Winning Attitude

Count money, man.

Money, man.

Stacked riches.

I'm trying to told him I'm a beast.

What's up, gang?

Welcome back to another episode of The Grindcast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

Thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your energy and the most precious asset that you have is your time and you're

spending some of that with us today.

We're grateful and thankful and looking forward to trying to invest into you.

So this is going to be a little just freestyle off the cuff about just winning the attitude

of winning, the attitude of taking your life to the next level.

And so I had a conversation with somebody.

And I think often in our business, something that comes up for me is how do you recruit

people that already are having some success?

They're making a hundred grand.

They're making 70 grand.

Some of our best people were making 200 grand before they started.

How do you do something like that?

How do you recruit somebody like that that's already got some things going on?

And I'm not going to dive into all the detail on that.

But what I do want to share with you is just a conversation that I've had with some

people and I've said, look, here's the analogy.

Because you got to look at your destiny and what you're capable of.

And I'm going to give you a baseball analogy of you got to go around the bases and come

home.

Okay, home is your destiny.

Home is reaching your full potential.

And so you get on first base and first base is comfortable because at first base, you're

safe.

And if you don't take your foot off the bag, you know, you're in really good position

to be really safe.

But then in baseball, you got to lead off a little bit.

You got to get closer to second.

You lead off a little bit like far enough that you're close enough to second, but not too

far to where they throw you out at first base.

But if you want to go around the bases, you can't steal second base, which are foot on

first base and not leaving first base.

You can't round the bases with your foot not leaving first base.

And so understand you got to steal second base.

Nobody's going to give it to you.

It's not always going to be easy and comfortable.

And if you're waiting for easy and no risk at all to go to the next level, you're really usually

never going to find it.

It's calculated risk.

It's you should believe so much in your timing and of your speed.

And what you're doing that, yeah, I know it's a risk of me getting thrown out at second

base, but it's probably not going to happen.

And you can bet on yourself.

And so you can't steal second base with your foot on first.

So then you get to second base, but you want to get to third base.

You got to leave the comfort of second base and go to third base.

You got to leave the comfort of third base and go home.

But sometimes in the process of taking risk, you don't have immediate success.

And so because you've had a little bit of failure, you struck out once or you got thrown

out once, you're you stop taking calculated risks.

Now I'm not saying do crazy stuff, crazy risks.

Like some of the risks I watch people take that are not smart, not calculated, comes from

a desire to skip the process.

They want to skip first, second, third base.

They want to skip doing the work and say they just want to gamble and think that there's

going to be an easy way out.

People always hit the lottery.

There's always people hitting the lottery, but the lottery is not made off of all the winners.

There's people at the casino that are hitting right now, winning, but the casino wasn't built

on winners.

The majority of the time, that's not going to last and work.

But the hard thing is that people that have the will to win, they take it so hard when

they're not number one in the process immediately.

I want to encourage you out there that when you're first starting out on a journey, don't

beat yourself up that you're not number one immediately, especially if you're used to

winning and you're used to being number one.

This is why humility is important, is that it's, I'm not saying accept losing.

My grandfather used to say to my grandmother and my family because I was a bad loser as

a kid, I would lose my mind if I lost and stuff.

He would say let them go because if you show me a good loser, I'm going to show you a permanent

loser.

I'm not saying get comfortable all the time with losing.

I'm just saying in the process of trying to be the best that you can be, you're going

to have little setbacks, little failures and things that you're not good at immediately.

But the people that you look up to in that field that you're trying to get as good as

them, they didn't get there overnight easy.

They got there by taking shots, having some losses, having some setbacks, having some failures.

So don't let those things kill you.

Then in the process of life, the more success that you have, the more obstacles that you're

going to have to overcome.

There's a lot of things that you're going to have to overcome in life.

It's not about what you're carrying, it's about how you're carrying those problems, those

issues.

There's people walking around all around us and you never know what somebody is going

through.

You never know what somebody is handling.

It may look easy.

It always looks easy.

Like as the kid, it looked easy to be an adult until I became an adult and had kids.

As the person wanting to be a starter on the football team, it looked easy.

Look like that until you become the starter, until you're the starting quarterback.

Now all the pressures on you, it looked easy to own a business until it becomes you.

It looks easy until you're in that process.

So I want us to focus on the understanding of everybody's carrying something, stress,

relate it, whatever.

