497: The 3 Step Plan To Ditch Regret And Tap Into Your Massive Potential With Jon Acuff

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You’re listening to the My Wife Could Her Job podcast, the place where I bring on successful bootstrap business owners and delve deeply into what strategies are working and what strategies are not with their businesses. Today I have my friend John Acuff on the show. And in this episode, John is going to teach us how to find the levers that you need to pull to take action on your business. It’s all about mindset and how to tap into your full potential. But before we begin, I wanted to let you know that tickets for the 2024 Seller Summit are now on sale over at sellersummit.com.

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The Seller Summit is the conference that I hold every year that specifically targets e-commerce entrepreneurs selling physical products online. And unlike other events that focus on inspirational stories and high-level BS, mine is a curriculum-based conference where you will leave with practical and actionable strategies specifically for an e-commerce business. Every speaker I invite is deep in the trenches of their business, entrepreneurs who are importing large quantity of physical goods, and not some high-level guys who are overseeing their companies at 50,000 feet.

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I personally hate large events, so the Seller Summit is always small and intimate. Every year, we cut off ticket sales at around 200 people, so tickets sell out fast and we’ve sold out every single year for the past 8 years. If you are an ecommerce entrepreneur making over $250k or $1 million per year, we also offer an exclusive mastermind experience with other top sellers. The Seller Summit is going to be held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida from May 14th to May 16th, and right now, this is the cheapest the tickets will ever be.

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For more information, head to SellersSummit.com. Also, if you haven’t picked up my Wall Street Journal bestselling book, The Family First Entrepreneur yet, it’s actually available on Amazon right now at 38 % off. My book will teach you how to achieve financial freedom by starting a business that doesn’t require you to work yourself to death. Plus, you can still redeem my free bonus workshop on how to sell print on demand and how to make passive income with blogging, YouTube, and podcasting.

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when you grab the book over at mywifequitterjob.com slash book. So go over to mywifequitterjob.com slash book, fill out the form and I’ll send you the bonuses right away. Now on to the show.

02:12
Welcome to the My Wife, Quitter, Job podcast. Today I am thrilled to have John Acuff on the show. Now, John is a New York Times bestselling author of eight books, including his latest book, which comes out very soon called All It Takes Is A Goal. Now having just published my first Wall Street Journal bestselling book, I’ve really come to appreciate how really incredible John’s accomplishments are as an author. He’s also one of Inc’s top 100 leadership speakers.

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and has spoken to hundreds of thousands of people at conferences and events. And for the last 20 years, he’s actually helped some of the biggest brands tell their story, including Home Depot, Bose, and Staples. Now, clearly, John and I could talk about a lot of topics, but what we’re gonna talk about today is actually a problem that many of the students in my Create a Profitable Online Store face. It’s basically how to get off your butt and find the levers that you need to pull in order to take action.

03:11
And we’re also going to talk about how to tap into your massive potential. And with that, welcome to the show, John. How are doing today? I’m great. Thanks for having me. I think this is going to be a lot of fun. Yeah, John, I know a lot about your books, but I actually know very little about your backstory. How did you blow up? And I know how hard it is to sell books. So how did you become a New York Times bestselling author?

03:31
Yeah, so I was in corporate marketing for about, I don’t know, 14, 15 years. I journalism major loved advertising. I’ve always loved the ability for copywriting to inspire action. I was an ad nerd. would, I would rip like before Pinterest, I would rip ads out of magazines and organize them in binders on my bookshelf. Like completely like there was an automotive section. There was a makeup section just cause I was fascinated by why did they write their headline that way? What does that mean?

04:00
So I love the written word. And when I was working at Auto Trader in Atlanta, I started a blog just kind of on a whim. And it was the first time I kind of realized, wow, there’s this whole other world out there and a lot of the gatekeepers are gone. Like for me to have an audience in the sixties, I would have had to have known somebody who owned a radio station. And for me to have an audience, you now I can just decide, I want to talk to people about these things I care about. So that’s really what started it for me. And it kind of grew from there where

04:29
The blog turned into a book, turned into some speaking, turned into some other opportunities. And so for the last 10 years, I’ve had my own business and I do primarily two things. I write books and then I go speak to companies about the books. What was the name of that blog? Well, the first blog I had was in 2001 and that was called, that was called Sweet Raymond and it was a music review blog. And it was, I, it kills me that we were like, ah, we quit it. Me and my buddy, Billy Ivy started it and we had a little bit of momentum, but you had to build it in Dreamweaver.

04:58
And it was impossible, dude. It was impo- and so like, I was an early slash lazy adopter. I was there kind of early, like a blog in 2021. Like if I was telling you today, I’ve been doing it for 23 years, but then we, did it for like a year, got a bunch of people to send us free music, which was like, oh my gosh. Like, and then I started a second one in 2008 called Prodigal John. And then a third one called Stuff Christians Like, which was a satire of, um,

05:27
growing up in a church, my dad’s a pastor, so I wrote about kind of the funny side of that. And then it just started to grow from there. And then Twitter kind of came on the scene. And as a headline writer, Twitter felt right in line with what I like to write, which is short, of hooky, sticky statements. So I felt like I got a 15-year education from Home Depot, Bose, Staples, these big brands on how to write tweets. And then all of a sudden, just like the world opened up. Nice. So you start out with the blog, built an email list, and then Twitter started blowing up.

05:55
Well, now it’s called a bill. No, you’re giving me credit. didn’t build. didn’t put enough into my email list. Like, so I would say like people sometimes will go, what advice would you give yourself 10 years ago? Please, please, please invest in email. Like, please for the love of like, please build an email list. Like I’ve, I have one, a great one now. I feel great about my email list now, but I think I wasted years chasing shiny forms of social media because they gave me these dopamine hits of immediacy. Like there’s a heart, there’s a like versus doing the slow

06:25
delayed gratification of building a really good email list. again, I’ve made up for it in some of my lost time, but yeah, that’s one of those things I always tell younger people especially like, don’t sleep on email, like don’t sleep on email, like do it. Yep. And this is just a random question. I came back from vacation a couple of weeks ago and discovered my Twitter app was named X. Are you still big on Twitter and where do you think it’s going?

