EP 110 | Lessons Learned in May

heavy lessons learned. Like just like shit that happened in the month of May. But When you're winning, you got to put things in context. You have to put things in context. And maybe, maybe that's lesson number one. Put things in context. Sure, you can feel like you just got beat up, but if you're winning and your life is doing better and you have statistics to show that it's okay, I will take the freaking beating. I will take the pressure. I will take the stress. I will

take the just uncomfortability to be honest with you. There's so many things happening right now where I just feel myself evolving and being pushed and pushing myself and just like I'm freaking uncomfortable. And at the end of the day, the discomfort only is worthwhile when results happen. And so before I just talk about all of the stuff that's not going great or all the things that I learned because I fell on my face this month. This is,

I believe, how you should look at everything. It's like, man, would I do all of that over again? Would I learn all of these lessons over again in order to have the results. And the answer is yes, undoubtedly, of course. But when you're going after big things, it's easy to forget. And I'll speak from personal experience. It's really easy to forget that you're choosing your problems, like you're choosing how difficult it is. You're choosing the pressure that you're under.

You're choosing the stress. And last weekend I was in Cabo with my husband, Brandon, and it was nice for two days to just get away to talk about our goals. But both of us, when we were gone, still just feel an immense amount of pressure and push and lack of just contentment in where we're at because we know what our potential is. And when we do get away, all we talk about is what the opportunity is and

what the potential is. So then it's just kind of this cyclical thing where we're then upset because we're not there yet. But contextually, if you would have told us that where we're at today, five years ago, would be where we are, I would have broken down in the happiest tears to know that like I became what I wanted to become in my life. And I think stats

really make that evident. And if you're not willing to measure some measure, things go back to my last podcast about how I dropped or how I added 10% mass muscle mass and dropped. I think it was 8% body fat. Like the measuring things matter. If you haven't heard that one, it's a fantastic podcast to go back to the previous episode, but on to what I learned in the month of May.

So being liked this idea of being liked for the longest time, at least the last four years since starting Cardone Ventures, I have altogether rejected this idea of being liked. And in order to become who I have become over the past few years, I really had to compartmentalize people's opinions, people's thoughts about me, and just like, take massive action towards this goal. And I've been very hard on myself.

I've been very hard on the people around me, and I'm very thankful for just the pressure that I've applied into my own life. Um, I just realized I never finished the Cabo story. Uh, point about the Cabo story. Going back a second, uh, we could be, like, living on a beach in Cabo. We have enough money for the rest of our lives to just, like, hang out on a beach. And we don't because we do have all of this pressure. And I guess this does lead

into this whole being, like, thing. We put this pressure on ourselves. You as a business owner, you put the pressure on yourself to grow something because you believe that something is possible. But there are other alternatives. And so when you're winning, when you have good stats and you still don't feel like you're doing enough, that's okay. That's part of the game. That's part of this journey that

we're on. And remember, like, it's a good thing to remind yourself, oh yeah, I could if I wanted to lay on a beach, I don't have to do what I'm doing. And just that mental shift of like, I don't have to do this. Oh, yeah, I chose this makes you feel more empowered and confident and, like, lean in to the choices that you make for the sacrifices every single day that you put into growing something remarkable.

So back to being liked. I feel like I had to really reject a lot of the things that I learned growing up, and that served me in my early 20s to become the version of myself that I am today, where I didn't want to be liked. And I stopped looking for other people to like me because I didn't really like myself. I hadn't created anything yet. I hadn't done anything yet. There was nothing that I was, like,

truly proud of, especially in relation to my potential. And so I really view the last four years is like this hardening that's happened in my life. And I have a lot of male role models in business, and those male role models are fantastic and I have so much appreciation for. But as a woman in business, there are things that I should lean into as a woman and not feel bad about as a woman, just because my

male counterpart would never do that. And so there's this quote that I put out on TikTok about, like, it's not a leader's job to be liked. And I still agree that's not the job. Like that's not the priority. A leader shouldn't be focused on being liked by their team. However, you should be likable, and I kind of hate to use the word should. I'm speaking to myself right now, quite literally. I'm in my office all by myself, speaking to myself. But there's nothing wrong with people liking you.