It's not about only what you're carrying but let's get better carrying those things.

Things won't always go away.

Stress won't always go away.

You just get better at carrying those things.

I tell people that a lot of times when they started their business, they talk about how do

you manage the stress, how do you handle the stress.

Man I looked back at it.

I was so stressed out as an agent when I first started in this business, first six months.

I look back on it now and it's like, man, it's so much easy.

Easier to just focus on that than all the things that are going on right now, but I'm

less stressed out.

Just like parents or adults, you look back and say, man, to be a kid again, you don't have

a care in the world.

You don't have any bills to pay.

You don't have a job.

You got to go to people are taking care of you, all of that stuff.

But you got to understand it's not about what you're carrying.

That's how you carry it because problems aren't going to go away.

Actually, more money, more problems, more growth, more problems, bigger responsibility,

more problems, bigger problems.

How are you going to carry those problems?

You get stronger.

That's what I tell people is that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

When I tell people, man, you're stressed out now, it gets hard.

You're going to have to carry more things down the road in the mind.

It could seem unbearable, but I'm telling you, you get stronger like this.

If you can only do five pushups, you watch somebody that can only do five pushups.

Their fifth pushup may need their arms may be shaking.

They may be sticking their butt up in the air.

They may need everybody cheering for them, clapping for them, come on, you could do it.

They may collapse to the ground on that fifth pushup.

But then you reach a point over time that same person may be able to rip off 100 pushups

in a row.

So five pushups at the time, easy, but it was so hard at that moment.

So what happened?

Did the pushups really get easier or did you just get stronger?

If I use a bench press analogy, you go to the gym.

You see somebody bench pressing 135 pounds.

I remember when 135 pounds was hard.

Eighth grade, just starting to lift weights.

I remember thinking, man, you can't wait to be like the big guys, man, when they got two

plates on each side, 225.

And then over time, 135 becomes the warm up.

Then 225 becomes the warm up.

And all of a sudden you're pushing three plates on each side and beyond.

315 pounds.

Now did that weight get lighter?

Did they change from 45 pound plates?

Did it become not the same amount of weight?

Did it become, well, why can you do now easier?

300 pounds than you did when you were doing 135 pounds.

It's not that the weight got lighter.

It's that you got stronger.

It's not about what you're carrying.

It's about how you carry it.

And so we got to get to this point in life where we're not without problems, but we carry

those problems.

We carry those things well.

And what helps you to carry those things well is by taking care of yourself mentally,

physically and spiritually.

And that's, I mean, people get, I know, I beat you guys over the head with this stuff.

But the reason is because I want you to be able to carry it well.

It being what?

Life, man, life is hard.

It's hard over here.

But you got an opportunity to focus on gratitude and all the things that you're grateful for

or all the things that you don't have yet.

And that'll determine your attitude.

You got the opportunity to take care of yourself first so you can be good at carrying your issues

and be helpful to others.

Or you can neglect yourself and eventually it becomes harder for you to carry the problems

and carry the issues that you're called to be able to handle for yourself and for others.

Because it's inevitable that to go through the process of greatness, to get to where you

want to be, to go through life, you're going to have to go through pain.

In pain, purges, pretenders.

Like when you start having to go through pain, the people that pretended that they wanted

it, it starts to allow those people to be purged and see who the real people are, who really

wants it because when you go through pain, like how many people would get tattoos if they

didn't have to sit there and go through the pain of it?

How many would have babies if they didn't have to go through the process of it?

We just hit a button.

Here's your baby, sir.

Man, here you go.

There's hit that button.

No pain, no issues, no nut and there you go.

Brand new for you right there.

People don't realize the intensity and the intense sacrifice and effort that it takes to make

dreams a fricking reality.

I think that's what people don't understand is that they don't understand how much work,

how much effort, how much intensity, how much sacrifice, how many things you have to give

up in order to go to where you want to go and so it demoralizes people.

And I'm telling you, there's always people out there, you know, somebody invented Facebook,

somebody invented camera, somebody invented a telephone, somebody invented cars, planes,

Instagram, shout out to you guys out there that are inventing things, unbelievable.

But for me, I was ready to play the odds and I knew that I wasn't probably going to be

inventing a bunch of things, but I knew I can invent the grind.

I knew I could put in the work.

