Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: So a lot of framework that people go by in their everyday life is I am x because of Y and that you cannot change, whereas you look at it the other way. Like, I've experienced this, but it's not who you are. And I believe that mindset is so powerful because it's changeable. You can change. And the minute you say, I am this person and that's it. And because of that, you are going to be stuck and you're not going to be able to build and continue to build your confidence. So I think these, these frameworks are everything in being able to grow as a person.
[00:00:42] Speaker B: Welcome to Ace proudly touch for the superstars tonight.
[00:00:45] Speaker A: Tonight, welcome to the Loving Business podcast. Today's episode, cutthroat advice to build unshakable confidence.
[00:00:56] Speaker B: Before we get started, you know, I'm the numbers nerd on this podcast. I was looking at some of our show data and this one struck me that only 17% of our listeners are subscribers. So, need a favor from you. We're going to give you a moment of silence while you reach down, find that subscribe button and hit it. Ready? Three, two, one. Thank you. We'll be looking for a massive surge. I'm Mick Arnold, president of Arnold Packaging and Arnold Automation.
[00:01:21] Speaker A: And I'm Britt Arnold, president of Tagler Construction and supply.
Confidence.
[00:01:27] Speaker B: Ah, yes. One of my favorite words.
[00:01:29] Speaker A: And I believe it is the most important thing, not just in business, but in life. And while it can be a general topic, today, I want to dig into precise, somewhat cutthroat, very cutthroat at times, and brutally honest perspectives, opinions, advice on how to build it, because we're all looking to build some confidence. A lot of it, most of us, in all areas of our life, I think we all know, or at least I think we all know, that the only way I believe, to build confidence is to build experience. And confidence is evidence based. I think where a lot of people get this wrong is we think someone has confidence and thus they are able to successfully achieve something. Not the opposite. However, what really happens is we continually repetition and over and over and over again until you build a skillset and there's lots of experience, then all of a sudden you start to build your confidence and then you achieve, not the other way around. And I think about a lot of people that are very successful and very confident, and, you know, they're not overly charismatic or enthusiastic because they're so, they know the work and the experience they put in, as opposed to someone that comes in beating their chest over the top. And it's almost like a facade because they know they did not put the work in. That prep was not there.
And thus, it's almost like a facade of confidence. But the only way to achieve it, which is now what everybody wants to hear, is just putting in the work over and over and over and over again.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: Yeah. I think what you hit on was something that was going through my head, is some would attempt to achieve confidence through volume. And by volume, I mean loud, you know, somehow. Confidence, you would say, oh, well, not volume of work. No, no volume of loud. Yes, of just loud. Right. Oh, look, listen, listen to how loudly he articulates his position. He must be a very confident person.
[00:03:46] Speaker A: Right?
[00:03:46] Speaker B: And the word that I'll throw in there, along with the experience is preparation. And the amount of preparation that goes in is part of that confidence builder and experiences that, too. Right? I mean, I would say if I think about preparation, usually it's event based or even a little finite. Right. I mean, I am doing something. I have a presentation to give. I'm doing something where I need to prepare. But experience, I would just say drawing that out into a much longer timeframe is also part of that preparation. And I sit in rooms around here. Specifically, we're working very hard on our manufacturing group right now, and we have had some retirements and we have lost some experience. And you notice in that room, when you're with people that have less experience and are newer to the business, they don't have the confidence. And that is simply because they don't have the experience. They just don't know yet. And so much of that confidence is derived by doing it, doing it, doing it right. We talk about the mundanity of excellence is one of our favorites, and it's just the idea that small adjustments made over long periods of time yield excellence. But there aren't any shortcuts. And being loud, which would be code to me for going on the offense, just so that nobody would risk challenging you for fear of maybe getting shouted down. It lets you act that way or exude what would look like confidence when. And really it's just volume.
[00:05:17] Speaker A: And I think as we're talking about this, the question will be, well, how do you, how do you sustain that, that work over a long period of time? Who is it that ultimately builds the confidence and then achieves? And, you know, how do you continually put in those repetitions and do it day after day after day? I mean, it's not easy. It's hard. You talked about the mundanity of excellence and it's leaning into a lot of times those mundane, repetitive tasks day after day after day. But how do you continue to do that and keep that mindset going? And I think there's a couple of ways, and I think a lot of it has to do with frameworks and how we build our stories.
