998: I made a mistake. Here's how I'm overcoming it...

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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, I have to make a big confession because I did something wrong and, honestly, a lot of it stems from mindset, and that's why I just want to very transparently share it with you here, in the hopes that it helps you in some way, or, at the very least, it helps you avoid this mistake, because, as entrepreneurs, this is important for all of us.

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I'm excited about this one.

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Let's dive in.

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So, truth be told, there's one thing that I've consistently struggled with in my 16 years of being an entrepreneur.

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Seriously, this is the one thing that you can pick any point in time in my entrepreneurial history, and it's the one thing that I've consistently said I'm gonna be consistent with this, I'm gonna be good about this, I'm going to give value here, I'm going to do this thing and commit to this one thing.

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But that's also been the one thing that I've been absolutely terrible with, and so it's something that I'm gonna change ahead of the new year, and I think that, even more so than recognizing the fact that I'm going to change it, I really needed to recognize the mindset struggles that have been lingering behind this mistake that I've made.

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And that's why here I am, on the air in front of thousands of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs in over 150 countries, sharing this with you, because I hope that you learn from my mistakes.

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So let me set the scene for you of this giant mistake that I've made.

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So social media is important for all of us as entrepreneurs, and it's not something that you need to do.

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I'm a big believer that there are very few things that we need to do.

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You can grow a business in any one of a million ways.

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There's no wrong way to build a business.

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But at the same time, social media also allows us to reach people and to serve people, and that's the entire goal of business.

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So much of what you and I do is to help other people, and part of helping other people means showing up for them, showing up with them, being where they are and serving them.

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And it's funny I always argue when we talk about marketing.

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I always argue that you and I have responsibilities to be great marketers.

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Why?

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Because if you and I have a product or a service that helps people, well then if we don't get that product or service in front of other people.

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We're actually being selfish because we know that we can, or our product or service can help people and we're selfishly not doing that.

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Why?

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I don't know why.

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There's a million potential reasons here.

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It could be because we don't know how to.

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It could be because we don't have the resources to.

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It could be a lot of mindset stuff which you're gonna see here in today's episode.

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That that's kind of how I have felt for the past few years in particular.

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But at the root of it is that we obviously want to be seen.

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We want to get in front of more people that we not only are aiming to serve, but I would argue that we genuinely want to serve them.

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And you're going to see when I tell you about this big mistake I've made.

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It's not because of a lack of want, it's not because of a lack of me wanting so strongly to do more good things in the world, but it's because of some internal stuff that I've been working through and that I'm really excited to share with you so that it hopefully helps you work through it or hopefully you never face this mindset issue.

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But I think it's really important for us to have these conversations.

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So, yeah, social media.

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Let's go back there.

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There have been so many points in time in my entrepreneurial history, whether inside of my businesses or whether for this podcast.

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I have the most amazing conversations with all these incredibly brilliant and inspiring and action-taking entrepreneurs.

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There's so much goodness and for me, it comes very easy for me to show up five times a week here behind a microphone on the Wantrepreneur to Entrepreneur podcast.

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This is where I know that we get to serve so many of you listeners all around the world and I'm so grateful for that fact.

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But I also know that over 16 years of being an entrepreneur and building my own businesses and helping others build their businesses, I have amassed a lot of awesome connections throughout social media.

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And if you are a wantrepreneur or an entrepreneur and you follow me on social media, guess how I've been serving you for the past few years.

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I haven't.

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I have not been serving, I've not been showing up for myself, I've not been showing up for others on social media, and I'm really going to reveal to you the reason why and the mistake that I made.

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I tricked myself into believing something that the more I reflected on, I realized that's false.

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This is literally a limiting belief.

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I have constructed this barrier inside of my own mind, and it's because every once in a while, if you scroll through my old social media posts, you'll see points in time where I say, okay, everybody, I'm back, I'm going to start posting here more regularly, and then, guess what, I don't.

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I just fall off the radar again, and so then it puts me into this awkward position.

