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The Business of Business Podcast


Jun 22, 2021

Visualize Your Goals and Build an Action Plan to Achieve Your Dreams with Steve Gamlin

Start to think of what your goals really are and what they look like. Feel like, sound like, even smell like attach them as emotionally as you can to your senses and really get a gut feel for what you want. In my definition of success may be different from yours, somebody else's and 10 different people could be all different.

About Steve

Now in his 17th year as The Motivational Firewood™Guy, Steve Gamlin shares his back-to-basics blend of positivity and humor with corporate and conference audiences around the country. Drawing from a decade in the radio industry, 7 years of stand-up comedy and a 30+ year personal development journey, Steve teaches his clients to ‘SEE’ their desired outcomes, understand their ‘WHY’...then build Action Plans to achieve them, utilizing his Vision Board Mastery program as well as live (and virtual) events.

www.motivationalfirewood.com

www.businessofbusinesspodcast.com

Full Transcript Below

Visualize Your Goals and Build an Action Plan to Achieve Your Dreams with Steve Gamlin


00:00:08

Roy
Hello, welcome to another episode of the business of business podcast. I'm your host, Roy, of course we are the podcast that brings a wide variety of guests that talk about a whole diverse set of topics, trying to, help our businesses out there succeed. Sometimes we don't know what we don't know. So we get some really good ideas. Sometimes we know where we need some help. We just don't know where to turn. That's kind of what we hope to provide you with this. Some answers, today we is no different. We are, very blessed to have Steve Gamlin with us. Steve is now in his 17th year as the Motivational Firewood Guy. And, he shares his back to basics, blend of positivity and humor with corporate and conference audiences around the country drawn from a decade in the radio industry, seven years of standup comedy in 30 plus years, personal development journey.


00:01:07

Roy
Steve teaches his clients to see their desired outcomes, understand their why, then build action plans to achieve them, utilizing his vision board mastery program, as well as live and virtual events. Steve, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to be with us. Looking forward to this.


00:01:28

Steve
Thank you, Roy. Very happy to be here. Thank you so much for inviting me. I appreciate it. Yeah, you bet. Yeah. I, you know,


00:01:34

Roy
Your message is awesome first, before we even jump into that, though, I'm going to hit you up on the, where you got the motivational fire would get, and that's interesting, but we've talked, prior to this, a lot about, just being nice about the whys, making sure our why's are really the, what we want the why should be and kind of how we get there and how we can build that roadmap. So, anyway, let's start out with, where did the motivational fire wood got come from.


00:02:05

Steve
Very early on in my speaking career, we're talking probably 2004, 2005. I was invited to attend a national speakers association meeting in the Boston area. Cause that's where I live is in the Northeast. And so I went down there. It was my first time. I got one of those, blue name, badges of shame is what I always called it because everybody just knows your note. You're new and you're clueless. I just have, written across this blue badge and I walked in and this gentleman comes over and says, hi, my name is Don. What type of speaker are you? And of course be new. I go, I'm a motivational speaker. He goes, all right, what sets you apart? I said, I want to help people. He goes, well, you're not helping yourself set yourself apart here. He said, so many of us are what makes you different? And he was so gracious and so patient and so generous with his time.


00:02:57

Steve
And he kid gloved me big time. I, he just helped after about five minutes of me trying to say what made me different? None of which made me different. I said, well, look, if someone's paying to come hear me speak, they've got a spark of something in their heart that they want better about their lives because they've done, right. You're a speaker. If I share a story or a lesson or one of my own examples of how I survived everything I did to my life and became successful as it's I'm sharing motivational firewood. If they add it to the spark and take an action, they can make their life better. He says, all right, one more question. Do anything about trademarks? I said, none of that. He said, I really liked that concept because he goes, go write that down and then go look about trademark.


00:03:39

Steve
About $1,100 later, I've, officially been trademark or register whichever one, the motivational fire wood guy. Nice.


00:03:47

Roy
I like that concept too. Cause that's what we got to have that spark in order to, start the bigger fire. Unfortunately, if we don't have that, it's hard to, spark somebody else. So that's a very good illustration. Let's talk about seeing, what we want and the why I'll let you choose where you want to start. And, don't be concerned. We're not under attack. We just live pretty close to an air force base. They're flying of train in the train in this morning. If you hear it coming over, it's a, actually it's a comforting feeling for us when we don't hear them flying. We always question what's going on.


