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Aug. 11, 2024

908: You can be ANYTHING... buttttttttt you NEED to do these 3 things!

Ever feel like you're running in place, unable to make progress in your personal or business life? Discover the transformative power of belief and actionable steps in our latest Solo Sunday episode. Drawing from our host Brian Lofrumento's own experiences and the empowering mantra "anything is possible," we dissect three crucial steps to escape the stagnation that's holding you back. Whether you're just starting your entrepreneurial journey or seeking to elevate your current business, this episode offers a practical roadmap to help you regain momentum. 

In this episode, we also dive into the profound impact of mindset and self-belief on achieving your goals. Through candid personal stories and examples, we'll explore how shifting your mindset can unlock new opportunities and propel you toward success. Brian shares his Sunday routine that keeps his goals aligned and his motivation high. 

Chapters

00:00 - Overcoming Feeling Stuck and Stagnant

09:43 - Beliefs, Goals, and Taking Action

16:16 - Podcast Guests and Interactivity

Transcript
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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and in this Solo Sunday episode, we are going to be talking about all those times that we feel stuck in our growth journeys, whether you feel stuck when it comes to growing your business, or whether it feels stuck when it comes to growing yourself.

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We're going to talk about how to get unstuck and the three important steps that you must take along the way to become who it is that you want to be and be where it is that you hope to be.

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I'm super excited about this one.

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Let's dive in.

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So I know that personally, I love bringing up the fact that anything is possible.

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It's the three words that have followed me all through life, both personally and professionally.

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It's something that has always been echoed to me by my mom, ever since I was a little kid.

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Still to this day, she always reminds me that anything is possible, and obviously here on the show, one of our founding principles is, of course, the notion that anything is possible, because I think entrepreneurship is the ultimate example of that is that in the professional career, we need to wait for someone else to pick us.

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We need to wait for other people to give us opportunities.

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Where the reality is, as entrepreneurs, we get to just go and build things and forge our own path and serve people at whatever level it is that we're capable of and that we want to do for them.

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And so I know that, for both myself and all of our amazing guests that come on this show each and every week, it's something that we talk about a lot, about the fact that you can be anything, you can accomplish anything, you can grow your business in any way that you want to, in any way that you hope to.

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There's just a world of possibilities out there, and it's why I so appreciate and I'm very grateful for the fact that I'm surrounded by entrepreneurs.

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Literally, it's what I do for a living, it's in my day-to-day life.

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I'm friends with so many fellow entrepreneurs.

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It's because it is that attitude, it is that mindset of possibilities, of belief, of hope, of optimism, of action, of all of these things.

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But all of that comes with a giant disclaimer, and that's why, here in today's episode, I do want to talk about the other side of it, because inevitably, at various parts of our journey, we feel stuck.

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We either feel stuck that we don't know how to grow our business, whatever that next stage is for us.

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Heck, even if that stage, if you're still at zero and you're thinking to yourself, what the heck am I doing wrong?

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What needs to change?

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Or even if you've been at it and you're comfortably making $10,000 a month in your business and you're thinking, gosh, what takes me to that next level?

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Or we can extrapolate this as we so often do every Sunday in these solo Sunday episodes and we can talk about ourselves personally and our own personal development and growth journeys where we say I just feel at a crossroads in life and I haven't really made progress in the past three months, six months, a year, two years, three years, five years I don't know what that time period looks like.

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We all go through those ruts.

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That is not unique to any single one of us, but any of those times where we feel stuck, the more that I've thought about it lately, I just keep coming back to three simple things that we always need to do when it is that we feel stuck.

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And we have to do these three things in order, and we're going to talk about both the three things today, as well as the order and why I feel that that's so important.

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So the thing number one I've noticed this so much recently in all of my conversations with a heck of a lot of you entrepreneurs, which I so appreciate, all of those, or all of you who do actually have the guts to reach out to me.