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For example, let's use Facebook.

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So I've not really posted on Facebook for the past three, three-ish years, we'll call it, and it's a platform that used to be my number one platform.

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I used to love connecting with people.

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On Facebook.

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You can write a lot.

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There's not those same character limits.

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I really enjoyed Facebook back in the day, but in recent years I've just ignored it, and when I did some reflecting here you all know I do this in Q4 and especially here in December.

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I always reflect before the new year to think about what needs to change, what worked this year, what didn't work this year.

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This is very much one of those things that didn't work this year.

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I asked myself why.

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What's holding me back?

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I would like to start showing up more.

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I would like to start serving my people more.

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I would like to start putting more good into the world.

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So what the heck is holding me back?

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I really did some deep exploration here and here's what I came up with.

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It's going to sound silly when I say it out loud, but what I came up with was what the heck am I going to say?

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What's my excuse going to be?

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How am I going to explain to people that I've not been here for three years?

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But hey, here I am, I'm back and, by the way, I'm just gonna start showing up more frequently.

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That feels so silly to me.

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What the heck, how am I going to explain away the fact that for three years, essentially I've just entirely disappeared from this platform or these platforms, because it's all social media for me and that was in my head and every time I sat down, like I said, wanting to show up again and wanting to serve more people and wanting to amplify the goodness that not only I'm putting into the world, but especially I mean I love bragging about all the amazing entrepreneurs that I get to interact with and work with and interview and all this good stuff, all the lessons and insights I've picked up from them along the way, as well as my own experiences.

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I want to do all those good things, but how can I just explain that to people?

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Are people going to be like why?

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Where did he go?

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Like, are they going to hold me accountable to that?

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And so the truth is that that was my big mistake and it has been eating at me, truth be told, for years now, because I've always known that if I could just overcome this hurdle, if I could just make this a consistent habit, if I could just consistently show up for others from a place of service whether it be on Facebook or Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn I honestly don't care where it is but if I just showed up from a place of service for others, only good things happen.

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And so that especially bothered me.

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Why can't I overcome this?

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And I'll tell you what I really sat with this month was the recognition that you'd never need an excuse to start.

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You never need an excuse on this planet to do good things.

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You never do.

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And I think about socially.

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If you and I show up to a party extraordinarily late let's say we show up 10 minutes before the party ends Well, okay, people are going to be like what the heck?

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Like?

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Where were you?

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Why couldn't you show up on time and we feel the need to explain ourselves.

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This is, socially, something that we've become accustomed to, but the reality is in life, in business, in relationships, in friendships, in literally anything we do not need an excuse to do good.

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We do not need an excuse, we don't need to explain why we're doing something that's positive, we can just start doing it.

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And so, for me, that was a really big mindset shift where, when I sat down and I said, look, 2025, I want to for the first year of my life.

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Truth be told, 2025 will be the first year of my life where I'm making such a firm commitment to consistently showing up from a place of service for others across all my social media channels.

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And the reason is is because I don't need an excuse.

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I don't need to explain anything to anyone.

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So when I sat down, I just said you know what?

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I'm just gonna make any post, I feel like Because people don't care, they don't need an explanation, they're not gonna think about the three years that I wasn't on that platform.

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I'm the only one who's thinking about this.

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Quite frankly, I very openly acknowledge that all I need to do is start showing up.

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With goodness, nobody will complain when I start showing up with goodness from a place of service, and so that's what I did.

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I made my first post on Facebook in quite some time, so if you and I are not connected on Facebook, just search my name.

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You will find me my personal profile, not my business page.

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I don't use that.

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I still don't know why Facebook had business pages in the first place all those years ago.

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It's so hard to get traction there other than with paid ads.

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But that's really what I wanted to share with you today is that you don't need an excuse to start doing good in the world.

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And I guess the flip side to this conversation is all this stuff that I'm saying to you about the fact that I want to start showing up on social media in the new year and I want to be consistent with it.

