So let me get into a little bit about what we’re doing here. We tend to do webinars that talk about organic growth and marketing best practices. But this year, we decided to kick off the year and setting goals and accomplishing those goals. What that really focuses on is your mindset.
Many of you, I’m guessing, are on this call and you can actually weigh in with an answer to this question too. Is organic growth one of your top three goals for the year? And what is one of the other goals for the year? I’m curious. So is organic growth yes or no? And if in addition to that, what is one other goal that you have for the year? But organic growth is on the mind of almost everybody we talk to.
And obviously to drive organic growth, your marketing is a big part of that.
So what we’re going to do is we are going to introduce you to Juan Vendanya. I met Juan at one of our leadership off sites. He was brought in as our motivational speaker and we were all blown away. I have been to many, many conferences as you have and have heard a lot of motivational speakers, but he was by far one of the best.
So let me do just a little bit about Juan and then I will hand it over to him. Juan Bandana is a globally recognized speaker and best selling author who has helped leaders from Fortune one hundred execs to Olympians unlock confidence and momentum, and that’s key. His energy is contagious, he has a way of turning big ideas into simple actions that you can carry with you long after today, which is exactly why we wanted to have him here to the FMG community to kick off this year in style. So with that, I am going to hand it over to Juan.
I want to just quickly from our housekeeping, Yes, we are recording this webinar, we will send a replay and we will be addressing questions briefly at the end. So we are not going to try to take questions throughout, but I’m going to be jotting down the questions. If you have any, add them to the chat, don’t be shy, and I will come back on towards the end of the session to facilitate some Q and A. So with that, Juan, we are ready for you.
Susan, thank you so much. What’s going on everybody? Happy twenty twenty six. I it is such a blessing to be here with y’all.
It’s so cool to see everyone in the chat coming from all around North America. Not only did the US have seen just from everywhere. Good morning if you’re on the West Coast. Good afternoon if you’re on the East Coast like me.
Y’all, it is such it’s such a blessing to be here. It’s twenty twenty six.
Can you feel it? You know, there’s that new excitement.
There’s that enthusiasm about a new year. You know, people are sort of on that forward foot. They’re excited. And whether you have set your goals for this year or have not, whether you’re in a place where you kinda got thrust into the year.
I don’t know if any of you had that, where you’re kinda pushed into the year and like, oh, it’s already January fifteenth. What am I doing? Where’s my plan? Or if you were prepared, there are certain things that can really make the difference.
And what I’ve obsessed over the past ten years of my career is understanding the difference between those days where we doubt everything about ourselves, about our goals, about what we’re able to create, those days where we hesitate, And those days where we’re on fire, where we’re crushing it. Because we’ve all had that moment where you were absolutely crushing it, but then something happens.
You fail, you lose a key client, or you fall short. You don’t hit a target, or someone says something to you and and or confidence can take a hit. And, you know, after working with few hundred thousand high performing leaders across almost every industry, I’ve realized that the tools that we need to succeed aren’t often what get in the way.
Often what gets in the way is our own psychology.
And what I found is that as people, we will not outperform our self image. It comes down to the belief that we carry, and that belief and that confidence is ultimately shaped by three things. Now before we dive into those things, a few ground rules for the day to get the most out of our time together. The first is if you are not already make sure you are taking notes when you listen to a presenter passively, on average, you retain ten percent of what that person said after seven days.
If you take notes, that retention rate jumps up to seventy percent. The second is to engage and y’all are already doing a great job putting things into the chat. This is a two way conversation. And please, as someone who is just talking to a camera here and and could feel like a little crazy, having y’all be a part of it in the chat going back and forth means the world. And then the third is to have a good time.
You know, in a world of worry where so many people focus on what’s wrong, we have the opportunity to focus on what’s right and say, yeah, I’m gonna have a good time on a Thursday. I know that there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot being thrown my way. There’s a lot happening in my life, but that does not mean I can’t choose joy now.
I can’t choose excitement today. So as we dive in, make sure to have a good time. We’re here. We might as well.
So the three things that really impact our level of confidence or how we show up in the world, how you show up to clients, how you show up in conversations, how you show up with your friends is ultimately determined by three things. The first is the beliefs that we carry.
A lot of you have extraordinary beliefs about yourself. But we also, myself included, have toxic ones. You have beliefs of, you know, I I provide tremendous value for my clients. I show up in the most meaningful way possible.
Awesome. There’s also some beliefs that are, I’m not consistent. I can never build that kind of book of business. Well, no.
No. I’m just not a people person. Well, now I could only have this is this is my ceiling. This is the kind of volume I could do in a year.
And we set these psychological ceilings on ourselves that hold us back from achieving our full potential. So the first real big impact is the beliefs. The second is the experiences that we go through. You fail, you fall short, you know, something happens.
Let’s say, I’ll give you a really easy example is if you’ve ever bombed a speech, now you have certain beliefs about public speaking, which were informed by that experience that you had.
And then the third is the people that are a part of those experiences, the people that doubt us, you know, that is often what impacts our confidence more than anything. Sort of like that one teacher. Did any of you just throw into the chat say yes, sir. That’s me.
