The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast 239 Fred Stuvek Jr., It Starts With You: Turn Your Goals Into Success

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

Fred Stuvek Jr., It Starts With You: Turn Your Goals Into Success

Hi, this is Voss here from TheChrisVossShow.com. TheChrisVossShow.com. Hey, we're coming here with another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you guys tuning in. You guys are our best audience in the world. Be sure to refer it to your friends, neighbors, relatives. Go to YouTube.com forward slash Chris Voss. Hit that bell notification button so you get all the notifications of everything we're doing,

including the product reviews we're doing for Christmas. Holy crap. AT&T, Harman Kardon, JBL., you got to see all the great toys they're going to be reviewing that you're going to want to have, and also the pre-CES show stuff as well, and Rocky Raccoon the Husky. We have, of course, always the best guests on the Chris Voss Show. Today we have the author of the book, It Starts With You, Turn Your Goals Into Success, Fred Stubeck, Jr. Welcome to the show, Fred. How are you today? I'm doing good, Chris. Thank you for having me on.

It's a pleasure. And thank you for sending me a copy of your book here. You want a wonderful, nice notation in the front there. And it said, thanks for having me on your show, Chris. Too bad you went to Trump University and you can't read. So there's that. That's appropriate and true. But you paid good money for it, though, didn't you? Something like that. Yeah, I'll be paying on the loans

at least five years after I'm dead according to my student loan history uh advisor whatever i don't know so i never even i i people are most people that know me are like did he even graduate elementary school so so let's talk about you in this book is there a website people can go to to check it out yes it's uh it's actually the title of the book it starts with you dot net okay it starts with you dot net and when you go to the website there's some uh there's some information on yours truly uh there's also uh you can read the preface and a chapter on adversity just to get a feel for what the book's about.

You can go on and, you know, there's a blog on there. I've written three blogs. One of them is how to, you know, how will I do in school? You know, things like that discipline. And there's also links where you can purchase the book rather, you know, through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, et cetera. And Chris, I've bought into social media. I've bought in. I was a ghost until the book, but it's become apparent that I have to be on social media.

So I'm never more than a keystroke away. There you go. There you go. There you go. No one finds Christ on prom night until they got a book and then they went to social media. So I have links to all my social media. Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, etc, etc, etc.

So if anybody wants to reach me, you can just click on that. My email address is on there and I'll get back to you straight away. Nice. Nice. So the book's pretty cool. It's got a lot of different stuff on how to achieve your goals and be successful. Part one, find something you believe in and get good at it. Part two, associate with successful people in organizations and persevere and adapt, never, never give up and different breakdowns. So give us a little bit about yourself, Fred. Like what prompted you to write this book?

What's your past history, background, all that good stuff? Okay, well, in terms of my history, I was born in West Virginia, and I was raised in southwestern Pennsylvania, a small coal mining town. Oh, my mom's a coal miner's daughter. Okay. Virginia too. Yep. Well, we had four seasons back there, Chris.

We had football, basketball, track, and baseball. So those were the four seasons, and I participated in every season. My understanding is now we just have four seasons of opioid, opioid, opioid. Opioid, PTSD, et cetera. Yeah, well, that's a whole other issue. But, you know, it was a good area, you know, good people, good values, good work ethic. And I felt fortunate to grow up there. I played a lot of sports and I was offered scholarships to a number of colleges and universities and went on a visit to the

Naval Academy and it just kind of resonated with me. I liked the discipline, the commitment, the sense of duty, ability to serve my country. And I just thought to myself, that's going to make me a better person. So I decided to go there. I went to school there. I did graduate, I might add. Play played football, lettered three years of quarterback. After that, I was commissioned, went into the Naval service, served for five years, got out and transitioned to the civilian world. I worked for a West German medical company, started off in sales and worked my way up, then segued into a high-tech medical startup. We eventually did an IPO with that company that went well. After that, I started a company up and sold it about 18 to 24 months ago.