And one of the things I think about a lot is when I'm going through something that's particularly challenging, that's where a lot of people quit, when things are really, really hard. And I'll use an example, as we are building our DC business and we're going through the CBE application process, it is just. I think we're done. I think the application is done. I mean, hundreds of hours of work, and then something comes back and it's like, well, cree do this to your business plan or do some pro forma or some financial projectant projection, and it's a lot of work. And I just. Sometimes I just want to say, when is it going to stop? But I always go back to the mindset that this is where so many companies and so many people have stopped. That's why there aren't a ton of companies that do have this particular designation. And this is just one example and maybe small. But in those moments, I think if you can create the framework like this is challenging, and this is what's going to make it all worth it. And I think about, too, as I was going through my journey, like, well, what are the pictures or the stories I look back at now to give me that sustained motivation or inspiration? And it's not when I ultimately accomplish something, it's I look at the mattress on the floor before I bought the bed in my condo. I look at the first check I ever made for $1,000. It's like those hard moments are what I always go back to. So if you're in a position where it is really challenging now, create the framework like this, this is going to be the moments I look back on. This is building my character and my confidence.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: Right. I think, you know what you said to me using sports references, which I love, because everybody understands, right. You don't go to the moment where you lifted the trophy. You go to the moment where I use golf as my typical metaphor here is you go to the moment where you realize that your sand game wasn't as good as it you needed to be, and you hit thousands of balls to be able to get that part of your game to where it needed to be. But here's one thing that I can.
[00:08:15] Speaker A: I interject just a point real quick before you proceed.
[00:08:17] Speaker B: You already did.
[00:08:18] Speaker A: Well, can I ask a question? Yes, of course.
[00:08:20] Speaker B: Yes, of course.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Wow, that was rude.
I won't ask next time. No, next time I'm just gonna do. I will not ask.
[00:08:29] Speaker B: I want you to.
[00:08:30] Speaker A: Nope, just. I'm gonna just get in there, laugh next time. Okay, now I forgot what I was gonna say, cuz you. So keep going.
[00:08:40] Speaker B: All right. It'll come back. I think one of the things that I'm noticing, and it's a little bit concerning about the confidence piece.
[00:08:47] Speaker A: Oh, now I remember. Okay, back at you. I did that on purpose. Okay, but seriously. So that was a great point that you made. And I think the one thing that when you're holding that trophy as you. I think that's what you just referred to.
No one, people notice that moment, but no one notices all the effort leading up to the moment. So the minute you realize your sand game was weak and the thousands of balls you hit to improve that, like all that effort is going to go unnoticed. And again, it's framework. If you can think day after day after day, I'm putting these efforts in and it's not going to be noticed. It will not be noticed. And it may only be noticed the minute I'm holding that trophy over my head. But the only way I'll ever hold the trophy over my head is for all that effort that never got noticed.
[00:09:38] Speaker B: Yeah. And one of the things that concerns me, and this is completely on topic because this will short circuit the ability to gain confidence if you approach this way, is I'm worried a little bit about society in that so many things are being done for us and I'm watching it inside of our own company, where I don't want our teams to know the what. Right. I mean, when this happens, this is what I do. I want them to understand the why. Right. And this is not a Simon Sinek why. I'm not talking about that, actually, I'm talking about nothing remotely close to that. But I want them to dig in and understand where the root knowledge came from. You know, if we're talking about designing a container, which is something that we do a lot of here, and actually create some pretty special intellectual property around it, I want our team to dig all the way into the root of the design, right. I don't want them to just enter things into a spreadsheet that somebody created three years ago that magically spits out the cost, for example. I want them to understand at a very deep level why we designed it. That way and how the bill of materials got created, that ultimately became the cost. Where I took that bill of materials, for example, and added some labor, and that became the cost I watching in the name of productivity or efficiency, which is what we're doing right now as a society, because the speed matters. I'm wondering who's going to be left to actually dig in and solve. We don't need to know how to spell anymore. There's one. Why would I learn how to spell when all the smart guys at Microsoft will spell for me? And I just wonder, you know what? I'm concerned that a large part of the population isn't going to be pressed or inclined or inspired to dig into that level, and therefore, you'll never have the actual confidence, right. You might know what to do, but you don't actually have a deep understanding of why you're doing it or what the buildup to it is, right. If you watch Steph Curry hit three after three, or Caitlin Clark, one of our favorites, right. You just watch them hit the threes. But if you actually go into the deep understanding of the hours and hours and hours, years and decades that they put in, you know, they, they shot the ball a thousand times for each one of those three pointers and that they made in a game time situation. And my concern is, you know, who's going to be left to actually do the hard work with all of this automation? AI's figuring out everything. Why would I stop the think or have an original thought when I can just have this chatbot scrape the Internet and tell me everything that I want to know? My biggest concern, and then which will contribute to lack of confidence or not actually having a grasp on the subject matter is the incredible amount of, I'll say, shortcuts. And I just mean that I didn't have to do the work personally, and therefore I don't have a mastery of the information that is beneath it.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: I think that's a great point.