Did any of you have that one teacher growing up that if they were to get fired, it’s not that we’d celebrate, but we might not lose much sleep. Okay. Chassis says, yes, sir. Write a page.
Yep. Amy, yes. Let’s go. Greg, abs okay. So I’m not alone. For me, that teacher was miss h, my sophomore English teacher.
Now her job was to teach us English. Her purpose was to ruin our lives.
To give you an idea, we had an essay that she forced us to handwrite in pen when we had computers.
Like, it should have taken us a few hours. It took me a month. I go to hand it in. I put it on her desk, and she looked at it, and she said, Juan, you used black ink. You were instructed to use blue.
I can’t accept this.
I feel like some of you may have had a teacher like this, and this wasn’t even her best work. My most impactful moment with miss h was when we were going around the class sharing our goals. It was kind of the beginning of the year. There was that new year, new me energy.
And it gets to me, and miss h says, Juan, what Juan, what’s your what’s your goal for after your time here is done? I said, miss h, I know I’m not the best student, especially in your class, but I wanna be an author. It’s been a dream I’ve had since I was seven, eight years old, and I think I have something to say. And she looked at me, and she said, Juan, you’re not a writer.
Writing is a gift you’re born with and you just weren’t. I’m giving you a grade to pass mostly because I don’t wanna see you again.
And her words stuck with me.
You know, she said them when I was a sophomore, but I carried them with me for years.
Haven’t you done that before?
Carried the words that someone gave you months or even years ago forgetting about the fact that you have the ability and the power to put them down?
See, we all have people that doubt us. We all have people that give us insecurities that we never asked for. And if they were the biggest problem that stands in the way between us and the next level, us and real confidence, us and the performance barrier that we’re looking to break through, we would be fine. But they’re not. Other people aren’t the biggest problem. Contrary to popular belief, we are.
Here’s why confidence is so hard for so many. Here’s why so many people set a goal January first, they get really excited, and then seventy six percent of them fall off by February fifteenth, according to the data. Here’s why. Because we have a brain that’s working against us.
Turns out eighty percent of our thoughts every single day are negative.
Ninety five percent are repeated from the day before.
See our brains, they have a negativity bias. They are naturally inclined to look for what’s wrong and where’s often the first place they look.
Us.
How we show up, how we perform, how good of a business we’re building, how good of a parent we are being.
And it’s it’s a hard it’s a hard sort of negativity to to grapple with because we live in a time that gives us more reasons to doubt ourselves than to believe in ourselves.
And it turns out this is far more universal than I thought. See, for every one positive thought we have, we statistically have four negative ones, which is why sometimes it feels like you’re crushing it on a Monday, but then you feel defeated by Tuesday.
And I thought this was only me. I thought it was only people that are still trying to figure it out. Turns out it’s far more universal than I thought.
Oprah, after giving thirty five thousand interviews in her career, this blew my mind. She said that every single person asked the exact same question once the interview is done. Lights turned off, cameras stopped rolling, every person leaned in, they handed her the mic and they asked, was that okay?
She heard it from billionaires to the greatest athletes in human history. Every person wondered the exact same thing. Essentially, what they were asking was, am I enough?
Which is a question we’re asking constantly.
Am I enough for this change? Am I enough for this next level? Am I enough for the relentless pressure? Am I enough for the daunting goals that I’ve set for myself that I don’t know if I can make happen? And it’s hard to answer because we score more points on the board for self doubt than we do for self confidence. So before we dive into sort of the four main pillars that I wanna walk us through today, to give you a little context on me, I went to school, you know, not knowing much English.
And when you’re different, sometimes you interpret that as being wrong. I had severe social anxiety. I hated introducing myself because growing up, though I’m living in Florida now, growing up in Canada, I was often the first Juan people had ever met.
So I’d make up names.
And a lot of times today, people often say, Juan, there’s no way you struggled with confidence. You talk about confidence. This to just give you some background, this was sophomore me. Please do not take a screenshot if I see this on LinkedIn. I will not be a happy camper. But this kid was unbelievably insecure. And naturally, when you’re an insecure teenager, you get into a relationship, In my case, with a blonde American cheerleader that I thought was gonna be the one.
You know, we had the plans. We had the city we’re moving to, the breed of dog we were gonna get.
And when that relationship fell apart, I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience.
And I stopped trying in class. I let myself go. I slid into depression which needed an outlet. That outlet was food.
And it started with overeating.
Things got progressively worse. I developed binge eating disorder and got to a place where I was seventy five pounds overweight, obese, and food quickly became not enough. So then I turned to alcohol.
And what started as Fridays, you know, turned into Saturdays and then Sundays and somehow Tuesdays.
Ended with me being taken in an ambulance in the hospital for alcohol poisoning, not knowing if I was gonna survive.
And you know, I knew something needed to change. My goal at that time was I just wanted to get better.
I just wanted to find a way to live a life that was in alignment with who I wanted to be. And, and I knew something needed to change, but I first needed to believe in that change.
You know, the first step in changing ourselves or in creating change in our lives, in our businesses, in in our relationship, in our body, in our in our bank account is having the belief that we can be that new person.