I've been fortunate to have a range of experience, both in the military and sports, in the business world, in the public, private sector, bought companies, sold companies, etc. And after I said, you know, I don't do the retirement thing very well, Chris. And so I was trying to sort out what to do. And I just I'd give them some talks. I went to different places, gave talks here around Knoxville, outside the state. And every time I would have to talk, somebody would come up to me and say, where can I buy your book?

And I said, well, I haven't written a book. And they said, well, where'd this stuff come from? I said, well, you need to talk to my children. You know, I talked to one of my sons. I said, Eric, you're going to buy the book. He says, dad, I lived it for years. He says, why do I need to buy it? So that kind of planted a seed. And I've always enjoyed mentoring young people. I mean, I think some of these young people today are struggling for direction and

need some leadership and always try to help when I can. And my wife has always encouraged me to write a book. So I try to listen to her as much as I can. I find that makes for a very healthy relationship. So I decided to write a book. She was telling you to get you out of the house though, Fred. What's that? She was telling you that just to get you out of the house though, Fred. I think she was.

I mean, the other day she says, don't you have any trips planned? I can have the pool boy over and you're here. Yeah. But you know, when you walk in the room and she hangs up the phone right away, you always wonder what's going on. That's good. I always looked at it this way in my marriages. If she's cheating me, at least, you know, she's bothering some other guy.

I don't know what that means. Yeah. But so when I decided to write the book, I. You know, I wanted to write something a little bit different. I looked at a lot of the health self-help books out there. And, you know, I believe my experience has given me a distinct perspective. So I wanted to write something that was more of an instructional manual, something that was more of a life coach in print that would give people directions. And it would be something that we would provide them with the basis and foundation to be successful and they could use as a reference document later on. So I put this together. I believe it is a good approach. I mean, people tell you, you have to be successful.

Well, have you ever, I mean, being successful, Chris entails a number of issues. It's just not one thing. And there are a lot of, a lot of issues that are, you know, that are associated with that and the absence or weakness in one area can hurt you. So what I wanted to do was to put it together in such a manner that each chapter builds on the previous one and the sum total of these things working together uh is very important now one of the things that i did if you if you noticed in there i like the numbers three five and ten i don't know why i just like them and so if you look in the book well when you do look at the book you'll see that I focused on, for example, on adversity. What is adversity? Why is it important? And how do you do something about it? And I get into specific steps. I talk about discipline,

how to build discipline, how to build self-confidence. So I wanted to give people the instructions to provide a sense of direction so they could be successful and they could use it later on you know throughout their career i was at the that was the other day i was at the club working out and a young lady came up to me and she said i loved your book she said i i'm in sales i carry it with me wherever i go anytime i have a little extra time i'm going into a sales call or something i take out the section that i'm most interested in. I read it. I refresh it. Chris, this stuff isn't rocket science, what I've written down. It's basic stuff. But as you know, Chris, it's the basics. It's the fundamentals that are important. And I think sometimes we lose sight of that. So you need to

constantly remind yourself and refresh those things. So that's why I wrote the book. And, you know, I got to get the word out now, Chris. I like how it gives good core steps as to how people can be successful and how they can manage it. Now that you mentioned, I do notice there's three parts to it with five different sort of chapters per part so there's five and it only has 10 pages so i guess that explains no i'm just kidding it's actually quite long it's actually uh to be specific since i threw it on the bus there are 195 pages so um where's the 10 is the them in the bus, they're 195 pages. So where's the 10? Is the 10 in the book somewhere that we, 3, 5, 10? Yep.

If you look at some of the traits that I list for leadership or something like that, there may be 10 traits listed. There we go. There we go. 3, 5, and 10, folks. 3, 5, and 10. Yeah. I think they're good numbers. I'll be successful with the numbers 3, 5, and 10, folks. 3-5 and 10. I think they're good numbers.

I'll be successful with the numbers 3-5 and 10 in numerology. No, I don't know if it'll work at the casino, Chris. You can try it. And everybody I know who's a gambler in Las Vegas has a system that wins. Well, if it was a system that wins. Because they used all their money on that system to make that system work well if it was a if the system worked they wouldn't call it gambling i guess well i mean you know i i when you walk into those casino halls here in las vegas you look around you look like

i'm pretty sure the house is winning most of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Jack on the side of the road, they'd be like, I don't know why we keep losing. I've been to Vegas several times. I haven't been recently. Maybe I'll get out there and we have a drink one day. But when I go out, I like to go to the gambling areas, but I just like to watch the people lose the money and take the free drinks.

