Creating Confidence with Heather Monahan - #1: Go Big or Go Home with Gary Vee

Episode Date: May 14, 2019

In the world premiere episode, Heather welcomes the Belarusian-American entrepreneur, author, speaker and internet personality as he shares the secrets of learning not to care about praise OR criticis...m, raising children without a sense of entitlement, and how the strongest people in his life have shown him the effects of nature versus nurture. Review this podcast on Apple Podcast using this link and when you DM me the screen shot, I buy you my $299 video course as a thank you! Click here to review! My book Confidence Creator is available now! Get it right here ! If you are looking for more tips you can download my free E-book at my website and thank you! DM your questions for the show -- Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | LinkedIn See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Thank you for listening to this Podcast One production, available on Apple Podcasts and Podcasts and podcast one. Hey, this is Heather Monaghan, and I am so excited that you are here with me for creating confidence. I'm so excited. First of all, everyone struggles with confidence once in a while, whether it be in your relationships or maybe at the gym, or maybe about going for a promotion or asking for something you want or putting yourself first. You know, no one's got this whole life thing on lock.
Starting point is 00:00:40 And I'm really excited that I'm finally at a place in my life where I can share with you my low moments, my high moments and how I overcome the adversity that I face every day. Each week when you join me here, we are going to leapfrog the villains, overcome adversity, and chase down our goals. And I'm going to teach you the tips and tricks I used to do it. And we're going to meet a different guest each week that is doing it and creating their confidence and success. and we're going to find out how they do it differently, what their insights are, and how you can apply that to your life. I'm also going to answer your questions.
Starting point is 00:01:19 So please, DM me the questions you would like me to answer. Email me, Heather at Heather Monaghan, your questions, or hit me up on podcast one, or in the review notes or in the show notes. Just leave me a message wherever you can, and I will absolutely answer your questions each week. So for those of you that don't know me, I want to tell you a little bit about myself. I grew up poor and my mother was a single mom with four kids working three jobs. And those days were really tough for me. And back then, I now can see I was very insecure. I felt very afraid.
Starting point is 00:01:58 And I was exceptionally driven by wanting to get out of that situation. So I started working at a very young age. and I made work in creating wealth a priority for me. I decided at a very young age I would chase a paycheck. That is absolutely the wrong answer. However, I didn't know better at the time. I share it with you now just in case you are chasing the paycheck. I ask you to open your eyes and try to find your passion
Starting point is 00:02:27 because it took me 43 years to figure that out. And I don't want you to have to wait as long as I had to wait to find a better life for myself. So I learned to outwork everyone. That was my strategy when I was really young. I started off after college going to work for the Gallo Winery. I became a top seller within the first year and I was sexually harassed at work. I did not have a high level of confidence.
Starting point is 00:02:54 So I ran away and I went to work in the radio industry, which is where I spent the majority of my time in corporate America. I went to work actually for Wilkes Broadcasting. first, and he gave me an equity partnership, which was an opportunity to make a lot of money to work a massive amount and to have to move away from my friends and family in order to take the opportunity on. So I boarded a flight and moved to Saginaw, Michigan, and lived by myself for almost three years where I ran a $25 million property. My goal and direction from my partner was to accelerate revenues as quickly as possible so we could sell the company for a
Starting point is 00:03:39 profit. And we did just that. Within under three years, we accelerated revenues and drove home a $55 million sale price on that $25 million property. Major success. From there, I created my confidence with my wealth. I created and affiliated how I felt about myself with how much money I make and how I at work. And that is a really slippery slope. However, on the outside, other people would look at me and they would say, oh, she's so confident and has it together. But personally, in my personal life, I did not feel confident. I really struggled. And a lot of times I'd find myself looking in the mirror saying, Heather, you have no one to count on but yourself. You need to make this work. You need to find a way. Don't rely on others. And while on the outside, it looked like I had this
Starting point is 00:04:32 amazing thing going on because all signs were pointing to that, the reality is I felt really empty inside and really lonely. So getting to know myself over the past couple of decades, it's been interesting to understand some of those days where I was making the most money that I made were some of my darkest. So from there, I sold the property for $55 million and I moved to Florida to take a step backwards in order to join a larger company. So, I went to work for this radio company that had radio stations across the country. I ran their Naples, Florida operation and took that operation to number one in the company in under a year. When that happened, I called the president of the company and asked for a meeting. When we met,
Starting point is 00:05:20 I pitched him on an idea. I said, listen, I was able to create this amazing turnaround in under a year in one operation. Why not create a position, vice president of sales, that we were able to create a will manage this same operation, but expand it to the entire country, your entire organization, and allow me to deliver these same type of results for this one finite location to your entire company. I worked out the numbers showed him how much more money I could make him and the shareholders. And he said, great idea, but we want you to stay in your job. Thank you. So I left that day. I called around and I found another much bigger job. And about a week later, I met with him again. And I pitched him again. Here's a job. Here's my vision. Here's the value I can bring you. And he said the same thing. Thank you, Heather. We love it. But we're not going to create that job. We love having you here in your position. And that's when I resigned. I said, well, then I'd like you to accept my resignation. I'm going to be moving on to a much bigger job. Actually in Boston, it was great working for you. I'm glad I was able to deliver this value for you. But now it's time to move on. And that's when he said, hold up. And he ran out of the restaurant and came to
Starting point is 00:06:32 back five minutes later. He had called his father to ask permission to create this position. Now, what's interesting here, and I want you to note, is you can never take a no from someone who cannot give you a yes. And I nearly ended up walking away because I didn't realize he was not the ultimate decision maker. So always be really clear on who you're dealing with and if they are the ultimate decision maker, because I wasn't dealing with the ultimate decision maker. So now that we were dealing with the CEO, we got the approval. And at that time, I took over as VP of sales for the entire company. And the company was billing about 100 million in revenues a year at that point. Over the next 14 years at the company, I was elevated to executive vice president
Starting point is 00:07:19 and then ultimately chief revenue officer for the company. And during that time, I took the company from $100 million. My last year when I left, we were billing over $200 million in revenue. So a really nice run there, a lot of growth and a lot of success and a lot of advancement. And I was really feeling good about myself. About a year before I left the company, I had decided I wanted to start leading a more of a purpose and passion-driven life. So I decided to launch my own personal brand. The hashtag is Bossin Heels, which is actually now the name of my company.
Starting point is 00:07:57 And I launched that personal brand and was met with so much. resistance and negativity in a very toxic environment at work. And what I found is when you begin shining your light and really stop playing small, people who are insecure and unhappy will feel threatened by that. That's when you realize those are not your people and you need to move on. However, I didn't realize it at the time. I felt scared and I felt tethered to that paycheck. and the idea of leaving and walking away from that team that I had built and the success that I had built and the paycheck that I counted on, that security was so scary to me.