06:50
No. So like in 2020, I deleted it from my phone, which was like heartbreaking for me because I just didn’t need that much anger in my pocket and I didn’t need that much anger in me. So like it was this circle of like, it just wasn’t healthy for me anymore. So I still use it on my laptop because that feel like when I’m out with my kids, Twitter was so easy to try to document a moment. And then I leave the moment and I could feel my wife, my kids be like, Hey, we’re here at this zoo. You’re writing what you think is a funny

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tweet about a giraffe, we’re also here at the zoo. And so I still have it on my laptop. I still use it. I, you know, I don’t think threads is killing it. Like, don’t like so many people are like, this is the end. think we love to say things like that. I think it still has a future. I still enjoy it. I just, you know, for a couple years there, it just felt so toxic to me. And so like I had an interaction on threads the other day that kind of sums up how I think social media sometimes I posted a parenting tip.

07:49
I’ve got two teenage daughters. I’ve got a about to be 20 year old. She turns 20 tomorrow, which is crazy to me. And I’ve got a 17 year old. So I posted a tip about parenting and a single mom responded like with her version of it, like, well, here’s how this is impacting my life. She got three kids and then a dude who is like late twenties with no kids corrected her. And I was like, this is the problem. Like, and like he shamed her with his, like he was like, well actually, and I was like,

08:15
She’s a single mom with actual humans she’s raising. You’re a 29 year old with cool tattoos and a thread account, like stop it. So I think there’s some parts of social media that are like that and Twitter sometimes leans toward that, but I still like it as a concept that still think there’s tons of possibility there. Yeah, I’m not a big fan of social media. In fact, I don’t let my kids have a social media account. It just puts me in a bad mood sometimes. Yeah, yeah, it’s not a, I rarely

08:45
scroll and get happy. Like I rarely go, man, that was an hour well invested. And so my relationship with it is, I would say it’s medium hot right now. It’s not super hot. When Twitter first came out, was, man, I love tweeting. It felt like this whole new world. But now I’m kind of like, where do I need to draw healthy boundaries? And like to write books, like it takes me a long time to write books. And so I have to be like,

09:11
Something I often tell people is that time is our most valuable resource, but it’s also our most vulnerable. Like time can’t protect itself, only you can protect it. So that’s been part of my journey too, is as I want to write more books, I have to go find that time. And if I realized I was on Instagram eight hours last week, that was eight real hours I gave to something that wasn’t paying me. Like why am I doing that? Hey, so John, so I’ve been teaching

09:38
online business courses for over a decade now. And I really wanted your take and your philosophy on some of the most common psychological issues that my students face. And I do this all the time. I compare lists of my successful students versus the ones that really don’t go anywhere. Really? That’s how do you do that? I’m just curious. Like, is it like you have a list of people that you’re like killing it, killing it, killing it, killing it? Like, tell me about that. So every couple of years.

10:07
actually every year, I’ll send out a survey and see where people are at revenue wise. And a lot of these people I’ve noticed on these lists are people that I interact with regularly. I give live office hours every week. Gotcha. And then I also do one on ones with other students. And oftentimes I can tell within the first five minutes whether someone’s going to succeed or not. Just some of those signs. What are some of those like, okay, this is a red flag, a red flag is if they come on and they’re not prepared at all.

10:37
And they’re just wishy-washy. They didn’t watch a single lesson. They just come on, they go, hey, you know, I was hoping you could help me. Is this good? And you didn’t do your homework. Yeah. Right. And if you’re wishy-washy and you’re not and you’re all over the place, that’s another red flag for me. Yeah, that’s good. That’s good. So, for example, like if somebody though says, hey, we’ve got our one on one coming up. I want to use your this office hour.

11:05
and they come in and they have five pages of notes and specific questions and they like that’s somebody you go, okay, like they’re into this. They’ve got some skin in the game. I like that, but it also works in reverse. So sometimes, ironically, I think the engineers in my class are the worst ones because they want definite answers. So they’ll come with this book and they’ll come to office hours and whatnot. And they’ll say, I need to know this, this and this. I’m like, dude, you don’t even need to know that stuff. Just get started.

11:33
It’ll work itself out because you can’t prepare for any of that stuff. Right. Yeah, that’s interesting. My version of that is people want me to specifically tell them how many goals they should work on at any given time to say how many goals and they want me to say four point eight. Like that is the number. And the truer answer that I give, which is sometimes frustrating is as many as you can, like as many as you can do well. Like some people can they’re they’re in a zone and they can do 10 different things at a time. Some if it’s their first one, they need to start, get a little momentum.

12:03
You know, I so I totally get that. What are some of the things in your world they want specific answers on? How long is it going to take for me to make money? Yeah, how can I? How can I guarantee that this is going to work? How much does it cost? To start, how much can I like these are all questions that are very highly dependent on what you’re selling and there’s there’s too many variables. There’s not there’s not general answers or even specific answers until you know the situation and it’s going to change. It’s going to be fluid. Correct.

12:33
Yep. Anyway, my point is, is that I’ve just noticed running my class for last decade that most things are just completely mental, right? Another thing that I teach is rocket science. It’s not like you need a degree or anything. You just need to know how to sell stuff and it’s just people getting into their head. I would say the majority of the people though have problems getting started because you know, when you, whenever you start something new, there’s all this knowledge overload and you feel like you don’t know exactly which direction to go.

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And even if you know which direction to go, it’s hard for people to get outside their comfort zone and actually give something a try. So question for you is everyone’s different, right? What are the steps that you would take to understand your own personality and then trick yourself into making forward progress? Well, I love a simple technique I sometimes use with people is to interview a previous win. So what I’ll see sometimes is people come to me and they’ll say,

13:30
John, I’m having a really hard time losing weight or getting in shape. And I’ll go, okay, well, tell me about a time when you did achieve a goal. Like, tell me about the time. And they’ll go, okay, you know what? I got out of debt like three years ago. And I’ll say, well, so what did you do? What were some of the factors? What were some of the tools that were helpful? And they’ll say, well, I was in like a small group where we met and we talked about it. And I had an envelope system that I used. And we printed out a picture of our car and we cut it up into 12 pieces. And every time we paid off a piece, we put the picture up and we…

13:59
We kind of built the car as we progressed. And I listened to radio stations about radio shows about it and podcasts. And then I’ll go, how many of those helpful things are you currently doing in your weight loss goal? And often they’re not doing any of those. So I’ll say, how do we translate some of those tools into this new goal? You might need to hire a coach. You might need a personal trainer. You might need Orange Theory because that’s a group of people that all work out at the same time and it becomes a community.