There you go. There you go. I had some a long time ago. It used to be they gave you decent drinks in Las Vegas, but we digress. So you've got the book, and this is pretty awesome. Turn Your Goals into Success.

You talk about how to reach life's pinnacle points, peak performance, personal achievement, professional success, and distinction. And you give them a roadmap to take and do that. The power to create anything you envision is already within you but you already know that and uh so you give them a way to shift out of potential mode chart the course and go especially where you've had success in your life and everything else um so yeah a great book on book on what you can do. And it looks like you had an MBA at one point. Yeah, I went to night school and got an MBA. I just want to get that box checked because I was convinced at some point in my life I might be up for a certain position promotion.

And there would be a box that have to be checked. And actually, that's what happened. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if that box had not been checked but uh you know you know people don't realize that especially these days they they want instant gratification on everything and they think that they can have instant gratification on being an entrepreneur or being having getting a good job and getting paid well um it just doesn't happen overnight you can't just be like oh i want to be on a superior day where's my million dollars you know um there's a lot of work preparation that goes into it i always love it people will do that to me in social media they'll be like how do i become successful in marking myself

with social media uh you know can you give me a few tips so I can be like you? And I'm like, why don't you grind really hard for about three or four years? And you're pretty sure no one's reading and build a content base. For the first one or two years, you'll probably realize you're making content and no one's listening. And then just grind that out, and you'll probably eventually be a success. And they're like, really? That's a lot of work.

And you're like, anything of value takes hard work, man. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at it, Chris, I mean, I think there's a lot of, I mean, on the social media and the news. I mean, a lot of this stuff, I social media and the news i mean i mean a lot of this stuff i mean it's i mean it's it's not real they're not i mean they're celebrating something that that gives people a false perspective for example all you see is the people that are successful you never you never see any stories about the people that have failed i I mean, when you start up a business, eight out of 10 new businesses are gone within 18 to 24 months.

And, you know, if something comes too quick, I mean, if something comes quick and easy and there's a lot of money, chances are you're dealing drugs or something like that. I mean, it just, it doesn't work that way. You have to put your time in. And you have to keep it working.

That's the four-letter word that most people don't want to do. What? There's work? Oh, I'm not. What? No, no. It doesn't come on my phone. There's not an app for this.

How to get rich quick. You know, I had a great father, God bless him, but he was really enamored with multi-level marketing schemes. And as I built my businesses and companies and put in the slaving and hard work, he would always come to me with the new multi-level marketing company that he joined. And he joined so many of them. I don't know how you could be successful. And he did find ones that he made some good money at,

but they would always change the game on him because he didn't have control and he'd lose the commissions eventually. But he'd always come to me and he'd be like, Chris, all I got to do is work really hard for a couple months with Semmel M and I can retire. And I'm like, do you understand the concept of what that would have to entail? Especially before retirement. But he would always claim to me that all he had to do was work two or three months

and he could retire. And then, you know, two or three months later, he'd be calling me up going, I'm with another multi-level marketing company. And just these constant get-rich-quick schemes of multi-level marketing. And I'd be like, Dad, you just go start your own business he came to work for me and he made more money than he ever made his lifetime at 55 and he was really good but he was really sadly poorly and organized to start his own company to do his own thing and he kind of he kind of didn't want to he kind own company to do his own thing. And he kind of didn't want to. He kind of wanted to just do whatever.

But the get rich scheme, the four-letter work word, is something that a lot of people nowadays don't like. And that's really what you've got to do. You've got to roll up your sleeves and put in the sweat and get her done. Well, and, you know, society may be partly to blame for that. Maybe the parents. I mean, Chris, where'd you grow up, if I may ask? I grew up in SoCal.