00:04:29

Steve
Well, the importance of seeing what you want, I mean, over the years we get the people that do their new year's resolutions and what are they right? Every year they bust out their broad brush pencil and they're right. I want to be happy. I want to be healthy. I want more money. Well, seeing people say that every year. Right during that week, between Christmas and new year's, they look in their living room and they're cleaning up and they see this little folded piece of paper, keeping the lamp from rocking. It's got some salt sustains on it and the pizza guy's number and they go along to where this is, then they'll put up, they go, oh crap. It was my resolutions for this year. Right? Exactly. What do they do? They changed the date. They just make them for next year. Right? So what I do with people, individuals, entrepreneurs, and company teams that say, look, all right, companies, stop handing down these numbers every year with the numbers and said, here's your goals? And people stop broad, brush him like he happy, healthy and more money, right.


00:05:25

Steve
Start to think of what your goals really are and what they look like. Feel like, sound like, even smell like attach them as emotionally as you can to your senses and really get a gut feel for what you want. In my definition of tests may be different from yours, somebody else's and 10 different people could be all different. If we each dial into what we want and in the case of the work teams that I work with, if you walk into work everyday or dial in or whatever it is you do now, if you're connected to why you're there, right. What that paycheck is going to help you to earn in, do it would all of you collectively bringing that energy and dedication to creating your own individual goals and achieving them what that's going to do for the company talking about engagement. Yep. That's what I do with people is break it down to what do they look like? Feel like sound like in many cases, even smell like or a goal.


00:06:15

Steve
Yeah. That's where I start with people.


00:06:17

Roy
I think that's a good point. You bring up the Y and when we set goals, it's good to, instead of me just telling you, I need you to do 80% of this, why and the how, and a, a, just a brief example is in, when I was younger, I worked for a public utility and we had these big, old, rubber gloves that, when we got around anything that was energized or we thought may be energized, we put them on, they had inner liners, the rubber glove, and then a big outer leather glove. There was a very specific way that you had to fold them to put them back in their little carrying case. And, we had safety guys that would come out and that was the first thing they'd check. And, you get deemed, if they weren't right. I'm telling you for about three years, I could not get those right.


00:07:06

Roy
Every time I took them out, I had to go back to a manual to figure out how they went in there until the guy took me aside and says, here's why you do this. And all the pieces fell into place. I'm like, okay, now I get it. I understand. I remembered it for the next 20 years. Never even had to think about it again. Yep. Yeah.


00:07:27

Steve
It just provides such a roadmap when, Y the story behind something, right. It's like, you're playing a role. All of a sudden the script becomes so natural. Right. It just becomes a part of who you are when you're connected to that. When you said he was going to show you why I thought he was going to show you some like really crispy critter, after pictures, like back in biology in college, they go, here's what a combine can do on a farm know, they show that. Yeah, yeah, no, that's what I thought. That's where that was going to go for a second. I get nervous. And, they actually,


00:08:01

Roy
Used to the power company would come out and they would take hotdogs and stick in those, fingers and poke a hole in them and, show you what you did if you didn't take care of what would happen to you. Yeah, I mean, this was just the simple of, you put the inner liners palms together, and then the outer ones went with the palms out, just in case you had any splinters in them. It wouldn't poke a hole, but, like I said, for a couple years, I just couldn't figure it out. I couldn't wrap my head around it until, somebody said, this is exactly why you do that. So I think it's important. We talk it's off track, but when we'd bring people into our workplace or on our teams, sometimes it's like, here's your chair, here's your computer, here's your task. We don't really give them the how integral part do you play in this whole operation? And I think we, as managers, as company owners, I think that we miss out on, that's our deficiency that we really don't sit down and educate these people on the wide range of where do you fall into this bigger scheme of things and just how important you are, because I don't think people realize in their job it's vital.


00:09:16

Roy
You're not just somebody that we could do without you're vital part of this team. Here's why, because, we wouldn't need you if you weren't an important.


00:09:24

Steve
Yeah. I used to tell the companies I worked with, they said, look, even if we don't do vision work project right off the bat, I'll tell you what the holidays are coming up. Best thing you can give each one of your team members is a picture frame and you ask them to put whatever's most important to them in their lives. Why they're there for that paycheck every week in that frame. Once a week, I want you to take five minutes and have a conversation with someone about what's in their frame. Just say, what story behind that, or, wow, who is that? Or what is that? Or why is that so important to you? So you're going to start seeing the why and hear it and feel it. You also get a feel for what these team members are all about and how best to communicate with them and support them and cheer them on.