14:28
You might need a sticker system. You might need all these things. So a really easy way and it’s encouraging versus overwhelming is to go, tell me about something. And most people have done something. If you ask them enough ways and enough times, they can find something that’s gone well that they’ve, you know, I have a friend for instance, he’s thinking about doing a business, his own small business.

14:52
And I reminded him, he sold books door to door. Like he did that college book program, which is one of, my opinion, I’ve never done it. In my opinion, one of the hardest sales things in the world. You’re going door to door in an area you you’re not from selling a product that, you know, some would say is fairly archaic. Like you’re like, Hey, you know how you have Google? What if it was this? You know, like, and he made tons of money as a college student.

15:18
So part of my job in that moment is to remind him of that and then take some of the learning from that and apply it to the new thing. And then you’re, it’s like you’re automatically starting with a win. You’re not starting with this feels so massive. Yeah. I’m just trying to think about your analogy that you just gave. So right now I feel like I need to be running and the problem is I hate running. So every time I shut myself out and I run, I do this Hill and I hate every minute of it. And then I come back and I,

15:46
It feels good afterwards, but during sucks. And then the next week comes around and I have to do it again. And I just can’t get myself. Why does it have to be running? Like, why does it have to be running? It doesn’t, but that’s the most efficient way to get the most amount of exercise in the shortest period of time. It is. That’s true. It’s part of why I don’t, I’m not a cyclist because I have to do 30 miles of cycling to get three miles of running. But I, yeah, in a situation like that, I would specifically go, okay,

16:14
Does it have to be running? Can it be something else? And then you could say, well, it’s the most efficient. And then I’d say, well, can you like, if you gave it X amount more time, would you get X amount more joy? Like maybe there’s a joy, there’s a joy payoff. Like if it’s that miserable that you’re not doing it, it doesn’t matter if it’s the most efficient. It’s kind of like saying, I never eat Brussels sprouts, but I know they’re really, they’ve got the vitamins I need. go, well, do you eat them? go, no, I don’t eat them. But I know they’re like someday when I like, would say,

16:44
If you’re not doing it, doesn’t matter. It’s efficiency. It’s not being done. If you are doing it and you’re grumbling through it, but you feel really good after I’d go, well, if the payoff of the after is work it worth it, still do the thing. Like that’s, still worth the, I’m always trying to do that ROI of this thing I got is worth the work I put in and it like multiples of the work I put in. It’s not just a one-to-one. It’s like five X, four X, whatever. So it’s, it’s worth doing it. Like,

17:13
writing books is hard for me. it takes a really, and it is, it is. And if I, if I did probably an hour, if I broke it down hourly, what I’m paid to write them, there’s other ways to make more money. Like there just is, but I love the challenge I need. You know, I read a book called ADHD 2.0. It talked about the right kind of difficult. Your brain needs something that’s the right kind of difficult for me. Writing books is the right kind of difficult when I’m not actively writing.

17:43
I’m a much grumpier person. I’m a much more stuck person. for me, the challenge of writing the book, even though it’s really challenging, is worth the many, many forms of payoff I get for it. So I continue to do it.

17:58
I just wanted to take a moment to tell you about a free resource that I offer on my website that you may not be aware of. If you are interested in starting your own online store, I put together a comprehensive six day mini course on how to get started in eCommerce that you should all check out. It contains both video and text based tutorials that go over the entire process of finding products to sell all the way to getting your first sales online. Now this course is free and can be attained at mywifequitterjob.com slash free.

18:27
just sign up right there on the front page via email and I’ll send you the course right away. Once again, that’s mywifequitterjob.com slash free. Now back to the show. I mean, the students in my class clearly want to start a business that’s successful, but it’s hard, especially when you’re learning a bunch of new things and there’s a ton of variables. So I don’t know if that’s analogous to you writing a book, but whenever someone tries something hard, the tendency is to just kind of give up.

18:55
Like you try really hard for a short period of time, things don’t move and then you say, hey, why am I doing this? It’s not working. How do you get over that? Yeah. So for me, I expect it. go, every goal you go through a this is dumb anyway phase. Like it’s just gonna happen. So part of it is you think that’s not going to happen and then you feel surprised and feel like a failure. So I know in the middle of any goal, I’m gonna be like, this is the dumbest thing. Like why, who cares? Like, and I’m gonna start telling myself another story.

19:22
Like there’s a show called Alone. don’t know if you’ve ever seen it. love the show. It’s the best show. So you can always tell when somebody is preparing to quit. They do like the same four or five speeches. I had the producer of the show on my podcast. And so one angle is they’ll start to talk about the people at home that need them. So they’ll go, you know, man, my uncle, I just, I left my uncle. Like I don’t want to quit, but I know he’s somewhere. He’s got a bad foot. don’t want to.

19:47
What if he’s limping somewhere and I’m not there? Like they start. So that’s one of the stories. And so I think it’s the same with in the middle of a goal, you know, you’re going to have the, is dumb anyway story. So don’t be surprised by it. Be prepared for it. So one of the things that I think Steve happens is we think we’re going to maintain our motivation at a fairly reasonable level, the entire goal. And what I say is the opposite of that.

20:12
Motivation is the flightiest thing ever. It leaves on day two. Like when the work shows up, your motivation dissipates. And then the other problem is we think we’re going to have one form. So we have this like, I’ll find my why I’ll find my perfect thing. And that’ll propel me for 10 years. And what I teach instead is what about a motivation portfolio? What about like making a list of the things you can refer to, not just one or two, because some days like on my portfolio, my personal portfolio would be things like.

20:39
you know, showing my kids that they can do difficult things and showing my kids that like hard work is worth it. Some days I’m like, I don’t care. Like that’s not like my kids aren’t motivating me. Some days I’m like this music is some days I’m like this accountability, this mentor, whatever. Some days I have to go like 12 deep to find the reason I’m doing the thing. And I go, okay, that’s right. Some days I have to remember like my favorite thing, Jocko Willenick ever said was that if you’re going to procrastinate, procrastinate on quitting, tell yourself I’ll quit tomorrow.

21:08
I’ll give myself the ability to quit tomorrow because chances are by tomorrow you’ll be like, got a night’s sleep. had breakfast. Like I’m not quitting. So I, I am very serious about treating motivation as a skill that I can practice and add to versus going, I’ve got my motivation. Now let’s just hope it lasts because that’s just not, that’s just not how it works. And so for me, if you were trying to start a business, I would expect to think it’s dumb in the middle. I would expect to be discouraged.