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I'll tell you, as a podcaster, I've sat on a few episodes lately with guests, but most people honestly, 98, 99% of people who ever tune into a podcast episode or a YouTube video or read a book 98 or 99, it's probably more like 99.5% of people never have the guts or take the time to actually reach out to those people who are positively impacting them.

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And so, as someone who creates a lot of content, who's on the air five days a week, I'm so appreciative for all of you listeners who do reach out, whether it's to say thank you Honestly.

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I do appreciate those emails, but I really appreciate and love those of you who reach out and say hey, brian, I just wanted to bounce this idea off you.

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Is there anything I'm missing or anything from your experience that you see?

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Or even people that just have a really pointed strategic question.

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I always love offering guidance, so don't be shy.

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All of that was a really quick aside to say don't be shy about reaching out to me or any other content creator.

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Honestly.

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That was a really quick aside to say don't be shy about reaching out to me or any other content creator, honestly, we love serving you.

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We do this for all of you.

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Otherwise it's just me talking to myself in a microphone, which is not the most fun thing in the world.

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It's you all that make this a lot more fun.

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But all of that the reason I bring that up is because I do love and appreciate my conversations with you, the listeners, and especially for so many of you entrepreneurs out there.

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Lately I've just been hearing this, this exasperation that's the word that I'm going to use where you think I'm stuck.

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I'm stuck business wise.

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I feel like I'm stuck life wise.

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I'm still in this job that I don't like.

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I'm still in this situation.

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I'm not at my healthiest.

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I'm hearing people are stuck for all different sorts of reasons and it makes sense at the end of summer here we are recording this in the middle of August and I know a lot of people.

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Things just go off the bandwagon, things go off the wayside.

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When it comes to summertime, we're not working as much, we're thinking about vacations, we're soaking in the sun, the family time, the friend time.

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There's a lot of things that go on, but for me, what I think really gets lost along the way is even what we want to be and what it is that we want to accomplish.

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And I feel like that's the step one that we need to talk about, because how can you make progress, how can you grow, how can you move forward when you don't even know what it is that you want to be and what you want to accomplish, and what you want to accomplish and what you want to move forward towards?

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It's really hard to arrive at some sort of destination when you don't even know what the destination is.

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So, of course, you're not going to be able to chart the path, chart the route that it is that you have to take from where it is that you are now to where it is that you want to be.

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And so I feel like that's step one.

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That is inevitably what goes wrong in any growth journey that leaves us feeling stuck is we lose sight of, or we never even decide, who is it that I want to be?

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What is it that I want to be?

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What is it that I want to accomplish, and so it's a really big, broad question.

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But I do think that we need to sit with ourselves and we for sure need to ask that question, but for sure we need to answer that question.

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And when it comes to answering that question, I think it's really important to note that these answers aren't going to be permanent.

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It's very likely that they're going to change, and I think we put too much emphasis personally and also societally in believing that most things are permanent, when the very harsh reality is that most things, almost all things, are temporary, and so we need to reassess this question.

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We can't just ask ourselves this question today and be done with it and just keep moving in that direction.

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It's just like if you and I took a sailboat out on the water is we orient our sails in the direction of where we want to go, but a lot of things are going to change that along the way.

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We're going to have to adjust to the wind, we're going to have to adjust to so many different things.

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Maybe there's another boat that's coming into view.

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There's so many things that we need to adjust, and so adjusting our sales.

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It's an analogy that we use a lot in life and business, and it's because it is exactly that.

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The winds are always changing, the circumstances are always changing.

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We need to be adjusting our sales, but it does start with that important question of who do I want to be?

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What do I want to be?

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What do I want to accomplish?

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Because we already know most things don't just happen by mistake.

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You're not going to be a great dad by mistake.

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You're not going to be a great entrepreneur by mistake.

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You're not going to be super healthy and fit by mistake.

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You're not going to be enriched by mistake.

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You're not going to have financial wealth by mistake.

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None of these things are going to happen by mistake.