And there's nothing wrong with doing things that that make people like you because you genuinely want to do them. And what I've learned this month, I've been reading this book that's been phenomenal, talking about how somebody liking you is actually very beneficial in business. And I've kind of

taken this like, fuck you approach. Like, I don't need you to like me because the results and the statistics and the team of people that we're going to create is going to be so fantastic that it doesn't really matter if you like me and I will intentionally do things and like stop myself from being warm, from being softer because of this idea that I've had in my head that I don't. I shouldn't crave doing things to make me softer or warm. And this book just really

like I had this epiphany. I had this, like little awakening just within the last few days, to be honest with you, that me being likable is different than wanting to be liked. I shouldn't want to be liked but and do things just because I want to be liked. But I should do things that are likable that I naturally feel inclined to do instead of. I'll give you a great example. Instead of like, removing exclamation points on emails, I've always thought, man, my male counterparts would never do that.

Why do I feel the need to do that? Well, honestly, Natalie Dawson likes putting exclamation points and I am exclamatory

in communications. And there are times where I'm very direct in communications and will hand it to you in communication, but when I am congratulating somebody, it's freaking okay to put an exclamation point or put an emoji and do things like that that I don't actually have to naturally like remove those from my communication, because I'm worried that people are going to think that I want them to

like me. And so it's almost like I turned this liking thing into like, I don't need people to like me. And I was like, standing really firm on this, what I thought was solid ground, and it served me for a period of time. It served me for a period of my career because quite honestly, I didn't like myself for a while and I needed to create results so that I liked myself. But now that I've created the results and I believe in myself and I have confidence in myself, I can be likable and I should be

likable and and soft. And I still don't have that point to prove. Like the chip on my shoulder is, isn't there? That chip isn't there. I still have chips on my shoulder and I love my chips. I, I, I use my chips. My chips are very important to me.

So this like contrast between being liked and being likable, I really think is an important one and something that has just really significantly impacted me over the last few days, uh, in a way where I feel more myself and I feel more comfortable being free in my communication for how I actually want to communicate with people and how I actually want them to feel around me. I don't want people to feel like I'm cold. I don't need them

again to feel like warm and fuzzy. But I'm just going to communicate the way that I feel like I should instead of making it more cold because I thought that it was supposed to be cold. To reject traditional male female roles in business. Okay, number two, hold on. I have to take a drink of water. All this talking to myself, it's got my throat dry. All right. I was hanging out over the weekend with somebody who

has made billions of dollars. He is, in fact, a billionaire, one of only a handful on this planet that we live on. And he was telling me a story about earlier in the morning, he and his significant other showed up to a pickleball match, and they had never played pickleball before, so it was their first time they got their rackets. They started practicing, but it was a foursome game, meaning that they had to find another group in order

to play against another foursome. So instead of being apologetic about their lack of pickleball skills, he was scanning for the other players who were practicing to see who was the best. And he picked the people who were the best. And then, to their lack of surprise, they won. So here, this couple, who had never played pickleball before, teamed up with another couple, and they won the tournament against people

who have all played pickleball before. And he said something as he was telling me the story at the end that was just like, so beautiful. He's like the people that you pick in life matter. It's like, oh yes, they sure do. The people that you pick in life matter. If I was in a similar situation, I probably would have felt bad that I was so terrible that I wouldn't want to play with the good people, because I'd be afraid that they would be upset that I was

so bad at the sport. Like, I wouldn't want to bring them down knowing the skills that I don't have in that particular area. Whereas he's like, no, I'm picking the best person. And I think it's fascinating that if you pick the best people, he he then went on to translate it to business because he's clearly picked the best people in the past. And he's, uh, he's a very well-known billionaire. And he said that that's what he's always done in business. He just picks the best people.

He's not the best at anything, but he picks the best people and they win. And it was just such a profound example of the little things that people who are more successful than you do, than you are what they do. Like, I wouldn't have done that in that same situation. I'm telling you the truth. I honestly would have picked a mediocre group because I wouldn't have felt

like I should have been with the best group. But in the situation, he's dynamic, he's funny, he has all these other things going for him and he himself is well connected. So him inconveniencing the best pickleball players by them being on his team, he's really doesn't view himself as being the inconvenience because he adds value in other ways. And now that particular group has had value added value

to him. The people who were great, they've added value to him because he's now winning this thing that he's actually terrible at, and he's added value to them because he's very well connected in this world and likes these people for no other reason outside of they're great at pickleball and this billionaire mindset. The show is called Building Billions for a reason. I want to be around and switch my mindset as I transition from just going out of my 20s now into my 30s in this lifetime,