00:10:05

Steve
And, just start connecting with people at that level. Yeah, you don't get the old crack, the whip, here's your numbers, here's your guests, your computer, and catch it at the end of the year and see whether or not we're going to keep you on. Yeah.


00:10:18

Roy
And, and I, I do some work with companies on employee retention. Of course that's one of the big steps is getting to know your people beyond just getting to know. I think that guy's name is Steve. He says like three chairs down, or, he shows up every now and then it comes in, I guess he's a worker. I don't know what he's doing here, but anyway, get, really get to know them, their families, you should know everything about them and it's not always easy, but you have to take that extra step to have that connection in order to, I think I feel to keep people engaged and, keep that whole team spirit going because I, I feel like if I just leave Steve over in his corner working, Steve may not be happy. And, instead of getting his job done, he may be over there looking for, he may be scrolling through a one ad or postings trying to see where he can go next.


00:11:14

Roy
So, that personal connection, it's just invaluable. And it's something that we've lost. I feel like, I, I am a show my age for a minute here, but, instead of picking up the phone and calling you is like, I'm just going to send you a text or an email, hope that you respond and hope you get the message and you take it well, instead of having that personal communication. Anyway, didn't mean to derail you there, let's talk about the vision of the vision board and that whole process. It's always very interesting to me because it, I think we can do that as a company probably, and then also can do that as individuals. I'll let you kind of take off on that one where you want to start.


00:11:58

Steve
Sure. Yeah. I first heard about vision boards back in the early two thousands when the secret came out well, the secret I've got mixed feelings on the secret. I was a big fan of it and I still am, but I think they got some of the things wrong, like putting in the genie in the magic lamp, like your wishes, my command, okay, you went a little overboard there, but two-thirds of the way through the secret DVD, there was a guy named John ass wrath, and he was talking about how he had built vision boards in the past. And he had them boxed up. One day his son was asking what's in the box and he showed him and he said, oh my gosh, we're actually living in the house that I poured on my vision board several years before. It's having, it's not a magic slate or a magic lamp, but what it is really dialing in what you want your goals to look like, and then identifying with as much detail as possible and connecting to it as best you can to plant that seed.


00:12:51

Steve
What it also does is when you put that kind of an emotion in your head, the opportunities to get there, start to pop up all around you. You're going to hear things that you'll wait a second. That might be my next step to get to. Now that I know what the X is on the treasure map, at least I can point in the right direction, right? Meet the right people, engage in the right resources, learn new skills. If I have to make connections with certain people. Yeah. That's what I try to do with the vision boards with the way I do it. Versus like at the beginning of the year, you hear people say, Hey, we're having a vision board party with wine, cheese crackers says the moon steaks. People show up to those that drink a little wine. They laugh. There's good energy in the room.


00:13:32

Steve
Some of them bring all the pictures of things they already want, or they sit there laughing and joking, cutting up magazines and they glue them on a board. Well, they haven't done any of the work yet, right. In my opinion, to establish where they are now and assess where they are now. Right. Figure out where they want to be. So they can establish that road right. To wait. I mean, if you're just sitting there drinking your wine and hanging out with a bunch of people laughing, you're going to think a bunch of pictures are really sexy that day. And this is what I want. When a couple of days later you might look at it and go, it's not feeling it. And I'm not inspired by it. Believe me, I know this, my first two vision boards I made in 2005 or an absolute mess, they were worthless.


00:14:11

Steve
Now it, two weeks later, I just looked at it and go, well, this is all stuff I could have just busted out depending on dear Santa Claus, no one connected, except for building a recording studio. That's the one thing I, I was so connected with that. I made it happen that year.


00:14:27

Roy
Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. The, I think the roadmap concept, because you use this in strategic planning for people and it's like, everybody wants to get on board with, and I always kind of use geography, but it's like, okay. We really want to end up in Chicago this year. That's where, you know, that's our place. That's great. Okay. If we don't know where we're at, we don't know whether to turn, go to the east or we don't know where to go to the west. If we're in Utah and we said, well, maybe we'll just head out to the west. We're never going to make it. I think that's one thing I always tell people is, if financially, or, in a lot of realms of planning is you've got to know where you are and you have to do a really honest assessment either. We can't do the smoke and mirrors of where we hope that we are, where we would like to be.


00:15:21

Roy
I mean, it's like, we're really, are you in this process?