And then participating in that change, which is what we’re here to today. I really want to spend our time answering the question of how do we get that confidence back. But then how do we set ourselves up to not just have a fiery January, not just to have an amazing start to the year. I want us to have a new standard that we tap into, that becomes a new baseline, that becomes a new level that you play at so that you never revert backward. Because a lot of people, they set goals, they say I’m gonna do this thirty day challenge. They say I’m gonna do seventy five hard and they read, you know, ten pages of book, do no cheat meals, basically no joy. And then on day seventy six, they had a tub of ice cream.
Why?
Because the goal was the challenge, not the transformation on the other side of it.
The goal was completion. Many people have set New Year’s resolutions and their completion goals, not transformation goals. And this is who I want to become.
So to dive right in the four decisions that we need to make, and ultimately, this is gonna end with saying, here’s what I wanna pursue this year. Here are the unreasonable goals that I’m gonna set. So we’re gonna get there, but we’ve gotta lay some groundwork first. The first decision, the first thing that that confident people, but high performing people do is that they generate energy.
Now you may be thinking, Juan, what on earth does energy have to do with confidence? Everything.
Because whether we know it or not, especially for what all of you do on a day to day basis with the clients you have, you are building relationships with, and the clients you are looking to bring into your world, we’ve got to realize that that’s what we lead with. See, people meet your energy before they meet you.
I work with almost every industry in in in the world, sixty, seventy times a year. I I was talking to Suzanna and team before. Financial services is literally my favorite in the world. They are my favorite people ever. It was my number one industry this past year. And this is the reason. Because this is the bit this is the business.
People meet your energy before they meet your background, your credentials, your resume, what you have done.
There’s an energy to confidence, isn’t there? There’s an energy to trust, to saying you should trust me with the biggest decisions of your life, which is your financial future. I saw someone mentioned in the chat in regards to helping student athletes with their NIL.
There’s trust in going with the adviser that’s gonna help their family build the life that they want.
There’s an energy to that. But if we’re honest, how many of you have sensed a little low energy out there in the world these days? Just put it into the chat. How many of you have sensed a little low energy out there in the world recently? How many of you sense that?
Michael, daily, page. Yes. Oh my god. Me. James. Yes. Yes. All the time. Absolutely. Yep.
Daily. Yes. Yes. Every day.
And the challenge is when that low energy is you, when it’s me, we have this moment where you think, I used to be so locked in. I had so much drive at the beginning of my career. I had so much excitement at the beginning of a year. But then I got to a certain age, But then I got to a certain level.
But then things got complex. But then unexpected challenges were thrown my way. And I lost some of that energy for life. And I will tell you, I’ve run into so many extraordinary people that are at the top of their game, that have a level ten ambition, but a level two energy and wonder why they’re not breaking through to the next level.
I heard this once and I loved it. Most people don’t go for another level of life, because they are too tired at this one.
In order to show up as our best, in order to unlock that next level, it starts by giving energy to the goals that we have, even on the hard days, which will come, even on the days where we don’t feel like it. And now my role model for this is Brody.
Brody is my puppy. He looks cute. He’s a psychopath.
The most excited dog I’ve ever seen in my life. To give you an come over to the house. People come visit. This still happens to this day. He gets so excited. He cannot contain his enthusiasm, and he pees all over our guests, his version of a warm welcome. And regardless of what’s going on in the world, raining outside, Brody’s really excited.
Stock market’s down by ten percent. He’s buying the dip.
You cannot bring this guy down. Here’s the main difference between Brody and every single one of us, myself included. He doesn’t need a reason to be excited or enthusiastic as people we do.
Here’s what I’ve realized. We make the way that we feel or the engagement that we bring to a moment or the energy that we’d lead with conditional.
Only if I go on that trip. Only if it’s the weekend. Only if I feel like my business is growing year over year at the rate that I’d like it to. Only if I reach a certain level. And we wait for these moments of enthusiasm as opposed to creating those moments ourselves.
And then what makes this way harder is have you noticed how we are living in a time where people even bond over being tired?
Have any of you experienced this before? Is this only me? Have you realized that people like to bond with you over being tired? I’m like, I’m exhausted. Me too.
People love it. Yes. Yes. Of course. So true. Absolutely. And people will take every opportunity for it.
So a question we need to ask ourselves is are we going to buy in the current narrative or have the courage to create a new one?
People are tired. People are worried. People are scared to get to that next level to pursue what they really want. We need to be the ones that go first.
See, confidence starts by giving energy to change.
Changing ourselves, changing our commitment, changing how we show up in the world, changing how we interact with the world around us because most of the time, we go through life in conversation, interacting, asking questions like how are you? What is the resounding answer to this question? Just throw it into the chat. What is the resounding answer to this question? Fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Okay, okay, fine, making it through the day.
Living the dream.
And what happens is we ask questions that without us knowing with the best intentions in the world, actually make the client on the other end of the conversation, the friend, the family member turn themselves down and lower their energy, as opposed to being the kind of people that can inspire and ignite engagement in the people that we work with. Because when we do, they’re going want to work with us. When we do, they’re going to trust us more. When they do, they’re going to feel like we are the right person to go with. We’re the right partner to work with them.
