 If you start to see success, you deserve all of the success that comes your way. The universe, God, whatever it is that you believe in, is not going to bless you with success unless it feels like you deserve it. Today, we're going to talk about what I learned from 1,000 episodes of this podcast, The Mindset Mentor. And before we dive into that, I want to tell you a little bit of the story of it, because I think it's interesting to see where it started, because a lot of people can look at the podcast and see this success and think that it was this way all of the time. But this podcast wasn't a successful podcast from the very beginning. And so, I'm going to go over the five things that I learned from going through, but real quick, let me tell you how this came to be. Hopefully, this can be an inspirational story for anyone out there that wants to start a business. It's the exact same thing, or wants to start a podcast, or wants to be able to help people in some sort of way. So, a little background on me. Before I started the podcast, I was in sales. I had trained a few thousand salespeople at a company that I was at, and the thing that I missed the most after I left and went into doing corporate sales and corporate training, the thing that I missed the most around that was I just missed helping people. And then one day, I was in a place called Jason's Deli with my girlfriend, and I got this like feeling, this overwhelming feeling. This is back in 2015, this overwhelming feeling of like, I need to teach the stuff that I've learned that's helped me along the way. The personal development, the books that I've read, the mindset tips and tricks and all of that stuff, I need to teach it. So, I told my girlfriend, and literally had this microphone that you guys that are watching on video can see, this exact same microphone is the same one that I've been using since the very first podcast episode. I just happened to have it inside of my house because I'm a musician, so I had recording equipment, and I just decided to do it. But for six months, I didn't put the podcast out because I was afraid, why would somebody listen to me? You know, I had the imposter syndrome, but why would somebody listen to me? I was at that time, like 28, 29 years old. It's just six years ago. And I'm like, why would somebody listen to me when they can listen to Tony Robbins or some of the greats that are out there? They can listen to John C. Maxwell. They can listen to Brian Tracy. They can listen to Zig Ziggler. They can listen to Jim Rohn. Why would somebody listen to some 29 year old guy that's still just trying to figure it out? And that's what I thought. And for six months, I didn't start the podcast. And then I just decided, you know what? Screw it. I'm going to do it. I'm just going to put out the podcast and we'll just see how it goes. I created seven episodes. I'm sorry, I created 14 episodes because I heard that the average podcaster gives up after seven. So I created 14. And on day one, I released, and this was in August of 2015. On day one, I released three episodes. They were terrible. I don't recommend going back and listening to them. You can if you like, you can scroll all the way back and listen to them. But they were nowhere near as good as I feel like they are now. I had 44 downloads, 44 plays, 44 listens on the very first day, 44 for three episodes, which means approximately 15 people were listening. At that point in time, I think a lot of people can get discouraged and say, you know, I don't want to do this. You know, only 15 people are listening to me. It's never going to be anything big. I might as well just give up. I'm right. I was a fraud. I am an imposter. Somebody can go listen to Tony Robbins. They can listen to John C. Maxwell, Zig Ziglar, Jim Rohn, all of the greats, and they can give up. But my thing that I have is that if I start something, I usually don't give up on it. If I started, I'm going to see it all the way through. It grew and grew and slowly grew. And then it got to about 80,000 downloads a month. And it stayed at 80,000 downloads a month for about three years. And it just stayed. It plateaued. It was a hardcore plateau. And at that point, a lot of people would think it's not growing. It's not worth it. I can give it up. But for me, I was like, I'm going to figure out a way to get this to continue to grow. But if you fast forward, six years, we're at around 1,000, just over 1,000 episodes and approaching 100 million downloads. And we consistently are in the top 100 podcasts in the entire world. It's just been an amazing ride. And so there's a lot that I've learned in this process, but I wanted to tell you before I tell you what I've learned, I wanted to tell you the story so that you can see that it wasn't all, you know, unicorns, sun shines and rainbows. There's a whole bunch of struggles and having to stay with it for a really long time. No matter where you are, whether it's a business you want to start, whether it's a podcast you want to start, you want to start helping people, whatever it is, this, what I'm going to teach you, these five steps, the five things that I've learned will help you immensely. So number one is to trust your gut feeling. This is something I feel like people, especially people that I've worked with, thousands of people, I've worked with over the years, a lot of people have really hard time distinguishing their brain versus their gut feeling like that. What is it? What do I feel like my intuition is telling me? Because we're so trained, especially in the West, to think, to think, to be logical with stuff. And so to go, what does my intuition say? It's very foreign. I got the feeling inside of Jason's deli that I needed to start a podcast. Logically, it didn't make any sense because I was 29 years old working for a sales company, not working very much. You know, I was working probably a few hours a day and I was making a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. It didn't make sense logically to go, Hey, I'm going to go start a podcast because six years ago people didn't really listen to podcasts and to think that I'm going to build a business on the backend of it, let alone a business that's doing multiple millions of dollars every single year now. It's like, that didn't make any sense. I didn't think that that was even going to be something that could be possible, but there was this feeling inside