Starting point is 00:08:40 I couldn't fathom it. And when things like that happen and you're in the wrong place, inevitably something will happen to get your attention. My hair started falling out. I threw my back out and couldn't walk. I mean, literally, I was physically becoming ill from the negative environment, toxic environment I was in. And that's when the most beautiful thing ended up happening. The CEO I had worked for for 14 years stepped down as he became ill, and he decided to elevate his daughter to the CEO position.
Starting point is 00:09:14 It was not very long after that that I got the phone call to come in and meet with her. And when I did, I walked in and she pushed two different papers. at me. One was a memo that said Heather Monaghan has been fired. The other one was a memo that said something to the effect of Heather Monaghan, wonderful person, has decided to go on and pursue other opportunities. We couldn't be more proud of her and excited, blah, blah, blah. So I then saw there was another stack of papers, and I knew what those were. Those were a gag clause order that she wanted me to sign that would essentially say I would not speak about the company. I would not speak about her or my experiences there. And in order to get the paycheck that she had on the side waiting
Starting point is 00:10:06 for me, which I'm sure was pretty large, I had to sign that gag clause. So in that moment she was smiling and I was broken inside realizing or thinking I was losing everything in that moment. and I decided to change that dynamic like you can in any moment you can completely change the dynamic and energy in the room. I pushed those two papers back to her and I very calmly said, I did not sign either. I will not sign either one of these. I did not write either one of these. So why would I sign them? If there's nothing else to say here, I'll be on my way.
Starting point is 00:10:44 And I stood up. And she was shocked. She went from smiles to absolute rage. face was red and she was livid. She had counted on my chasing that paycheck and wanting that income. She thought she had me that I would sign that clause and I'm so proud of myself now that I didn't. However, it was one of the hardest and scariest things I've ever done professionally in my career. It was by far the best decision. So I calmly changed that dynamic. I stood up. with total composure and walked myself to my car and then I cried like a baby for the three
Starting point is 00:11:25 hour ride home devastated feeling like I lost everything I got under a weighted blanket in my house and claim my space told everyone in my life that I needed some time and I couldn't handle other people's problems and issues and I needed people to be supportive and kind to me and I asked for what I needed a lot of different things happen from that moment on which eventually led to me to writing my first book, Confidence Creator, to moving into the very dark, unsure world called entrepreneurial life, which is now my current life, over a year and a half later. And it's become a bit more clear since then, but I was so used to this very clear, linear world in corporate America. It was comfortable. And even though it was toxic and awful
Starting point is 00:12:15 at times, I was so used to it. What's amazing is in the last year and a half, I've learned more than I had learned in the last decade in corporate America. So if you are somewhere and you're feeling really comfortable and complacent and not really happy, you've got to start taking those steps to set you up for a better tomorrow to stretch yourself and to start learning and growing. Because one thing I know for sure, making that leap as hard as it was to not sign that memo to not go back and just work for another radio company, it's the best thing that I ever did in my professional career. And I want that feeling for you, whatever that looks like for you. So a lot of people have asked, why don't you start a podcast, Heather, over the past year and a half?
Starting point is 00:13:02 I've heard that from a lot of people. And of course, I wanted to, but I was at a place where with writing and self-publishing my first book, then promoting my book, then starting my speaking career, then starting to figure out the online course world. There were so many different things happening, and I was a beginner at all of them, which can be really overwhelming. And that idea of becoming a beginner at podcasting and not knowing what I was doing
Starting point is 00:13:28 and having to try to figure it all out, I just thought to myself, I've got enough on my plate. I need to take a step back and wait on this one. And I'm so glad I did, because during that time, I realized there are huge companies out, there that are specifically created for podcasting. They're the experts. They're the best in the
Starting point is 00:13:49 business. And for me to really do this and do it big the way that I wanted to and bring massive value to you each week, I needed to work with a team. No one succeeds alone. And that includes me. So that's when I was introduced through a great friend, Lauren, to podcast one and got the opportunity to go on the lady gang show. And that show did incredible. and then I followed up and asked for a meeting with the head of podcast one and and that was over five months ago. We were negotiating for a while and here we are today. I'm, I'm so proud to be a part of the podcast one team. I'm so proud to be working with experts that know how to position a podcast, know how to edit a podcast, know how to promote a podcast and know how
Starting point is 00:14:36 to train me and set me up for success. So I definitely didn't want to do this alone and I'm not now. I couldn't be more excited for what you're going to hear for you to come on this journey with me. Because today I am a beginner and this is my first day. And like with anything, I feel nervous. I'm anxious to hear what you think, but I'm also so proud of what I've created and can't wait to hear the feedback that you can give me on what you think of this show. I can't wait to hear your questions. I'm going to answer them every week.
Starting point is 00:15:08 And I'm so excited for you to listen to this, our first guest on Creates. in confidence, go bigger, go home. You know it's got to be Gary Vee. So stay tuned to listen to this one. So welcome back, everyone. I'm so excited. This is my first show, and I go bigger, go home. So my first guest, I'm so excited to introduce you, you already know him.
Starting point is 00:15:34 You know him and love him. It's Gary Vee and a brief bio for anyone who might not know. I hate the one Trouty sent me, so I'm going to go off what I think. He's the chairman of VIII. Vayner X. He's co-founder of Empathy Wines, which we're so excited about. Thank you. Co-founder of Vayner Media. He's an international best known for his speaking, his writing, best-selling author, five New York Times best-selling books. He is a social media phenomenon
Starting point is 00:16:03 and mentor to millions and overall badass. So I'm so glad to have this time with you today. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. All right. So I wanted to start today, you know, this is interesting because I'm looking at the show around how do we create confidence for ourselves and others and diving into some of the hard times in life and how we bounce back from them. Just so you know, I reached out to your team and I said, guys, your team's amazing by the way. And I said, guys, I need your help. Help me dig into his past and let's find some times he struggled with confidence. That must have been hard. No, you're going to love this one. This has happened to no one. Heather, we spoke to his family. We spoke to all employees. There aren't anything.
Starting point is 00:16:44 times this man has struggled with confidence. Is that true? You know, I would say outside of the sixth to like 10th grade window around singularly like am I starting to like girls and do I have the confidence like ask them out is really the only even resemblance of anything. Here's what I've done. This is super interesting where you just took me with that. One of the things I'm most proud of is I talk about only things I know. One of the reasons I'm improv, one of the reasons, I mean, look, we're doing this podcast. You could see I'm like trying to run the company seconds before we sit down. I'm like trying to be cordial.
Starting point is 00:17:28 I felt bad because I have fires going on right now. But you're like sitting here, we had a few minutes before we started this. And I'm like, shit, let me put this down. I wanted to be nice. I'm like, I don't want to be that. Right? But like, I can go on in a second because I will only talk about what I know. It's the same answer to what I'm about to tell you.
