No don't go in there, Daddy's working.
Jonathan: Woo-hooo-hooo-hoooo. Yes, yes, y'all - coming at you, straight from the studio inside the Expedition. Picture this - it's about 10:15 in the morning here in Orlando, going about 75 miles an hour in the Expedition, down the highway and I've got a bright red XLR cable plugged into an ATR2100 mic going to my Zoom. This is the new setup. I'm testing it out to see if it sounds better. Anybody that would look into my window right now would say, "WTF. What is wrong with that guy? He's carrying a mic in his car." [0:01:06.4]
But you, you my dear listener, you know - daddy's working. So we're back for another one. I'm hoping that this setup sounds better because I really couldn’t stand the sound of the Zoom in the car all by itself, all that background noise. A little embarrassing, especially since I'm supposed to be running The Podcast Factory and I'm putting out content that, while useful, the sound quality may not be great and one of the top reasons people stop listening to podcasts, from what I understand, is if the sound quality is bad. So I don’t know if I lost any listeners with those last few episodes, but it's okay because I didn't have any, really that many to begin with so, probably net zero here. So I'm thinking today a lot about belief and believing in yourself and I want to talk about something I'm calling borrowed belief. [0:02:07.7]
And sometimes you need this because no matter how good you are, no matter how successful you are, no matter how much you've accomplished, there's always going to be that little bit of am I good enough, and I've struggled with this at every level, all the way from the bottom to where I am now. I hit these ruts where I wonder, am I good enough - am I doing enough - am I doing the right things - am I who I am supposed to be and so I know you, at whatever level you're at, you're going to experience this. If you're not experiencing it now, maybe it'll come in the future and if you never experience it, then you are blessed, good on you. Wish I had that super power, but I don’t. So let me tell you a story. A little while back - here's where this has really come out for me, where I realized it early on and it was right before I started The Podcast Factory. I was in a mastermind. [0:03:06.7]
It was the highest level mastermind I had ever been in and I've told you about this before where Cupcake almost pooped her pants when I said, "This thing is going to cost $1000 a month," and she was like "What?! Are we even making $1000 a month with this business?" And I couldn’t really honestly answer that - we were making more than $1000 with expenses. It was tough times, but I knew I needed something different. I joined that mastermind and when I got into that room, there were some players in there or people who I thought were players at that time, people doing millions of dollars a year and I was barely doing $100,000 a year. And like it always does, it starts hitting me, "Am I good enough? Am I supposed to be here? Do I belong?" and I just, I battled with that a lot and so the questions I asked, the way I acted, the way I showed up, I think displayed that I felt like I didn't belong there and so people picked up on that. they pick up on the body language. [0:04:07.9]
They pick up on the cues, but fortunately, a lot of people knew my work and liked what I was doing and wanted to help me and build me up and told me that I was just being crazy - "Of course you belong here, man. You're doing awesome things. Don’t you realize that?" I didn't. I didn't realize it. I didn't know it. I was too close to it and well, that kept me behind. Really. It kept behind for years. I broke through eventually and from that mastermind, I created The Podcast Factory Agency, started producing more shows, got an income and recurring revenue and let my real estate training business behind to pursue this business, the podcast business, and that was a big breakthrough. It was huge. And I felt better and I felt freer and I felt like I was doing good things, but it happens over and over again. As an entrepreneur, you're going to have a rollercoaster ride, up and down, up and down. It's not a straight line. It's not a straight shooting up trajectory like an Elon Musk rocket. [0:05:11.7]
There's going to be ups. There's going to be downs. And what you realize as you get more experience is you've recognized when the down is here. You don’t find it. You recognize when it's here. You allow it. And then you pull yourself out of it faster. So the downs aren’t as far down and they aren’t as long. And so this is normal and especially if you're a solopreneur and it's just you and your team and you don’t have the right environment, the right people around you. It's going to be harder to pull out of those downs because if your team is there and they're not of the same mind as you are, if they're more of the worker mentality and you're the visionary, they're not going to be able to pull you out of that. So I've talked about this many times and I'll continue talking about it because it is the most important thing I've ever done for myself. [0:06:05.3]
It's the most important thing, actually me and Cupcake have ever done for ourselves or our business, and that's getting in the right environment, getting around the winners, getting around the people who lift you up so that you can break through those ceilings, break through those barriers, break through the things that are holding you back that shouldn’t be. So I'll give you another example. Podcast Factory had been going a couple of years and as usual, I'm getting into a slump and I'm thinking, "I'm not doing as good as I should be. We're not making consistent money. We don’t have consistent opportunity. This is not producing the way I want it to, the way it should. I feel like I'm working hard, but I'm not getting results." So what do I do? I hire some consultants again. We're stuck. What do we do? We go and we start looking outside. We look for the people that are doing the things we want to do. [0:07:03.7]
We look for the people that seem to have the answers we want and we do whatever we have to to get next to them, get around them, learn from them. And so at that time, it was investing 10K to work with the guys over at Traffic and Funnels, Chris and Taylor, one of the best investments I've ever made in my life, in my business, but here's the thing - when I got in there and I told them… they already actually knew my pricing because they were clients before I got in there and as soon as they became clients, they did this thing where they started laughing at me. They're like, "This is all you're charging? Oh my god - you're funny, man. What's wrong with you?" And I thought they were just messing with me. A few months into it, I'm like, uh, alright - maybe these guys are right. Maybe they know something I don’t know, and I'm going to find out what that is. I'm going to pay them. I'm going to hire them as consultants so that I can learn from them. Me and Cupcake talked and we decided, yes, it's time to invest this 10K. [0:08:05.5]