of me like, this is what I'm going to do. This is what I feel called to do is if it is my obligation to do this and to teach this stuff. And it was just a gut feeling. And the people on the outside, all of my friends were like, you're going to do what? That doesn't make any sense. What is a podcast? I don't even know how to listen to podcasts. There wasn't a podcasting app on your phone at that point in time. Spotify didn't have it. It was just really hard to listen to them. And so many people when I first had the podcast were like, Oh, that's cool. I've heard of podcasts before. I've never listened to one. I don't really know how to. And so it didn't make logical sense, but I got this gut feeling of like, I'm supposed to do this. And I just followed the gut feeling. And then I just never gave up on it. And that's the beautiful thing about it is just to continue to keep going. And that's going to be one of the steps as well. So the first thing I'll tell you is if you get a gut feeling, if you get a pull, if you have this feeling of like, I'm supposed to do this, even if it doesn't logically make sense, if it feels right, not if you think that it's right, if it feels right, even if it just feels right to you, it usually is right. Your gut feeling is your emotional compass. It is telling you where you're supposed to go in your life. Your job is to try to tune in to what that is to actually figure out what it is that you're supposed to do. So the first thing that I will say is go with your gut feeling and don't pay attention to what anybody has to say. I don't care who they are. I don't give a damn if it's your parents, if it's your teachers, if it's your mentors, if it's your best friends, if you get a gut feeling and it's a strong pull and it feels like a full yes to you, you've got to go for it. Doesn't matter if it doesn't make any sense to anybody else. Doesn't even matter if it doesn't make sense to you. If it feels right, it's usually right. So the first thing is to follow your gut feeling. That's what I've learned from this podcast. The second thing that I've learned is to follow your dreams. For me, all I ever wanted to do is be able to build a business where I've been able to help people. That's all I wanted to do. How can I help people? How can I help people? The thing that I miss the most about when I left Cutco and I was 23, 24 years old, for six years, being in the corporate world, I just missed the feeling of being a teacher, the feeling of being a mentor, the feeling of helping people. And so my dream was in some sort of way, how can I help people? I don't know what it is. It doesn't make any sense. But I had this, this first off, this emotional gut feeling that I needed to do something. And then I also had this feeling of like, I'm supposed to help people. I don't know what that means. I don't know if that means it's supposed to be a coach. I don't know if that means I'm supposed to go and be a high school teacher, but I just had this pull of I'm supposed to help people. And that was the dream that I wanted to follow. And the cool thing about it is now looking back six years later, all of the dots connect a thousand episodes later, all of the dots connect. It all makes sense. But back then it didn't make a whole lot of sense. I just had a couple feelings of I'm not supposed to be doing the sales job anymore. This isn't fulfilling me. I don't want to die working jobs that I hate simply in exchange, you know, exchange my time that I have in this life for just money. I don't want to be stuck in the rat race. And I went through and looked through my journals six years ago before recording this podcast. And it was just journal entry after journal entry after journal entry that just said, I don't want to work for anyone anymore. I want to build my own business. I want to help people. I don't want to have a salary. I don't want to be stuck to somebody else's schedule. I want to be able to travel the world. I want to be able to help millions of people across the world. And it was just like I kept journaling and putting it down and putting it down and putting it down. And eventually the universe revealed itself to me in a way that just made sense and that gut feeling was the pull. And so I'll say, make sure that you follow your dreams, start to figure out what your dreams are. If you're not clear, as I always say, if you've never heard me say it before, it's okay not to know what your passion is and what your purpose is right now. But if you don't know what it is, it's not okay to not be in constant search for what that thing is. You've got to figure out what it is. So that's number two is to follow your dreams. Number three is to just don't stop. That's it. It's simple. The only reason why I feel like I've won in the podcasting world is because everyone who started when I started, they just stopped doing it. It was just countless person, person after person after person after person after person after person. I follow up with them years down the road and they're like, Oh yeah, I gave that up, you know, about a year in. I just didn't stop. And I eventually just figured out my flow. I figured out what people liked. I found a community of people who liked my message and it just worked. And so whatever it is that you want to do, just don't stop. You're not going to see success right away no matter what it is that you do. It's just not, it's not going to happen. It's going to take time. You know, it's like the Chinese bamboo. It takes five years for the bamboo. Once you put it inside of the ground, it takes five years for the seed to even break through the ground. But after five years, it goes from no feet, zero feet, you know, literally just a tiny little seed to up to 80 feet high in six months. But it needed five years to get to that point. Sometimes people give up right before they're about to see success. And so what I'll tell you is if you get the gut feeling and you feel like it's right and you have this dream that you're following, time doesn't matter. You need time on your side. It needs time to mature. It needs time to grow. It needs time for you to mess up and figure things out and mess things and figure, mess up things and figure them out. Just don't stop. Just stop stopping. If you want to be successful, just stop stopping. That's it. Just keep going. One of the things that I love is I was with a friend one time and he was like, you