953: Wherever you go, there you are... (BIRTHDAY REFLECTIONS AMID HURRICANE MILTON)

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Hey, what is up?

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Welcome to this episode of the Entrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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As always, I'm your host, brian LoFermento, and this episode is coming to you very late for this solo Sunday episode, because this is a post-birthday but also post-Hurricane Milton update and episode from Tampa, florida, and I'll tell you what.

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It's also kind of relevant to the fact that we've been hit by two major hurricanes in the past few weeks and it was my birthday.

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So automatically I'm in self-introspection and reflection mode.

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I'm excited about this one.

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Let's dive in, all right.

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So, first things first, I want to personally thank all of you listeners and, yes, those of you guests who I know tune into this show, which I so appreciate, all of you being a continued part of the entrepreneur to entrepreneur community and so many of you have reached out to me over the past few days and week.

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Really, obviously, here in Tampa Florida, we were directly hit by Hurricane Milton.

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I actually, funny enough, I evacuated Tampa, went about an hour south to where my parents live, just outside of Sarasota, florida, and we got hit by the eye of the storm.

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So it was a very eventful week with not much electricity, zero Wi-Fi and no cellular service.

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So that is all to say that I have been offline, completely out of touch.

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I was joking around when I finally got cell phone service back and posting some updates on my Instagram stories.

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I was writing, you all know, way more than we do, because we were literally in the dark for days on end.

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So it was very eventful and, squished in between, there was my birthday as well.

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So my birthday is on October 11th, which it was so fun to celebrate that with my parents, at the very least, even though we didn't have power, we managed to make it a special day, and my parents are always super thoughtful.

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So it was a really special day, and I will say, even beyond just having a birthday in the middle of the eye of a hurricane, a major you know, once in a thousand years rainfall event that they've been talking about here in the Tampa Bay area.

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Birthdays always just make me introspective and reflective, and there was something special about this year and this birthday in particular, not only because I'm on the other side of my early 30s now, you know, I'm in the second half of my 30s, quite officially, there's no way escaping that and so it just brought all the feels and it really made me reflect on the things that I've done up to this point, the direction that I want to go in, who I want to be, how I want to be, what I want to be doing All of those things came to mind.

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And especially doing all of that reflecting while being, I mean, completely isolated from the world, quite literally, with the fact that I couldn't go on social media, I didn't have cell phone service, I didn't have the internet, I didn't even have lights.

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All I had was a radio.

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My parents have an old school radio, which, I will say, makes things a little bit creepy.

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Just hearing the radio talk about exactly what's going on and how many millions of people are without power, it sounded like the end of the world.

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But I'm glad to be on the other side of that and sending really positive thoughts.

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I'll tell you guys what.

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It's very fortunate that I'm behind a microphone and hitting record on a computer and it's something that I'm very grateful and I count my blessings in that regard.

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But not everyone's been as fortunate throughout the state.

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So huge thoughts for everyone throughout the state of Florida and more recently we obviously had back-to-back hurricanes here and all the people in Tennessee and North Carolina and Georgia everywhere that's been affected.

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So that's a little bit of a preface to today's episode, but I really want to share with you something that I was reflecting on for my birthday and that is something that I don't think we talk about often enough within the world of entrepreneurship and I've heard this phrase before where they talk about create a life that you don't need a vacation from, and I've always really loved that, because for me, someone who I've traveled a lot, and that's something that I'm really fortunate and grateful that I've had the chance to travel so much.

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I've been to over 30 countries.

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I've obviously traveled all throughout the United States I think I'm at 43 states or something like that and and so throughout all of those travels, I've met so many amazing people and particularly so many amazing entrepreneurs, and throughout those experiences I, of course, fell into and mixed with and went to events and got to know a lot of the digital nomad community, and so frequently when I met digital nomads and I'm not throwing any shade at any lifestyle or any choices here in today's episode, but I do wanna share with you some perspectives that I gained from people within the digital nomad community and lifestyle, because the more that I talk to them, it seems like they all reach a point in their digital nomad life cycle where they realize, no matter where I go, it's still me.

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That's there, it's still my attitude, it's still my life, it's still my problems, it's still my worries, it's still my dreams, it's still you know the things that I do on a daily basis, still my habits, it's still the way that I spend my time.

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It doesn't matter whether I'm in Paris or Amsterdam, or if I'm in Brazil or in Los Angeles.

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It doesn't matter where I am, I'm still there.

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And that's why I've never quite really understood this quote that I'm about to share with you, but it's always stuck with me for one reason or another, and I will say that, as I was sitting down and doing my birthday, reflecting, this quote came to the top of my mind for the first time ever.

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It's a quote that I've long known and long heard and never really given it thought, and that quote is, very simply wherever you go, there you are.

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Wherever you go, there you are.

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And so, as I was sitting there, without electricity, without internet, without cell phone service, without lights, without literally anything, what I really sat with was what I had and what I always have had, and what I always will have is me Wherever I go.

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That's where I am.

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Wherever I go, I'll be there.