00:15:25

Steve
Yeah, yeah, exactly. You got to know. It's just like, when you plug in a GPS or you use Google maps, it will determine where you are. With like my old GPS, I had to, turn it on. It, won't figure out by satellite where I am. Even older, back in the days of the roadmaps, when you unfolded it to the size of the picnic table, you had to know where you were to be able to know how to get where you want to go. And it's the same way. I mean, there's seven steps in my vision board mastery program. I 10 steps, sorry, we don't even gather pictures till step seven or six are all assessing where you are and where you want to go. Yeah. That's, that's not serious vision board parties. Well, they may not have the depth of work. That's where I created the t-shirt line that says friends, don't let friends attend vision board parties.


00:16:14

Steve
It's all pretty good because people thought it was funny.


00:16:17

Roy
Yeah. Well, and the other thing I think that, comes out of the, that party environment like that, or if we just tell somebody to do it is, the vision is nice, but we need the, I think the meat of that project is what are those steps that we have to put in place in order to get there. I, I'm not saying that, okay, we want to get, a certain goal, we can put five steps. Those are going to be dynamic. I I'm kind of phrasing this as a question, but my opinion is, those are dynamic. That's where we start off today. As we start that journey, we may discover new information or new things that we need to add or subtract. It's, it should always be, I guess, in a way that you can update that.


00:17:04

Steve
Yeah, no, everything's a work in progress. Yeah. I've had people a month after doing events, call me up and go, Hey, Steve, I achieved this goal. I'm like, great, excellent, awesome. I'm jumping up and down and cheering and clapping and here in the studio, and then I'll say, all right, what's next? Like you wanted this, what could this lead to? And then they'll say, well, this, all right, what does that look like? And then I'll say, no, go ahead and put that picture over the other picture, but leave a quarter inch hanging out. If you have a really successful year, your vision board might look like a relief map of Dakotas, but it's always a work in progress. It, no, it's not a, it doesn't have a beginning or an end until you make another board, which is the continuation of your board. That's what I tell people.


00:17:50

Steve
Don't throw these out 10 years from now. You may have five of them or 10 of them in your office. Go back to that first one, look where you are now, it could blow your mind. Yep.


00:18:03

Roy
Which also brings us to a good point that I'd, something I've tried to become more evangelistic about is celebrating our wins. I guess that it also gives us a, something we can look back on because as people as humans, I guess we tend to be hard on ourself. I use this example all the time that, I got 10 things on my to-do list today. I get seven of them done. Instead of celebrating 75%, which if I could hit 75%, I'd be making millions of dollars in baseball. I think about those three that I missed and I spend time, why didn't I get those three? And we started out those three, instead of saying, what, I got seven done. Awesome. And move on. Anyway, just the keeping, the vision boards, I think is a good idea. So we can celebrate our accomplishments.


00:18:56

Steve
Yeah. I have people reach out to me. I, I tell all my clients is to look every time you achieve even an incremental part. I talk about it like an old wooden rollercoaster, because it has to go click, and you got to do every single quick fee to the top of that first hill, because it's all the way the mechanics of it work. Right? You can't skip you. Can't cheat. There's no hacks. There's those super secret formulas. You have to take every single one. You can go over the top and enjoy the ride. Right. I tell all my clients, I said, look, if you have a significant click that happens during the week and you share it on social media, you had better tag me on that because we have a hashtag with my clients. It's hashtag click, baby click. Oh, cool. Celebrate all the incremental.


00:19:38

Steve
I get tagged almost daily on social media. I'm in here jumping up and down, smiling, laughing, Hey, sometimes I cry with my clients. They're so overjoyed at something. I sit there and I get emotional with them. It's, it's beautiful. It's all comes down to those little clicks and you got to celebrate those seven out of 10. And, and believe me, I've been guilty of staring at the three and saying really why exactly I'm celebrating the me. I've done it too. Yep.


00:20:02

Roy
Yep. We do. I think that's the benefit of having a coach, somebody like yourself, because, I call you up and say, Steve, left three on the table today. He'd be like, yeah, but what'd you take off the table, ? And again, if we prioritize where the seven you got done where the high priorities, then it's a win. I mean, we'll take that and win every day. The, yeah know, so.


00:20:28

Steve
I work with my people too, like don't oh, I'm sorry. No, no, you're fine. Go ahead. You work with your people. It's going to say, when we look back at those first steps and we're going to be perfectly imperfect, especially at the beginning, and we're going to be clunky or we're going to be awkward. So wins are going to be ugly. I used to be so bad. I look back at my early stuff and I'd go, oh my God, how did anybody pay me to deliver that? And I would take stuff down offline over the past couple of years, I adopted a new way to look at my earliest steps and my earliest interviews, my earliest creations, I just look at it and I go, oh my gosh, that's adorable. It's soft. Blows it a little bit. It also helps me realize how far I've come.


