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About Dan
First full-time job at 14, Contestant on The Biggest Loser season 5 at 21, Nashville recording artist, Debut album “Goin’ All Out” charted #7 on Billboard. Currently: Founder/Partner in 10+ companies; Restaurants, Real estate, Youth programs, Tech company.
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The One Word Breaking Your Limitations (Pt. 2) | Dan Evans
Here’s my guest again, Dan Evans. Read the first episode because we talked a lot about the word can’t, and how I hate it. We ended up in a good spot about relationships and how being paired with somebody that is not quite the right one for you, whether it’s business, partnership, marriage or whatever, and how the expectations of other people are the reasons why you can’t, which are the reasons why you won’t or don’t. In part two, we’re going to talk about the ways to overcome the word can’t. It’s a little bit of a mind shift. For everyone, we’ve been going on the first episode so far and we’re going into the second episode.
There’s no slowing down.
There are no two days in between us. It’s just published two days apart.
Rick texted me and said, “Let’s go do it. I’m in a mood.” I was like, “I love it. It’s going to get gnarly.”
We’re going to hit your hard again because as we were texting, Dan and I were talking about this cool book that he’s writing. When he was telling me about this, I was like, “This is amazing because it specifically has to do around with the word that I hate, can’t.” This is a way to overcome that and turn those don’ts and won’ts, which is what the word can’t means into, “I can, when.” We got into relationships and business last time. We can get more into weight loss or finances this time around. There was something you text me and you’ve got this. Tell me a little bit about the book that you’re writing.
It’s called The Power of Yet. I love it because this was something that I stumbled upon a couple of years back, working with many different people who are making their way into the business world. Even people who’ve been in it for too long where they have their mind made up on certain things. You get trapped on these roads of can’t, “We can’t do that. We can’t get that done in time. I can’t do that. I’m not good at that.” I don’t like that. There’s a word that fixes that. At the end, I would always finish the statement for them and I would say, “Yet.” It’s an entire paradigm shift on the concept that they’re stuck on. It’s like, “I can’t lose weight yet.” “I have tried to set a morning routine. I can’t do it yet.”
It changes everything. It shifts it and stops them because they first want to jump and make more excuses on why they can’t but they realize, “I’m digging my heels in and that’s not good.” It’s fun because it creates this moment of self-reflection for anybody to throw it at, but it’s also a great internal thing because when you hear yourself going down those roads or creating your own self-limitations so many times, we attempt to own our self-limitations. We stand on it. We’ve said this for so long. It becomes ingrained in who we are and you throw one little word there right at the end, and people have a moment in time where they have to choose, “Do I want to leave room to free myself from that or do I want to hold on to this for dear life?” You learn a lot about people right at that moment when you throw the yet and it’s very powerful.
That’s the moment of choice from what you’re describing. When you throw that word in there, it’s like, “I can’t lose weight…” “I can’t be with this person…” “I can’t make more money…” Even that last one could even come into a gender bias. There is a wage gap between men and women or even other things, “I can’t do that because I’m not a man.” “I can’t do that because I’m not a woman.” Outside of giving birth, there are a lot of things that can be shifted over. It’s that choice moments of yet. In my industry with CEOs, one of the most powerful and first female CEOs that existed that was high profile was the CEO of HP, Hewlett-Packard. What’s bad is I can’t remember her name now but I remember seeing that years ago. I was like, “That’s amazing.” Now we have our first female as a vice president, which is also amazing because at that point, it was never a thing.
We both have a history of growing up in church and ministry. At a young age, my mother was working in churches and ministry. She made her way up and became a pastor of a church. I had many friends who even said, “She’s a woman. She can’t do that.” I was young. I didn’t realize all the rules that I could live throughout that. At an early age, it was always, “Why not? Is she not doing a good job? I don’t know what’s missing here.” That limitation hadn’t been set for me. I never realized there was like, “She can’t.” Why not? Whatever that was for her wasn’t going to stop her.
It could have been a yet at some point in time. She can’t while she was trying to ascend and do what she wanted to do. There were probably a million reasons why not that everybody else was giving you. For her, it was, “I can’t yet.”
