scott: Yeah, because it was all my husband's fault. The reason why our marriage couldn't get together. It was my parents' fault, it was my friends' fault because they didn't understand me. Everybody was to blame. Then this coach, she's the one who called me out. I told her, "I don't know why people always think I have it all together" and da da da. She said, "Well Tasha, have you told them any different?" What she did is she put the mirror in front of me, and she said, "I hear what you're saying." This is what she was saying in so many words, "Let's talk about you. What part are you playing in all of this?" Here's what she said: "Even if they are wrong, why are you putting up with it? You do have a choice."

Robert Plank: Oh yeah. What you allow is what will continue.

Tasha Scott: That's right. She used a great illustration. She said, "Imagine I'm sitting across from you and I'm kicking you leg. You might say 'Please don't do that' and I say 'Well I want to.' You keep kicking my leg and I say 'Please stop' and you say 'No, this is fun.' The only way it's going to stop and because you're persisting is if I get up and walk away."

Robert Plank: Or you could kick back, right?

Tasha Scott: That's true, yes.

Robert Plank: It sounds like a lot of what helped you is that you had this coach, this neutral third party to call you on your stuff. When you need a wake-up call, someone who wasn't someone who had their own agenda, who wasn't someone who was trying to help themselves or hurt you. Just someone who said, "Okay, well I'm seeing everything that you're doing here, Tasha, and here's what I'm seeing based on your actions and here's what I think needs to change as far as the direction you're going."

Tasha Scott: That's right on, Robert. I've specifically said I need somebody who has no emotional connections to me, to my husband, to my community. In fact, my life coach, she's in Pennsylvania. I'm in Alabama. We spoke by phone. There was no reason for me to lie or be dishonest or try to filter anything. She was a stranger and for some reason, it was easier for me to unleash and allow her to help me without taking sides or anything like that.

Robert Plank: I like that what you just mentioned is that the lying stopped. I think that it's really easy to fall into the habit of just having a few lies here and there. You lie a little bit to get ahead or you lie to yourself about, "Well I'm going to get all these things accomplished today." Before you know it, there's so many little tidbits of lying happening that you almost don't take yourself seriously.

Tasha Scott: That's right. It's pretty scary when you can't even live with you anymore. That's a miserable place to be. That's why I reached out for help because I was at a point of desperation.

Robert Plank: Anyone else who's at that point of desperation other than getting a life coach? What's the second thing someone could do to get out of that hole?

Tasha Scott: Journaling was a big thing for me because I would say my journaling was my no-judgement zone. Sometimes it's easier to express yourself in writing because when you're writing it out, you're writing out those thoughts that you're afraid to speak out of your mouth. Journaling was a really huge thing for me. Also, I'm a person of faith but ironically in that time period, I would say I was even mad at God. I would say honestly what really triggered everything for me was having the life coach and the journaling. Those were the two big factors because she even helped me to deal with unresolved anger issues.

Robert Plank: You're saying that she uncovered things that you didn't even know you had.

Tasha Scott: Absolutely. She challenged me in a very gently, non-judgmental way.

Robert Plank: Whoa, is there a thunderstorm there?

Tasha Scott: It is. It just started raining like crazy.

Robert Plank: Aw man, and it's perfect timing because you're talking about all the turmoil and all of the problems you've been though. Eventually the storms always clear, right?

Tasha Scott: That's right. There's always sunshine after the rain.

Robert Plank: Once all of the stuff gets cleaned out, which is a necessary process sometimes. I'm glad that you brought up and reminded me of journaling because that's one of those things where it's like I know I should do it and probably once ever one or two months, I'll go and fish it out of the drawer. I'll just write a couple of sentences or two. That comes in handy especially if I'm feeling like really stuck or to that hopeless point of despair like I've been getting too stressed out. It seems so simple, but it's so crazy how just putting it into a few words about what I'm feeling, what I'm afraid of, what I want. Just putting that down, it's magical. I can't believe how simple and yet how effective that is.

Tasha Scott: That's right. She taught me how to stop stuffing my issues. In other words, when things were happening, starting to face them as they were happening. My problem was I would go and hide my head in the sand and not face my real issues, but that only made things worse. She taught me how to speak up, how to confront without being disrespectful to yourself or to other people, how to set proper boundaries. She taught me the power of saying "no" because I was a people pleaser. That's a bad combination when you're in business and you're a people pleaser. That's a disaster waiting to happen.