And I don't know if there's, this is what I would call a solution to that, but I think it plays into what you're talking about. And that is the mindset of framework that to be able to sustain that short game or the long game and be able to dig in and really build your knowledge and understand, I think we have to look at ourselves and our character and who we are as the asset. So every time you're building, the only asset that matters is you. Right. So everything you do, you're just continuing to build that asset. And something I heard Alex Hormozi talk about in an interview is nothing that really matters in his life and probably most of our lives has an, an end goal, that being winning. So, like your marriage, there is no, like winning in marriage or for him, his companies, like, there's no, you don't win at the end of the day. You just grow and get better. And I think if you could look at that, like, internally, my asset as me, and it's never about finishing finish line, finish lining, finishing a race, or winning. It's continually building and making sure the asset is now better than it was before. I'm not looking externally, it's always internally. And I think that's a really good way to be able to sustain that long game and the mundane repetition over and over and over again. What do you think about that?
[00:14:18] Speaker B: I just think, you know, yeah, as usual, I'm in total agreement. Another yes and moment. But it just, it's, it, this, this undertone that I keep coming back to is the hard work, you know, is, is being able or being willing to commit to doing the hard work, whatever that is, whether it's the three pointers. But if we're shifting over to business, the only way. When I talk to our teams and we talk about and listen, I'm a big fan of large language models and chat bots because I have respect for the productivity that they will bring to our teams. Talk marketing, for example, if you can save hours and hours, and I literally mean hours and hours, not writing copy, because you can get the support of a chatbot. I want our teams to do it. But do you know why? The reason I want them to do it is because it will free them up to work on things that are much more creative. Because the only way to not get rendered irrelevant is to continue to create. Because let me tell you what the chatbot can't do. It can't create. So as long as you're on the innovative, it can scrape backwards, it can look backwards and scrape, and it can assume the next word, or it can algorithmically. Ooh, got that word model, what the next word should be. But it actually doesn't have the ability to create. So if you're using, and when I'm talking to our teams, the reason I want them to use it is to free up that 2 hours to go do something creative, because you can't get tracked down or you can't get tackled from behind if you're out ahead creating. But if all you're doing is borrowing ideas from the past, then you will get caught from behind. It's inevitable because the machines are going to process the information at such a speed that you can't outrun them if you're not creating. And all that is back to that confidence idea that we're talking about, is that when you have a mastery of that and you can speak about it to a level that is accurate. Right. It is unassailable by others or people that would want to say, I think that's bullshit. Right. It would be testing your subject matter expertise. If you have done the hard work, then you can stand behind it and you can do it confidently. And by the way, learn through the conversation, accept the criticism. Too good to be denied, but accept the criticism. Right. And learn from it and be in a position to defend it. Not be defensive, but defend it because you have a lifelong commitment to the knowledge that you just shared and you want to make sure that you're able to represent that accurately. And that's all part of building that confidence and saying it a way that is factual and would never have, for example, your voice going up as if it were a question, would be factual based on the book of knowledge that you've built through your travels.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Is it fair to say that when we are talking about hard work, we are talking about our input? And what I mean by that is I believe that a lot of people, and I get caught up in this, as I refer to a lot of people, a lot of times it's me, we. That I'm referring to in what I would call the lagging metric, which is the output, as opposed to the leading metric, which is the input. So if we can focus on that input. So let me put this into an example. You were talking about Caitlin Clark.