know, the thing I love about you is you're basically just like a cockroach. Like you just don't die. You just keep going and keep going and keep going. And that's that's how you have to be in pursuit of what you want. So just don't stop. Number four, be consistent with whatever it is. That's one thing that I've learned over a thousand episodes. And from the very first time I started the podcast, Monday, Wednesday and Friday, I have not missed a Monday, Wednesday or Friday in six years. Not one time in a thousand episodes have I missed a Monday, Wednesday or Friday simply because there was one time years and years and years ago that I uploaded an episode and it didn't go out in time because I scheduled it instead of four o'clock in the morning. I scheduled for four o'clock PM and I was brushing my teeth and I saw a couple emails that had come through. And as I was brushing my teeth, I looked at these emails and people were sending me emails saying, Rob, your podcast didn't come out. Are you okay? I'm not even kidding you. I was like, holy crap, it's only been a few hours and I'm already getting emails from people who are concerned about my wellbeing simply because they've gotten used to my podcast coming out at a certain time. And so, you know, you have to stay consistent with it. I realized that my listeners depend on me. You guys depend on me to sometimes fill your time when you're driving to work or while you're going on your morning run or while you're at the gym. And it's my obligation to make sure that I show up for you if you're going to be listening to me. And so when I say be consistent to be successful in anything, you have to number one, like I said a minute ago, don't stop. Number two, be consistent. Just continue to keep showing up. Doesn't matter if you believe in yourself, but if you show up to the gym four times a week and just work out hard with a trainer, you're eventually going to get in much better shape. That's exactly how it is with life. That's exactly how it's a success. Just don't stop. Be consistent. Don't stop. Be consistent. Keep going, keep going, keep going. And then the fifth thing that I've learned is you deserve all of the success that comes your way. This is one thing that holds a lot of people back. I have coached many people. I've coached many people who have a massive trouble with success. They have massive trouble with failure. And a lot of times the reason why is because they don't feel like they deserve the success that comes their way. And so they actually, when they start to see success, they self-sabotage that success. They get in their own way. They literally think to themselves, I don't know if I deserve this money. I don't know if I've come from a place where everyone is poor. I don't know if I deserve to me. And they're not consciously thinking this most of the time. It's usually a deep subconscious that's just a pattern, but it's like, if I get rich, will everyone that I've always been friends with not be friends with anymore? Cause I don't fit in with them. Will everyone want to use me for money? Will everyone forget, you know, make fun of me and, you know, get rid of me and not be, not let me be part of the family. It's this weird thing where it's like, it doesn't make any sense when you actually speak it out loud, but so many people have this deep psychological feeling of, I don't deserve success. I had that feeling for a little while of like, why, how did I get so lucky to do something that I absolutely love doing that makes me feel alive and also be able to make a lot of money doing it? It was like, this doesn't seem fair. I remember seeing people and seeing parts, see my mom and family struggle to make money when I was younger. And it seemed like it was so hard to do. And it's like, who am I to be able to do something that I love to not feel like I'm struggling for it to feel effortless for me to love doing this and for me to get paid tons of money doing it. And for years, I want to say years for a while, I was like, I don't know if I deserve this. And so there's a lot of people that deal with this. And I want to tell you that no matter what it is that you do, if you start to see success, you deserve all of the success that comes your way. The universe God, whatever it is that you believe in is not going to bless you with success unless it feels like you deserve it. The success, the money, whatever it is that you get is just a byproduct of the value that you're giving the world. And so you deserve all of the success that comes your way. Whatever that success looks like, whatever it feels like, whatever it means to you, you deserve it. And so don't self sabotage yourself on this path to success thinking that I don't know if I deserve it. I don't, I'm not going to fit in with my friends anymore, you know, all of my friends are broke. Will they try to use me for money? Will they make fun of me for starting to make money? It's just this weird thing where you feel like we're going to be kicked out of the tribe if we simply become different. If I start talking in front of people and putting my message out there, am I going to be exiled from the group? And it's kind of like the old, you know, tribal feeling of the brightest light gets the most arrows. Maybe if I stand out and I do something different than I have to fear that because there could be something that could come bad down the road. Nothing bad is coming down the road for you, no matter what. It's all coming. There's all good coming down the road for you. You either believe that the world is working. Everything that's happening in the world is happening to you or it's happening for you. I'm here to tell you it's happening for you. You deserve all the success that you want, that you will get. Don't get in your own way when that success is starting to come in because you can damn it up and put a damn in front of you and all of your success because you don't feel that it's right. And so with six years, almost 100 million downloads, over a thousand podcast episodes, those are five biggest things that I've learned. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you want to learn even more about Master Your Mind, click right here and watch this video as well. If you were already the person that could create the success that you want, you would have already had that success. So what we're getting down to is that it's you that needs to change.