21:37
I would expect for those things to happen. And then before I started, when I had the most natural motivation, I would try to fill my portfolio as full as I could for the journey ahead. Knowing that it was going talk about this portfolio. I mean, what does it look like? Yeah. So for me, it’s a, it’s a written down list. It’s a, I’m a notebook guy. I’m a paper guy. And so I have a bunch of notebooks. So like, I’ll have a notebook that I’ll keep kind of a running list of like, Oh, that was really fun. Oh, that was really cool. Like, Oh man.

22:07
Like, like think about it this way. I was, I was thinking about this. I asked an NBA coach or NBA trainer this the other day. I was like, how many minutes do you think Steph Curry has practiced? You’re on the West coast. Like you know, Steph Curry. And I said, will you do the math on that for me? He’s trained tons of NBA players. And he was like, in my estimate, 29,000 minutes, no, 29,000 hours, 29,000 hours. He said from six to 35 with an NBA dad. So he got an earlier start than some people, 29,000 hours.

22:36
And then you look up his stats and he plays what like 38 minutes a game maybe on a real like he’s traded eight like in a week, he probably practices 25 hours. And if they have three games, he had 90 minutes of court time. Like you go, well, that’s not like mathematically that doesn’t make sense, but he knows that like that 20 minutes, that four second shot is worth the 29,000 hours. So like that’s another big part of it is like.

23:03
If I have a really amazing event that goes well and I got to speak for 20 minutes, I’m writing that down on the list so that I remember. really feel like, scientists call it negativity bias. We have an ability to remember the negative moments easier than the positive. And so I work hard to remind myself about those positive reasons that I’m doing this difficult thing. I don’t hope I’ll remember because I know I’m not gonna. Like I know I’m not gonna. I, you know, people are sometimes surprised. I’m a naturally very negative person.

23:32
I’m super cynical. I’m super jaded. I’m pessimistic. Like I grew up in Massachusetts. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the Northeast. I don’t know. But I often tell people I’ve tested positivity and I’ve tested negativity and the ROI of positivity is so much better. So I just work really hard at it. don’t, you know, so I don’t wait to feel motivated. I don’t, I don’t wait to kind of keep going. I have to work on it. And somebody might look at me and go like, well, that’s a crutch. And I’m like, yeah, exactly. Like not even just a

24:01
crutch. Like I’m the guy that they pull down the ski hill, behind the, like behind the snowmobile and I’m all wrapped up and I’m like, I need that many tools to get through like this challenging stuff I’m doing. So I take a lot of the shame away for people to say, if you need additional ways to stay motivated during this challenging thing, this business you’re building, like go ahead and plan for that, like go ahead and that’s going to happen. And your version is going to be different than my version, but you, have a version. know a woman that one of her,

24:31
things for building a business was she said she was gonna buy a Louis Vuitton purse. Like once she made a certain amount of money, like that purse, that purse would do nothing for me. That would be wasted in my motivation portfolio. For her being in Paris, being on the streets, every time she saw one on another woman, it was like, hey, hey, hey, don’t forget. Like this is, you’re building this bit. Like that was amazing. Like that was, she probably got a thousand reminders to keep pushing on her business. She eventually got to do it.

25:01
So I just think you have to get creative with your motivation as creative as you get with building the actual business. You know what’s funny about what you just said? I was just thinking to myself in the beginning when I used to teach my class, it was all about motivation and, and you know, just, Hey, you can do this. You can do this. A couple of years ago, I took a different stance and I think it’s working. I went out and I gave a lecture and I said, Hey, this is going to suck. It’s going to take you longer than you think it’s going to be. And you’re going to, you’re going to witness these

25:30
what I call troughs of sorrow, right? When you’re doing really well, and then it’s gonna go down, then you’ll figure something out, it’s gonna go up and down. And I think that’s mentally prepared people to think and give a longer timeframe for success. And so they stick with it a little bit longer. What’s worse about today’s environment is there’s so many get rich quick schemes out there, where people expect to make money within like two or three months. And when they don’t, they’re like, oh, this must not be for me, I’m not doing something correctly.

25:59
Yeah, I did something wrong. Yeah, I think there’s the tension. I think for people who encourage other people is like, where’s that line? Because some people like, you know, if you look at motivation as a spectrum, there’s some people that want that. Hey, get out of bed. You got to get going like you got to do. It’s gonna whatever that you got it like that type of motivation. There’s other people where it’s like, hey, I want you to try one thing and then let’s be let’s be kind to ourselves about the progress like let’s.

26:28
And I just think there’s different ways different people are motivated. I don’t think it’s one size fits all. But one of the things that I say that relates to what you just said is that I say excellence is boring. Like excellence is boring. Like the things I do that contribute to my excellence are very like thank you notes. Like they’re not, they’re not exciting. They’re really not like getting somebody’s contact information and then making sure it makes it to my CRM system. Like when I get on a flight and I did it, like there’s like five little detail steps I have to do. It’s very, to me, it’s very boring. Like

26:57
being on stage, super exciting, but that was a fraction of what the whole experience is. So I just, try to set this, the, kind of expectation that way. And then I also, people say, how long will it take my business to be successful? And I say, I actually know the answer. The answer is longer than you want. Cause I’ve never met somebody who’s like, yeah, it was like, it took like five minutes. It’s crazy. Like I just, I just did it. It took five minutes. I think the challenge is social media gives us a lot of befores and a lot of afters, but not enough during.

27:27
Like we don’t have enough during. And I get it. Like when you post the during, people are like, eh, it’s kind of boring. Like, yeah, cause excellence is boring. like the stuff I, that’s why I like, I don’t do a lot on YouTube because the things I do for my business would make boring videos. Like today, if I, like I wrote for two hours by myself, if I set up a camera, like that, what would you watch? You would watch me be like, oh, that, no, that’s the wrong word. What am I, this story feels fake. What do I?

27:56
That wouldn’t be exciting. And so I just think we don’t show the boring stuff. And that’s unfortunate because most of it is boring stuff. I agree. My friends used to joke with me when I was an electrical engineer. was like, I was always like, hey, they should make a movie about engineers. And they used to make fun of me. It just be like this dude typing in front of a computer. Yeah, that way. And for like two hours with like some sad song and then you like it’d be the national and then you’d go.