There are no female pastors at church yet.
That was Carly Fiorina from HP. We could talk about gender bias even more. Do you feel that is still a moment of choice even with that?
Coming up from a family of entrepreneurs, my mother led the way. From a young age, one of the first businesses that our family started was Before and After School Program for kids. That business existed for about 22 years. I worked every job in the company. Over time, I eventually became the Chief Operating Officer of the company and served that position for several years. For us, with my mother founding that company, she surrounded herself with talented and powerful women to run that company. Some were my leadership at the time. Other times, I was leadership for them.
I grew up in a world where that didn’t exist in my presence and directly around me. It was a great thing because over time, understanding that that exists in other worlds and maybe it’s even more of a mental limitation where people say, “You can’t have that job because…” I got to see the power of a powerful self-driven and self-motivated woman through my entire childhood and often in my adult life. What that has always taught me is the hardest worker and most determined person will win. Nothing else matters, long hair, short hair, tall, skinny, fat or whatever you want to call it. All of those things fall to the wayside of the most driven person. The person who will not lay down. The person who will not give you an, “I can’t.” There is no room for that.
It’s the person who will make the choice.
We would come home at different times when I was young because it’s a kids’ program and our toaster would be gone. I was like, “Mom, where’s the toaster?” She’s like, “We’re doing breakfast now. I needed it. It took it from the house. We don’t have toaster anymore. Go another time.” The DVD player and all our kids’ DVDs and stuff were completely gone. I was like, “Mom, where did all our stuff go?” She’s like, “We needed it because we’re doing this After-School Club thing.” No joke, I got a computer for Christmas. We were talking about video editing. I love production and the whole thing. I come home one day and my computer is gone.
The computer at the front desk in the business crashed. She came, unplugged my whole thing and took it. It was one of those things where you might look back and be like, “Your childhood was robbed.” No. I was taught a valuable lesson. The valuable lesson was if you truly believe that you can and if you go all-in on something, nothing will stop you. Every self-limitation you put on yourself or is put upon you from the people around you, from the ideals you grew up around, from the type of people you’ve surrounded yourself with, whatever it is, everybody comes from a different background.
If you have that unstoppable mentality that, “Nothing will get in your way. It doesn’t matter. We’re all in on this. We will bulldoze through any obstacle that comes in our way.” Those are the people who win. There is no taking that win from them. In my life, seeing that role played by a woman, by my mother has taught me that the playing field is even. It’s about who has it. Who can drive, bulldoze and push through? It’s beautiful. She’s an incredible woman. You know my mother for many years.
She was my first business coach. I remember getting to the point because she was my coach for about six months. I remember this meeting with her. I came in and I gave her a spreadsheet I put together and everything with projections and plans. This was getting to the point where I had something to move forward. I got to that point where I was like, “Here’s where I’m going. Here’s how I’m going to get there. Here’s what the next six months look like.” She goes, “You don’t need me anymore.” I was like, “Hold on.” She’s like, “No. You’ve made your decision now. You’ve made the choice and you know exactly what you need to do to move forward. You don’t need me anymore.”
As you’re talking about the DVD player and the computer from the front of the desk, your mom made a choice long before them. Those weren’t even the choices or anything because the real choice was to say, “I’m moving forward and I’m going to be me.” She had already made that decision and that’s probably a decision that we have to make time and time again in life because of the certain environment or big shifts that happen in business, relationships or whatever. All the dropping weight and all these big decisions points to say, “I’m going to be me.” When I walked into that, it was hilarious because I remember it. I remember the spreadsheet too. It’s like, “This is how I’m going to scale up.” Up to that point, I had not taken action yet. I got to this point where she’s like, “You’re good. You don’t need me anymore.”
The mother eagle pushing the little eagle out of the nest. It’s like, “Flap your wings. Start flapping.”