Starting point is 00:17:44 I have basically only done things that I love and I'm good at, so it's super hard for me to lack confidence when I'm disproportionately passionate and disproportionately capable of the thing that I'm doing at all times. Plus then I'm also really, really good with people and don't overvalue their opinions. And so, look, everybody has struggled with confidence, but like one of the reasons in that investigative gate of reporting
Starting point is 00:18:16 that it's been tough is I've no question I've now come realize I'm a little bit of a unique kind of dude and I think there's strengths and weaknesses in that you know like I don't I've never experienced skydiving because I'm like I don't like that and I don't want to do that like like you know like it's there's a lot of things that are limited about me sure but it's also the reason that that was the answer and I think the overarching answer
Starting point is 00:18:42 and I just touched on it is that one thing I can tell you is you will be hard pressed to go through life and find many people as deeply insular as I am. I am remarkably incapable of getting too high on people's positive feedback or too low on...
Starting point is 00:19:02 I'm just in this deeply weird zone of like, it is what it is. I have super good intent. I have zero expectation of others. I have no entitlement that I deserve anything. I am just in this very interesting mind zone that I am so grateful for now that I've come to realize it as I've lived and been about.
Starting point is 00:19:29 No addy, just grattie. It was, you know, it's really funny about that and thank you for noticing that. I posted it yesterday. Like, it is remarkable that so much, much of what everybody aspires to get from meditation, from medicine, from self-health, like, from all these things that 99.9999% of people are trying to get to this place through these things, my mother and my circumstances and my DNA and my father and my sister and my, like my
Starting point is 00:20:06 circumstances and DNA, and so I'm so grateful for this zone I'm in, I'm really, really confident. Have you always felt that grateful? Yes. Wow, that's amazing. Let me phrase. I always, I didn't know the word was grateful. I always was like, I was super in love with my mother, you know, like, because I knew something good was going on. I was super, I never complained.
Starting point is 00:20:36 Never. Like just don't have that gear. Can you start working with children more, please? Listen, what do you think I'm up to, right? Like, so much of what drives me today is the fact that there is an enormous amount of 13, 14, 15, 16 year olds that think I'm cool because of Instagram.
Starting point is 00:20:56 And I am secretly so grateful for the opportunity to, like, form some of their opinions. Absolutely. I really am. A woman the other day tweeted yesterday. yesterday, she took a screenshot of a text message with her and her son. And she said, finally, finally, somebody's penetrated my son. And I can't tell you how good it made me feel. Starting the year with a wardrobe refresh, Quince has you covered with lux essentials that feel
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Starting point is 00:24:31 or because this is what my parents told me to do. So how did it end up? Was it by chance that your dad started the wine library and you ended up just loving wine and sales was there? How did those dots connect? They started in fourth grade, I believe, when I decided consciously off of intuition and feelings
Starting point is 00:24:51 that I didn't believe in school and that I knew, think about how young you are. You would hang on a second. This is frustrating as a mother because I'm an 11-year-old and I'm all about you encouraging these kids not to complain. However, it's dicey when you start saying, I want to get out of school and school's not for everyone. It's dicey if you hold the institution of school being on a pedestal.
Starting point is 00:25:18 And I think that's fine. I want none of my opinions to be anyone else's opinion. I want to share my opinions that I've lived or I've observed very closely and want to talk about them. I get 10,000 DMs a week from children 13 to 20 saying things that they would never tell their parents and so when I say things about hey parents,
Starting point is 00:25:44 you're buying your daughter a BMW because she's begging for it but she's telling me behind the scenes that I hate my parents for making my life so easy. now that kid's talking out of both sides of their mouth, but they're a 15-year-old. And so like what's the decision-making process? That is an unbelievable conversation. We have a whole generation of parents shitting on millennials,
Starting point is 00:26:08 but they're the ones who raised that entitlement. You know, I think of it as enormous self-esteem building in parallel with radical candor and lack of entitlement. And that's what I think my mom did. She told me I was the best, but when I went 0 for four in a little league game, she didn't blame the umpire or my coach. She said you weren't good enough. It's leadership by example.
Starting point is 00:26:34 I mean, that's all it is. You know, but it's very rare in our society today because parents want to build self-esteem, but what they actually did was build entitlement. And kids got soft. And we're collectively soft because we didn't pay the Piper and have a recession in 2009. Everything is materialistic.
Starting point is 00:26:53 We all care to keep up with the Joneses. Everybody's valuing everybody's opinions. Opinions are flying heavier and more black and white than ever because of social media. And we've gotten into this massive cocoon of everybody's listening to every voice but their own.
Starting point is 00:27:07 And then when some people tell me, well, Gary, my voice says I suck. I'm like, that's not your voice. You've taken on the voice of someone else. Lady Gaga said something yesterday on social because she crushed the Met Gala. And she said something like, I once had a boyfriend who told me
Starting point is 00:27:23 I would never be famous, that I would never win a Grammy. Did you see this? I love that, yeah, that's been out for a little app. And she said, and I replied to him by saying, one day after we're broken up, you're not going to be able to go to the deli without hearing my name or seeing my face. She put it out into the universe, she owned it,
Starting point is 00:27:39 and I showed that to my kid. That's so funny, you just brought that code up. And I just so understand that. I was told by the system, by my report card, by the friends, parents, by my teachers, by everybody that I would be a failure. D's and Fs, you're going to be a failure in life. The only voice to listen to was my own.
Starting point is 00:27:59 Instilled by your mom. Correct. Through self-esteem, I'll never forget it. Opening a door for elderly woman when I was eight years old at a McDonald's, I can see it now. Oak Tree Road, Bradley's, Edison, New Jersey, 1983, maybe 84, before November,
Starting point is 00:28:17 opening a door for a woman, sunny day, and my mom went all. off as if I won a Nobel Peace Prize. She instilled positive reinforcement around a very good behavior. My mom also punished me on every report card. She punished me consistently through high school. No Nintendo, no TV, no phone, no friends, no going out,
Starting point is 00:28:41 all the way through my senior year of high school. Even though I was proving to her that I was capable, sports cards, helping my dad's business, she held me accountable. I was still a student. and I was failing at school, and thus you should pay the price. That accountability mattered.