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I also, at the same time, need to let myself off the hook and show myself grace and say, look, there will be times where I'm not.

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I mean, just look at this podcast, for example.

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There have been many times over the span of almost 1,000 episodes.

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At this point, episode 1,000 comes out this Wednesday.

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This is episode 998.

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There have been many times, over the course of 998 episodes where life got in the way or when business got in the way or motivation was at an all-time low or I was approaching burnout when it came to content recording episodes.

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There's so many times where all of those things happen, but I'm comfortable with podcasting.

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I love podcasting.

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Podcasting is one of my favorite things in the world and so I never really felt the need to have an excuse to get back behind a microphone because, also, I see how many of you, all around the world and over 150 countries, tune in and and that felt like my invitation to just show up for you again, knowing that, hey, all I need to do is record an episode, publish that episode.

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It will serve people all over the world.

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That inspired me.

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It gave me that, that invitation, it gave me that I guess that excuse and that's the funny thing is you actually don't need an excuse, even if I didn't have all of those things at any given time I can just start showing up and using my voice for good.

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I can just start helping people.

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I can just start putting more goodness into the world, whether it be on this podcast or on social media or my email newsletter.

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I just want to go to the corner of the my next block over and just start saying nice things to strangers.

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You never need an excuse to do good in this world.

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You never need an excuse to start showing up, and that has been my biggest revelation when I think about this mindset hurdle that I've been looking to overcome over the past few years, and I hope that me sharing it with you here on the air inspires you to start showing up.

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I hope it inspires you to stop looking for excuses and stop feeling like you need to explain why you've been inconsistent or why you've not been present or any of the things.

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Forget all the excuses.

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Just show up with goodness from a place of service.

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You'll never need an excuse and you'll never need to explain it.

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So that's it for me.

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In today's episode, I will say to you here on the air since this is obviously a very open and transparent episode with some of my inner thoughts and inner feels and my own inner struggles I want to share with you that this week is very special here on this show.

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Episode 1000 is something that I could have, truth be told, never, ever imagined.

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Eight years ago, when I sat behind a microphone, very few people knew my name.

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Nobody was following me at the time, but I sat behind the microphone and recorded a truly terrible episode zero.

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By the way, episode zero was quite bad.

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Go back and listen to it if you want, but this Wednesday, like I said, is gonna be episode 1,000.

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And Go back and listen to it if you want, but this Wednesday, like I said, is going to be episode 1,000.

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And at the time of me recording this episode, I've not yet recorded episode 1,000.

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I've got something special up my sleeves for it and I know it's going to be a really special celebration and reflection and look forward and there's going to be a lot of goodness in episode 1,000.

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And I'm excited to feel those feels this week, but a big part of it is just a thank you to all of you.

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There's something about entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial spirit that is just so invigorating.

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It's something that keeps all of us alive, and so that's why for us to build that momentum and to reach episode 1000, despite the challenges, despite the wins, despite the life things, despite the global things that we've all experienced over the past few years, it's gonna be a special week because we've got amazing guests coming on in Monday's episode and Friday's episode, of course, and Saturday we've got another amazing guest.

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We're just, we're rocking and rolling with all these incredible guests here so that you can learn and so that you can move forward in your business.

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Because, just like I've transparently shared things with you here in today's episode, our guests they're the real rock stars that every single episode they show up without ego, without an agenda, without the need to prove themselves, just transparently sharing the good stuff that's in their zone of genius.

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So huge shout out to our guests, massive shout out to all of you listeners that truly you're the reason why this show exists, and I hope that you join us for episode 1000.

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So all of that's just a little bit of a teaser.

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Pound that subscribe button.

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That's the way you'll get episode 1000, the second that it drops, 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 Wantrepreneur 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 thewantrepreneurshowcom.

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And I just want to give a 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.

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Deeply believe in the power of getting their message out in front of you, awesome wantrepreneurs 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 to Entrepreneur podcast.