I credit her and I also credit my first client, who is a Brad Fralick who owns six of the Buffalo Wild Wings around here. He’s still a good friend to this day. He was the original push. He was like, “You can do this.” I was like, “I never thought you’d be on the jumbotron.” He was one of them. That was that initial push to plant that. The fire was already within me. Seeing your mom and the amazing examples she set for you and I’m sure she’s there. She’s still involved. She swoops in but she also lets you go out and be. She’s a great person to have around you, especially for the family. Skip business or anything else to say, “I want you to be you.” If I’m too much over you, hovering around you or even from a business partner saying, “Do this and do that. You’re not going to be you.” She’s giving you the ability to say, “I can.”
One of the cool balances that we play in family businesses is there are cycles and seasons and we all work together. There are times where somebody is bringing up with some passion or an idea. Everybody else naturally steps out of the way. It’s like, “You’re onto something. You’ve got energy now. I’m not going to get in there and try and co-run your idea, flame and passion. I’m going to quietly step back and be here to support but I’m not going to get in there and try to ‘yes, no, can, can’t’ your ideas because that’s not my job.”
Energy is everything. Energy and passion where there’s momentum and flow, you can’t get in the way of that. There have been many times where we don’t even realize it’s happening. My mom would come back a year later and go, “I didn’t get it so I got out of the way.” I didn’t realize that happened at the time. I felt myself gearing up and going, making calls, calling the shots, putting things together and something happened.
We took an entire offshoot to this business idea that is now growing and something that has helped us pivot with time. Businesses evolve. A 22-year-old company has pivoted many times and you don’t always know what those are. They’re never in the initial plan but to be prepared for them and to have those people around you who will not get in your way and decide, “It is up to me to give you and I can’t. That’s not my job. That’s not what I’m here for,” because I don’t know what’s in your mind. I don’t know what energy you’re channeling into now. You have something going on and I can recognize that enough to not ruin it. Many times in life, it is a moment of time. It is where energy is meeting the person in the right place at the right time. People who stifle that and attempt to get in the way. Many times, it’s a jealousy thing.
“Nobody ever picked me so why should I pick you?” None of us picked anybody. That’s not how this thing goes. It’s not the picking and the choosing and we’ll put your ballot in the hat. It’s about being sensitive and understanding that there is some true, clear passion and energy at this moment. The only thing I will do is get in the way and screw it up. I’m self-aware enough that my ego is in enough check. That’s okay. I don’t need to play CEO of this thing now. I’m okay with that because I love it enough that I realized that you’re some rocket fuel that we could use. I’m not going to get trapped into what I think that you’ll think about me. What will my friends think about me if I’m no longer holding the CEO title? They’ll think that I got stepped aside or I’m not keeping up? No. I’m self-justifying people who don’t get it and I don’t need to.
It’s okay that they don’t get it. Your mom gets that too. I can almost hear the word yet after that. It’s like, “I’m stepping aside because I don’t get it yet.” There’s power in yet.
Sponge time, soak, drink and let it settle.
I appreciate your mom even getting out of my way. I didn’t even know that she would have been in it at the time thinking, “Aren’t you going to help guide me through these next steps?” “Nope. You made your choice. You’re good to go now. It’s now okay to go and fail.”
The selfish side of somebody could easily say, “What we’re going to do is let’s start making our first calls. I’ll sit your desk up next to my desk and we’ll talk every single day because I want to keep you under my wings. If you outgrow me and you grow this massive company that you did, people might not know that I get credit for that.” That’s all ego getting in the way.
It’s getting a lot of credit now in 38 countries. You’ll never know that was going to happen either.
The full circle. That’s the beauty. Those things find their way back. When you try to force it, create it and hold everything in your little eagle nest, it never does.
The word yet, I cannot emphasize enough what you were saying that it’s the choice at that moment in time. If you don’t say that word, here’s the inverse of that that I’m saying. It’s almost like a negative state. If you refuse to say the word yet, you’re refusing to make a choice. You’re refusing to take action. You’re refusing to be you. If you’ve got this thing in your head, “I don’t like the way that I look. I hate having a 500 credit score,” which I’ve had. It’s not that I liked it. That was because of the environment, losing a job, starting a business at the same time and having twins. I couldn’t make my mortgage payment for three months. That tanks your score for a little while.