Starting point is 00:28:58 A lot of moms and dads are overacting the other way. They decided entrepreneurship is cool, their kids getting Fs, and they're like, hey, you're gonna be an entrepreneur, but what I'm worried about is they're creating entitlement. And so this tightrope of self-esteem building while being accountable is remarkably difficult. And then, back to like,
Starting point is 00:29:22 this sixth to tenth grade of like, I like girls, but I'm scared to ask him out because I don't want rejection. I also didn't conform to peer pressure, ever. And that was because I just couldn't hear anybody else's voice. I couldn't hear anybody else's voice but my own. Well, there's no way you would have been able to get to where you are today, specifically from the social media standpoint
Starting point is 00:29:46 where there are so many haters, there's so much negativity and attack online, that you developing this authentic confidence has got to be one of the reasons why you could get here. You know where it comes from also, balancing it with empathy? Let me give you my perspective
Starting point is 00:30:03 on when I read something that says, well, you're a crackhead, Gary, or you're a charlatan, or you're lucky, or your daddy gave it to you when they don't know the story of what I actually did at Wine Library. All those things penetrate first level
Starting point is 00:30:20 hurt. You know, nobody wants to hear it. But immediately my place doesn't go into, I'm confident, fuck you, my place goes to, man, God, thank you God for not letting me live a life where I would actually take the time to spend and consume somebody's content. I don't even consume anybody's content to begin with, let alone consume with the interest to tear that person down. You have to be so unhappy inside to why. to manifest tearing somebody else down. And I, listen, I don't like talking about this, but this is your first episode and I wanna give you something.
Starting point is 00:31:00 Thank you. My grandma was remarkably negative. You know, she has dementia now, she's been in essence gone for five to seven years, but she's been gone to me for 25 years because she was the singular most negative person I'd ever come across in my life. And the reason I checked
Starting point is 00:31:20 out from her at 16, 17, 18, whenever I did, was because she spent 100% of her time tearing down other people. My father, my mother. It's your father's mother. Yes, my aunt, my sister. She tried to do it to me, but I was like so in a, like, you know, she gave up on tearing me down, I think, at some level, because she could sense that I didn't give a fuck.
Starting point is 00:31:45 You know, but nonetheless, I, I'm disproportionately optimistic and positive. But I live, my grandma spent her whole summer with us every summer. So how would you create boundaries to protect yourself from someone like that? I couldn't hear her. But other people can. How did your sister do it then? She did it.
Starting point is 00:32:03 Oh. Do you understand? That stinks. It sucks. And so like what people don't know is everything about me because I don't share everything like I just shared with you. And the reality is like I've seen it up close and personal. I know the extreme positivity.
Starting point is 00:32:17 I know extreme negativity. Not only was she a disproportionately negative person, she lived her adult life until she was my age right now, 43, before she moved to America. You know, and like lived in Soviet Russia. She was a widow with a 15-year-old. She had shit. She had tough life.
Starting point is 00:32:36 Like was a child in World War II. Like, I don't judge her. But I also understand what it is. And I understand why my dad is the way he is because that was his framework mother. His environment was the Soviet Union and that mother. Mine was America and coming of age
Starting point is 00:32:53 and my mother. So I'm grateful. How did your dad and your mom get together because they sound really different? Sometimes opposites attract. And my dad is amazing in a lot of ways. But he will look at the world negative. My dad starts with no.
Starting point is 00:33:07 I start with yes. That's a very different way to see the world. Are they proud of you, you know, your dad specifically? My dad and I are outrageously close. And my dad, you know, just because he starts with no, or just because he had a negative mom
Starting point is 00:33:20 and because he's negative, doesn't mean there's so many, I mean, my dad is ridiculously loyal, outrageously proud. No, you know what I, let me tell you what I mean by that. Please, please. I want to do a better job with this question. When I wrote my first book,
Starting point is 00:33:32 some people in my family were upset. They don't like hearing about inside your life because it was inside our life in the past. You know what's funny? I think my parents, well, first of all, my mom, I've literally made her out. Like my mom,
Starting point is 00:33:48 She worshiped you. Well, she worshipped me from the get. Right. She lost her mother at five. Oh my gosh. Her dad went to jail when she was a kid, like for 10 years. She had a tough life too. Way tougher than my grandmother.
Starting point is 00:34:00 Well, interesting. Thus, as you can imagine, it's very hard for me to accept people blaming their childhood when my mother lost her mother at five and lost her dad for 10 years to jail when she was a teenager. And like, who raised her? A stepmother. Wow. who wasn't thrilled about it because she was just devastated
Starting point is 00:34:20 from losing her new husband to jail and then she came to America and was poor and she worked every day of her life went on zero vacation. My mom and I went on two family vacation like my mom never complained a day in her life her life is shit
Starting point is 00:34:34 compared to 99.99% of people that come to me with complaints. It's hard for me to get going to accept your complaints when that's my mom's life and it's right in my face. Forget about my life which had its hard
Starting point is 00:34:47 chips but like not compared to most or or just in the mix you know like my mom's the most positive like amazing like I'm a byproduct of her so what do you think that is a choice DNA is big chemicals that were put in her because she didn't decide at five years old to be like I'll face this disaster I think chemicals real um I think chemicals are real look this has been figured out long before us, like DNA and environment is real. DNA is crapshoot. Environment gets into an interesting game, right? It's also a crapshoot, you don't pick your parents,
Starting point is 00:35:30 but what you decide to listen to and whom becomes a very interesting debate to me. You know, one of the things that I'm very proud of is I am the practical positive reinforcement in a lot of people's ears right now, and I take that very seriously. and it really makes me happy because a lot of people
Starting point is 00:35:52 don't have the luxury of having family that is cheering. Exactly. You know, most people have family that's booing for them. Misery loves company. Most people want to tear down everybody else's building to make theirs feel bigger. You know, it's very rare
Starting point is 00:36:08 to have pure practical positivity being pumped into the ecosystem hence why all the attention I have and easy for me not to get high on my supply because as you can tell by this conversation, I view that as a cosign to my parents and my circumstance. I'm not special.
Starting point is 00:36:25 My parents are special. My circumstances were special. I'm just living out the circumstances. Do you ever get afraid, and this is kind of off topic, but I'm thinking about you being special. You know, first of all, I think everyone's special, right?
Starting point is 00:36:38 So in their own unique way. They are. However, you've created this real strong, forward-facing personal brand first. Yes. I think of Gary Vee first before VaynerMedia, right? No question. Of course.
Starting point is 00:36:50 You and everybody else. Before empathy wines. You and everybody else. So, you know, do you ever get worried from a business perspective? Am I so big that what if I get knocked off by bus tomorrow, what happens to the company? No. What does happen? It folds.
Starting point is 00:37:06 Or they rally and decide to keep it afloat in the honor of their fallen leader. You never think of that. No, because it's a silly thing to think about. It's interesting to me. It's an ideology. First of all, it's selfish. Like, I'm dead. Why wouldn't you want to set your people
Starting point is 00:37:23 and your teams up for success? Not the company, them. F*** the company. I care about them. Do you know what happens to Dustin? He writes a blog post and does his story of what he remembers about Gary this one time he said this thing to me,
Starting point is 00:37:39 posted on LinkedIn, and 400,000 people ask him to be on their personal brand team. This is where I'm unbelievably selfless. I don't care about my company. I care about the human. You like it? It's shocking.