See, here’s the easiest yet most powerful question you can possibly ask someone in your life to ignite them with energy, even yourself. What are you excited about?
What are you looking forward to?
Okay. We’re talking about your financial plan. We’re talking about your financial future. What’s exciting about that? What’s a trip that you wanna save for?
What what what’s an experience you wanna have? What is this portfolio for?
What is this plan for? When you can elicit excitement that generates more energy in the other person and in yourself. And I wish this was my idea. It is not. The reason this is effective is because of something called anticipation psychology. Not to get too nerdy, it is essentially our brains way of preparing us for what’s to come, which is the reason why you feel better in the weeks and months leading up to a vacation than on the actual trip.
You feel better before.
So if we want more energy, we need to tap into our own psychology and leverage what I call excitement anchors. These are your partner on the weeks and on the days where you don’t feel like it.
Those early mornings when you don’t want to get up those weeks where it is an absolute grind. Here’s how it works. By anchoring to what you’re looking forward to in the future. Psychologically, it brings that future energy into the present moment. And then you can use that energy to deploy it with the goals that you have today, to use it in the conversation that you have now, to use it in the client meeting you’re about to step into.
See, we need to anchor to what we’re looking forward to. And so here’s what I want you to do. I want you to take literally one minute, because we’re gonna go pretty fast because I want to save some time for questions as well. I want you to define five excitement anchors over the next seven days.
Five excitement anchors, and they cannot be a birthday, a holiday, a vacation or something big. The small things Heidi gave an amazing example, morning coffee, incredible. Give five and put them on the calendar.
See, when you look at your calendar, you should feel excited that this is your life. So I want you to literally take out the calendar right now because we’re going to work and take sixty seconds to schedule five excitement anchors. Your time starts now.
And if you have them already, put them into the chat. Inspire other people.
And, also, if you want help in some of those goals, that pop up that just came up on the screen, say, Let’s make it happen during this one minute, and make sure to put your excitement anchors into the chat.
Okay. Amazing. One one minute really quick. Let’s see a few of these meeting someone new.
Dinner with my teenage kids. Awesome. Jim Paddle. Oh my gosh, Rick. We have recently got into Paddle, and I feel like my competitive side it’s just my friends and I have a very contentious relationship when it comes to battle.
Puppy, sudden hit in my face in the AM with the morning cold. Love that. Learn something new I don’t know. Hiking in the trails.
Game night with the hubs. Organize in my closet. Family dinner. Daily coffee. Watching my son play soccer.
Go bears. Sharon, elaborate. Going to a new restaurant, amazing home baking, love it, pilates, purge my things, kayaking, starting a new book, incredible, all amazing things.
And I can bet that when you’re thinking about them, when you were scheduling them, when you were sharing them, there’s a level of energy that is generated within you.
Because when you anticipate things, it brings that future energy into the present moment. But how often do we think of and schedule the things that we’re looking forward to? Barely ever. But if I were to ask you what is stressing you out over the next seven days, you would know immediately.
Let’s give less energy to the stressors in life because they’ll always be there. Let’s give more energy to the excitement. That energy is gonna help us create the things that we want. That’s why it’s number one, to generate energy. And what we need to remember, with what you all do every single day, the world we live in is a mirror.
Your industry is a mirror, not a window. Meaning the energy you put out in the world, it’s gonna come right back to you. So let’s make sure we put out energy that represents our best.
Be responsible for the energy you bring into a room. Be responsible for the energy you bring into the room because people meet your energy before they meet you.
Second big idea is to practice courage. Now, this is a big misconception. Many people think courage is a destination you reach. It is not. It is a muscle you train.
See, many times we hope to be courageous, and we forget about the fact that courage is something that we need to practice. And now a moment I needed to practice some courage was when my wife and I, when we got engaged, this is Gabby. We wanted to celebrate our engagement with a trip to Hawaii. And Gabby had the idea of going open water without a cage, shark diving. And I said, I’m what I don’t think we wanna do that. And she said, booked it, and it’s nonrefundable. Oops.
So we get out to the island of Oahu. On the second day, we head to the north shore of the island, home of the bonsai pipeline, a set of waves that averages twenty to thirty feet high. And this is where we’re going swimming.
So we get down to the marina, we pull into the parking lot. I look over there’s four millennials doing yoga beside a boat. Gabby goes, I think that’s them. I go, I don’t at all. And she’s like, go ask, go ask. And I go, hey, is this for deep blue eco tours?
And one of the guys looks at me and he goes, yeah, bro, totally. So I already don’t have a whole lot of confidence in the leadership of this team.
And we get into this boat. It’s me, Gabby, three other people on the tour, and then the dive team. We had three miles into the middle of the ocean. On our way out, we get a safety briefing. Three rules for success. Rule number one, when you’re getting into the water, make sure you do not jump in the water because then they’ll think you’re food.
Instead, make sure to slide in.
I go, boss, I really don’t know the difference between jumping a slide that feels eerily similar, so I’m kinda confused.
He says rule number two, when you’re getting into the water, always when you’re actually in the water, always remain in eye contact with the sharks at all times.