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So, whatever it is that you're working towards, you got to get really clear on what all of those things are that you want to be, and we can even bring this down on a really micro level and ask ourselves how do we want to be?

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Do you want to be more outgoing?

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Do you want to be more informed?

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Do you want to be kinder?

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Do you want to be more talkative?

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Do you want to be?

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Do you want to be more adventurous?

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Do you want to be more of a risk taker?

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What is it that you want to be All of these things first, things first.

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You need to ask yourself this question and then decide what it is that you want to be, because I think it's pretty clear it's something that, the older I get, the more that I'm accepting is that we already know how to get to most places.

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We already know how to achieve most of the things that we want to achieve.

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I'll use fitness as the example, because it's a very simple example Simple in theory, hard in practice.

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We all know how to be fit.

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There is not a single question left on planet Earth about how we can become fitter.

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It's a very simple equation Eat better, exercise more.

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Eat better, move more.

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That's it.

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That's really what health and fitness comes down to.

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Now, are there ailments and things that we experience along the way?

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Yes, but we all know for an absolute fact that if we eat better and we move more, we are healthier.

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It is a very simple formula.

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However, we mess it up along the way, and so understanding these things is not enough, but deciding on them and putting our stake in the ground and understanding what our destination is, that is an essential step one, but, because it's easier said than done, it leads us to step two, which is, in my opinion, you need to believe it.

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You really need to believe it Because if you thought I was going to go from decide on where it is that you want to be and what you want to be to doing it, no, that middle step.

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I feel so strongly about this and it's come up in so many conversations I've had lately with you, listeners, with other people that I just meet out and about in my daily life.

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I'm always out in public, I'm always in coffee shops or going on bike rides or walks through the city.

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I love just engaging in conversation with people from all different backgrounds, and what I so consistently come to find is that even when people say, ah, this is what I'm working on, this is what I really want, obviously most of those conversations are about people who want to start their business.

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They always say I really want to do this.

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And here's you know, I signed up for Canva and I created a free website on Squarespace or Wix or whatever it is.

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The tools are completely irrelevant.

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But they tell me all of these things and I say, okay, what's holding you back?

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And I realized they say, oh, I'm not good at sales.

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Or, even worse, they say I'm not a salesperson.

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Or they say I've never been a boss before, or nobody in my family is an entrepreneur, or I don't know any business owners.

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I can tell that even though they're doing the things which is awesome and that's an inevitable step we have to take action.

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They don't believe it, they don't believe themselves to be entrepreneurs, and so it's really difficult to accomplish anything in life when our own mindset is that we are not that thing.

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If you don't believe it, it's really hard to do anything with that.

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You'll always experience some level of self-sabotage because you yourself don't believe the thing.

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And so if step one is for us to ask ourselves what do I want to be, what do I want to accomplish, you need to decide those things.

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But then step two is you need to really start to believe those things.

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And there's a lot that goes into beliefs, and we've talked about that a bunch of times here on this podcast and we'll continue to talk about it a bunch more times.

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But at the root of it is your own inner game, your own inner self-talk.

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The words that you use, the language that you use, how you talk to yourself, how you talk to others about yourself All of these things are incredibly important, and then then, of course, when we believe it, then we can actually start taking those tangible steps.

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It's something that I'm guilty of as well.

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I mean, I've said the words out loud a million times in my life of oh, I'm not a runner, I hate running and I truly do, and it's something that clearly still, even at the time of recording, I feel this way, and so there's a reason why I don't even own running shoes right now.

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I own soccer shoes, cleats, I own tennis shoes, I own shoes for everything else that I do, but I don't have running shoes because I don't believe I'm a runner and until I get over that fact, that will not change If that's my attitude.

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It will not change.

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It really is that simple.

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And so I'll confess to you here on the air that's not something that I'm working towards.

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I have way more fun biking, running or biking walking, playing tennis, playing soccer, playing Frisbee.