Should I be looking at Caitlin Clark's external success? Won a championship, scored this many three point blah, blah, blah, or her input, right? So she's working 10 hours a day. I'm working eight. Okay, let's focus on that input. Now. Maybe I should work not just ten. Now I need to work twelve because she's already ahead of me. If I want to be still lagging a little bit behind her because she's already better than me, then I'm going to put in the same amount of work. But I want to be better than her or maybe just equal to her. So I need to put in more work. So focusing more on that input piece than the output I think is really, really important. And I also think it's another tool or tactic to be able to sustain that long game.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Yeah, I think the word I will just interject in there is making sure that you're efficient in how you do it only because time is truly finite, right? There's no one's creating any more time. You actually have 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52, 365. That is the truth. And every so often you get an extra day called leap year. But if there's anything to be sensitive about, if you are willing to put in that type of work, it would be the efficiency, right? It would also be to attack and say, well, if she is getting this out input with 10 hours, how do I get the same output with 8 hours? And what will I do with the extra two that I created? Because I can be as good as she is in two fewer hours. Now the question becomes what do I do with the extra 2 hours that I created? And that is that whole, that whole productivity mindset. Personal machines, all of the things that we work on. But something that I can tell you that I individually work on is personal productivity all of the time. Because what I'm trying to figure out and what we ask our customers on the automation side of our business point blank is what will you do with your new product? What will you do with the time that we found you? If I used to take 10 hours to do something and I can cut it to eight, which means I've just created 2 hours of disposable time, the question for myself is what am I going to do with those 2 hours? So yes, input, but never taking, at least personally, never taking my eye off of the efficiency piece. Because if she's doing, if she's this good at 10 hours, I want to be that good at eight. And if I then push it to nine, then I go past. And that's a very head to head piece. But those are all tools and tactics back to our topic today. Those are all tools and tactics to hit rate, tools and tactics that help you to gain confidence. And then it becomes exponential when people start to seek you out as a subject matter expert and you share and they share, back then the growth becomes exponential because you're surrounded by a community that's sharing ideas and you're building upon them real time. That's when it becomes absolutely mind blowing.
[00:20:32] Speaker A: And sometimes I do refer for me, sometimes I do like to keep it more simple of just hours put in. Because especially if you're just getting started, you don't even necessarily know what efficiency looks like and you also don't know exactly what that person's doing. I am a believer in. If you're just putting in the hours, you are eventually going to build confidence.
It goes without saying, the more efficient, the more efficient the output, the greater the input, the greater the output. But to not overwhelm someone, I like the idea of just putting, put in the work. Just put in the hours.
[00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah, those repetitions. Yeah. Those repetitions are absolutely critical. And I think that's one of those moments where you wouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good, because you would be learning all of the time. And, you know, back in the golf world, it would be, you know, you would say practice makes perfect, which goes back to those repetitions. But then you would say perfect, practice makes perfect. And as you start to get better and you identify those moments. But here's the thing, you don't get to identify those moments if you don't put in the shitty reps first. Right? You have to put in, you have to put in the wrong reps to ultimately evolve into understanding what the right reps look like. And that's when it starts to build on itself too.
[00:21:46] Speaker A: 100%. I look at when I started Tigler construction and supply, I mean, talking about reps, the first projects we did now looking back, were so shitty. I was trying so hard putting in more hours and really putting in the work, putting in the input, if you're looking at it from a quantity of hours. But they were horrific. Now looking back, because I didn't. So that is exactly right. Putting in the hours and the reps will get better, they will continue to get better.
[00:22:15] Speaker B: And then I think what comes along too, is back to that idea is then once you start to build that community that we're talking about, then what you get out of it is supervise repetitions. Because even a little better than repetitions, if you think about the coach over your shoulder, I would always refer to those in the golf world as supervised repetitions. Right. So you'd be checking back in and it would be, yes, that's what right looks like. Keep doing that. Didn't have all the video tools. I would love to be able to approach golf with the same type of energy and commitment that I had then. Now with all of these new tools, the statistics video was brand new. Certainly you didn't have a phone where you could just. I might have driven myself apeshit crazy.
[00:22:54] Speaker A: I was just thinking, if I saw.
[00:22:56] Speaker B: A video of my swing, because I know it was rather imperfect. I managed to.
[00:23:01] Speaker A: Well, you're so analytical.
[00:23:02] Speaker B: Well, I managed to get the club face back to the ball in the right spot. In a repeatable way, which works, but far from perfect.
Segue moment or you want to keep going?
[00:23:13] Speaker A: Are you segwaying?
[00:23:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I can.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:23:15] Speaker B: Because what I want to talk about now is how I experience people. So we talked about the opposite, right? You know, volume loud, equal incompetence.
On the flip side, I experience, and that's just to say that, you know, you do have to also have the ability to articulate or even be a little extroverted at times as it relates to sharing. Because I will tell you, I do encounter a lot of people who are true subject matter experts. I mean, they are incredible, incredible in their knowledge, yet don't share.
They aren't as loud as I think they could be in sharing their knowledge.
And that would be part and parcel to being a subject matter expert. Putting the repetitions, doing the hard work alone, still might not engender all the confidence that you would like. What do you think about that?