Robert Plank: Oh yeah. Then you get too many commitments, spread too thin, all that stuff.

Tasha Scott: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Robert Plank: Could you unpack that a little bit? How to be more of a confronter, how to be more assertive, how to set those boundaries and say "no less?"

Tasha Scott: Sure. I'll start with within the confines of a relationship. I'll use my husband and I for example. What I did was I started having to learn how to communicate without getting emotional and all this stuff because it was like a dance. We were starting to be so predictable with each other. I would say something and he would think I was attacking and all this. I learned how to communicate truth in a respectful way. In other words, if he said something that hurt my feelings, I can say, "That hurt my feelings" without attacking him and him feeling like he's the most awful person in the world. That was in the confines of the marriage relationship, but then when it came to clients I had to learn that especially in what I'm doing as a coach that I am not somebody's savior. She taught me that by example. She could listen to me and she could be that voice of reason, but at the end of the day the responsibility and the choice was mine to make.

A lot of it, if I had to put it in a word, was codependency. I had to stop making other people's problems my problems but still give people permission to be themselves too and not be judgmental, all those different things.

Robert Plank: I like that thinking. I like all of that. Cool. As far as somebody trying to get their life together or trying to up their game or any of those kinds of things, aside from what we've talked about what's a huge mistake that you see these people making over and over when they're trying to either have better relationships or be more assertive? What's the common mistake no matter what they've read or what they've heard? What do people keep doing that just annoys the heck out of you?

Tasha Scott: There's two extremes. One extreme is you go all the way quiet and you just withdraw. What I call that is suffering in silence. You try to cope and muster up all the willpower you can to deal with it. We were not made to be islands; we were made for connection with other people. That's one extreme, is withdrawing all the way to where you think, "Nobody will get me, nobody will understand me." The other extreme is talking to every and anybody thinking that they're going to just rescue you from this situation. I would say the mistakes are both extremes.

Robert Plank: I would say that I'm more of like the quiet, withdrawing kind of person. Both my parents, especially my dad, were the talk-to-anybody. I think the problem with that was that he would just end up figuring out four or five problems. I guess it's good to tell one person, but he would tell everybody. He would call the same list of 20 people and all day long just bitch and moan about the same exact problems he had, and just get worked up every single time and not really get any kind of resolution there.

Tasha Scott: Yeah. All it does is cause confusion.

Robert Plank: What's the answer if you're one of those extremes?

Tasha Scott: Find a safe place. What I mean by that is now, I'm in a place where I have a support system. My support system, I can count on one hand. I believe we all need people who know the real us. I have my coaches, but I also have accountability partners. I've got two ladies that I would say, "These are my accountability partners that know the real Tasha." Of course my husband. I talk to him, but you know how it is sometimes. Guys don't understand everything about the woman.

Robert Plank: Right. All we can do is listen.

Tasha Scott: Yes, so I have to have my girl time.

Robert Plank: I hear you.

Tasha Scott: I would say have your support system, and it doesn't need to be a whole lot of people.

Robert Plank: I like that thinking. I think that up until now, I hadn't really thought about that in those terms, that in our personal life we have our partner, our friends, our family. We have people that we can bounce things off of, but a lot of times especially in our business, we don't have that kind of person. What you're saying is even if you don't have a partner in your own business and things like that, you can go and hire an accountant building partner or hire just a coach in general to get you to where you're going to set up that structure.

Tasha Scott: That's right. Even in addition to the coach, you can have, some people call them a "business bestie," somebody that's up here that is success-minded, like-minded like you are that you can talk to in between the sessions with your coach.

Robert Plank: Oh, I like that. Just to have a bouncing board or something to throw ideas off against.

Tasha Scott: Yes, that's right. What I've found is that as I have that support system in place, it helps me when fear comes, when doubt and insecurity try to come I am able to process it now which is not what I did in the past. In the past, I would just worry and meditate on all the negativity. It was like toxin.

Robert Plank: It seems like one of those things where if it's left untreated, it just grows and grows and takes you over. It's almost as if you would fix the problem early, it wouldn't have been such a big deal but then because you let it sit and fester, everything else gets bad and you have this huge problem to fix.

