Who Can Check You?

Count money, man.

Money, man.

Stacked riches.

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

For something, welcome back to another episode of The Grimecast.

Get ready.

It's a new day.

Today's title is Who Can Check You?

Who do you have in your life that can tell you if something's off with you or out of

whack or could tell you something that maybe not everybody would want to tell you or something

that you yourself doesn't want to hear?

I think that is a key component, you know, that one way to gauge if you've gone too far

with your success or ego, I think what's even more concerning is if you even had, you

haven't even had any major success yet and already you don't have anybody that could tell

you anything.

I think that is a challenge.

That is down the road, train wreck, waiting to happen.

And so we're just going to talk about who do you have in your life that you could identify

that can check you and tell you things that you need to hear.

So first thing is, you know, look at who are you surrounding yourself with.

We've all heard that you're the sum of the five people that you spend the most time

with, right?

And round yourself with people that have similar goals and similar ambitions.

You know, that's key.

Early in business, I got around people who were killing it.

You know, I look at when I first went to college playing football and you look at who was

I hanging around even though myself was only, you know, as a freshman, fourth or fifth

on the depth chart, I'm hanging around the seniors.

I'm hanging around the starters.

I'm hanging around the fifth year seniors, the captains doing anything that I can to

hang around them, working out with them, you know, meeting them early, meeting them late,

whatever I need to do.

And then in business, I did the exact same thing, you know, my first original business mentor

and friend Marcus Smith will tell you when he called my resume, I immediately when I got

hired and brought on, I put pressure on him in the system, moved everything directly

next to the office and said, I'm just, I just want to hang with you.

I'll do everything.

I'll follow you anywhere and this is, this is something that is so rare to see.

But anybody that applies this, it's an automatic.

I feel like if you have average or above average, it just average skill set and whatever it

is, average potential and whatever it is that you're trying to get good at.

If you say I'm just going to find a way no matter what, I don't care if I got to be

the janitor, I don't care what I got to do.

I'm going to find a way to surround, I want to be surrounded by this group of people.

And at first, I think what stops people from getting in that circle is humility.

So they either say I want to be in that circle, I want to be around those people.

So I'm going to wait until I get enough results to where I'm in that circle.

Or you can just humble yourself and say, look, I'll shine your shoes.

I'll meet you four o'clock in the morning.

I'll be your driver.

I'll be your chef.

Whatever I got to do to get around you to make it make sense, we're going to get, I got

to get around you.

And so I think that is, is, is one thing that you can do.

It's not necessarily on along the lines with the exact title of, of who can check you.

But I'm trying to tell you to check yourself there and see, have you humbled yourself?

And are you putting the right people around you no matter what?

Are the, even if they're your peers, are they on the same track and the same path that

you're trying to travel on?

It's difficult to hang with four people that are not focused and you want to be the one

that's focused or three people that are not focused and you want to be the one that's

focused.

In Proverbs, it says is, Iron Sharpen's Iron, so one man or one person can sharpen another.

And so that's, that's a piece to it.

But I also think you got to have a piece to it to where you have people in your life that

can call you on your bullshit.

You can have people in your life to tell you you're going too far in certain areas of your

life and pull you down and say, hey, this is something you got to pay attention to.

I think it's, it's, it's got to be somebody that cares about you, right?

Obviously, you don't want to take advice from somebody that you're not 100%.

But if they have your best intentions at heart, okay, which a lot of people will have criticism

for you, but they don't necessarily have your best intentions at heart.

If they have good intentions and they have your best wishes, they care about, you know,

you as a person, I think it's, it's worthy and worth having, allowing a person to check you.

And approaching it with humility, you know, Steven Covey wrote, humility, it takes humility

to seek feedback.

And it takes wisdom to understand it, analyze it, and appropriately act on it.

And so I think looking for feedback.

Searching for feedback.

And I think a lot of times that people are around, when people are around you, if they don't

know that they can give you that feedback without you being offended, then they're probably

not going to give you that feedback.

So if you truly want the feedback from the right people, go identify who those people

are and say, listen, you have full permission.

If you ever see me out of line in one of these areas or whatever it is, feel free to keep

it real for me and real with me and check me.

But be careful who you choose because you don't want to take advice from people typically

that you wouldn't want to trade places with.

So you've heard me talk about that before.

Don't take advice from somebody that you would not want to trade places with.

And then, you know, always you have the, you know, out of 100 times, there's always a

exception to the role.

So yes, you can learn from people that are not where you want to be and them tell you their

mistakes.

So you could learn from a bum on the street, you know, somebody that's homeless and they

may have some wisdom for you at times.

Those are all, that's true.

There's exceptions to the rule.