[00:24:17] Speaker A: I think this is. I'm gonna paraphrase Alex Hormozi again. I like a lot of his points, and one of the things he was talking about was why he ended up moving to YouTube and doing so much content online. And people look at him and be like, how do you have all the time in the day to do all this content? And that was his exact point. He said, if. If my goal really is to make education, bring it to the masses and make it easy and palatable and business education, and I am not putting it out there as much as I can, as often as I can to as many people, then am I doing the job that I want to do? Am I impact? If my goal is to impact as many lives as I can, this is part of it. And it far, far.
What's the word? Far exceeds any of the criticism. I might get on the back end to do this thing and impact as many people as I can.
[00:25:22] Speaker B: Funny to the idea. That's interesting, that word criticism, the idea that there would be people with time or would take time to be critical of that. I think it's just part and parcel to the very public nature in which he chose to do it. Right. Through podcast. Through podcasting. I mean, that whole mission that you just described to me is about as noble as it gets. The idea that somebody or, you know, a group of people would be behind the scenes or criticizing, that is really interesting. And I think it just comes with, comes with this, you know, this, this medium, this broadcast medium where people, well, how do you have time to do that? Instead of saying, my God, that's amazing. You actually gave up all of those other things because, you know, he sacrificed, right? That's one of the words that's. That's in there. You sacrificed all of that because you were so committed to sharing this information and this knowledge. That's amazing how that. How would you. How'd your takeaway ever be? How do you have time to do all that? That blows my mind even.
[00:26:18] Speaker A: Well, let's stay here because this is. This is important. So you brought up the word of community, and I'm going to segue a little into the people we are surrounded by and what they think. And part of confidence is not caring what other people think. And this is what we continually tell the girls, teenagers, the moment you realize people aren't thinking about you, the better off you're gonna get. But it's hard to do. And I think it's such an important piece when we're talking about confidence.
And one of the things I've realized is a lot of people that a lot of the people that we're worried about or that are deterring us from certain things, unfortunately, are the people that can be closest to us. Not always, but they have the most influence over what we think and what we do.
And if you let those voices, whether especially the people that are close to you, but anybody, come in and change what you want to do or how you do it, you're immediately giving ownership to other people.
And I really like this idea. And Jocko Willink talks about it in his book, extreme ownership, is that the great thing is the moment you can take accountability and say, yeah, I messed that up. It's the most powerful thing. While it's the hardest thing, it's the most powerful because it means you can also fix it. So it's about this idea of extreme ownership, not worrying about what other people thinks, taking control, and realizing that when you're on top, you are going to have a lot of people celebrate you. But on that climb, it's going to be the opposite. Why? Because a lot of times, you are going to be a reflection of other people and it's going to make them uncomfortable.
[00:28:13] Speaker B: Right.
[00:28:14] Speaker A: So I guarantee the people now that are at the top, they're celebrated most of the time. But while they were on that journey, they were having a lot of people be like, what are you doing, man? Like, enjoy your life balance, work life balance, you know, all of these things.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Well, it would be like that. One of our favorite sayings, you know, along the way, someone was trying to blow their candle out. So theirs could burn brighter like that. That whole mentality.
[00:28:37] Speaker A: I want to go and maybe unintentionally. No.
[00:28:39] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because, man, to commit to that level and put the work in, it's daunting. And some people just simply don't want to do it. I want to hit on two words, going back to the Caitlin Clark piece, and it's the difference between success. You actually mentioned the word success, and I mentioned Steph Curry and Caitlin Clark. Just the amount of hours, for example, they put in practicing threes.
I would go back to both of them, and I bet the word is excellence, because I think excellence is a very internal thing versus success, which is a very external thing. I think that success is given to you by others where excellence is internal. And I bet if you watch the way they approach that, there would be this idea of excellence that was woven into everything. I'm sure the success is great and they're proud of or grateful for it. But I can also tell you that any number of people are just as turned off or turned away by it.
I can tell you personally, I am not exactly comfortable by lots of kudos being put on me. I know you feel the same way because it was never about that. It was about everything that you just said. Personal attainment, doing better against yourself the next time. And certain times doing better against yourself was so good. It was also better than everybody else, but that's not what you were there for. Yes, it's great to hoist the gold or the big trophy or the whatever, you know, when you were putting in all those hours or identifying where your weaknesses were. Actually, I can promise you, I never thought, well, if I get my sand game better, I can hoist a bigger trophy. Never part of the calculus whatsoever.