I don’t know if y’all have seen a shark recently, but their eyes are on the side of their face. And I’m wearing goggles, so not really sure how to execute on rule number two. Says rule number three. When you get in the water, do not, under any circumstance, swim directly above, below, behind, in front, or beside any of the sharks.
And I’m like, what else is left? And and I’m nervous. And I’m creating all of these stories about the experience before I am even in the experience. I’m assuming a negative outcome before it’s happened yet.
So we get out to this buoy, three miles out, and they explain we’re gonna create white water with the engine to mimic a fishing boat. Because there’s these fishing boats that fish off the coast of Oahu. What they do is they throw hundreds of defective crab overboard. So the sharks over the years have developed this learned behavior that when they see that white water, that signals to them that crab is coming into the water, and that means that it’s time for them to eat.
So we’re gonna create that white water signal to the sharks that it’s time to eat, and then we’re gonna swim. He said that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.
We go forward, backward, forward three times.
Almost immediately, ten plus sharks start circling and thrashing against the side of the boat.
The captain looks at me, and he goes, alright. Get in.
And I look at Gabby because this was her idea. I go, I’m bored. Do you wanna go ahead? You thought this would be fun.
And she goes, you’re going. I will be right behind you. It’s gonna be fun. Don’t make up stories about it before you’ve experienced it yourself.
So I’m sitting on that back panel of the boat. I slide into the water. I put on my goggles. I look down.
I see probably thirteen or fourteen sharks circling from five feet all the way to twenty five feet below me where you could just see their silhouette.
Then Gabby gets in the water with the others that were on the tour except for one. There was one girl at the very last minute that decided that she wasn’t gonna get into the water because she was smart. She decided to stay on the boat twenty minutes in feeling good, feeling comfortable. It wasn’t that it was the fear went away. It was that it was such an engaging experience. The fear didn’t really matter.
And then I looked to my right where Gabby was, and she’s gone.
Look to my left. She’s not there either. I pop up from the water. I take off my goggles. I look over and probably twenty feet away.
I see Gabby completely dry on the boat.
I was like, you left me to die. Did I marry the right person? I swam around. I got back on the boat. It was the craziest experience of my life. But what really stood out to me was this.
Everyone reported the exact same thing.
Terrified before.
But as soon as we got in the water, it was such an engaged experience, the fear didn’t really matter. And then afterward, everyone was absolutely elated except for her.
The one that didn’t get in the water.
She said nothing, but her expression said everything she wished she had the courage to try.
How often do we fail to jump?
You know, that moment made me realize is how often do we have that dream? We have that goal. We have that next level that we want to reach. We have that thing that we wanna pursue. Part of us really thinks that we can make it happen, but we see it from a distance.
It looks scary. We doubt ourselves. We hesitate that the we’re the right person for it. And then we sit on the sidelines of our life waiting for a moment that will have more in us to face the fear.
See, it is actually not about overcoming your fears. It’s about building a better relationship with them.
And the research backs us up. They literally did brain scans that found fear and courage coexist.
They’re one in the same. In other words, we cannot wait to feel ready.
The goals that you have, you’ve got to do it scared because that’s all courage is.
Courage is literally your willingness to put yourself into the moment of discomfort before you’re ready.
Confidence is being bold enough to say, hey, listen, I’m not prepared. I don’t know if I’m gonna be able to make this work. I’ve never done this before and going forward anyways. That’s how we become our best. What we found is that confidence is really built by going to the places where we have none. So I want to encourage you to have the courage to go for it, to take the leap, to jump in the water, to say yes, to sign up for the half marathon, to set a new standard for your life and then stick to it for the first time in your life to be the kind of person that says, I understand the results that I’ve gotten up until today are all on me. The results I get into the future are gonna take a new level.
They’re gonna require a different version of myself, a different level of commitment, a different level of drive. So I don’t want you to just come in here with and feel excited. I want you to decide what is that stretch goal for me?
What is that courageous action that I need to take? Because many people stay in their comfort zone. They stay with what they’re good at. And what happens is oftentimes success. And I would I’m gonna assume that the majority of people, if not every single person here is successful. But success has a little bit of a challenge not many people talk about is that success doesn’t necessarily beget more success. Sometimes it begets complacency.
And sometimes you reach a certain level of earning of your career, of your body. I feel good. And then we actually downshift.
Then we actually coast and we ride out that wave.
So I wanna challenge you to ask yourself the question of how am I practicing courage this year? I wanna be a friend, but I also wanna be someone that challenges you to say, how am I how am I committing to extraordinary this year? What am I doing in terms of raising my marketing efforts, in terms of investing in my business at a new level that I’ve never have before, as opposed to putting myself out there? Maybe it’s putting yourself out there on social media in a more meaningful way to be a voice in your industry with so many people that choose not to be. So what is that courageous step and that courageous decision that you’re gonna make today, on Thursday that you can implement and execute on before the weekend.
So when it comes Monday, January nineteenth, you get to the office or you join the call and people are like, what did Valentina do differently on the weekend? What’s going on with Jim? Heidi seems a little more locked in. Paige feels a little different today.
How are you going to lean in to the things that create discomfort? Because that’s where all the growth is. So I want you to take literally sixty seconds because we’re flowing real fast through all of these things. I wanna make sure we get to questions.