Okay. So let's say Chris grows up and your family, I mean, they take excellent care of you. You participate in many sports. Every time you show up, you get a trophy. You never get criticized. Life is a bed of roses. You just drift through things. Everything's cool.

You go to college. You have good grades. You get out. You're going to change the world. You go to work. You don't get a trophy for showing up. You get yelled at. You want to know what to do.

Hard work and success requires the ability to withstand adversity and failure. And if you've never experienced it, how are you going to deal with it? Yeah. It's kind of like when you get diseases when you're a kid or bacterias or bugs. Your body has to learn to fight and overcome those bugs so that it can have protection for the future. Because if it doesn't, then it'll die. And, yeah, you're right.

You know, but in the end, I mean, you know, my parents raised me a certain way. I certainly wasn't getting participant awards. And hopefully they made me a better person for it. I don't know. But, you know, there comes a point where everyone's has to take, there was a point in my life where I had to quit blaming my parents for whatever, you know, however I was raised or I thought I should have been raised. And there was a point where I had to, you know, pull up my bootstraps and go, all right, this is on me now.

You know, there's a point where I had control over who I am in life as an adult. And I had to say, okay, well, anything that happens from here on out, it's my fault and not my past fault. And if you look at, I mean, life is about the decisions you make. I mean, you're not a victim of circumstances, and people make decisions sometimes for the wrong reasons. But you have to create those opportunities for yourself. And whenever I, for this book, say it starts with you, it doesn't mean that it's all about you.

It means it's about initiative and accountability. To be successful, you have to develop the mindset and habits for success because what you think and how you act defines you as a person. And if you have good habits and you train well and you make good decisions, your chances for success are increased exponentially. But if you don't, you're probably destined for a lifetime of mediocrity. Yeah, most definitely. It does start with you and and once you get adulthood you know it's on you what you do from there on out you know i mean i wish we would teach self-actualization more to people where where you're like you say your decisions are based on your thing um you know some people believe in a lot of different things that you know they're they're a puppet to something in the sky and circumstance

and whatever whatever sort of um anger gratitude that person will bestow on them uh but being self-actualized one of the things i really loved about being an entrepreneur was beyond her really makes you self-actualized you're you realize the buck stops with you and that you've got to make it happen you've got to make it go and uh boy if you know you're probably not going to be a successful entrepreneur but it really helps you become very self-aware of who you are and what you're doing and and uh developing yourself well when you i mean if you find something that you you believe in and you go for i mean there's a leap of faith with everything that you do no no risk no glory uh and as you believe in and you go for, I mean, there's a leap of faith with everything

that you do. No risk, no glory. And as you all know, when you've taken out personal guarantees on a number of things, you maybe have your house collateralized and things aren't looking very good. Those are challenging times. And I think the true test of character is how someone responds to adversity. And if you've been through adverse circumstances and succeeded, it makes you stronger. Now, an adverse circumstance is something like that. Your business is in trouble. You're having a hard time making payroll, et cetera. Losing your iPhone is not an adverse circumstance. Okay, Chris? That's just an inconvenience.

But in some people's minds, it is a catastrophe. It is an adverse. Okay. But that is very important. And that was also something that I learned a lot from. I mean, you know, when you're sitting there, you have to make payroll and you have to rob from Peter to pay Paul. It presents it presents some challenges, but there's always a way to get there's always a way.

I caught Hannibal whenever he was crossing the Alps, elephants and all his general said, we can't do it. It's impossible. He said, find a way or make one. Well, I mean, I think that's the mentality you have to have, but I'd leave the elephants, but I would leave the elephants at home. Yeah. That's what I do. I keep all my elephants at home. In the closet, actually.