Starting point is 00:37:54 I've been in corporate America my entire career into the last year and a half and I will tell you, I have never once seen a chairman or a CEO come from business at that perspective and I think it's amazing,
Starting point is 00:38:06 that's unbelievable. Because I actually think it's also practical, not just altruistic. I've died. I'm not going to care. I don't know. I literally don't know what's happening. It's over. It's a wrap.
Starting point is 00:38:18 What I've done is I've built such a progressive, forward-facing personal brand that the collateral on my employees is remarkable. Do you know what's going on right now? My people are getting offered all sorts, like, especially for Team Gary, these two characters, like they just have options, and that makes me happy.
Starting point is 00:38:40 Kenny just left the team. He got a great gig in California. Now, I think it's super great here great here that people are naive about. And I think that, you know, I'm a uniquely kind of interesting character. And I make it look a lot easier than it is. And that will either play out or not for Kenny. But like, he's now family.
Starting point is 00:38:57 And I think I've done, that's what the best part of what I'm doing is. I'm just in the middle, right? I just established to you what's above me, right? My parents, my circumstance. And what's below me is my employees. They're feeling all the benefits. of it. It's so interesting because I'm just seeing right now your brand is just pulling people towards you, people wanting to be a part of this. You're constantly recruiting, but not from a
Starting point is 00:39:26 fake standpoint, from just a true organic showing the world who you are. It's genius. Yeah, and it's very, look, this is a very, I know a lot of people are listening right now. I've never heard of me, so this is going to come across pretty aggressive. So I'm hedging, so please bear with me. I hope you see the purely good part of this, not the narcissistic part. But my ambitions are remarkably high. Like, I wake up every morning trying to have a statue made of me.
Starting point is 00:39:59 You know? Hashtag goals. You know? And here's why it's worthy of a laugh and why I had to hedge it. One could see that and be like, ugh, like what is that? I see it as if that is actually your framework,
Starting point is 00:40:13 The only way you do that is a human that is not an athlete or a politician is you have to be disproportionately one of the great, nice humans of all time. I'm trying. I think I was gifted something. It'd be like if you're LeBron, you don't wake up in the morning at 13
Starting point is 00:40:30 when you realize, oh my God, I could literally be one of the greatest basketball players of all time. You don't kind of then run away from that and say, like, I'm going to be a painter. Sometimes people do, Gary. That's the thing. And that's what's important about this show. and about your content is letting people know
Starting point is 00:40:45 your job is to chase your passion. Your job is even though it's scary, even though it's hard, even though everyone's telling you not to do it, even though the money's not there yet, go anyways. Look, you're preaching. I think that one of the manifestations
Starting point is 00:40:59 of my work that I'm most proud of is if somebody goes and reads, crush it, which I wrote in 2008 and came out in 2009. We're talking about a decade now. I mean, not only do I fully believe in what you just said, because it was the manifesto, I also ended up being right
Starting point is 00:41:15 because in 2008 didn't seem possible. There was no podcasts. There was no Instagram. You're preaching, sister. Like, here's why. If you never get anywhere close to my level of notoriety or financial rewards,
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Starting point is 00:43:07 www. northwest registered agent.com slash confidence free. Don't worry, I'm getting there. I believe you, and I'm saying that to everybody who's listening. You know, like, I was as happy as I am right now in the basement of my dad's liquor store packing boxes. You truly were. I'm going to really fuck with you right now.
Starting point is 00:43:30 You ready for this? Ready. Happier. I love the process, and I love when nobody knows who I am. and when I'm underestimated. I love it, I love it. I have a chip on my shoulder. I'm an underdog.
Starting point is 00:43:41 I like being underestimated. The thing that is most difficult in my life right now is that I'm overestimated now. That's interesting. Uh-huh. Now I've crossed the chasm where I could say anything to a certain group of people and they're going to think I can pull it off.
Starting point is 00:43:58 Empathy wines may fail. We have a lot of headaches. That's going to be shocking to everybody. I weirdly want it to happen. Trouty does not. Trouty doesn't because, and he shouldn't because this is his first big at bat, he's disproportionately tied into it. I'm not.
Starting point is 00:44:16 I don't want the loss. I don't want the scarlet letter. But boy, one of the great ways for people to understand the true me is for me to have a loss in a wine business of all things. Right. I don't know. I don't know to tell you. I'm not scared of that loss.
Starting point is 00:44:33 You're so unique that way in that, as I mentioned, before I had a very successful career in corporate America. I became very comfortable. It was safe. I could see it was linear and you just keep getting promoted and the money's coming in. And it's very comfy. I've had to learn in the last year and a half to take the leap into the unknown. There's total darkness.
Starting point is 00:44:53 And this is good for you and what you're doing right now, Truddy, you know, starting this new company. You have to just keep moving forward. And it's scary. And where you love that scary is what I'm hearing. I don't because I'm so used to loving the company. It's really, it can be really hard. Purebred entrepreneurship. This is some, you really hit me in my heart
Starting point is 00:45:15 because you articulated it so well from the other perspective. This is why I hate so many people going into entrepreneur. My friends, I couldn't agree more with you, you need to go chase your passion, all those things that we just talked about. This is what led me to self-awareness. Please make sure you're hearing both of us very clearly.
Starting point is 00:45:33 You chasing your passion doesn't mean you can't be a number four. Your passion, your happiest place might be the number four for a leader that you blindly believe in for the next 63 years. I'm not sure D-Rox ever going to leave now, whereas two years ago
Starting point is 00:45:49 and two of his teammates who are in the trenches with him were like, hmm, that might be true. They both just shook their head because I think that might play out. And it may not, and tomorrow he could walk in, that's fine, but where I'm going with that is self-awareness.
Starting point is 00:46:04 You're right, I love the dark, started when I was nine. You're in fourth grade. Of course you're supposed to go through school. It's also 1983, 84, 85. There is no entrepreneurship. College is the only way to win in our society, right? You want it to talk about a real dark?
Starting point is 00:46:23 I've only lived in dark. I've only lived in the unknown. In a weird way, that was an amazing gift that you were given. Although I went the other way at that time, I would have thought your life was hell that you had to work. Everybody thinks that. It sounds so hard.