Where in your life are you practicing more courage?
Where in your life can you practice more courage this year professionally, personally? That’s up to you. I’ll give you about thirty seconds to a minute. Your time starts now.
All right. Some amazing answers in here. More social media overcoming my imposter syndrome, working on my marriage relationships, amazing transition into full time advisor, new career, new into marketing, incredible developing and making new relationships. Incredible.
Love it. Love it. Love it. Awesome. So in my social media presence, video marketing, having a difficult conversation.
Awesome. Focus on my marriage. Creating my music album. Very cool.
Awesome. I love it. Oftentimes, we just need a reminder that we got more in the tank.
That we got more in us. And I’m here to not just say I believe in you because I feel like, know, in my for my friends and my family, I’m, I’m often the person that believes in them more than they believe in themselves. I want to be that belief. But I also am I I also, in addition to belief, I also want to challenge you today.
To say, where I’ve been operating right now, there’s a new playing field I’ve not even touched.
How do I access that?
And then inspire other people to do the same. That’s what I think the courage piece is really for. Scared is a feeling. Courage is an action, so we gotta do it scared. The third is to prioritize progress. Now, we all know making progress in our lives will make us feel more confident, of course. So what is that holds people back?
For a long time, I thought it was the fear of failure that, you know, holds people back from going forward, from really pursuing something.
I’ve actually found that it’s the fear of failing in front of people.
You know, we care so much about what other people think to the point we’re going for it doesn’t seem worth it.
And we try so hard not to be judged within the world that we live in today is basically impossible. Anyone here have a judgy family?
Does anyone here have a judgy family? Anyone here realize that they had a judgy family over Christmas for the first time?
Okay. If you anyone is anyone the part of your family that is judgy? Is it you? Is it I won’t I won’t judge.
It’s okay. Yes. My kids. I know that’s right. Yep. Yep. Yes. My mother. Okay. We figured it out this year.
I had fifty my wife and I had fifteen people here over the holiday hosting four different families over Christmas, we rented tables, it felt like we were a catering service. And I realized that judgment doesn’t end with family. Sometimes it begins there. And to give you the perfect example, my family is actually from Nicaragua.
My first language is Spanish. Oftentimes people are like, you look like a Brandon.
And Nicaragua is a beautiful place, and I would go there every single year. And the perfect example of this is something in Nicaragua called Portiando. Portiando, this is a real photo from Granada, where my family is from. This is where you place a rocking chair outside of the home. You engage in local gossip. They call it, it is essentially the act of judging others as they walk by.
This is a morning routine.
And I always wondered what they talked about. And on my twelfth birthday, I was so excited. I was in Nicaragua, And I finally got an invite.
Like I was pumped. Was like, I’m finally old enough to judge other people. I can’t wait. And they gave me a little rocking chair and everything.
And we get started.
And they’re talking about everyone in the town. They’re talking about everything that has happened over the past thirty days. I literally feel like I’m watching a telenovela in real time. And one of my aunts out of nowhere catches me completely off guard, looks at me, and she goes, see, this is why you’re single.
I was like, Diaz, I’m twelve.
I know I gotta get in the game, but can you give me some time?
And growing up in a family like that and in the world that we live in, I realize we live in a pretty judgmental world, don’t we?
A world that often pressures us to have it all together to play the perfect game. So as we grow up and as we enter our careers, what does the strategy for confidence ultimately become for most? What is the corporate strategy for confidence?
Yeah. I’ll just fake it till I make it.
We bring the version of ourselves we think people want.
We bring the version of ourselves we think the moment requires. But I don’t think we should fake it till we make it. I think we should work on it until we become it.
Because in a world that will soon be replaced by machines and AI, what cannot be replaced is you, who you are and the trust you create for your clients. When you’re dealing with their most important decisions in their life aside from who they marry, You are the one in such an uncertain and unstable economic landscape where the world is saying one thing, but then the market say another. People are confused. They’re scared.
They’re scared of of getting left behind. But they’re also scared of losing it all. What if we get to retirement, I lose twenty percent thirty percent of my portfolio, and then my retirement days look different.
You, that is our ultimate advantage. You showing up with the presence and the enthusiasm and the I’ve got you energy. See, authenticity is our ultimate differentiator. That’s why people want to work with us.
But what keeps people feeling like imposters, or what keeps us feeling like we need to be a certain way is a phenomenon in psychology called the spotlight effect. This is what this is an operating system that has been running in the background for you this morning. It is currently running, and it will run for you this afternoon. It’s where we think people are thinking of us all of the time.
So naturally, we people please. Hoping not to disappoint, but what that does is it ties our confidence to external validation, which, by the way, makes it very easy to tear down, or it makes it feel like our lives are an audition.
I absolutely love this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt. You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you if you realize how seldom they do.
You wanna know how to let go of what other people think of you? Spend more time thinking what you think of you.
See, confident people don’t strive for perfect having it all together. They strive for better. And so here’s what I want you to think about. Finding your one percent better this week.
One percent better. It doesn’t seem like much, but here’s what happens. When you get one percent better a day, in a year, you’re thirty seven times better.