Tasha Scott: That's exactly right. I say everybody needs a support system.

Robert Plank: Amen to that. That makes a lot of sense to me. Cool. A lot of great things you shared with us today, Tasha. I really like your story. I like all the court reporter stuff and how you jumped to this unexpected area where you had all this money and had to figure out how to figure out the rest of you. It sounds like the number one thing you told people is to get a coach, number two thing is to journal so you have that no-judgment zone, and then communicate without getting emotional. That way, you can share the truth about your own feelings so your stuff doesn't get ignored but you're also being respectful.

Tasha Scott: That's right.

Robert Plank: If people want to find out more about you, your books, your products, your coaching, where can they find out about you?

Tasha Scott: Sure. My website is TashaMScott.com. They can definitely find out a lot about me there. One of the things I vowed to do because I got that kind help, I decided to go and become a certified life coach myself so that I could be that safe place for others, especially women in business.

Robert Plank: Nice, and especially because you've gone through all the things that they're now probably going through.

Tasha Scott: That's right.

Robert Plank: Awesome. TashaMScott.com, can't wait to check it out and see what's there.

Tasha Scott: Yes, thank you so much for this opportunity.

Robert Plank: Glad to have you on.

Robert Plank: Our guest today is Melissa Krivachek, and she has written five books and is a three-time international bestselling author. She's been honored by the National Council of American Executives at the top one percent of U.S. executives in both 2015 and 2016, has been featured on the cover of Evolution Magazine, all kinds of cool stuff. Melissa, welcome to the show.

Melissa Krivachek: Thanks Rob for having me.

Robert Plank: I know literally nothing at all about what it is that you do, so what is it that you do?

Melissa Krivachek: I love helping people not only tap into their passion but monetize it and help them realize, you can have everything you want all at the same time, love, success, happiness, money, and clients.

Robert Plank: That's a big promise. How do you do it?

Melissa Krivachek: Well, you have to focus on one area at a time, so everyone comes to me for sales. The reality is they think they want sales, and they ultimately do want sales. The thing that's holding them back is something in their personal life from keeping them moving towards the direction of whatever their goal might be, if it's more money for the new house, the new car, whatever that is. I'll give you can example. I've got a client in Canada. She had initiated a divorce with her husband. As a result, he committed suicide. Every sales decision she made was based on his approval, except he wasn't alive to give her his approval.

Now after four months of working together, she's made well over a hundred thousand dollars. She's sold all of his assets because she held onto them like they were going to make or break her. She's relaunched both of her companies, and she's traveling the world. Now she doesn't have a home base, which is amazing. I've had clients have all kinds of different problems in their personal life, which carries into their professional life. The thing that they're always trying to solve is how do we get more clients, how do we get more sales, how do we drive revenue.

Robert Plank: You're going after the underlying causes, like a therapist or life coach almost.

Melissa Krivachek: I'm not a therapist. I have a background in clinical psychology and years and years of sales leadership and management experience, like sixteen years. I love sales. I'm super passionate about it and sort of obsessed. At the end of the day, I know every aspect of my own life that I've changed. I've gone from over three hundred pounds to almost a hundred and ninety pounds, dropping from fifty-seven percent body fat to thirty percent and going from having no money, repossessed car, fifty grand in debt, five maxed out credit cards, six days in jail, and being homeless for thirty-six days, to running a multimillion dollar company over the past seven years. All of this has transpired because you have to do it step by step, and you have to find the underlying causes of what's holding you back from obtaining whatever it is that you want.

Robert Plank: Dang. Being in jail, that's pretty scary. How did you get from there to here? What are those steps to fixing all of it?

Melissa Krivachek: Well the first thing is just realize what you need to fix. You have a mountain of debt, don't conquer the entire mountain at one time. Do you have tons of weight that you need to lose, don't try and think that you're going to go to the gym for three hours a day and you're going to lose the weight. Pick one area of your life whether it's sales, health, finances, your relationships, your self-esteem or confidence, and then just focus on that one area and put all your time, effort, energy, resources into the area. Then move onto the next area because every area affects the other areas.