I'm trying to give you typically just like, you know, they tell you, if you want to live

a long life, you know, do these, these three things or do these, you know, things.

It doesn't mean necessarily you're always going to live a long life.

We've all seen people that do that and then it doesn't end the way that we would have

hoped for.

And then on the flip side, you know, you'll see people that they just smoke and drink their

whole life from somehow some way.

You look at those people and they live the 80, 90 years old and you're like, man, how does

this person live the 90 smoking and drinking and eating McDonald's?

And this one eats clean and runs marathons and they fall over and die at 50.

We know those are, those are things that happen.

Okay.

So when I say try not to take place from people that you wouldn't want to trade places

too, that's in most circumstances.

We got to use common sense, but typically, typically look at who you're getting your advice

from and ask yourself what I want to listen to that person based off of where they are

in that specific scenario because you want different people for different areas of your life

to check you, right?

So if you want to, if you want to grow in business, you may need a business person that

can check you.

If you want to grow in physical fitness, you may have your trainer that needs to check

you, right?

That's what a trainer does of you're not getting low enough, you're not going hard enough,

which a diet, which a calories, all of that.

That's all someone holding you accountable and checking you that cares about you.

Having a mentor of somebody that can check you in your marriage that has more experiences

as, hey, as a dad, as a husband, as a father, as a mother, as a wife, these are things,

you know, having somebody that can point out some of those things to you is going to be

critical.

So I think if you get anything from this, it's go search out, seek out a mentor right

now, find a mentor for yourself, let people know that they, let the people that you respect

close to you know that they can check you in any given moment.

And you know, then I get the questions, you know, how do I find a mentor?

So you know, I think finding a mentor is taking shots and asking people, making yourself

accessible when they're accessible, making it convenient for them, not for you finding

it don't matter if it's four o'clock in the morning, and then implementation of what they

give you because mentors, people that are sought after, everybody wants their time.

So then they have to start deciphering, who do I give my time to just like somebody that

says, who do I give my, if you got a million dollars and you want to give half of it away,

you don't just blow it into win, you want to invest it into somewhere that that nonprofit

or something's going to give you a return on that investment because you want to give it

away into something that's going to make a positive difference.

People are the exact same way.

If they want to give of their time, they got to know that their time is being spent on someone

that's going to make a difference and going to implement what they're giving them and

not just being an ask hole, right?

You've heard me talk about that where people ask you questions, you give them the answer

and it just goes down and gets lost, it goes in a hole because it never gets implemented.

And so if you want to find a right mentor, once you got the right mentor, be prepared.

Anytime they bless you with some time, be prepared and bring them questions.

Have questions, take notes and implement.

That is encouraging to someone else.

And so I can look at periods of my life where people say, who's been able to check you?

Who's been able, I think my mother at times, I wasn't always receptive as a kid growing

up to that.

But as I aged, my mother, my wife, of course, has been able to give me positive feedback,

positive criticism on things that I need to change, things that I need to get better for.

With people I need to watch out for, giving me things that I don't necessarily want to hear.

Some close friends of mine, but I look back on my beginning phases of life in business as

an adult.

And I would say, one of my mentors, Jim Sarace, where he just would give it to me if I

wasn't growing spiritually.

His big message was, are you growing on the inside, more than you're growing on the inside?

And he would always check me there if he saw me starting to grow more on the outside

than I was on the inside.

And that's something that I'm forever grateful for.

He would check me at every level of my life.

I can remember time since I met him where he would have hard conversations with me or say

things to me that cut me for a moment, but don't kill me down the road because you didn't

cut me for a moment.

And same thing with Marcus, when he first started to mentor me and guide me, even to his

days, just somebody that never really holds his tongue.

So that was somebody that could always keep it real.

And I've tried to overtime earn the respect from him to be able to do the same thing back

down the road as we've aged and gotten closer.

So I just want to encourage you out there, go out there and find somebody that can, we

say the word check you, but really just hold you accountable and know that they can have

free dialogue with you, to be honest with you and to check your blind spots before you

have to get hurt.

All right, so go find somebody that can check you, check yourself, make sure that you don't

have nobody out there giving you real feedback, maybe because you can't handle it and

take a peek at yourself in the mirror and ask yourself, is it your ego?

Because part of growing and avoiding mistakes is having people that can check those blind

spots and give you the news that necessarily you don't always want to hear.

So I appreciate you guys, as always, you could spend your time anywhere and you choose to

give us 15 minutes of your life today and for that, we're always grateful.

So there's anybody that you know that could benefit from this message, share it to them

and share it with them.

And we look forward to seeing you again, hearing from you again, you hearing from us again

as we tune into the next episode of the Grandcast, get ready, it's a new day.