So what is your one percent?
Is it making ten extra calls? Is it posting three times a week on social? Is it scheduling the date night that you have put off far too long because work has taken the front seat and your relationship without you even knowing it has taken the back?
Friends, I believe we’re one percent away. So I want you to think about and I want you to take literally thirty seconds, sixty seconds, and define what is my one percent shift this year in twenty twenty six. Maybe I’m gonna start my day with more intention and not go to social media and email for the first ninety minutes of my day? Am I just talking to myself?
We’re one percent away. So what’s yours? Let’s take thirty seconds. Your time starts now.
Alright. Wrap it up. Wrap it up. I’ve got a few examples. Daily Bible. Love that.
Share joy. Relentless joy. Linkedin impressions. Very cool. Every day with at least one person, consistency and tracking.
Less doom scrolling. Love the honesty. Friends, this is incredible. Y’all, I genuinely think we’re one percent away from all of the things that we wanna achieve.
And finally, before we get to some questions, number four is to go beyond what’s possible. See, this is easy when we’re kids because we have no limits. We have no, you know, ceiling of what we can and cannot do. But as we grow up, we run into people that tell us what we can do and can’t do. And miss H was the first person to limit what I thought I could become.
And after my run-in with her, I gotta be honest with you, I gave up on that dream of being an author.
Ten years go by. And I have this idea for a book, but I felt like I could still hear miss h’s voice. Luckily, I had a little confidence along the way.
So I decided to research the odds of success with traditional publishing, which was a big mistake because the average publisher gets ten to fifteen thousand proposals a year, of which they work with six to eight authors. Typically, you need to have gone to a great school. You need to have done something. I had done nothing. You need to be somebody. I was Canadian. Like, I don’t really have the credentials, but I did have a willingness to go past where most people quit.
So I put this proposal together on Canva, true story, and I start sending it out to all the major publishers in the world. And within forty eight hours, I get my first response, which reads, this wouldn’t be right on our list, which wasn’t even the worst response, by the way.
Rejection number five comes in, couldn’t see the vision. Rejection number ten, I’m gonna pass. Rejection number fifteen, we only work with established authors. Rejection number nineteen, it fell flat on the page. Rejection number twenty one, it’s a no from us. Rejection number twenty three is my favorite. No, sorry.
And I was ready to throw in the towel, because I felt like I was running out of publishers.
And then a month and a half later, I get rejection number twenty nine from Penguin Random House, which was the one I was kinda waiting for because it almost gave me this permission to give up because I tried everything.
And I go upstairs. I open the email. The email reads, dear one, we think this book will fit perfectly on our list. We’d love to partner with you on this project. All the best penguin random house.
And I’m looking at this email thinking, this is spam.
Like McConaughey, Obama, eat, pray, love, there’s no way.
We go back and forth. We set up a Zoom.
And leading up to the Zoom, I still think this is a scam. I feel like they’re gonna ask me to send Bitcoin to confirm the partnership. And, like, I’m I’m nervous, and I’m sitting on the Zoom call, and it’s just me, and all these doubts start to flood in. Mike Juan, this is gonna be no different. You’re not a real writer. Why are you wasting their time?
And as all those doubts are coming in, I see the Zoom boxes start to pop up.
And it’s all the executives from Penguin, and we ended up signing the deal as one of the youngest authors they’ve worked with in history, which was pretty cool.
But at that point of the story, you’d you’d probably wonder what I was thinking.
It was time to send miss h a book.
So I emailed mild high school.
And I get a response directly from miss h after fifteen years of not speaking.
Where she said, hi, mister Bandana. I received a message you wanted to connect with me. How are you? Regards, miss h ice in her veins.
So I respond with Gabby’s help.
Hi, Laura. Great to hear from you. For context, I was in your English class. Big dream.
Reminds me being an author. I’m excited to share ten years later. I signed a deal with Penguin launching later this year. Your class was a turning point for me.
I’d love to bring you a signed copy. How does your schedule look at the end of May?
Her response, I could not have written a better script.
Hi again. Oh my gosh. That’s amazing for you and incredibly gratifying for me to hear that I play a small part in your literary journey. Congrats. PS, just watch the attached video with your permission. I’d love to play it with my classes as an example of where words can take them.
I could not believe it. We went back and forth. We landed on date for me to go home and visit. And I was nervous because the first chapter starts when writing is a gift you’re born with and you just weren’t.
She opens the book. And in the end, y’all are one of the first people hearing this. Miss h did receive that fifteen year dream. And as you can probably see in the photo, the craziest part, she was so nice.
Like, miss frizzled, nice. And I was thinking, you couldn’t have been this way before?
There’s always gonna be people that doubt us, and she was such a lesson to not deter the unreasonable goals that I had for my life based on the opinion from someone who didn’t have my perspective, which is what I really want. Before we dive into a few questions, I really want to for you to define what is the unreasonable goal that I’m gonna set for this year.
Keyword unreasonable. I don’t want you to set SMART goals. We’re over that. I want you to set unreasonable goals.
Goals that you look at it, and it kinda gives you that pit. Goals that you share with your friends, and they’re kinda like, are you sure? Goals that that make you will require you to be a different version of yourself. So I’ll give you about a minute on that.