28:23
Then you go back to your car and be like, all right, did my job today. Yeah. Let’s talk about breaking out of your comfort zone. I actually have mixed feelings about this term because I seek comfort actually in everything that I do. Right. I like everything to be in steady state in a place where I can just maintain it indefinitely and not have to worry about anything like I optimize for stress. So when someone tells me to go outside of my comfort zone, I resist.

28:53
But I know it needs to be done. So what are just some ways to encourage not only me, I guess we can turn this into my own self-help session. other people. Let’s fix Steve. What are some of your tactics for doing that? Well, to the phrase comfort zone, I always tell people like use the phrase that works for you. So if your version of that is I want to be comfortable, I don’t want to be stuck, call it the stuck zone. Like sometimes people say, what’s the difference between a habit, a goal?

29:21
And like, I don’t care about the word. I care about the results. Like so, cause I heard somebody say like, Oh, I don’t believe in goals. And I was like, what do you believe in? They’re like, believe in commitments. And then they described what was exactly a goal. So some of the words, but I think we’re talking about the same thing of like the moments when I’m stuck, when I’m in a rut, when I’m in a funk, like you can use whatever phrase to describe that. Um, I just mean you’re, you’re being less than the Steve you’re capable of being. Um, there’s, there’s more to you there. Um, and you can still perform it.

29:51
you can still be high performing in a relaxed state. Like I think the times I’ve tried to create out of stress, the creation is not as good. Like the times I’ve written things out of stress, it just has a texture that’s not helpful to people. Like I think you can tell that. I think you can tell when somebody, I think there’s a difference between having urgent information and frantic information. And so like there’s people that I respond like, oh man, that was urgent. They really wanted me to get that idea.

30:17
That felt frantic and manic and like there was so much stress that I don’t feel like I can learn from that person because they feel like they’re living in perpetual stress. And that’s not what I want in my life. But as far as getting out of the comfort zone, um, I always say nobody willingly leaves the comfort zone and they shouldn’t because it’s comfortable. Like, why would I, why would I leave that? You have to trick yourself out of the comfort zone. You have to create something that’s worth leaving the comfort zone. So my personal example,

30:45
which is really where I started kind of building my own business. When I lived in Atlanta and I started to blog, I didn’t wake up one day and say, today I’m going to be disciplined. Today I’ll get out of my comfort zone. Today I’ll have grit and persistence or whatever. I just started this small experiment called blogging and I really liked it. And I liked it so much. I wanted to do more of it. And the way to do more of it, cause I had two kids under the age of four and a young wife and a Atlanta commute and a full-time job and freelance clients, the way to do more of it was for me to get up earlier.

31:15
So desire drove that change, not discipline. I thought about time like logs and like each hour I threw at the project was like throwing a log into a fire and the fire just got bigger and bigger and bigger. So for me getting out of the comfort zone, I’ll often say to somebody, well, what do you want? Like what would make it worth it? What’s something outside the comfort zone? Like what’s the challenge you’re trying to fix or the thing you’re trying to win? And if I can get them thinking about that,

31:44
then leaving the comfort zone isn’t a challenge. You want the thing you, you know, it matters more than these other things that maybe, you know, for me, like think about, I think about my job. I love speaking on stage. Like I feel so honored that I get to do that. I don’t love, uh, delayed flights. I don’t love airports, airports assault every sense, like every single sense. I don’t love missing flights. There’s a million parts of it that I don’t love.

32:12
But the thing I love is so strong. Like I’m a homebody. My wife, it’s so funny. I don’t like if somebody invites us to a new restaurant, I’m like, well, what’s the parking going to be like? What are we talking about? it a valet? Like, is it on street? What are we talking about? Like I have all this anxiety about that. Like, cause I’d like, I don’t want to get out of my comfort zone. I don’t like, and then when somebody says, Hey, we want you to come to Omaha, Nebraska, you’re going to rent a car. You’re going to go to a city you’ve never been to. You’re going to have to connect. Like, would you do that? I’m like, yeah, I’ll do that. And she always laughs like,

32:43
I can tell you love it because of all the things you do that you don’t normally do. And so that’s what I try to help people with the comfort zone is like, why, like, how can we find something you love that you that you’d willingly leave the comfort zone and you’d and you’d leave it in a way where it was small enough that it was easy to do. And then it started to build momentum. And then before you knew it, like I, one of the lines I sometimes tell people is like, I want you to find something you love so much. Netflix is boring.

33:09
Like if I’ve done my job, I’ve helped you find something you love so much that Netflix just gets boring. All these other distractions get boring. Like you’re not on social media bunch for a bunch of reasons, but one of them is you have stuff you love doing and you go, no, like I’m helping students. Like, like I’m doing all these other things that are more exciting and fulfilling for me than social media. So that’s not a difficult choice. Let’s use the analogy of business here. So you want to make money.

33:38
and you’re excited by making money, but the process of doing that is not, you kind of have to take a leap of faith, right? When you started your blog, was it hard to write? No, no, felt like I’d been stuck for years and I had all these words. So the writing wasn’t hard. The making money part was still challenging. like sponsors, stuff like that. There was a lot of things I didn’t know how to do. And so

34:06
those parts were hard. The actual content wasn’t challenging to me because I felt like I was tapping into something that I really wanted to do. And I think that’s the same with small businesses where if it’s something you really care about, there’s a natural obsession that starts to take over. Like I watched a video the other day where this guy reviewed his five favorite types of socks from these like obscure sock manufacturers, because that’s his business. And I was like, man, this guy went real like real nerded out on socks.

34:36
So I think like for me, there’s a ton of people that would say, you um, I started the business that had the most potential profit. I don’t really care about owning car washes, but it had the most potential. I think that’s great. If you’re motivated by that, go for it. Like own 50 of those. think there’s other people who are creators where they’re like, this is a thing that I care about on a creative level and I want to do it and I want to turn it into a business. think those are two very different expressions of business.

35:05
And you got to kind of figure out which one you fit into. One thing that happens to me is I, I feel like I’m not meeting my full potential. And then I just started saying yes to everything. And all of a sudden I’m over committed. It’s kind of how I felt last year when I was launching my book or earlier this year. And I ended up in this like seesaw of, you know, feeling complacent and really kicking butt, but like not being happy with all the things that I’m assigned. How do you find the balance?