Starting point is 00:46:38 What's hard is not doing something that is true to you. And so I want to really redefine success. I really, really do. I really, like, this is my new thing, which is like, okay, wait a minute, right. Everybody starts with a North Star. If I, through my sheer will and gifts, can start a true movement of conversation
Starting point is 00:47:00 that success needs to be happy and calm, not rich and famous, boy, could I really be good when I do finally get hit by a bus? Like, that has to be the ROI. Like, it has to be. And, like, my big thing is, like, cars and diamonds and wine and, like, sneakers and homes and planes
Starting point is 00:47:24 and tickets to big events, like, please don't make that your aspirations. It's fine if you want to. Like, knock yourself out. But, like, please underline. that making $88,000 a year loving it will always, always beat making $297 hating it. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:47:44 And we don't have that conversation in our culture just yet. And when people just heard Follow Your Passion, where they get stuck, let me give an example. If we did this podcast 11 years ago, following your passion and the other person on the other line says, well, my passion is to play video games, there was nothing for him or her to see that they could make enough money to live in society
Starting point is 00:48:03 to live in society around playing video games. When I say that now, everybody knows that you can be an e-sport star and not only can you live your passion, you can be rich and famous being ninja. I'm familiar, my 11 year old tells me every day. So what happens is, that's my concern. My concern is that everybody listening right now,
Starting point is 00:48:23 follow your passion, do your thing, if that thing is knitting, or if that thing is sports gambling, which would be highly not acceptable right now by most parents, of 11-year-olds, though the math behind it is very similar to poker and all this other stuff. And I do believe that moms and dads all across the world right now have 11-year-olds
Starting point is 00:48:43 whose number one passion is sports betting and they look down on it because what they look on was the past, bookies, the mafia, Las Vegas. That's where we're all coming from our past. And I always look at the future. That's my knack. So what I see is that the sports better is going to be put on the pedestal similar to the stock trader or similar to a professor, or let me give an example, it's already happened.
Starting point is 00:49:07 If you walked into your parents' house in 1987 and said, Dad, I want to be a chef, your dad would have been like, you're going to be a cook in a restaurant, you loser. But what would have happened is you could have gone on to become a famous chef, which is what culture was 10 years ago. It's not as cool today to be a famous chef
Starting point is 00:49:29 as it was 10 years ago. It's still pretty cool. But it's still pretty cool, and it's crazy compared to 1985 where your parents would have thought you were a cook. Well, what you just taught me, and I think it's really important to highlight this, we're all coming at something from our past experience.
Starting point is 00:49:43 What we can stop in that moment and do instead is come at it from what our future may be and look to see what it may be and open our minds to thinking differently. And if you listen to your kids, they're going to give you insights to what the future can be. And this is a very powerful parenting tip.
Starting point is 00:50:00 Every parent is judge. their kids based on yesterday, but your kids are living in today, which is a better indicator of tomorrow. That's really, really powerful. Drop in knowledge, Gary. Trying to give D some microcontent for my Instagram. You know, but this is, I really like how I articulated that.
Starting point is 00:50:21 Like, that makes a lot of sense to me, and that has been the benefit. You know, when I said to my dad, I want to open a dot com in 1996, my dad had never been on a computer at that point. I'm being serious right now, had never physically used a computer at that point. So he's 43 years old
Starting point is 00:50:38 and has never in his life used a computer. So for him to judge me deciding to launch a dot com, I ended up being historically correct. I also luckily had an incredible father who at that point saw what I did in the liquor store from 14 to 21 and saw that I worked hard and I wasn't an idiot and I paid my dues and he gave him.
Starting point is 00:51:01 me my opportunity to do that. A lot of kids go into their family business and expect their parents to let them do something, but they didn't put in the seven years that I put in. You know, people are always like, Gary, how'd you convince your dad to let you do those radical things by working my face off from 14 to 22
Starting point is 00:51:16 by the time I was 20. Nobody understood that. So, you know, that's, so anyway, man, I'm really excited, we're talking about this. I think I just, I think we just helped a lot of parents. I really mean that. And hearing that you have an 11 year old, He's more right than you are.
Starting point is 00:51:33 Now, the key to this whole thing was, it's funny that I brought 14 to 22, the key if your son wants to be a professional sports gambler or a sports card flipper or a sneaker flipper or an e-sports star or an Instagram celebrity is work ethic. This is where parents often make the mistake in reverse. When I turned 14, I was a bad student,
Starting point is 00:51:57 I was already a baseball card entrepreneur, my mom and dad looked, to me and said, you now work in the liquor store every day. You're not going to Harvard big shot? That means you're going to have to work. You might as well start now. So if your kid tells you that they're not going to follow the school system and they're not going to be in the NBA, they might not be able to be on three basketball
Starting point is 00:52:17 teams. You may have to cut them to one because you want them to still have a balanced life, but they better fucking work. Parents are not putting kids into the working system early enough. So now you have a kid that's getting D's and Fs, but he's telling you, Mom, don't worry, I'm going to be the next Mark Zuckerberg. Mark Zuckerberg sold CDs. Mark Zuckerberg built apps when he was a kid.
Starting point is 00:52:35 There's a second part of this conversation that's not being talked about. I've never talked about it. I'm pumped for putting this on film as well. If you're going to let your kid be an entrepreneur and that's the path, I want that kid to actually work. So what job do you want these kids to get?
Starting point is 00:52:49 Either a business that actually makes money that they're doing by themselves, that's fine. Get a joint account. Show me, Ricky. Not ideas. F*** ideas. Execution. You got a business this summer?
Starting point is 00:53:01 You're a DNF student going into ninth grade. Now we're going to high school. We've had a very adult conversation that you're not going to maybe go to college or you're not a great student. Okay, in between your summer from eighth to ninth grade, instead of slacking off and getting ready for high school, you either, A, go work at Walmart
Starting point is 00:53:19 so you can get dirt under your nails because that's the future of your life. No kid wants to do that. Or you better start flipping on eBay or StockX or show me that your Instagram account around Magic the Gathering or around fashion makes money. So I'll give you June,
Starting point is 00:53:38 but if on 4th of July, you can't show me a bank account that has $2,000 in it because you sold ads on your Instagram, now you're going to Walmart. Suffocating that is the key to practical parenting instead of ideological parenting.
Starting point is 00:53:54 Right. And that is the framework of my optimism. And confidence. And confidence. Because what happens is that kid gets real life. And so what's going to happen is Sarah is either going to sell $480 worth of slime, which the market is going to give her positive reinforcement.
Starting point is 00:54:12 Not her friends saying that she looks pretty. The market buying $480, that becomes, that's what was my positive reinforcement. I didn't need my teachers or my friends or the system. When I did a baseball card show and I sold $2,000 worth of cards, The market was telling me I was good. Validating you. Validation. The market.
Starting point is 00:54:33 No individual human. You didn't need anyone to do it. The market. Look at these goosebumps. It's a really interesting insight. That is really powerful. It's why nobody's opinion ever mattered to me, but everybody's collective opinion matters to me.
Starting point is 00:54:47 My reputation matters to me. Just not Dustin's singular point of view. And Dustin's matters to me because he knows me better than you do. And now you matter more to me than you did 30 minutes ago. But Ricky Pants 49, who leaves a comment on Insta, he just knows what he sees on Insta. Right. He doesn't know me.
Starting point is 00:55:07 Your closest friends and relatives don't know you. Nobody actually ever fully knows you. So why are you letting somebody's anonymous comments dictate how you feel about yourself? That's so important. I get so much feedback from people that haters crush their confidence and they really struggle to overcome them. They value other people's opinions.