Your time starts now.
Alright. Alright. Alright. I’m seeing some awesome goals. Get my pilot’s life license. My wife retire early.
Awesome. Incredible. Incredible. Incredible answers. Amazing. I’ll before we wrap with one one final piece, what I’ll what I’ll say is that if there’s anything that you need as you move toward this year, feel free.
Honestly, I I hope it goes without saying, send me a message on on LinkedIn. That’s probably where I hang out the most. It’s literally just one. You can message me or on Instagram as well.
I’d love to be connected and sort of be a fan on the sidelines of your journey. So whatever questions you have, just throw them into the chat. I know we have been seeing a few come in on on the q and a tab, but anything into the chat, just throw those in before I hand it back over to Susan to wrap up, we can do a few questions because I know it’s two fifty five. I wanna keep you all on time.
I don’t have a hard stop, but I know we wanna keep this train rolling. So any questions at all about what we covered? Derek, favorite book, The Alchemist.
If you have not read The Alchemist, I’ve read it probably three or four times. It is an extraordinary, extraordinary book.
Give me the why quickly.
It’s because it is it’s the hero’s journey. You know? It’s this journey of this, of this farmer, that, like, he just goes on this unbelievable sort of quest, and it’s and he finds his personal legend in terms of his purpose. It’s it’s incredible. Incredible.
Any others? Any others before we we wrap up with a closing closing few notes here? What made you wanna reach back out to your teacher? Honestly, to I had so many people ask me, are you gonna are you gonna reach out to miss h? And I wanted to go in person to not only give her give her the book, but also to share with her how how much her words had an impact. And I literally carried them for close to fifteen years.
Like, remember to to this day, what she was what what she had said. And I needed her to remember that the words that she said hold weight, and that she says hold weight. So but it was a cool experience. She was great. And it was there was no animosity and she was awesome. I haven’t heard back from her since, which either means she has not read the book or she has. Yeah.
What is it? Let’s see. What is your level of training in writing self learned or went to school? Heidi, self learned. I can barely spell definitely to this day.
And working with penguin, we did hire a professional writing team. So there’s about seven people on the team with their editorial team. The lead writer who’s worked on some of the biggest books of all time. She was the editor on George W.
Bush, his book Wow. Which was crazy. Like he handed her a manuscript on his private jet. She read it on the jet.
She threw it out and said, go hire a writer and give me something I can use.
She’s a beast.
Most when you’re the best in the world at what she is terrifying, but extraordinary. She is like Mary is her name. She’s from New York, but she is like like in the movies. Like, she is one of the best editors in the world. You know?
What else?
If you work with her.
Yeah. She’s incredible. How can we get your book or access to, more of you after this? I would say, Carly, on on socials on and let me actually throw in.
I will just throw in my LinkedIn because that is where where I I would say I hang out hang out the most. And that is me. That is not an AI. As many times you see a lot of people doing these like m dash LinkedIn things.
Or also on, on Instagram, which is there. You can scan that and and we can keep in touch there. And then, yeah, the book is kinda everywhere. It’s on Amazon, Target, Barnes and Noble, Walmart, Confident by Choice. I realized I didn’t even show it, but this is the book. And it’s been, yeah, two and a half years in the making. It came out this past August.
And yeah, I just have been a project of a lifetime. Let’s do one more before I hand it back over to Susan. And then with some, I’ll give some closing thoughts as well.
Okay. What else? Are you going shark swimming ever again, Crystal? Absolutely.
I would do it again in and y’all before I hand it back over to Susan because Yeah.
I know we’re we’re heading to time.
The what I will leave you with is We are.
Is, you know, there’s there’s always gonna be people that stand in the way between us and what we really want. And there’s often when moments where we’re doubting ourselves or other people are doubting us. In those moments, we need to adopt a new mindset. And that mindset I’ve realized is let’s find out.
I don’t think any of us have an idea of what we can achieve this year, so let’s find out. You don’t know if they’ll say yes or no. So let’s find out. You know? And and I will I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes of all time, which is by Theodore Roosevelt. It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man or woman stumbles the credit belongs to the man in the arena, who strives valiantly and fall short again and again because there’s no effort without error. And if they fail, at least they fail while they’re in greatly so that their place shall never be with those timid souls who know victory or defeat.
You know, when you find yourself in the arena this year, when you find yourself kinda faced with that challenge instead of thinking, I don’t know if I can, I encourage you to replace that with, let’s find out what happens when I try?
Because belief is in short supply. We need more of it. And there’s so many people, there’s so many of your clients, so many of your friends that need that from you. They need the best of you.
Yeah.
So if you can’t do it for you, do it for them. With that, Susan, over to you.
You know, I don’t even wanna take away from that momentum that you are leaving everybody with. I am high energy. I think everybody on the call is leaving with some takeaways and we can just see from what they’re writing. They appreciate you so much.
We do too. And I love how much you played to what they do and the value that they provide to their clients What they do is a noble profession. We are honored that they joined us and I’m excited to see what this year brings. Thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks so much y’all. Happy Thursday.
Bye bye.