35:35
Well, I think you find the balance daily. I think it’s I had a I had a friend David Thomas He’s a therapist here in Nashville and he said the problem is people want there to be a switch They’re looking for a switch I do the thing and it switches off the stress it switches off the out of balance switches off the negative thoughts I have whatever and he says so you’ll see people jump from switch to switch to switch They’ll go I did yoga yoga is the new thing or I did but like I launched this thing. I’m gonna this is the new thing

36:03
and it works for a week, maybe even two weeks, maybe even a whole month, but eventually life gets stressful again, the world gets loud again. And he said, life is more of a dial than a switch. When it gets dialed up, you have to dial it back down. You have to use turn down techniques to turn it back down. So for me, I know I can start to feel when I’m out of balance. I can start to feel when I’m not writing it as much anymore. I don’t have time for it. I’m so busy. I don’t have time for writing.

36:30
I’m short with my wife and kids. I’m not interruptible. As I’m working, if my kids can’t interrupt me or my wife can’t interrupt me, I feel thin. My favorite description of being overwhelmed is I’m so nerdy. is Bilbo Baggins in Lord of the Rings says he feels like too little butter spread over too much toast. I remember that mental image of that scraping of trying to…

36:57
I’ll have moments where my dials turned up like that and I have to start saying no to stuff and I have to start doing things differently and I have to start relooking at why I’m doing it in the first place. And then the other thing is like, I’ll do exercises. So an exercise I do occasionally is I’ll make a list of the things I do that are important and the things I’m doing because they make me feel important. It makes me feel important at a meet at a dinner party, be like, okay, 10 people on staff. Like, but

37:25
Is that important for me to have 10 people? Could I have four people? Could I have five people? Like it makes me feel important to say, oh, you should talk to my COO. And like, do I, do I need a COO? Like am I building a business that has that, that real need and it’s beneficial. So I’m often going, okay, where am I doing things out of ego versus out of I’m supposed to do them. And a lot of times I’m, you know, it’s, it’s wrong. And then the last thing I do is I try to practice self-awareness and my version of self-awareness. One of them is overhearing yourself.

37:55
when you can overhear the things you’re saying. And I’ll get into this rhythm where I can start to do that and I’ll notice on go, Oh, I didn’t like how that sounded. It came from me. Like I didn’t like the person that said that, Ooh, I took some steps down a path. didn’t intend to go down. So an example, or, or I’m limiting myself. An example of that would be just the other day, I caught myself saying to somebody, I’ve plateaued on my speaking fee because I’m not a celebrity and celebrities like you win a super bowl. can make

38:23
10 times what I make as a keynote and talk about throwing touchdowns. And I was like, so I’ve plateaued. And then I teach these three questions in this book, Soundtracks, wrote that say, it true? Is it helpful? Is it kind? Is it true that celebrities make great keynotes? It is. That’s true. Is it helpful for me to say that to myself again and again? It’s not because what I’m doing is saying, so therefore you don’t have to work hard. Therefore you can, like it’s over, whatever.

38:50
And so instead I switched it around and said, I’m going to make my content and my customer service so great that I get around the celebrity obstacle. I get around that. And so when you work with students, I guarantee you hear them say things like that, where you say, I think you should try this. And if they come up with their five excuses, you know, okay, they’re, so committed to the excuses. Like gay Hendrix. Yeah, I’m not tech savvy.

39:17
I’m not good at video. I don’t have a big network. I don’t live in a big enough city. You know, like I’m not an expert in 10 years. could be maybe do this, but like Gay Hendricks, who wrote the big leap says I get to keep the limitations I fight for. So if I fight for my excuses, if I fight for my limitations, get to keep them. So I’m trying to constantly like keep my finger on the pulse of that and go, okay, where am I at a balance or where am I stressed in the wrong way? What can I do about that?

39:47
Yeah, one thing that I’ve started doing, what’s funny is I started out teaching this class, but it’s turned out to be like a psychological class. You know, just dealing with the way people work. And what I found is that if you can get someone to just do a little teeny thing, like you don’t tell them all the work that needs to be done up front, you tell them to do a little bit. And then over time, you get used to doing that little bit of work on a regular basis. And then you can just gradually add on to it. And an example for me was I remember this was like 10 years ago.

40:16
Ramit Sethi came on stage. He told us all the things he was doing with email and his autoresponders. I’m like, oh man, that’s overwhelming. And so I went up to him I was like, how do I, it just seems so overwhelming to implement all that stuff in one go. He’s like, oh no, no, no, just start by sending out one email a week. And I’m like, oh, okay, I can do that. And then gradually, it’s just like one video a week for YouTube or one blog post a week. And then gradually I’m used to that. And then I can increase it just a little bit. And before you know it,

40:46
I’m writing all the time or putting out all the time. A hundred percent. I think that’s, you know, the way I sometimes describe that is if you think about a goal, like a ladder, most people only have two rungs. So imagine a 12 foot tall ladder. There’s one rung at the top that says make a million dollars in my business. And there’s a rung at the very bottom that says, start my business. And there’s no rungs in between. So the person sits there and goes, okay, I just have to jump up 12 feet, which is two feet higher than a basketball room. Grab that rung and pull myself up where my approach is more.

41:16
What if we put a rung every six inches? Like, could you climb to the top of that ladder? And they’ll go, yeah, that would be really easy. And sometimes they feel it’s too easy and that’s self-sabotage and there’s all these things, but I’ll go, let’s figure that out. Like, how do we add some rungs to that? Which are those little things like Rameet? He didn’t say to you, you just got to get it together, Steve. Like, don’t be lazy. He was like, no, just, just do this, you know, and here’s, and plus like in a speech, somebody’s experience is condensed. Like,

41:43
You’re often looking at nine years in 30 minutes and you forget that. Like, you know that intellectually, but you forget it in the moment. And the other thing is I wouldn’t have done half the hard things I’ve done if you told me how long it would take and how hard it would be at the beginning. If somebody at the beginning, like I got to speak at this event called global leadership summit, which was amazing. It was so fun. And it probably took me 12 years to get on that stage, like 12 years. that like, but if, if you had told me at the beginning of that, like, Hey,

42:12
you’re going to get to do this really fun thing. It’s going to take you a dozen years. That would have been so demoralizing to me. And I wouldn’t have been able to receive that and certainly been encouraged by that. the little one email is to me, it’s just another rung on the ladder. And that’s why I tell people all the time, like, want to start a business. And you’re like, what would it look like to spend half an hour thinking about what type of business it would be? Or what would it look like to spend, know, because what’s funny is

42:40
I’ll have people say to me about business. They’ll go, I want to start a business, but what if I get sued by one of my customers? And I’ll be like, do you, do you have a product yet? And you’re like, no, Mike, do you have a customer yet? And they’re like, no. I’m like, well, that we can’t, let’s not fix a fictional problem. Let’s go. Like we don’t even have that problem. They’ll say, what if I sell out? What if the product sells out? And I go, do you, do you have like a storefront yet? And they’re like, no, but what if like, and all these people are mad at me you’re like, they don’t exist yet. Like.