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I have way more fun doing other things.

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So that's not at the top of my list of what I want to reshape, but it is one very simple example about beliefs and belief patterns and the way that we view ourselves and the language that we use.

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And so, of course, step three really is doing the thing.

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Go out and do the thing, whatever it is.

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If you want to be more informed, go start getting more informed.

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Start asking people questions, start paying attention to current events.

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If you want to become better at sales, go take a sales training.

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Go talk to real life salespeople.

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Go get hyper focused on sales material, whether that's reading books, listening to specific podcast episodes, reaching out to people more intentionally, whatever it may be, you ultimately have to do the thing.

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But my argument here today, at the root of today's episode, is that you cannot do step one until you've already done steps one and two, because if you haven't decided where it is that you want to, because if you haven't decided where it is that you want to grow and you haven't decided what it is that you want to be, you're going to be a mess, you're going to feel stuck, you're going to not make progress because you're going to be all over the place.

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How can you make progress when you don't even know what you're making progress towards?

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And so I think step one is incredibly important.

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But then step two if you don't change your belief patterns, then even when you start doing it, you will forever be confined by those barriers that you've built up in your own mind.

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It's why one of my favorite quotes you are confined only by the walls that you build yourself.

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And it's so true.

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And actually I'm going to pull on a Napoleon Hill quote here, which he's the author of Think and Grow Rich, where he said you can be anything you want to be only if you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith, for whatever the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve.

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I'm going to read that excerpt for you one more time from Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich you can be anything you want to be, if only you believe with sufficient conviction and act in accordance with your faith, for whatever the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve.

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I think it's so important.

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But it does come back to these three steps and that's why I think it's important for us to build in these decision points in our journey.

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For me, it's every Sunday.

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It's why these solo Sunday episodes.

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It's not by mistake, it's not just because we pick this day of the week for the heck of it.

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It's because Sundays, for me, are all about hitting a coffee shop, doing this reflective work, reorienting my sales every single week.

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It is for me there of work reorienting my sales every single week, it is for me.

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There are some weeks we're in the middle of the week, I feel unorganized, I feel all over the place, I feel scattered and I say, okay, hold on, let's reset.

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We need to build these decision points into our lives, into our weeks, into our businesses.

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I'd extrapolate into our relationships, into everything that we do, to always make sure that we know what it is that we're working towards, that we believe it, and then that we go do the work to achieve it.

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So lots of food for thought today.

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This episode is more about you asking these questions and you doing this self-exploratory work and you coming up with these answers, but I hope that it hits you where it needed to for this week.

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It's a really exciting time of the year.

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We're on the end of fall, or the end of summer, the beginning of fall, which is my personal favorite season, and there's a lot of good stuff coming from us.

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This fall we have been, honestly, the entire team has been all hands on deck.

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We are working hard to continue growing, for you, to keep reaching even more entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs and keep serving all of you at even deeper levels.

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So lots of exciting things.

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With the new season comes all new ideas, new perspectives, new things.

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So make sure you pound that subscribe button, because we'll be coming at you, as always, every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.

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Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the entrepreneur to entrepreneur podcast.

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If you haven't checked us out online, there's so much good stuff there.

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Check out the show's website and all the show notes that we talked about in today's episode at the wantrepreneurshowcom.

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And I just want to givea shout out to our amazing guests.

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There's a reason why we are ad free and have produced so many incredible episodes five days a week for you, and it's because our guests step up to the plate.

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These are not sponsored episodes.

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These are not infomercials.

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Our guests help us cover the costs of our productions.

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They so deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, that they contribute to help us make these productions possible.

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So thank you to not only today's guests, but all of our guests in general, and I just want to invite you check out our website because you can send us a voicemail there.

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We also have live chat.

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If you want to interact directly with me, go to thewantrepreneurshowcom.

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Initiate a live chat.

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It's for real me and I'm excited because I'll see you as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday here on the Wantrepreneur.