And I think so often we're surrounded by this world and social media where they only put

people's highlights out and you see all this guy's net worth is a billion.

I want that billion.

This guy's net worth is 250.

This woman's net worth is 100 million.

I want that money.

And what people don't see is the work that went into that first while you weren't making

a lot of money in order to make that money.

So all this fighter, all he did was box for around and he made, you know, 10 million or

whatever it is.

But go back and look at all the hours, all the weeks, all the years, all the reps remade

no money to finally, all that is is a reward from the last 10 years of work where you weren't

making no money or the first 15 years of work or 10 years of work or all the investments

that had to happen.

Like I did the math today in my agency, in my group with some of my leaders today.

And I said, all right, let's, let's say hypothetically, okay, it's not realistic.

Let's say for you to think everybody in here has the opportunity to go make a 100 million.

But I can explain a scenario where you make $5 million a year and it's very doable or $7

million a year.

And so I did the analogy and I said, well, let's say you save up.

you know three to five million dollars a year after you've made it to that point. And

you know ten years later, 12 years later, 15 years later, you got 50 million dollars.

Okay, let's say you're 40 years old. At that point, if you get 10% interest on your money,

every seven years that number would double. Okay, would know extra effort on your

interest on your end. I'm just saying the money would double. Not saying you'd make any more

money doing anything else. I'm just saying this money you already got, if you get 10% interest

on your money, every seven years that would double. So if we had 50 million at 40, then at 45,

we would have 100 mil. And at 50, we would have 200 mil. Or excuse me, I'm going by five's right

now because I gave them the analogy of well, of 10% doubles every seven years. What if you got

13% 13 14% now you could start to double your money every five years. And that's doable.

And so I'm going to go up by five's. And so if I take 50 million at 40 at 45, I got 100 at 50,

I got 200 at 55, I got 400. And at 60, I got 800 million, almost a billion dollars.

Now that whole time we could have been making more money, but that money was just from one

pile of money we had that just kept on multiplying itself. Very realistic to have a billion by 60,

65 in that analogy. And I think the majority of the people that are worth a couple hundred

million dollars, a billion dollars, a half a billion dollars, a hundred million, 200 million,

people see them and they think that it's because they invented Pepsi Cola or that they, and that's

true a lot of times. But not for the majority of the time, the majority of the time, it was the

compound effect. It was consistently, it was a little bit. And it kept on doubling and you kept

on putting into work and you were making a good amount of money. And then, and then you started

to make more money, but, but then you were making all that interest and over time it just kept doubling,

doubling, compounding, compounding, compounding. And now we're sitting at this place that you're 50,

60, 70 years old and all the young people looking at you and they say, I want that. What's the short

cut? And you got to try to explain to them that there isn't really a short cut, that the short cut is

doing the frickin work, that that you got to explain to them that I didn't show up this way. I had

to, I had to go through a bunch of stuff. It took patients. It took process. It took time.

There's no get out of jail free speed past it most of the time. Too many people are trying to

play the lottery in business instead of controlling what they can control, getting singles doubles,

driving and run singles doubles football, first downs, basketball, free throws, layups.

What always wins games? The championship teams are built typically. Dynasties are built on systems

in processes that can continue to happen and grow no matter what throws at us, not a 80-year bomb.

We're depending on an 80-year bomb all the time. We're depending on making 10-3 pointers in a row

all the time. It's who can make free throws? Who can make, who can play good defense? It's fundamentals.

And so what I'd like to encourage you to do is, you know, John Maxwell always says, if you focus on

goals, you don't always get growth. You don't always end up accomplishing those things immediately.

You don't always get growth. But if you focus on personal growth and you focus on just growing yourself,

you always end up growing. You could focus on goals and you don't always hit them. But if you focus

on growth and growing yourself, you could always do that and typically growth follows down the

row from that. And the last thing I'll leave you with in leadership was we round the bases

to come home and you start working through others and you're thinking, man, how can I? People ask

me all the time. You know, like, do you really think out there? You guys know I'm in the insurance

business, right? You think I was sitting in class one day and I'm like, man, I know, I know what I

want to do. I'm going to get into life insurance. People are going to be so proud of me. I'm going

to go to the wedding and everybody's going to be proud of me. Do you know it? Don't sound good at

the wedding. You sit at the table. Oh, what is your husband do? Oh, he's a lawyer. Oh, man,

that's great. What does your husband do? He's a doctor. Man, that's great. You hear that? He's a

doctor. What does your husband do? Life insurance. That don't sound real sexy. Sounds better to say,

oh, man, I'm a financial asset manager, fund wealth manager person, all these sexy terms.