43:09
let’s figure it like, let’s do the first thing and then we’ll get to that. But I think sometimes we fantasize about future problems that prevent us from taking like today steps. What if someone copies my product is a big one. I’m like, well, if they’re copying it, then that means it’s selling well. You’re doing well. what if somebody steals? Yeah, I on the writing front, people say, what if somebody steals my ideas? And I do you ever see a read Derek Sievers book? I think it’s anything you I have. So his metric, his thing in there, I think it was in that book.

43:39
where it’s idea times execution. So the idea is worth one and the execution is worth 10. So he’s like, most people will never execute your idea. Don’t even worry about it. Everybody has ideas. They don’t execute them and they certainly don’t execute them faithfully and consistently. So don’t worry about that. So that always makes me think, oh yeah, I don’t need to worry about that. If somebody does that, they’re probably not going to.

44:07
go as long as I go on this. Like they’re not going to put 10 years in. So it’s not a big deal. Yeah. John, it’s funny. When you’re talking about evaluating, you know, what’s on your plate and that sort of thing. Why does the world need another book? All it takes is a goal. You’ve already hit, I mean, you hit the New York Times bestseller list, which is like the pinnacle for an author, right? But you continue writing these books that are amazing. What motivates you to write this book? Tell us about this latest edition that’s coming out, I think in like a month, right?

44:37
Yeah, it comes out of September whenever I don’t know when this is going to air, but it comes out September 12th. So here’s how I, this is my, like, this is my Venn diagram for starting a business or writing a book. And I’m sure you might have different things you tweak, but I look for three things. I look for a personal connection that I’m deeply passionate into the idea. Like I, I have to be personally connected to the idea. The second thing I look for is a need like

45:04
Is there a real need for it? So for instance, am I hearing about it from neighbors at the pool? Am I seeing it online? Like, am I seeing clients ask me about it when I go speak at their companies? And the third thing I try to find is, is there a spot for me in the marketplace? Like, can I fit in in the marketplace somewhere? So the thing I’ll sometimes say is, if you have a passion and there is a need, but it’s already over-served in the marketplace, that’s a cake pop. Like if somebody told me like, hey, I got this crazy idea I’m going to do, it’s called cake pops. I’d be like, oh.

45:33
They’re already at Starbucks. Like you’re late to that. If you have a crazy passion, nobody’s serving it in the knee in the marketplace, but nobody needs it. That’s a hobby. Like I love that you’re into ferrets, but like there’s not a huge need for that. And if you have a need in a marketplace, but no passion, you just built yourself a day job. and you’re not going to. So with this book, I went and dropped, uh, brought my daughter, my oldest daughter to college for a tour. was a college I went to college. My wife went to, and we’re walking around and my wife is like,

46:00
wasn’t college amazing. I was like, no, it was a train wreck. Like it was horrible. Like I, I wasted so much of my time there and, I was having this real moment of regret. Um, and so then I, when I drove back to Nashville, because I just written this book about mindset, I was like, well, let’s change that mindset. That was four years. I might live 40 or 50 more. What can I do with those? Is there a way to live into your potential? Like on purpose? Like, what does that look like? And so then I had the first piece, which was passion. And then the second piece was need.

46:28
I’ve got this PhD who’s a professor here in Nashville and he and I did a survey with 3000 people and said, are you living up to your potential? And 96 % said no. And 50 % said 50 % of them was untapped. So then I had the need. So then I went to the marketplace, which is pretty easy for me, which is usually just Amazon. I realized there’s a ton of books about potential, but a lot of them are very high level and very holistic. And they kind of like, they say things that you go like, what do I do with that? And my, my

46:58
content I try to create is I’m always trying to answer the question for people, what do do with this on a Tuesday? Like, what do do with this on a Tuesday? How do you actually put this into, you know, into action? And so I felt like I had the three things. And so the quick answer to why does the world need another book is like, I needed another book first. And then I tested to see if my audience needs that book. And then I tested the ideas with hundreds of people first. So that, that’s what’s changed about my writing process as a, I think, and I think you would probably agree with this, like,

47:28
I live in Nashville. You’d agree with that because I do. That’s true, Steve. I don’t know why you’re being argumentative, but to be a long-term musician in Nashville, you eventually had to be an entrepreneur. Like you eventually have to have some business acumen. like Taylor Swift is a brilliant CEO. Like she’s doing so many smart things. Garth Brooks is a CEO. My friends who are musicians who never caught the big break, but still have full-time careers.

47:57
are entrepreneurs, like they look at it like a business. I think about writing that way too. So I now know like one of the things that’s helped me is instead of releasing a book and hoping the ideas work, I test them in online communities. I have hundreds of people poke holes in them and go as a single mom, this isn’t how I’d look at it. As a retiree, this is not how. And so by the time the book comes out, there’s 30 to 40 real people in it other than me. Like you’re right.

48:22
I don’t need to write another book that’s kind of like a memoir. I’m 47. This is my ninth book. Like get over yourself at some, like what, what new part of my life I’m going be like, Oh my gosh, you need to see this side of me. But what I can do is say, here’s a challenge I face. Wow. A lot of people face it. I think there’s a fresh way to talk about it. Let’s go. I will say this, you know, when I first saw the title, if I didn’t know you and your history, and if I saw it for the first time, I would have been like, Oh, okay. Uh, you know, all it takes is a goal, but.

48:52
What I really like about your writing is you make it really fun. You tell stories. I ended up chuckling a couple of times reading the book too. let’s go, Steve. Let’s go. It’s hard to make me chuckle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s a steel. He’s a certain Asian man. Yeah. He’s, he’s an electrical engineer. He’s not here for you, for your riddles and your limericks. And I just love books about psychology, right? Because we’re all in our own have you read lately that you love?