Starting point is 00:55:27 You know what else does? People are like, Gary, you're so humble. I don't value other people's opinions. So when people come in and say, you walk on water, I'm like, cool. No, really, it goes both ways, right? A lot of people talk about the trolls or the haters. You know, when you kind of cross the chasm and now you're getting macro ridiculous...
Starting point is 00:55:47 We like the praise, though. We like the praise. And I think that's where people's vulnerabilities are. They love the praise, so now they're validating other people's singular opinion, but then, who just happened? You know, pretty goes to ugly really fast. Right. you're caught because you loved it when it was pretty.
Starting point is 00:56:03 But now but somebody said ugly. So really it's taking those compliments off the pedestal and saying we're even all the time, we're all equal all the time. And whether the comments positive or negative, I'm not going to let it affect me. And I would tell you if you said push comes the show of Gary, which one do you hear more?
Starting point is 00:56:20 I have empathy for the negative feedback because I want to continue to evolve and I don't want to just say it's a hater. You know many people say somebody's a hater or a troll but that person's actually right? No, I never thought about that. So I see a lot of people who are selling spam, selling bullshit products and services.
Starting point is 00:56:38 And when somebody leaves a comment that says you're a snake oil sales, when they're like, hey, nah. You're saying that these goji berries cure cancer because you have an MLM and you're trying to sell people into it. They're right, you're wrong. So I never want to become that caricature of myself.
Starting point is 00:56:56 I never want to be resistant to feedback, so even though I don't value the opinion, I listen. It may not penetrate my soul or my behavior, but I listen, and I always try to calibrate it against of like, do not become delusional, do not become a character chur of yourself. Got it?
Starting point is 00:57:16 It's very easy to get caught up when you have as much positive, you know, reinforcement as I have. Right. But I try to keep myself very much in the zone. I like that idea of, you know, really, instead of thriving off of the compliments, thriving off of the positive feedback, let it come in, accept it, listen to it,
Starting point is 00:57:33 like I said, listen to everything that's out there, but don't allow it to affect you. Listen, I'm more likely to, like, really be thoughtful about a troll comment than smell the roses. I really am. And I think that level of, you know, if you're going to have confidence,
Starting point is 00:57:49 you need to balance it with humility, that's where it gets really going. And then you sprinkle a little empathy for the other person, again, everybody who's listening, if you've literally stopped posting because somebody said you're ugly or stupid, you have to understand
Starting point is 00:58:03 that that person's in a bad place. We have to start talking about that. Like it takes energy to muster up watching something and then leaving a bad comment. Think about how miserable... Could you imagine if that was your life? No, it's very sad. Like, I've never done that in my life once.
Starting point is 00:58:19 No. Never. But you're right. It's all about them. It's not about the person that's receiving the comment. The old version of me that's like that is sports me.
Starting point is 00:58:27 Like I just said, I've never done that, and I actually just thought of something that almost happened yesterday. Yesterday, the Milwaukee Bucks beat the Celtics. You might be a Celtics girl, since you're from up there, and it goes to three to one, the series, and I wanted to tweet a Paul Pierce,
Starting point is 00:58:42 who after game one, when the Celtics won, said the series was over and the bucks were finished, I wanted to tweet and be like, now what, dick? Because I hate Paul Pierce, because I'm a Knicks fan. Again, back to I mentioned my grandmother, Because I have a version of me where I'm sad as a Nixon Jets fan and I want to pull down the Patriots and the Celtics,
Starting point is 00:59:04 I'm like, ooh, that's sports. That's a different arena. But I really feel it, but that's sports. Wait a minute, that's how people actually live life. If my real life was Jets fan Gary, I would be devastated. And the fact that that's how everybody actually is acting right now about politics and life and social media,
Starting point is 00:59:25 that's why I understand certain things. I'm self-aware that I am, you know, envious of other teams being successful. I'm sad that my team is not winning. I don't feel in control. One of the biggest reasons I tell everybody you're fully in control is because I believe it.
Starting point is 00:59:42 I believe I'm fully in control. It makes my life happy. I am not in control of the New York Jets. Why do you think I want to buy them? That misery I want to get into control. If I own them, then I am in control. And so like that's how people live their lives. They feel like the government's in control.
Starting point is 00:59:58 They feel like their spouse is in control. Their boss, their corporation, the system. Yes. I don't believe that. I believe you can be very, that doesn't mean that women don't face more difficult things than men. That doesn't mean minorities don't feel, like there's systematic issues.
Starting point is 01:00:16 But like, everybody's got problems. Having too much is a problem. Sure, it can be. I've been talking more, I think it can be. If you actually hear what I said earlier, the BMW story, like I spend way more time
Starting point is 01:00:29 on the entitled rich kids than I do on the poor kids. I think the poor kids have it good because they have a chip under shoulder and with the new internet, nobody's stopping them. I think it's the rich kids or the over-spoiled kids
Starting point is 01:00:41 that are in deep, deep, deep, deep shit. They're soft. What about your kids? Gonna be soft. I mean it, I'm not joking. What can you do then to address that? I'm going to do the thing I'm going to do,
Starting point is 01:00:53 which is I'm going to cut them financially off completely. Oh my gosh. Completely. Are you serious? I feel like I'm going down an inevitable path of giving away all my wealth to charity. I really believe that,
Starting point is 01:01:03 which is wild because 10 years ago I would have laughed you out of the room if you told me I'm an immigrant to give your family the money. I just think the money's a problem. That's shocking. You know, it's shocking for you even to come out of my own lips. But this is what happens when you live something. This is why I love talking about things I know
Starting point is 01:01:20 instead of judging things I don't. I judged Bill Boll. Gates and Warren Buffett 15 years ago when I first heard it. But that's because I hadn't lived it yet. Now I realize, oh my God, if my kids know that they have a parachute at all turns, they can't live a life of a life of happen.
Starting point is 01:01:38 Which then leads to uncomfort. Exactly. But I have to watch them because they're still young. For example, it's uncomfortable to me because I would never want anything I achieved to be hedged that it wasn't done by me. But that's me. Not everybody's like that.
Starting point is 01:01:53 Some people love the idea of being third generation wealthy and just enjoy. I have too much pride and love of the process. Some don't like it. So you've got to listen. So I'm just going to be thoughtful and woke and open to all these things with my kids, and we'll see. I have no idea.
Starting point is 01:02:13 Most likely one of the kids is going to want to climb my mountain and be bigger than me, and one kid's going to want to give away all the money in Africa. And all of that's fine. I will not judge my children on how they react to their circumstance and DNA. I will not. I have no interest in my kids being entrepreneurs.