For example, if you have a really shitty sex life or if you have really bad relationships, it's going to affect your sales. If you have a lot of excess weight and you're not drinking water, getting sleep, or taking care of yourself, that's going to affect your sales. Everything affects your sales. At the end of the day, it's like a realization of what problems am I carrying, and how much baggage can I free myself from so I can lighten the amount of work that I have to do be as productive and as effective as possible in people's lives.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. I know that you're probably this way too sometimes, like I'll have a down day or a down week, and I'll just be like, something's just not working. When I actually think about it, there was something going on that maybe some loose end I hadn't taken care of or some bad relationship or friendship that I just thought I could put off to the side or ignore. It was affecting everything else, and I didn't even realize it.

Melissa Krivachek: Oh a hundred percent. Just like in March, I actually got rid of my best friend. We had been best friends for six years. I got rid of the relationship that I had, which I had for two years. As a result, then I freed myself up from all of the baggage that these guys were carrying. We don't oftentimes realize how much someone else's energy and how much someone else's baggage is affecting us. If you hire people with a lot of baggage, let it known in your organization that you're going to be the one carrying that baggage because you took on the responsibility of hiring those people. The same is true in your personal relationships. The same is true for the people that you go to the gym with, your sex life, everything is dependent on how many problems somebody brings to you and how much of a decision maker and problem solver you are.

Robert Plank: That's a really simple message, but at the same time, even though it's simple, I can't believe sometimes I forget about that or I miss that. When I was a kid when the Bill Clinton, Monica Lewinsky stuff was going down, that's forever ago, I remember there was someone on the news, someone who was similar to you, some kind of advisor or business booster kind of person. I'll never forget that this person said, "Well, if you have this," like you said, "the baggage or the dangling thread in your life, it's not only going to affect everything else, but the biggest thing it will affect is your creativity." I'll never forget that because I'm thinking out of all the things, sometimes we have a bad attitude, but man, if that makes it so that I can't even do what I need to do in my business, that's really scary. If just this thing that you think is just, like you said, some kind of like vampire type of friend or someone who takes advantage, you think it's something that you can manage, but it just seems like it takes over sometimes.

Melissa Krivachek: Well, it's not only that. You look at the things around you in your life, and the things on your wall, and the things in your office, and your own cars and such. Let me give you an example here. My best friend, like if you walked into her home, you would see tons of stuff everywhere. Her life was not simplified. It was overly complex. If we're going to travel together for a week, she would bring five months worth of stuff. She'd want to accomplish these goals, but she would never be working towards them, only walking away from them because she had all this budding herself down. If you look at the things that are on your wall and the things that are in your office or wherever you are, in the space that you are right now, you realize what you value.

You could be valuing faith or family or friends or your business, or you could be valuing video games and alcohol and great parties on the weekend and just things that don't progress you forward. We have to look at every single area of our life, and the simplest place to start is just look in your closet. Do you have a hundred different options or do you have ten different outfits that could create a hundred different combinations? The same is true for your fridge. Do you have a lot of garbage, pizza, pop, all that kind of stuff, or are you doing greens, proteins, water, and really healthy stuff? What you put in is what you're going to get out. The same is true in your business. If you're doing marketing and sales and all of the different things that go on to run a business and you have no team and no system, it's unfortunate, but you're going to go out of business.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. It's like if you don't have some kind of system, routine, structure, then it might work for awhile out of luck I guess, but then eventually that's going to burn you out pretty quick.

Melissa Krivachek: Well that's the thing. Everybody thinks that it just takes hard work. It doesn't take hard work because you can only work hard for so long, and you feel like you want to die, kill somebody. It just sucks.

Robert Plank: I'm looking around my office, and I only have a couple of things on my wall. I only have a couple things on my desk. What does that say about me? Does that mean I value simplicity? What's the hidden message?

Melissa Krivachek: For sure, but what are those things?

Robert Plank: On the desk, I just have a phone, day planner, glass of water. That's pretty much it.

Melissa Krivachek: Organization, health, and simplicity, I would say. Is that accurate?

Robert Plank: Yeah, I guess so. I'm not the most healthy person. I don't run twenty miles a day, but I think I do what's important.

Melissa Krivachek: Right. Organization is the day planner, and then the phone obviously is because you value not only having relationships, but I'm going to assume here sales as well because you run a business. You're obligated to that.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense. I'm looking at the books and the things that you have. You have your BOLD!: Helping YOU Unleash the Hero Within. You have your Millionaires & Money. They all look pretty cool. Could you tell us about some of your big ideas, some of the cool things you have to say?