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Well, ultimately, I believe that is the reason, one of the reasons you'll be able to sustain in the long term, because if we're always about beating other people, the minute you don't and the minute you don't a second time and a third time, it's so frustrating. How would you ever continue? So if it really is about building you and your character and getting better and looking at yourself as the asset, as I've just, I've said a couple of times, I think you can keep going. I think it's a much easier way or tool mindset. I'm not really sure, I'm not pulling the right word there, but to allow yourself to keep going. And as I'm talking about these reframes that allow us to build confidence, I have a couple of other ones, and we talked about this in our last episode, or I believe it was our last or a couple ago, the idea of etiology versus teleology, or teleology, which is going back to etiology, it is looking at the past. So a lot of framework that people go by in their everyday life is I am X because of Y. And that is something that you're saying this and you will not change. So I am, whatever it may be, because of some trauma in my life and that you cannot change, whereas you look at it the other way, like, I've experienced this, but it's not who you are. And I believe that mindset is so powerful because it's changeable. You can change. And the minute you say, I am this person and that's it, and because of that, you are going to be stuck, and you're not going to be able to build and continue to build your confidence. So I think these frameworks are everything in being able to grow as a person.
[00:32:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I think I love that thing. I am X because of Y. And I think if I were to ask myself always when we're having these conversations, I'm over here doing self searching and learning this one, I promise you, today, I will be a lot better human from this exact podcast than even some of the other ones we've done. But it was crossed my mind, as you were saying, that if I'm applying that to myself, it would be I am X because of Y. The next thing that came to mind was, when I'm defining y, how long ago did it take place? Right.
I am. I am. And I'm going to struggle here to find a great example, but I'll come up with one at some point. You know, I am this because of something that happened when I was five years old, right? Pick it. It would be interesting to me to really dial in on how long ago why happened.
[00:33:03] Speaker A: I can't talk to girls because my mom never had deep conversations with me. Something like that.
[00:33:09] Speaker B: That's exactly right. Yes. And for me, if you're talking about when I was 13, that would be a 40 year ago event, right? So it would always be the thing. I would dial in and say, well, how long ago did you want to call that a paradigm? How long ago did I adopt that paradigm? And does that make any sense? And if I have all the control to change it, then, you know, my mother doesn't get to choose whether I can talk to females or not because she didn't. She didn't have engaging conversations with me when I was in those formative years, and, you know, at least my made up story is I should have learned to talk to girls then, and my mother didn't do that for me. I mean, a little bit of a wild one stretch, but. But interesting, right? How long ago did that get ingrained? And why have I tolerated that for 40 years and not gone back on my own and fixed it?
[00:33:55] Speaker A: And that's going, the quicker you can reframe that, the better, because then you have more years ahead where you know that you can change and change that story.
[00:34:03] Speaker B: I do want to interject one thing is last week we shot, and I think we'll drop these chronologically, the story, you know, of my dad passing and taking over the company. And I remember a lot of times along the way someone would say, how's work? What are you doing? Or maybe we got just a little bit deeper than how's work? And my comment to them was, well, good, bad or indifferent, I did it. And that was just acknowledgement that I had ownership. The choices that were made inside of Arnold packaging or Arnold's factory supplies back then, if they were working great, I owned it. And if they were abysmally ineffective, then I owned that, too. And it was, things seem to be going well, and if they're not, then I own it and I've got to fix it. And I just think that mantra helped me a lot along the way. Good, bad or indifferent, I did it. And that's a very freeing thought. And for me personally, was a very freeing statement.
[00:34:58] Speaker A: I like that a lot.
Donald Miller, he is the owner, I believe it's called story brand. And he's, his whole, everything he does is about storytelling. And he helps companies with it and individuals. And I haven't read his book or know too much too deeply, but one of his things he talks about is the villain versus the hero. And this is exactly what we're talking about. So a lot of what we do is derived out of pain, good or bad. And that hero and that villain are experiencing the same pain, but the hero takes it and does something heroic with it, where the villain holds onto it and becomes the bad guy or the victim. So it's all about how you take that pain. And it doesn't have to be pain. It could be anything, any way, anything else. And what you do with it. And I really like that. Reframe that frame of mind that he positions it.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Yeah, well, I think, you know, we're watching this again, occurred to me real time. We're watching a pretty interesting special on Netflix right now called killing Eve. And what I was thinking about is, when you talk about the hero versus the villain mentality, need to stop talking so fast. But I'm excited by this topic is both of them, you know, both the hero and the villain have very attractive traits. Like, in that show, we are as attracted to the assassin as we are to the person that's trying to catch the assassin. They both have very attractive traits. And exactly what you said is the difference is the choices that they make with those assets that they have. One chooses to use those assets to assassinate, and the other one tries to catch that person and rid society of that type of behavior. But they have equally attractive traits. I would even argue the assassin is pretty. Is cooler.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Well, look at, I mean, look at Hitler and look at, I mean, look at the following, like, following. These people had.