Starting point is 01:02:30 I have no interest in my kids being competitive. I have no interest in my kids being like me. I have interest in one singular thing. Can they have as much peace of mind and happiness as I do? That's what it's all about. 100%. That's a real confidence. It sure is.
Starting point is 01:02:45 So I can't wrap up this show, Gary, without coming in hot. Anytime I'm scared of doing something, I have to do it. So I've got to ask you something. So I listen to your podcast all the time. My career was all about coming from nothing and smashing through the glass ceilings, getting to the C-suite, being a cheap revenue officer,
Starting point is 01:03:04 responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars, then getting fired and rebooting and starting my own company. I would love to share that message with your audience on your show. You want to be on my show. Yeah. It's done. You are the man. Thank you.
Starting point is 01:03:17 You're welcome. As a mother, I appreciate a lot too. Thank you. I hope that you love Gary Vee, as much as I did. I'm so excited that we got to spend this time together and spend it with him learning how he creates his confidence definitely different than most of the stories that I've heard. So so appreciate you guys being here. One of the things that people have asked me is, how do I get to a Gary Vee? And how does that happen? So I want to share with you some of the things that I do.
Starting point is 01:03:45 First, starting with was looking at Instagram yesterday because Gary Vee was posting about me. What's so interesting is in the DMs where it shows up that someone mentioned you, I start scrolling up and you need to know this. Ready? The first time I reached out and sent a DM to Gary Vee was December 15, 2016. I wrote this big note about I love the process of what you're doing. My hashtag is boss in heels. I'm providing the same level of transparency and success from the female side.
Starting point is 01:04:18 Could we please collaborate and bring more value to your audience? blah, blah, blah. Okay, so that was December 15th, 2016. I did hear back. I told him that I lived in Miami. He said that he's never in Miami. I said, but I come to New York. I can meet you anytime.
Starting point is 01:04:32 Crickets, nothing. Heard nothing back. Okay. Then April of 2017, I reached out. Crickets, nothing back. April of 2018, I reached out. And this was a good one. I like this one.
Starting point is 01:04:45 I said, Gary, I'm so excited that people are buying my book and buying yours too. I feel like I'm in great company. And I sent him a picture that I got off Amazon that said people that by crushing it are buying Confidence Creator. That's cool. I thought that was really relevant. Crickets. Nothing.
Starting point is 01:05:04 Okay, May 31st last year, I reached out. Gary, my new book came out. It's a bestseller. I was just on the James Altutcher show discussing it. I would love to bring your audience these tips, blah, blah, blah. Crickets. June. Gary, every time I look at Amazon.
Starting point is 01:05:21 Amazon by your book says people are buying it with your book. I can't believe this. It means we're meant to work together. Crickets. And then all of a sudden, yesterday I'm working with Gary V. So this is a long process. And when things don't come together quickly, this is over a three-year time period that I've been reaching out and trying to work with Gary Vee. The way that I ultimately got to him this time was I decided what I'm doing is not working. I need a new strategy. So I reevaluate. and I was clear that going to directly to him, even though that's my goal, it wasn't working. I needed to find someone that was in his space that I could get to. So I googled his name and then I clicked news and I saw that he had just formed a new company, Empathy Wines, and that he had a partner, John Troutman. So I thought, maybe I can get to Trouty. And I went on LinkedIn, I connected to him, I messaged him. and ultimately everybody has a need and a want.
Starting point is 01:06:22 And if you can fill that need or want, you can potentially get what your need or want is. And Trouty was really clear with me that he needs to move cases of wine. Well, I have a background in the wine business. I have a 20-year track record of driving hundreds of millions of dollars of revenue. And I know there's one thing that I know in that sales
Starting point is 01:06:42 so that I could help him. He said, well, if you can move cases of wine for me, I can get you to Gary Vee. So I made a deal directly with Trouty, who was amazing. And actually, as you saw or hopefully you saw in the video portion, Trouty sat in on the interview portion with Gary B. with me. He's an amazing guy. So the point or takeaway here is that when you can't get to the person you're trying to get to, take a step back and look at other ways to connect those dots. What other way, what other person can you find?
Starting point is 01:07:15 And remember, I've been working on this basically for three years. since 2016. That was the first time I reached out to Gary Vee. But the key is, I never gave up. And you should never give up to. So I'm dying to answer all of your questions. I actually had a question that came in yesterday that I wanted to share. And this is with someone that I've known for a while and has been on this journey with me and reached out to me to say, hey, Heather, I just got this new job. I was so excited. And today they presented me with my letter. of agreement to sign and the compensation was not near where I thought it was going to be. I can't take the job like this. I phone the woman who's in charge to speak to her, but I'm
Starting point is 01:07:59 feeling very nervous. I want the job. I love the job, but I'm scared to counter. What do you think? She also put, I'm rereading part five and six of your book Confidence Creator. I thought it would help, which was really cool. So here's the thing. In any situation, there's a value exchange, but the bottom line is this. People will pay you what you are worth. That is facts. So you need to know your worth, know what works for you, and you need to stand firm in it in a very kind, calm, positive way.
Starting point is 01:08:32 There's no room for emotion in business. You need to take emotion out of it, getting upset, crying, yelling, feeling angry or hurt. That means you're taking it personally. This is business. We don't know that person's situation. Maybe they were told there's a cap on what they can pay, but now it's on you. This is where the negotiation begins. What is the value proposition that you're bringing to the employer?
Starting point is 01:08:57 How is that going to make them money? Doesn't mean that you don't just have to be a salesperson to know you're helping a company grow. Your goal is to show the company how you're delivering value and increasing their value and net worth. So you want to frame up your conversation in that way in a really positive way that you're so, excited to go to work there, that you can't imagine how successful that you're going to be as a team. Here's how you're going to drive value for them. However, the current offer will not work as it stands and that you want to work through a way and a solution to get you guys to where you need to be. Oftentimes, you might be working with an HR director or a head of one department
Starting point is 01:09:37 and they don't have any more funds, but maybe by going to the president of the company, you can access more funds. So you want to also ask that person, hey, would it? help you if I speak to anyone else is there do you have you know if you're having budgeting issues would you like me to come in again and meet with some other people so that you could potentially access more funds and bring this together so it works for both of us I know you and I can find a way together you know really believing in yourself believe in believe in finding a solution and be collaborative and positive with that person oftentimes you will see that they may need your help or they just need to make another phone call and ask for additional funds
Starting point is 01:10:15 So the good news is I heard back today, and this woman did go ahead, and she claimed her ground. She said, this package isn't going to work for me, and I want to work with you. And the good news is that they came back, and I'll read this to you, she told me she will ask for more money. She will fight for me for more money, and she thanked me for my honesty and told me she has a lot of respect for me for making the call and putting it out there. So congratulations, putting it out there and owning your thoughts, your value. Others will respect that, and that's when you know you're in the right place. Can't wait to see you next week on creating confidence. Thank you.

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