Melissa Krivachek: Yeah. I'll just tell you. I accidentally started writing books. I actually got dumped by a rocket scientist.

Robert Plank: Oh no.

Melissa Krivachek: I poured my heart out on paper. Five months later, that book became an international bestseller. I was like, oh my God, people are actually reading this. By then, I already had a second, and a publisher was knocking down my door for a third. I was like, who writes three books in one year. The reality is I've now, two years in a row, wrote three books. How do you have love, success, and happiness? How do you have clients and make money? You have to make time for all of these things. You have to figure out what you value. You have to simplify your life. You have to know your money. This is one thing in a lot of businesses that they don't know. What is your cost to acquire a client? What is your overhead? How much can you spend on a client based upon how much they're worth to your business? What is your greatest liability? What's your greatest asset? How much is the best guy that's working for you worth to your company?

I really break it down step by step into just basic things that all of us can do, read fifteen minutes a day, drink a little bit more water, go for a mile long walk. These are things that all of us have heard a million times, and yet all of us ignore in one area of our life or another. They're really costing us. They're not only costing us our money, but they're costing us time, effort, and energy. If we look at all of these things collectively, there are areas where we know we need to improve, and yet we fail to improve because we start consuming information at such a rapid pace that we become consumers of information and not appliers of the information. It's not just about knowing the information or having relationships, but it's about actually going out and applying that stuff.

Robert Plank: Like getting out of student mode, right?

Melissa Krivachek: Yeah, you don't need to be a student of life. You need to be a doer in life. You only have one life, so the only way to accomplish whatever it is that you want is to start going out and meeting the people that do what you want to do, have accomplished what you want to accomplish, have what you want to have, live the lifestyle that you want to live, and have built the business that you want to build. Once you create those relationships, you start to have more power of influence. Not just with these particular relationships, but you start to overtake the marketplace, and that increases your value, and obviously your self-confidence. That affects your personal relationships. It affects your money. It affects your body and the way you take care of yourself as well.

Robert Plank: I think that's a pretty good message. It seems like what you've been talking about so far, it seems like the big thing is that everything is pretty connected. Like you said, if your personal life's not doing well, if your sex life is not doing well, if your health isn't doing well, then it'll go and affect your business and vice versa. It seems like I like just how simple you break all this stuff down, and it's all just pretty common sense advice that it seems like a lot of us ignore just because we've got stuck on some kind of path. We let a little bit go, a little bit go, and next thing you know, overweight, money's bad, and all that kind of stuff. It seems like a lot of people are just scattered, I guess. They have a million things going on, stuck researching stuff, having all of these different commitments, having all these things hanging. It seems like all of us need help, don't we?

Melissa Krivachek: We do. The thing is you have to close the circles as quickly as possible. If a bill arrives at your door, you should be able to pay that bill instantaneously so it's not weighing on your mind. If a email arrives, answer the email. If the phone is ringing, answer the phone. If the texts come in, answer the texts, Facebook messages. Also, eliminate the stuff from your phone so you only have certain periods of time during the day to become ultra-productive. I accomplish more in four ninety-minute periods of work time during the day than most people accomplish in the entire month.

The reality is that when I'm on the phone, I'm not answering my emails. When I'm in my emails, I'm not answering the phone. When I'm on Facebook, I'm not doing anything else. I don't have a million windows open with a million opportunities and a million people screaming at me at the same time. I've eliminated all of the apps from my phone, so the only thing that's on my phone is the dial button, the Paypal app, and uber. Everything else is eliminated. I don't have a calendar. I don't have a calculator. I have nothing. The reason for that is I don't want to be distracted by all the things that people put into their lives to get them off track. If you don't think social media or the news or just people in general are distractions, take them away and see how much more time, freedom, and money you make.

Robert Plank: How happier you get without even realizing, right?

Melissa Krivachek: For sure.

Robert Plank: I like that. That's pretty extreme. I know I said I have my phone here, but it's face down on the desk and I hate that when sometimes I'll get in that mode, especially holidays and family functions, I'll realize that I've only looked up from my phone twice this whole evening. I hate being that person. As we're winding this call down, one thing I'm really curious is about is you seem like a really social, friendly, bubbly kind of person, and I'm not. It's taken a lot of just small efforts and small steps to be more social. I'm just a nerdy, computer geek, programmer kind of person. What advice would you tell me going forward just to be more of a networker, social relationship kind of person?