Yeah. With the skeletons. But, yeah, so it's really important. I think it's a factor of what people need to do today to get self-actualized. And I think your book contributes to a lot of that in what's in it, what it talks about. Belief, fit, goals, strategy, commit, act, learn, quotients, communication, leadership, adversity, failure, recovery, team, fundamentals. All good chapters and topics on how to be successful in the book here um and and yeah i definitely recommend it it's a very quick and easy read uh it's not hugely

technical it's in its thing it's very motivational as you go through it in different steps that you can take to do to be successful and how to grow oneself and yeah being self-actualized preparing if you will like we did with the nba we prepare for uh success that's very important and so you know i had a friend say to me the other day i was trying to help him through some stuff and he kept failing and failing and failing in it and i said you know if you do some research and you read some stuff and watch some of these videos you can probably learn how to do this better and he goes well i i don't want to do that because it takes too much time and i want to waste my time and i'm like but you're wasting all your time one enough study and research on how to be successful

but you know one of the things that i one of the things that i did, I like to look at examples, you know, lessons learned and all that. And so when I decided to write a book, the first place I went was what mistakes do first time authors make? I mean, that's important. That's how you learn from your mistakes. And I was trying to take advantage of other people's mistakes and what they've learned to help prevent making those same mistakes. I think that has helped me. But one of the things that's very important, Chris, is the first chapter of my book. And I think a lot of people lose sight of that. You really have to believe.

I talk about belief. You have to believe in yourself and have confidence in yourself. If you don't have confidence in yourself, who's going to believe in you? And they're going to pick up on that vibe. And then the other thing is you have to have confidence in, or you have to believe in what you're doing. Because when things get tight, it's that strong belief that's going to enable you to weather the storm.

And it also has to be a good fit. For example, if you're an introvert and you're in a sales position, well, you either adapt, get trained or do something else. And, you know, companies also need to be more responsible in terms of matching the right person to the right job. I mean, just because someone has been an excellent salesperson doesn't mean they're going to make a good sales manager. You've probably experienced that before, right? Yeah, I've seen that. There's some that they make horrible managers.

They're great at sales. They're great at people skills. But a lot of great salespeople aren't good managers because managers, you have to push around a lot of paper and reporting and all that sort of good stuff. And most great salesmen don't want that. They like the freedom of being able to roam and sell and cash checks and make good money and not have to do paperwork and not have to babysit anyone. Yep. Yep. It's also, too, when you get into a certain position, whether it's in the military or whether it's in the civilian world, there's a difference.

If you're in a position of authority or responsibility, whatever you want to call it. But there's a difference between, and I mentioned this in the book, positional authority and personal authority. And if you rule strictly by your position without doing the attendant things that you need to do, for example, conveying, you know, why are we doing this? Why is it important? do you uh well how do you contribute things like that so i mean at the end of the day i think the personal authority is more uh is more important and more importantly it's transportable you can transfer it anywhere you can take it anywhere with you but you can't

take your title with you yeah you can't you can't you can't take your title with you. Yeah, you can't. You can't. And you can't take it to your grave either. No. You know, any title I've ever had is usually CEO and janitor. So it doesn't seem how big my company is. You know, there it is. So anything more we should know, Fred, about you and your book that you want to share with us? Well, I believe that, you know, who's the target audience for this book?

I would say that anybody at any stage in their career can benefit from the principles and the attributes that I've listed in this book. But I think it's especially important for young people, you know, for young adults who are starting out, it might give them a better idea in terms of what they need to do and how they need to hone in on their career path and what they should choose. You need to make decisions for the right reasons, not for the wrong reasons. Sometimes people make decisions because they want to avoid something. They avoid it because they're fearful or they're going to get uncomfortable, whatever. And those are bad decisions because you're making a decision for the wrong reasons. So you need to take the appropriate steps to overcome that. And I cover that in the book. But I do think that a lot of people can benefit in this book.

And I have a couple of companies that have contacted me already. They're going to make this a requirement for their new employees. And I will be going up and talking to them. There's also a major business school in the country. It's one of the top ranked business schools in the country that is going to be incorporating this book into their curriculum next year. And it's going to be required reading for all of their students and so i think those types of things are going to help the book get more traction and then appearing on these most excellent programs the viewers will just help spread the word there'll be a tsunami of demand so give us the website again where people can order up the book It starts with you dot net

It starts with you dot net Starts with you dot net Yeah And be sure to check it out guys We certainly appreciate Fred Stulick Jr. For coming on the show today And also be sure to refer the show To your friends, neighbors, and relatives

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