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It doesn't matter where I am, and so the reason why I'm sharing this with you here in today's Solo Sunday episode is because it really made me reflect on the fact that, as I celebrated my birthday, I think the thing that brings me the most joy in life and, trust me, there are a million things that bring me joy in life Anyone who knows me personally knows how easily excitable I am.

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I get excited about soccer, about tennis, about my family, especially about my niece and nephew.

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I get excited about going for walks.

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I get excited about biking.

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I get excited about chess.

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I get excited so easily all day long.

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I get very excited about podcasting.

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I get very excited about business, and so all of these things get me very excited, but I think, upon reflection, I think the thing that gets me the most excited is that genuinely, I appreciate me and genuinely I'm thankful for the person that I am and the person that I'm becoming, and it's something that is a point of pride for me, because myself and so many of you listeners and this is why I think that we are a very special breed as entrepreneurs.

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This is.

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One common thread that unites so many of us is personal development.

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We invest in ourselves, we invest in our minds, we invest in our attitudes, we invest in the way that we see the world.

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We invest in our own selves, our personal development.

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And so that's why, without anything else to distract me, for days on end in a lot of the state, by the way, still does not have power.

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At the time of recording, we are days out from the storm, and it could be another four or five days they're projecting before electricity returns to over a million people here in this state.

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Even most of Tampa still doesn't have power, and so that's why that quote comes to mind wherever you go, there you are.

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Wherever you go, there you are, and I think it's especially important and poignant for us, as entrepreneurs, to really embrace this and take it on board with our attitudes and really accept and own the fact that wherever we go, there we are, which means that we better become the types of people that we want to spend all of our time with, because I'll tell you what friends they come and go Family they come and go with the sense of they're not always there.

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Your family is not with you every single second of every single day.

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Your spouse, your partner they're not with you every single second of every day.

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They come and they go.

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The only person who will experience every single second of your life is you.

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So you better be building a person worth living with, you better be building a person that you want to spend every single waking moment with, and, in fact, this is the one person that you're going to spend those nights when you get in bed and you're just thinking those thoughts.

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You're thinking the thoughts of the person that you are Wherever you go, there you are.

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So I hope that you are building the person that you want to spend your life with, because, ultimately, that's what we all are.

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We all are a reflection of the person, the being, the thinker, the doer, the everything that we're going to spend every single second of our lives with.

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And so, to extrapolate this even further, the one common thread that I see I'll tell you what 2024, I have talked to more entrepreneurs and a lot of you entrepreneurs than I've ever talked to ever before.

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The show has been doing extraordinarily well this year.

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We have been expanding like crazy.

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We've got so many more listeners all over the world.

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I love hearing from every single one of you.

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Obviously, we've had three guests a week, every single week.

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This year we're already here in Q4, and we have had the most incredible entrepreneurs as guests.

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And I brag about it here on air all the time that I think I have the coolest job in the world because I get to talk to amazing people for a living.

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I get to have these incredible conversations both on the air and off the air, and I'm going to do some spoiler alerts right here for you right now.

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Is that the one common thread that has really stuck with me lately, the more I get to know these incredible guests.

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You know, on the air we talk business, we talk mindset, we talk stories, we talk journeys, we talk obstacles and struggles and wins and successes and strategies.

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We talk about so many things business-wise and when we finish that recording, there's something that always stands out to me Every single one of these entrepreneurs that you hear from.

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They've all built businesses that they love, and I don't think we talk about that enough.

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We talk about the ins and outs of business, the considerations, the mindset, the strategies.

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We talk about the ins and outs of business, the considerations, the mindset, the strategies.

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We talk about all of those things and you hear all of those, but hopefully what I hope that you start hearing in these conversations is that they love it, these entrepreneurs.

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They love their businesses, they love their lives, they love what they do.

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It doesn't mean that there aren't challenges and obstacles and pain points and things that they worry about and making payroll for so many of our guests who have employees on their team and so many things that they're responsible for, not only in business but in life.

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So many of them are parents or they have so many big responsibilities.

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Some of them are professors, some of them are sports coaches.

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We have so many incredible entrepreneurs with so many responsibilities, but what is a common thread just in our casual conversations, not even on the air, is gosh, these people have really built businesses that they love.

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They've built lives that they love.

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They've built their own selves that they love.

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They've built lives that they love.

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They've built their own selves that they love.

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They love talking about these things, they love exploring these things, they love being curious, they love learning.

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They genuinely love these things and I don't think we talk about it enough in the world of entrepreneurship is that we say you know, here's the top 10 most profitable businesses this year.

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Sure, go buy a laundromat, sure, go buy a car wash.

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There's a lot of ways to make money in this world, but I think what's most important and I can tell you this, as I sat in the pitch dark thinking about things on my birthday is I realized I'm so grateful to be living a life that I love, and this doesn't happen by mistake.

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You all know that my word for the year, for 2024, is building, and I mean that in the literal sense of it being a noun.

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I mean that in a sense of it being a verb.

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We are building things in our lives and I hope we're building them intentionally.