[00:36:55] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Very palpable as it relates to animals, us being attracted to behavior that looks like that and being drawn into this cultish type feel.
[00:37:06] Speaker A: One other thing I think is important to hit on is so many people, they want to have a voice. And especially in a world where influence, we talk about influencers, and people are like, well, I say things. No one's listening.
And this ties back to confidence.
It's all about context, right? So somebody says something that you've never heard of, it's in one ear and out the other. Bill Gates says it. And all of a sudden, it really resonates you with you. You listen. You're paraphrasing it on a podcast as an example. So I think what people have to remember is like, yay, everybody wants a voice, and everybody wants to listen to them. But first you have to put in the work and grow your experience and then build the confidence. And then once you have the work and the knowledge and the experience and you've built a cool story, you will automatically generate a interest or people will listen. You'll have a voice, but it's all about context, right? You and I could say the same thing, but if you have stuff to back it up, the bricks you've laid, people are going to listen. So we're just in this age where everyone thinks that they need a voice or they should have it or people should be listening.
I would say worry about the work, the input, what you really want to do, and that will be a byproduct that will come.
[00:38:35] Speaker B: Yeah. The instant gratification part. So I think it's even, this even circles back a bit to what I was bringing up earlier, just that actually wanting to dig in deep, you know, understanding the why. There's this instant gratification part of society right now where people feel like they just have, they should be able to fast forward to credibility. Like, you don't get to fast forward. You don't get to cut corners to credibility. You have to put in the work, whether you're a scientist that's made a discovery. And certainly there are some luck or some good breaks that happen. Not in the absence of hard work, usually. Right. The harder I work, the luckier I get. But there is that piece now where there's this instant gratification thing. And I think with times we're so focused on the results. I mean, there was a study that came out recently that said, what's the number one thing that kids want to be right now when they grow up? And the answer is an influencer, but that's so wrong because they're not exposed to the hours. Right. The hours and hours and hours. We talked to our good friend Doug Bobst, and we know hard. He works on his podcast, for example. People get to see a 1 hour segment as a byproduct of the other 23 hours that he put in that day. I mean, meticulously selecting every single thing, leaving no detail unturned. And everyone thinks that you just get to fast forward or shortcut or short circuit into that without actually doing the work. And I think that's maybe one of the biggest disservices that we could be doing to young people right now, is just fast forwarding to the end game and not doing as good of a job, of shining a very bright light on all of the work and the reality of the work that it takes to actually get there.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: Agreed. And one of the things, a lot of people don't want to do the work because they don't want to go through the chair. We don't want to go through the challenges and the hard times. And another important reframe, I keep going back to that word, is if you are in a position where it's hard or let's go even a step further and say you're at a disadvantage, you're disadvantaged in some way, keep in mind that the greater the disadvantage, the greater the story, the greater the achievement. So if you can look at that and say, okay, I'm starting from a lot lower or a harder place than somebody else's, well, great. When you get out of that and you come next for and you put the time in and you achieve whatever that looks like, your story, your achievement will be that much greater, it will feel that much better. So it's all about changing your mindset and when you're thinking about these types of things to allow you to continue to keep going. And I think we keep coming back to that. We know that confidence is evidence based, but how do you continue to sustain that level of work? And I think that's what we've been really honing in on today is, like, that piece of it, and how.
[00:41:44] Speaker B: And I think also adding onto that is how internal it is. Because imagine that Tiger woods stopped competing when he was so much better. I mean, it is undeniable how much better he was than everybody else at that time. There was a stat that came up the other day, for example, and I'll just share it. Scotty Scheffler has shot par or better, 38 straight rounds. Do you know who has the record? It's Tiger. And do you know what it is? 52. So while that's incredible and he's second best at 38, he's still 14 rounds away on the hardest golf courses in the world. From a setup perspective, from eclipsing that, imagine if Tiger decided that he was the best and there was nothing else to be done. So I think it's just we keep doubling back to this idea that it's almost exclusively external to get there. I'm sorry, internal. If it were external, you would quit. When you had gotten to that level of success and you were the best, you would quit. What would be the other reason for continuing to pursue if it wasn't for the internal component?