Melissa Krivachek: You don't need to be. That's the thing. You thrive in environments where you don't have to be social, so you use other tools that give you that social interaction but aren't face to face or over the phone, right? You use social media. You use probably ads of some sort or systems.

Robert Plank: Okay, and I do. I guess there isn't anything wrong with me, right?

Melissa Krivachek: No. There's two different types of entrepreneurial personality types. There's the introvert and the extrovert. The introvert is always looking for ways to become an extrovert, and the extrovert is always looking for ways to become an introvert because they think they need to have a balance. In the entrepreneurial personality type, we become very sensitive to everything around us, including the awareness that you just pointed out with I want to become this and I think something is wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with you. It's just how you are and how you operate and how you function and that gives you peak performance. If you want to change that, it's because you want to change. It's not because you have to change because you don't have to.

Robert Plank: I should just use my strengths as strengths and not try to be a person other than who I am, I guess.

Melissa Krivachek: Oh a hundred percent. I just gave somebody that information the other day. They have their girlfriend flying in and I was like, hey, listen. I totally understand, but I really don't think this is going to work based on how I see you interacting. I know that you're going to end up breaking up with this person, and it's unfortunate. However, you're trying to be two different people. You're trying to be the crazy guy that loves going out, loves drinking, loves just having a great time, and then you're trying to be this amazing boyfriend that's totally committed, which you're not, just very restrictive. As creative types, as entrepreneurial personality types, we can't really play these different roles and feel good about ourselves at the same time.

Robert Plank: That makes a lot of sense to me. Be yourself, don't fight it.

Melissa Krivachek: Oh a hundred percent.

Robert Plank: Well, cool. As we're winding this down, what would you say is the number one mistake you're seeing people make in business with their personality, with their daily habits, and all that stuff?

Melissa Krivachek: The number one mistake people make is thinking that they can't do it, like they're not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, educated enough. They don't have enough money, resources, time, talent, effort, energy, all of that. They do. They're just not creative enough. You will always have enough. As Tony Robbins says, "It's not about what resources you have, it's about how resourceful you become." When I started, I had nothing. Seven years later, I have an amazing amount of things that I've been blessed, but only because I never gave up, and only because no one ever told me I could never do it because even if they did, I went ahead and did it anyway.

Robert Plank: Right. You bring up Tony Robbins. I saw some video the other day about that, about overcoming the fear. His message was something like, "You don't have to wait for the fear to be gone to take some action." They can be independent of one another, I guess.

Melissa Krivachek: Yes, indeed. Fear is always going to be there. The greatest people in the world have just walked through the fear. There's a quote that says, "If you're going through hell, go as fast as possible."

Robert Plank: Oh yeah. I love that. I like your message. I like what you have to say. I want everyone to know more about you. Where can they find out about everything that it is you do?

Melissa Krivachek: Well, you can find me at melissakrivachek.com.

Robert Plank: Awesome. You've got to get one of those URL shorteners probably, like melis.sa or something if that exists.

Melissa Krivachek: I have no idea. I used to call my company something else, and then people thought I had two brands, one was a consulting brand and one was just books. After five years, I changed the name of my business to my actually name because there was no confusion then.

Robert Plank: Right.

Melissa Krivachek: It's interesting, like people know who I am. I just walked into the Maserati dealer the other day, and the girl knew exactly who I was. Funny enough, there was a billionaire behind me who paid 574,000 in cash for two Bentleys right off the showroom floor, nobody knew who he was. Not even I knew who he was because he came in in jeans and flip flops, and I was wearing the same thing, but they knew who I was. I was like, well how the hell did this happen?

Robert Plank: That comes full circle there about being congruent with yourself and how some of us try to have a persona that doesn't fit or try to have the duel lives. As soon as you make things simple, strip away the stuff that's not working, magic things happen it seems like. Cool. melissakrivachek.com, and we'll add that to the show notes. Go ahead, right now, and thanks Melissa for being on the show.

Melissa Krivachek: Yeah, you got it. Thanks Rob for having me.

Robert Plank: Any time.