We want to level up and we're not afraid to invest so that we can get to that next level. So we worked with them. We hired them and in the beginning, I had the worst mental roadblock because both Cupcake and I were like, "How can we charge more for this? It's insane. Why would people pay more for this?" And we were severely undercharging. I mean, it was ridiculous because I was barely…I wasn’t making almost any money at all on the retainer. So basically when somebody got on retainer, I was working for free, and on the upfront initiation or sign up or enrollment fee, we only made a few bucks and it was a lot of work and it wasn’t worth it and we were struggling and we didn't recognize that, but we also had a limiting belief, "Who's going to pay more for this? How is this going to be worth more? I don’t understand how we can charge more for this." [0:09:04.5]
And that's when Chris and Taylor, they just, they started taking screen shots inside their Facebook group of people commenting on "The Smartest Guys In Marketing," which is a podcast we helped them put together, and they started commenting and how much it was changing lives and how it was impacting them and they started telling how their sales calls were going easier because the people were listening to podcasts and excited to talk to them and already indoctrinated and ready, ready to take the step forward to working with them. And they kept showing me these screen shots and telling me, "Do you see this? Are you looking at this? This is because of you." I just laughed at them, "Yeah right. That's you guys. That's what you're doing. That has nothing to do with me." And they're telling me, "This is because of you. This is because what you helped us with. This is how you're helping us connect. This is because of you and you have to understand that this is a huge value that you're bringing to your clients and you don’t even see it." [0:10:05.6]
And this is something that I want you to have and take with you because I know it's going to serve you for the rest of your life. If you learn from this, if you implement this, if you take this to heart and use this, it's going to help you break through every single plateau. I call it 'Borrowed Belief.' Maybe you don’t believe in yourself. Maybe you're not 100% certain about all the value you're bringing to the world. Maybe you don’t see how unique and special you are, but there are people around you who do see it. Maybe it's your clients. Maybe it's your friends. Maybe it's your family. You have to tap into that and you have to borrow their belief as a crutch to help you believe in yourself, and this is a huge breakthrough for me. When I started with the boys in Traffic and Funnels, I didn't have belief in myself. [0:11:01.1]
I didn't have as much belief as I should have had for the work that were doing. I've seen the impact. I've seen the comments. I've seen the money my clients had made, but I never connected how I was helping with that and how I was becoming a champion of their cause, helping them make a bigger impact and we were altogether making the world a better place, and I had to borrow the belief that Chris and Taylor put into me, and I had to borrow it until I could believe it for myself. And let me tell you something - it was not easy. In the beginning, we raised our prices and I went on, I don't know, eight or 10 sales calls… oh, actually - I remember now - there was 14 sales calls in a row and I didn't close anything. I felt so terrible and I was beginning to doubt myself again. I knew I had made a mistake. I knew it. I knew it in my mind and in my heart. I'm like, "I have made a mistake. I shouldn't have raised my prices. This is crazy. How could I believe this?" But they kept on pushing me. They kept on encouraging me. They kept on telling me, "Believe. Believe. Believe." [0:12:08.5]
And I just kept on working. I kept on doing what they told me to do, and I kept showing up on sales calls, even though I had struck out so many times, and it was actually 14 sales calls in a row that I struck out on. On number 15, I closed one; 16, I closed that one; 17, I closed that one; 18… I went on to have the best month of my life two months later. I wouldn’t have done it on my own. I couldn’t have done it on my own. I needed to borrow belief from them and so I'm telling you about this because I don’t know who you're hanging around. I don't know if you're investing in yourself and in your environment, but I do know that if you're not hanging around the right people, if you don’t have the belief in yourself, if you don’t have those folks who are going to lift you up and believe in you and help raise you to the next level, you're not going to make it alone. [0:13:02.1]
It's very rare because what I've found in the years that I have been an entrepreneur is the most success I've ever had, the biggest bumps in success, my big realizations, all the major breakthroughs and going to the next level all came from being around the right people who lifted me up. So, that's my message for you today. It's a message of encouragement. It's a message of getting around the right people. If you're in a plateau. If you're stuck. If you're feeling like you're not where you need to be, get around the right people who believe in you. Borrow their belief until you actually believe in yourself, and that's how you're going to break through all the hurdles, break through all the plateaus, reach level after level, raise your ceiling. That's what I've got for you today and here's the thing - if you know somebody that needs this, if you know somebody that you and I can help today with this message, then I want you to go ahead and share this episode with them. [0:14:01.7]
Give it to them. Tell them, "Hey man, I believe in you. Here, listen to this and you'll know what I mean." Help lift them up. That's what we're doing here. That's what we have always done at The Podcast Factory. That's been my mission - to lift up my clients, to lift up my listeners, and to lift up the world with these messages, with this inspiration, with our power, together. That's what I have for you today. Listen to it again, if you didn't get it. I believe in you. That's what I want you to know. I'll see you next time.
This is ThePodcastFactory.com