[00:42:50] Speaker A: That's exactly right.
The last thing I'll end on is I was listening to the idea about always choosing the epic story or the remarkable story, and it's like going for the big thing and not just the thing that's tangible or right there. It's like always choosing the big story, the big achievement internally.
And I was really thinking about that because as a part of that, while that's true and everybody wants to choose the big story and the remarkable ending, it's the failure. Right. That would keep people from doing that. And while that's obvious, that's a big part of confidence, because if you're failing, that's going to crush a lot of people's confidence. So the earlier you can learn to deal with being uncomfortable and dealing with failure, the more you're going to be able to grow your confidence, not the less you've been there before. You know, it didn't work this time, but I'm gonna keep going. I'm gonna do it a different way. And that is so, so important. And I think about this when it comes to kids or raising kids or coaching kids, it's the idea of, like, everyone now gets a medal, right, or a trophy. I think teaching kids at an early age how to fail like you didn't, not everybody won't. Susie's working harder than you. She is. She's working harder at her soccer, her basketball game, whatever.
And teaching kids how to fail and be resilient is so important in this journey of building confidence. And I always talk about, I've talked about, especially in our earlier podcast, how I contribute so, so much, almost everything to soccer in building my confidence that eventually I've been able to translate into business.
And while I think a lot of confidence is domain specific, like, MC Arnold's really good at golf and is really confident in golf, but MC Arnold is not necessarily confident in public speaking. I do think the more you fail and the more you go through things and the more you can build your confidence, the more transferable confidence becomes. What do you think about that?
[00:45:18] Speaker B: I think I completely agree. And I love the quick analogy you put together. And I would just add onto it, Mick Arnold is good at golf because he did the work.
[00:45:28] Speaker A: Mm hmm.
[00:45:29] Speaker B: Mick Arnold is not good at public speaking because he didn't do the work.
[00:45:33] Speaker A: So therein lies my entire point. It's acknowledging that it is in your control. If you put the work in, you've done it once in one area of life and you can do it again, but you haven't put the work in yet. But you can.
[00:45:46] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:45:47] Speaker A: And that is the difference between building the confidence because you know you can do it, you've taken ownership, you've seen it, you've laid evidence in another domain, and now it is transferable. But you've got to put the same time and effort in.
[00:45:59] Speaker B: And I think the beauty of it now is in today's world, the tools to build it are laying at your feet. Right. MC Arnold's never going to dunk a basketball those days. Actually, not only have they passed, they actually never happen.
But at the same time, you know, as you do get older and you want to compete in these different domains, you have the ability, right. Public speaking does not require you to jump 10ft and some change to dunk a basketball. Right. So all of those domains become more and more open to you. And if you will commit the time and you will do the work, there's also all these tools laying around at your feet that are accessible, real time like Google and Chat, GPT and all of these great tools that a lot of smart people did the work as well and made available. And if you're willing to do the work, you can pick up those tools and create whatever it is that you want to create. That's something that to me is so exciting about 2024 and the future is that whatever, if you're willing to put in the work, the tools are laying all around you. Not that long ago, just a decade ago, you might have struggled to find some of those tools. Now they're just laying all over the place. And any number of them are free, right? They don't cost you anything. So it's going to keep coming back to are you willing to do the work and are you willing to fail and are you willing to pull the confidence that we keep talking about as a byproduct of that? And then you will get the credit and you will become a subject matter expert. And that's the only way it builds on itself.
[00:47:26] Speaker A: I think a great ending message for our audience is that anybody can go crop, grow, excuse me, confidence. Anybody can grow confidence.
[00:47:36] Speaker B: Absolutely, totally agree.
[00:47:37] Speaker A: It's not you're born with it or you're not. And that is a very powerful thing to know that, because confidence will change your life in every regard, but you have to work for it.
[00:47:48] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:47:49] Speaker A: But it's in your control.
[00:47:50] Speaker B: That's right. Confidence ain't free. Hella like that. Cheers. Confidence ain't free.
[00:47:54] Speaker A: Cheers.
[00:47:55] Speaker B: Good one. As always, thank you so much for listening to another episode of Love and Business. Hopefully you're charging down the road loaded with confidence.
[00:48:04] Speaker A: And as our only favor we will ever ask of you, please subscribe. It really does make a difference in the content and the show and how big it gets and what kind of value we can provide for you. Thank you so much.
[00:48:18] Speaker B: See you soon.
Welcome to H Robin Superstars tonight. Tonight, incredible, credible.