Every time I would look at that and for the longest time, I was like, “I’m never going to have a credit card again. I don’t want it.” I never got into any bad debt from credit cards. That almost became like a pride thing and not understanding the power of debt, and how it can accelerate things in business, which I do now. Looking back at that credit score in finance, it’s like, “It’s a 500.” I remember getting a car loan but before that I really need to get a car but I can’t get a loan. I’m just looking at my credit score because that’s what staring at me right there in the face.
I don’t think I said the word yet because I didn’t understand the power of yet at the time. I’m thinking, “I need a car because this one that I had blew up. I have to go to work. I’m going to have to go somewhere and get a car.” Here’s a scenario. I was like, “I’m sure I can’t get a loan. Do I need a co-signer or something? I’ll see if I can beg a friend or something like that to help me out here.” I was like, “Let’s see.” It was the lack of knowledge at that moment why I wouldn’t make the choice. The power of yet and understanding that when I had a 500 credit score, going into the dealership wasn’t like I was walking into a Bentley dealership or the BMW that I have sitting outside or my Aston that I’m getting out. It was Saturn. I wanted a new car because I didn’t want to have to deal with the mess that I came out of again.
I’m looking at the credit scoring. I’m walking in like, “We can get you a loan. No problem.” I was like, “You can?” It was another obstacle. They’re like, “We know you have challenges with your credit but here’s what we can do. We can either do a 9% loan or we can do a 19% loan.” I was like, “Why wouldn’t I want the 9%? loan?” They’re like, “You have to put $10,000 down.” It was a $30,000 vehicle. I’m looking at 1/3 down. This is me with no money at this point because I’m broke. I have kids and no job.
It may as well be $10 million.
The payment would effectively double monthly. I’m looking at that and I was like, “I can’t put $10,000 down, but that’s another one.” I was like, “I’ll be back.” Within two days, I went out and I sold a client contract that gave me $30,000. I was able to buy down that loan to 9%, even with a 500 credit score. It’s like, “I can’t get a loan yet.”
“I can’t go up at $10,000 yet.”
At that moment, I couldn’t materialize the $10,000 but 48 hours later, I could because it was a yet. Even though I felt that I can’t now, I still had a choice to make. Do I take the higher payments or do I want to be me my true self and say, “I would prefer a lower interest loan because that’s what I want. I’m going to go out and I’m going to figure out the way to make that happen over the next couple of days.” My first thing versus self-generating was calling people to say, “Can I borrow $10,000?” In the process, I was going after multiple different areas trying to land deals and things that I had in the pipeline. This was years ago. I still do my FICO monitoring because it’s a thing of mine ever since back in the day. I know that I had a 500 credit score and I’d like to keep a watch on that. Now, it’s not an issue. I walk into a BMW dealership and they’re like, “It’s no problem.” Any car you want to get? No problem. Do you want to buy a $200,000 Aston? No problem. They don’t even ask for income verification or anything like that.
You’ve got a different world.
I was looking and it’s a credit score of 835 and the max is 850. It is a different world. Several years ago, I would have been like, “I can’t have an 800 credit score. There’s no way yet.” Whenever you make it, that choice can sometimes take two days to materialize the outcome. Sometimes, it can take several years. It doesn’t matter though. During that time, are you going to not be you and constantly put an effort every single day avoiding that word yet and saying that I can’t? You’re putting effort and manifesting everything else around you to validate all the reasons why you can’t. That takes active effort to do so versus saying, “I’m just going to be me and I’m going to go this way. I know this is where I want to end up. The only reason that I’m going to even go that way in the first place is because of the word yet. Today is the day that I’m going to make a choice.”
It’s the decision moment. It’s exactly what it is. It forces a decision to the table and it forces you to wrap your hands around and cling on to that shortcoming and weakness or it forces you to stop and go, “Is that what I want to be holding on to?” You left with a yet.