I want to have generated $1 billion. I want to have $1 billion of net worth and have our companies be impacting the people that we have targeted to impact business owners and their teams and their spouses, to make a big enough impact to where our business is worth and I'm worth $1 billion, I believe that's a very like noble goal. And I have not enough time, but equally enough time. Should nothing wild happen to me to

be able to actually do it. And so spending time around people who think differently in all areas, it's not just thinking different in your professional life, but that thinking different applies in all of these different areas. So yes, contextually, of course, I know in business that picking the right people matter, but I would have never thought about that and how it translates. And it should translate into plain freaking pickleball and like a pickup game of pickleball. Okay,

on to number three. My third lesson in May keep investing in you. Meaning me. I'm just going to keep investing in me. I've just made this commitment that I'm going to keep throwing down money and repeat successful actions. On getting the next level advice, guidance, mentorship from new people to level up my game in certain areas that I know I have deficiencies. And so with keeping investing

in me, it's just like this double down. Like sometimes you got to recommit yourself like, I am going to do this, I'm going to keep investing in me, and I'm not going to stop investing in me. And it's been a while since I've, like, paid money to invest in myself for a mentor or coach. Uh, but I have a call with somebody on Monday to help on this, uh, branding stuff. I'm also having another call with somebody to figure out this piece of community building that I've just

been struggling with, and that's the right thing to do. Like, I you can know how to hack something in one area. And as I just mentioned in the previous one, just entirely neglected in a different area of your life, and I've not been continuing to invest in me and level up my skill set in that way. I've been reading books and podcasts, but like, I need somebody who's good at who's been successful, who's actually going to help me and show me the way. So number three, keep investing

in you. This ties in to number four, which is resist the urge to continue doing what's not working when you first when I first set a goal, I figure out these like massive actions that I need to take

in order to get closer to the goal. And at the time, they seem like massive actions because I'm I go from a dead stop to starting to do these things, whether that's working out, whether that's creating content, whether that's helping business owners, whether that's creating processes in our organization, like you go from a full stop to, like, I'm

going to make this massive change. And then somewhere along the lines of making what seems like a massive change, you might realize that you're not getting the results that you wanted. Like the original target, you're getting closer, but like almost elusively. So because you're still far away from where you want to go, and at that point you have to stop doing what you were doing and start

doing something else. That also seems like massive action, and you almost feel silly in the process because you're like, well, I just did like I just made this huge change and now that's not even working. So now I have to do more of it. And it's getting over the idea that in order to become great at something, you will need to do more than you think you will need to do. This is the premise of the ten x rule and what you think is ten x action.

When you put it contextually against what other people are taking to achieve the same result, you might find that you're taking less action than you should be. You are taking two x action, but it felt like ten x to you when you started. And so this lesson that I've learned resist the urge to continue to do what's not working. You're so bought in. I'm so bought in to what I'm doing that it's almost become like this checklist. It's like, okay, great. I did my workout and I

scheduled my content time and like, check, check. But I'm not getting the results in those areas that I know I would be getting if I was doing it more and doing it better. And so I have to give up this idea of, well, man, I finally just blocked out an hour of working out a day, and I finally just figured out the macro count that I need to be doing to where it's like, okay, I yes, I finally just figured these things out, but I also need to add this area of cardio in the workout example.

In the content example, I blocked out 30 minutes every day, and most days it actually ends up being five minutes because I'm running around doing other things, and then the weekends it's almost non-existent because I'm working on something else. And so really it ends up being 20 minutes a week instead of the originally intended. What would that be? Four hours a week, five hours a week, 4.5 hours

a week, 2.5 hours a week. And so it's this like, okay, now you have to take this more seriously and you have to do more action. And I need to entirely resist the urge to continue to do what's not working and make the change to dedicate the time. Block out my schedule, make it a priority to get the results that I want. And this process, you don't have to beat yourself up. You have to. You don't have to beat yourself up during. But you do have to be

really honest and look at stats and measure. Is what I'm doing actually working? Is it getting me closer to where I want to go? And the reality is, if it's not, you have to resist the urge to continue to do what's not working, even though just doing what you're doing right now, at one point seemed like a lot, doesn't really matter, because whatever needs to happen for you to hit your goal is what's required of you. That's what needs to be done. So then, are you really

willing to do what it takes to achieve your goal? Well, I like to think of myself as a person who is willing to do what it takes to achieve my goal. Therefore, I have to take this next leap and spend more time and more energy and more focus in these areas that I know I need to improve.