Who would have thought that lives would be able to impact it. Millions upon millions upon millions

upon millions of dollars would be able to be accumulated through a life insurance business.

And I'm thrilled and I've been so happy and fulfilled for so long doing this. How can that

possibly be? I think the same way I bet you true it, Kathy or people at Chick-fil-A may feel,

you know, when you see Chick-fil-A dominate the, I mean, come on, that's good chicken,

but that ain't the best chicken on the face of the earth. I tell people, I got people on

East Side of Youngstown are to make you better chicken and ribs and I mean stuff that they give you

in a with greens and macaroni and cheese you can get it right now, even with inflation for probably $45.

Little styrofoam plate. But their system, their processes, they're closed on Sundays,

there's a reason for that. It's, it's, oh, man, thank you and they say my pleasure.

They've made it better than, we ain't in here just boom and chicken, fries.

There's a purpose and a mission behind it that somebody feels is bigger than a chicken sandwich.

But at the end of the day, man, how can you really be changing people's lives when you are

you're doing a slang and chicken sandwiches? But I bet you there's a lot of people's lives that have

been changed through Chick-fil-A at Chick-fil-A because of the culture of Chick-fil-A.

And so for us over here, for me, what I've been able to do is say, look, yeah, we're going to do

chicken sandwiches. We're doing life insurance. We're going to, we're going to protect people.

Yes, it's great when you get chicken from Chick-fil-A. You're hungry, right? So it's all good,

you're helping people from starving, right? And so, but really, they could have got

Chick-fil-A sandwich or hamburger somewhere else. It's, it's, can you leave more in them

than you leave to them? It's how we've been able to create the culture over here of

not every single person may retire with us here, but we've tried to create a culture of

can we leave things in them as a person that may not, they may not realize it right then and there.

Some may, but down the road that they could say, man, these people, because I went there, because I

worked there, because I stopped there, they made me a better person. There's a difference made in my

life, because when you leave more to them than in them, you always have problems. When you leave

more to them than you do so, if, if I'm a parent and I give my kids everything and I leave more to

them than I leave in them in their soul and their spirit, I'm going to have problems. If you give

your team everything all the time, I'll give it to you. Here's extra leads. Here's this, I give it to

you. Here it is, but you're not creating the skill set that they need to truly survive. We got

problems. And so it's about what are you leaving in them before you leave things to them? Yeah,

we want to leave things to them. We want to leave the next generation better than we found it,

but we got to make sure that we're leaving bigger things in them. Then we're leaving things to them.

So there's not problems as we round these bases. And so just remember to run the bases

of life, to bring it home, more often it's about singles and doubles than it is home runs all

the time. Not wrong with swinging for defenses, but usually that happens naturally. Just get a hit.

Don't despise small beginnings. Put the work in. You can't still second base with your foot on

first base. You want opportunity in your life. You want to separate from other people. People

are going to say, well, Johnny, don't steal second base. You look so good over there on first base.

But if there's something calling you go ahead and steal the base, steal it. Go second, third home.

Go have humility in the process. Have people that can call you out on your shit.

Have a mission. Whatever you're doing, you could be a mechanic and you can change people's life,

which are mission of what you want to do for people, what you want to leave in people, what culture

that you want to create and understand that anything that's worthwhile, if it was easy, everybody

will be doing it out here. You're not alone. There's people out here on the grind with you. That's why

it's called the grind cast. We're all going through something right now. Take care of yourself mentally,

physically, spiritually. Don't listen to haters. Don't listen to people that are trying to knock you.

That's a that's a natural anytime that you're moving, moving things forward. Just ignore those people.

That's imagine if you were a star, how many people would say things and do things, just just get used

to it. Just get used to it. Keep swinging. Keep pushing. Keep fighting. If this helped anybody at all,

and you think we can help and make a difference and impact people, do me a favor and share, comment,

all that stuff, but share it with somebody else. I'm really grateful that all the things you could have

been doing today, you chose to spend some time with us over here in the grind cast studios.

Thanks for sharing another episode of Grind cast with us. Get ready as a new day.