49:19
Like what would have been the family first entrepreneur? hear that’s a great book. Nice. Nice. My favorite all time book actually is a influence psychology. yeah. By Chaldini and how to win friends and influence people. Uh, any book like that. I love, actually really like Michael Hyatt’s recent book also. Oh really? I forgot what it’s called. Make your mindset. I have it up in the back here. Yeah. It came out like six months ago. I mind your mindset. That’s what it was.

49:49
Basically how to reframe the narrative that that’s in your head because we all have narratives in our head. Yeah. I’m just a head case, John. I think that’s what it is. anything that can are you were you unusual in engineering that like that you cared about that stuff? Well, you know, what’s funny is I always hated the stereotype of being an engineer, you know, that we just heads down. But I was I was a stereotype. was heads down. The computer was my best friend. Yeah, but

50:18
Everyone always thought that I was more social than the average engineer. And I didn’t start embracing that until I started getting into business. Yeah, that’s interesting. yeah, I guess I’m always curious about what different types of books different types of people read. And you and I read a lot of similar books, but we have very different backgrounds. So that’s curious to me. Yeah. Yeah. mean, just the whole, maybe I should have majored in psych and not electrical engineering. Who knows? Okay. Well, let me ask you a question. So you know a little about what I do.

50:49
From an outside business perspective, what would you do differently? As you? Yeah. Well, I mean, we’re different people for, and I know you have courses. So for me, I, I don’t necessarily like doing customer service. So, which is why everything I do is kind of online, right? So we sell handkerchiefs and linens in our e-commerce store. That’s all online and the customer services through email and you know, it’s easy to, to farm out online course, one to many, it’s the same thing, right?

51:18
People are digesting the same amount of material. And I run customer service just once a week, pretty much in live office hours where I just answer questions in real time. Smart, smart. I found writing my book to be one of the most challenging things because I was under the impression that you put the book out there and if people love it, it just kind of sells itself. get it, dude. Selling books is hard in my opinion, but I don’t know. I didn’t realize that

51:48
It was harder to sell a book than it is like a $2,000 course. Which doesn’t make sense because the book is $19. But what you’re selling is actually work is what I discovered, right? Like people would rather watch a movie or video than read. At least my folks, I don’t know about yours. Well, the thing I’ll tell would be authors is walk down a plane and like the aisle of a plane in the middle of a flight and count open books versus open videos.

52:17
and then cry in the bathroom a little bit. And then, or I’ll say, go to Barnes and Noble and count the number of Harry Potter collectibles and puzzles versus like there’s been a, like it’s been growing the toy section of Barnes and Noble. So yeah, think it’s books are books can definitely be challenging, but I, what’s interesting to me from a business perspective is I sell two and a half times as many audio books as I do eBooks. And that’s been a change that I’ve noticed for the first time in the last like two years.

52:46
And I think it’s because of podcasts. think podcasts taught people there’s great content via audio and now more people are going to audiobooks. I read like from a business perspective, I read my own audiobook and I add 10 bonus stories. So that because there’s people that will be like, Oh man, I got the print book. Why would I get the audio book? And I want to be able to say, Oh, there’s a, there’s a whole other, you know, exploration in there. You should check that out. So I’ve over the years, that’s been a shift for me. You know, what’s funny is

53:14
I tried to veer from the script, but the director refused to let me say what I wanted to. As I was recording. to riff a little bit? I wanted to riff a little bit and I wanted to add a couple extra stories just kind of off the cuff. But I guess it depends on the director. me, like I’ve done it two or three books and we saw some success with it. So I felt like I had a little bit of an ability to say like, hey, here’s how, like, let’s try this. And I didn’t have a director. I had an audio engineer. I’ve had directors on different books.

53:44
But for the last two, was mostly an audio engineer and they were super like, yeah, dude, let’s do it. Let’s make it. So like, didn’t feel, you know, and there’s words I can’t say lie. Like I had to change rural road to country road. Cause I couldn’t say rural road. Like it’s hard. Like audio books are hard to record. So it’s fun that we have that in common that that’s something we’ve both kind of looked at. So do you sell more audio books than hardcover? Is hardcover last?

54:11
Unless the hard covers first. So I would say like if we broke it down, I would say right now it’s out of 10 books, seven print, three audio, one ebook. Like that’s the breakdown right now. So no print is still, but you have to remember I am a corporate speaker. So I’ll have, you know, I’ll go to an event and a corporation will buy a thousand paper back or paper hard, hard backs. So no, they never go.

54:39
We gave everyone in the audience a code to redeem, to get an audio book. like the nature of my business leans toward hardbacks. That makes sense. That makes sense. I wonder, I wonder how it works in just traditional online sales, not, not bulk buys. Yeah, I don’t know. I still think print is number one. It might not be as big a gap as mine, but I still think from what I’ve seen in authors I’ve talked to print is still we, you know, 20 years ago, we were like, the ebook’s going to kill print. Like it hasn’t, it’s been a slow death.

55:09
And it hasn’t happened yet. ebooks have gone down. yeah, there’s less. Yeah. So like, again, audiobooks, I think are eating ebooks lunch right now. Hey, John, I feel like I could talk you forever. we Yeah, it’s fun, Yeah, we appreciate you coming on. The book is available at every major retail store, I would imagine. Yeah, totally. Yeah. And you can johnacuff.com is my website and my podcast is called All It Takes is a Goal. So yeah, that’s where you find and I highly recommend it for anyone out there who’s

55:37
just looking to take some action and looking to trick yourself really into making forward progress. that’s good. Yeah, I like that phrase. That’s fun. Thanks a lot for coming on. Thanks for having me on, Steve.

55:52
Hope you enjoy that episode. Now, if you are having problems making forward progress with anything that you want to do, try some of the strategies in this episode and feel free to reach out. More information about this episode, go to mywifequitterjob.com slash episode 497. And once again, tickets to the Seller Summit 2024 are now on sale over at sellersummit.com. If you want to hang out in person in a small intimate setting, develop real relationships with like-minded entrepreneurs and learn a ton, then come to my event.

56:21
That’s over at SellersSummit.com. If you are interested in starting your own eCommerce store, head on over to MyWifeQuoterJob.com and sign up for my free six day mini course. Just type in your email and it’ll send you the course right away. Thanks for listening.