There’s a story we didn’t get into on the previous episode when I was talking about a weekend that I went through that forced me to some decision points in my life. It was battling my subconscious. I was going through some intensive coaching over a weekend. Even just getting on the plane to go there because it was in a different state across the country, there was a lot of I can’ts coming up that week, “I can’t because I have this big deal that I have to see through. I can’t because I have to try to land these other investors here. I can’t because my team needs me here this week. It has to be this week that I’m here.”
Even driving from the airport to the location came another I can’t because I was subconsciously forcing myself to get pulled over. I was doing 87 and a 55. There’s another reason why I can’t. That was 32 miles an hour or something like that. I was like, “I can’t get there now because I’m going to get arrested.” Even at that moment, I was telling the officer, “I respect you and I understand what I did. My brain has been on many other different things right here right now because it’s been a week. I know what I was doing. Is there any way you can cut me a break? I need to get to this thing for me because I’m doing some work on myself.” He’s like, “You were going fast.” There were two of us arguing. I was like, “I know. I understand. I haven’t got a ticket in twenty years.” He’s like, “We’ll see about that.” I was like, “I understand you probably get this line.”
It was in the mountains and I was going downhill. I can make up those excuses, but the real reason is my mind was on all the reasons why I can’t. I can’t do the work on myself that weekend. Going through it, I came back. You and I discussed at your restaurant that you opened up around that. I’ve realized that a lot of those I can’ts are things that I was trying to put into place subconsciously to almost protect myself.” At least what I thought was protecting me. All those can’ts turned into yets because that weekend for me brought up the point of decision in a lot of different areas to the choice to say, “Which direction am I going to go?” I realized that I was putting so much effort into not being me anymore. Now it became, “I can’t do this yet.” You and I sat down and we were going through this stuff. Can you tell a little bit of the story? We’re talking about you being booked at different places because you’ve been in the music industry and you released an album.
It’s such an interesting thing because you and I also have such a rich history of music. I’ve spent some time where I pursued it professionally. I moved to Nashville and got on the big giant tour bus. I put an album out that went top ten in the country Billboard charts. I played on giant venues and big stages and all these cool opportunities. Over time, it became such a professional lifestyle. When you’re young and you’re blistering your fingers learning chords, your first couple times on stage and you panicked. To go from that young person that loves to do it and loves to get to be included to taking it to the other side where it’s a professional world, you shift.
It shifts away from the reason I fell in love playing music, guitar, singing, vocals, harmony, and even the process of recording, writing and all of those things. It turns into this thing of these business agreements. What’s the deal look like? Is our stuff going to be there when we get there? Are they going to have all this stuff in the green room? You get so far away from what it is that you fell in love with in the first place. I found myself after moving into the more business side of events and production and entertainment, I was no longer playing as much. For me, I always still saw myself on that big stage. That’s where I belong. That’s what I built up to and that’s what I work towards.
When things would come along like, “We’re doing a cool open mic night. Do you want to jam?” I was like, “No.” It’s like, “You’re great.” I was like, “Thank you.” I would find myself almost refusing to ever do any performance thing unless I felt like it shined a light onto what I had built in my younger life to the point where I was actively rejecting any opportunity that might come up and be music-related. It got far down the road to the point where my brother Joseph was like, “Do you not like to play anymore?” I was like, “No, I love it. Are you kidding? I dedicated so much of my life to it.” He’s like, “You run from it. It’s an instant no.” At our restaurant we opened, we’ve got a small stage in the corner and we do a little bit of live music Saturday nights. It’s usually acoustic, 1 or 2-piece bands with cool local artists singing.
Our conversation was on the day that they’re building the stage.
We get the lights up and everything. It was that day or the day before that my brother said to me, “Dan, how about you play on the stage? Let’s book you.” I was like, “No thanks.” He was like, “Why not?” I was like, “There are a ton of reasons.”
“I can’t because.”