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And I hope we're building them intentionally and I hope we're building them strategically and, most important of all, I hope that we're building the things that we actually want to.

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And I know this feeling all too well because I remember my 10 months of working in corporate.

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I remember being amazing at my job.

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I loved it.

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I mean, I'm a people person.

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You put me in front of any group of people, you put me on any team and inevitably I'm going to really enjoy myself.

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I love digging into problems, I love coming up with solutions.

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I love working with others and hearing their perspectives and learning from them.

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I love that environment, but what I realized was I was building something for someone else, and so that's something that unites all of us as entrepreneurs.

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We are all builders.

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Every single guest who's come on the show this year and who will come on the show this year and beyond, they're all builders, and that's the attitude that we have, and so today's episode is really about that reflection.

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Whether we're talking about business or life, or ourselves, I hope you're building something that you love.

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I hope you're building something that you're passionate about.

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I hope you're building something that you're proud of.

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I hope I really hope that you're building something that lights you up, and the things that we're building are all of these.

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I hope you're investing in you.

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I hope you're building the life you want, and I hope that business that you're working so hard on is truly the business that you want, because I'll tell you, what I've experienced this firsthand at so many different points in my life is that, like I said, there's so many different ways to make money, and you can choose a business that you don't love.

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You can choose a business that doesn't light you up and guess what in the hopes of making money and guess what.

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You can fail at that, too.

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You can fail at anything.

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There's no guaranteed home run.

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That's the exact reason why business is is challenging, and that's the exact reason why not everybody's an entrepreneur and it's the exact reason why not everybody's a millionaire.

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There's no one guaranteed path, and so if you can fail at any of the things that you do, you might as well be doing those things that you love.

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You might as well be doing those things that you're passionate about and that light you up, and you might as well be doing all of this while becoming and growing into the type of person that you want to be and the type of person that you want to spend every single second around.

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If you sit there worrying at night and you say to yourself, gosh, I'm not where I wanna be in life.

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I am worried about this thing at work, or with my spouse, or with my partner, or with my family, or I'm worried about my health, stop worrying about those things and start making those things.

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And start making those things right in your life.

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Start building the life that you want.

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If you want to be more talkative.

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If you want to be more outgoing, you want to be more social, start becoming that person.

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It doesn't happen overnight, but that's why that verb of building, that's why thinking about all the buildings we see in cities and laying the foundation and building the walls and putting in the electrical and the windows and all of these things, they happen step by step, they happen in order and they happen over time, and it's important for us to do things correctly.

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But these things don't happen unless you start building.

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And so all of this I've been going on quite a bit today, but it's because I'm excited to have electricity again, it's because I'm excited to be behind a live microphone again, which is exciting to me, but also it's because I really want us to reflect on that fact that wherever you go, there you are.

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So I hope you love it, I hope it lights you up, I hope it gets you so excited when you get to sit down and say I'm going to work on my business today.

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Or you know what, today I'm with me.

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If I get stuck in traffic today, it's okay, because I'm stuck with me and my positive thoughts and my dreamer thoughts and my thoughts about possibilities and my thoughts about how fortunate I am and my thoughts about all the great things in my life and my thoughts about all the things that I'm excited about and I get to look forward to.

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That's the person who you wanna get stuck in traffic with.

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That's the person who, when you go to bed at night, you want to lay there in their head.

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That's the person that, when you're showering and night, you want to lay there in their head.

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That's the person that, when you're showering and thinking about the day ahead, that's who you want to be in the mind of.

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So there's no escaping that, ultimately, and so I love the simplicity of that quote.

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Wherever you go, there you are, it is probably one of the simplest quotes.

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I mean, the simplest quote is it is what it is, but this one is right up there with that.

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Wherever you go, there you are, you can't escape it, and you shouldn't escape it.

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Embrace it, accept it and then own it.

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So much to think about, not only on my birthday, but every single day, because life is just made up of choices and every single day we get to choose what those choices are.

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So I hope you're making the ones that are moving you in the direction, because I'll tell you what it's.

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Q4.

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October is halfway done, which absolutely blows my mind.

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We've got two and a half months in 2024.

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And I'll tell you what a little bit of a spoiler alert is that 2025 is right around the corner and everyone's going to be inviting you to level up.

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Everyone's going to be inviting you to think about your goals and your new year's resolutions and all of those things.

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But guess what?

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Today's episode really ties into the fact that you get to start making those choices right now.

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You get to start thinking about this stuff right now.

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So come January 1st, you're two and a half months in and closer to who it is that you want to be and what it is that you want to do.

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So, luckily for you and I, the work starts today.

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That's it for me this week.

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I'm so grateful for all of you who reached out.

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I'm really excited for this week's episodes.

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We are just rocking and rolling, so make sure you pound that subscribe button because we'll see you with new episodes, as always every Monday, wednesday, friday, saturday and Sunday, here on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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Hey, it's Brian here, and thanks for tuning in to yet another episode of the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast, if you haven't checked us out online.

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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 thewantrepreneurshowcom.

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