I had all of these reasons all built around the why I can’t. I can’t because I don’t know songs. I don’t have a guitar. I have stage fright. It’s none of those things. It was something in my life where I had drifted so far away from who I am into this idea, this scenario and this whole world I had created that I was avoiding and repelling anything that revolved around me playing any music whatsoever. I went from a time of my life to begging to be chosen to get to play to now refusing at any cost to perform unless it’s some this big opportunity, which is never going to come anymore because I’m not pursuing that. That’s not the part of my life and those calls aren’t going to happen anymore. Am I hanging it up forever? Do I just quit? No. I’m not ready to make that decision. I’m just going to softly refuse it forever and potentially never do it again.
I don’t know if you call it softly because this is the whole reason why I want to talk to you. When people would call you, they were saying, “How do we book you?” You’d be like, “You can’t.”
They’re like, “Who do we call? What are we going to do?” I was like, “There’s no one to call.” After we sat and had the conversation, I realized how ridiculous that is. I have completely left every bit of my love and passion for music because of these I can’ts that I’ve built in my life. The I can’ts led to you cant’s and all of these things. That night, we finished setting up the stage, getting all the lights going, getting all the sound work and making sure everything was going to be great for everyone else to play.
That night we had conversation, we sat there and I said, “I have to do this. I have to force myself out of this ridiculous box I created.” That night for nobody in the room, maybe 10 or 15 people sitting around the bar in the restaurant, and it was late at night, I picked up my guitar, I sat up there and I played an hour-long set for the small room of people. I wanted to do whatever it took to force myself out of that I can’t, you can’t, I won’t box that I had set. I was determined that same day to prove myself wrong. The person inside of me that would not allow me to do that, I decided to piss that side of me off and do it because I was not going to live with that self-limitation. I couldn’t.
Maybe that’s what one of the powers of yet too. Is that a tool, do you think? Spite yourself for real because you get so angry with yourself for doing, not doing, staying, leaving, going, coming back or getting into business, getting out of business or whatever it is. Do whatever it is because you know that in your gut that that’s the right move. You have to get angry for yourself for not doing whatever it is that you’re not doing because of whoever thinking about you that you’re thinking about them and all that other stupid crap that you’re talking about. Get angry with yourself.
That’s what it takes. It’s such an immediate, even emotional, conscious or clear response that, “I am not going to do this anymore.” It’s clear and it’s loud. I even texted you. I took a picture of the stage and I was like, “After our talk, I had to play. I did an hour-long set.” You’re like, “How did it go, do you think?” The words I said were, “I hated it because I enjoyed it.” You’re like, “Wow.”
I was happy for you because of our background in music, we played with each other on stage. I was like, “I’m so happy for Dan. That’s awesome he had that breakthrough. I still can’t. That’s his thing.”
This is the scene where it cuts to you and me over there on the stage sitting next to each other, sweating and smiling.
“I’m pissed at myself right now.”
I’m enjoying it. Those barriers and self-limitations, when you recognize them, you have to smash them down. Take immediate action.
Carol Dweck is an awesome author and a TEDx speaker. She’s got the book Mindset, which some of my teams have read. It’s understanding fixed and growth mindsets. You never want to force yourself to stay out of a fixed mindset because there are learnings in the fixed mindset. Learning yourself and all the reasons why you can’t and understanding the reasons why you would never make that choice to grow again. The reasons why you stayed there to begin with because if it’s a lack of choice, lack of choice is still a choice. Not taking action is taking action to stay where you’re at.
The importance of the struggle in that learning is something that she hits. It comes to the power of believing that you can improve and that’s part of the struggle. This getting angry with yourself is one of the keys to that. If you realize, zoom out and you take a look, it’s like, “I haven’t been choosing. I haven’t been taking action. I’ve been saying that I can’t and I’ve been avoiding it. I’ve crossed out. It’s not like the canvas out there that says can’t anymore. I’m going to go out there and paint on the word yet.” That’s the tag that needs to go on because it’s avoiding saying the word can’t and avoiding the word yet. It keeps you from making that choice. The power of yet works hand in hand with the power of positive thinking if you want to foster that growth mindset. This is something that she talks about. You’re then able to believe that you have the power to change and you can improve. This getting angry with yourself thing, maybe next time, I might hop on that stage or something.
It’s freeing in a wild way. It’s forcing yourself through with every closed door that you’ve decided that’s locked.
That’s a book that I recommend anybody to read. It’s Carol Dweck’s Mindset because there are a lot of things in there that resonated with me, even though I feel like I have that growth mindset. Over time, the choices to change have become easier to make the choice only because I’ve exercised that muscle a lot. For somebody who has been in the environment of being squashed for a long time, it’s difficult for that. It becomes easy to say the word that I can’t. For them, I can only imagine because I know. I was large for so many years. In the church world, I kept myself minimized. I made myself smaller to appease other people. Now I look back and I’m not angry with myself anymore, but it got to the point where I was angry with myself. That’s when I finally made the choice.
There’s an incredible thing when you exercise the muscle. You get used to the internal power. You grow the ability over time. Something happened to me and a lot of people but I’m going to speak about myself in particular. When things started closing down, businesses started closing, I watched one of our most predominant businesses lay off 178 people in a matter of four days. They went from this booming, thriving business to four of us sitting in the office trying to figure out what do we do next. Time goes on and I start focusing on other businesses, trying to do things, and watching everything being pulled back. I find myself in a place where it’s like, “I’m not going to take income from here and there’s no income to take from there.” I tell my wife, “We got to pull back.”
To go from this driving forward, go, no holds back lifestyle to pulling back, the fall rolls around and we jumped into this other business opportunity to open this new restaurant. With limited resources, it got back to the old days. We were in there. I’m talking about 12 to 14 hours a day losing sleep over the thing. You’re always on the phone. It’s a text. It’s a call. I live about ten minutes away from it, so I’m driving up there 4 or 5 times a day. I’m bringing my kids with me and let them hang out in the office and color on everything while I’m out there trying to help customers in the whole thing. Through that process, I lost my dad.
There was thing after thing where I found myself near the end of that year. Even at the beginning of 2021 where I had lost that unshakable side of me. I had lost that side of me that everything is a win. It doesn’t matter. I got to the point where for me, everything is a win. It’s just not a win yet. That started to go away and I started to feel like, “Is this going to work? Is that going to work?” I was like, “What am I doing? What happened? Where did this go?” I went from the power of yet. This is what it is. It just hasn’t happened yet. I was using that to preconfirm my outcomes and my success.
Even if I’m hitting a bumpy patch, I was like, “It’s not there yet. It will be.” I was that sure and positive, and I found myself starting to question that. As I began to recognize that in myself, it was an important moment because I said, “The reason it’s not there is because that’s not where I am anymore. Things are not moving in this powerful direction forward because that’s not where my mindset is. I’m not living in the power of yet, even in positivity in the outcome, in the what is possible in the situation. “This will be a big business. This will be a $1 million company.” It turned into it in the first four months because I was going, “Well, well, well,” and I found myself slipping away from that.
What’s important is using that as a checkpoint in many areas of your life. It’s a way to stop. Am I holding on to my limitations? Drop a yet on it. Am I not positive about the outcome of this? Say your outcome and tee it up with a yet. This will be successful. It’s just not there yet. That’s okay. That means I’m positive about what I’m doing. I’m positive why I’m here all these hours. I know for a fact what this will be. It’s a lot easier to live with it. It might be successful. It will be. It’s just not there yet. Give it a little time. Watch me, step back, hold on. We’re doing this.
I will drop that weight. I will get that car loan. I will have the partner of my dreams. I will have the business that I’ve wanted for ten years. It’s just not there yet.
There’s such a forward flow to that feeling and that positivity towards it. Set the goal and the outcome, believe it, own it, speak it like it’s true even if it’s not there yet. That’s okay because yet means it’s on its way. It means it’s possible and it’s going to be.
Thank you. Keep writing the book because I want to have you back on when it’s written. We’ll get it out there. Thank you for examining the word can’t in the previous episode and thank you for mic dropping the word yet all over the place. I appreciate you coming in.
It’s great to be back.
Thanks.