00:21:08

Steve
So yeah. Cause some people say, well, Steven's just this like, well a week ago you wouldn't have even been done. Just that. So, all right. How, how comfortable are you going to be? Next time? One of my clients did her very first radio guest interview last week on Friday. She was nervous all week and she sent me a message Friday afternoon. She goes, oh my God. That was so amazing. I have another one Monday. I'm so excited. She goes, now I get it. Yeah. Consistency plus momentum equals competence. So she's off and rocking. Well, and.


00:21:36

Roy
A couple of other things is that w we, for some reason we think that when we're at starting 0.0, that we should be the expert and do everything right. And get everything right. Which, that's something, that's a message. I think social media has perpetuated because we only see the good things. We never see those bad things. And, just like myself, there's a lot of things out there that I'm not proud of, but I look at them as, what it was a bad day, or it was that growth phase that, you're getting over. It kind of shows you how far you come. The other part of that is, we're not going to be on our game every day. I would love to because I have awesome guests. And, this is such a fun thing to do this podcast, but I mean, I'm going to tell you, I got times that, maybe I'm just not feeling it that day.


00:22:26

Roy
It's a, a lot clunkier of a show than what some of the better ones are. We just have to say, what, that's life, what is it? Success? Doesn't look like a, a line from the bottom left to the top ride. I mean, it's like, you're all over the place as you go through there. Oh.


00:22:46

Steve
Yeah. I used to tell people, I said, look, it's like dry. It's like trying to draw something on an Etch-a-Sketch in the backseat, Ricard doing 85 miles an hour over speed bumps. That's, that's what the road looks like. Exactly. Exactly.


00:22:59

Roy
Let's talk about what do we want to put on our vision boards and how we select it? Cause we've had a lot of conversations, about happiness and what we think about happiness is, and, so let's talk about what, how would we best suited to select these items that we want to put up?


00:23:24

Steve
I think the first thing people need to understand is that we always hear the whole work-life balance thing. People think it's work in it's life. I prefer Tony Sai was the CEO of Zappos for many years. Very sadly. He passed away recently. One of the concepts that he championed was work-life integration, meaning all parts of your life because you wear so many hats all day long, right? so I work with a life wheel and it's a pretty standard thing. That's out there in personal development. It talks about, let me see if I can get them all, your career, your finances, your physical health, your emotional wellbeing, your relationships, your connection with the world in a real way. Your spirituality, your ethics, morals, integrity are in there as well. All these different parts of your life is where I start with people. I said, look, if even if you just set one goal for each of them for the entire year, right, you're going to be so much farther ahead than most other people.


00:24:16

Steve
You're going to all of a sudden find out that they all work together. Like if you would intentionally say, here are the emotions. I want to feel them on a more regular basis that may change some of your relationships. You may cancel some of them. Yeah. Because they bring you down. You may want to be around the people who put you in that mood all day. Great. If you eat well, if you get enough sleep, if you drink enough water during the day, you're going to have enough energy to do more work, to make your career better, to make more money. That's great. Connection with the real world right now where we're so virtual with a lot of things, a lot of people miss that day-to-day connection. I seen so many people out there saying, when this is all over, I'm going to hug. Like it's ugly because right.


00:24:57

Steve
Cause they want that connection again. Some people and you, and I will find that it's very hard to believe. Some people will. There are people out there whose ethics and morals are really low because they want to succeed financially. That happens as well. What I try to tell people is they go, well, look, mine are all good. I said, okay, think back to the last 10 business decisions and interactions. Were you that ethical integrity, moral person in every single one of them? Yeah. I might've fudged jumping a little. Okay. Well, let's just make sure that from now on, we try to live up to the best of what we feel is the best version of us. Now, what society tells us, what we can live with. Right. And, and all those things added together is what will, can make you happy because if I'm happy, then this must be working in this and this.


00:25:47

Steve
They all work together. Yeah. Because if we, I was a workaholic for my decade on the radio, I worked 50, 60 hours a week and I was deejaying weddings and corporate events every weekend. I absolutely fried myself. I wasn't sleeping. Well, I was eating. I was living on fast food. Yeah. At age 35, I was just falling apart physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, just falling apart. That's what led to me becoming a speaker was that whole year or two in the ashes of all of that. Yeah. That's when I started to learn what I now teach everything I teach now came out of my notes. Cause I'd take a lot of them. Yeah.


00:26:25

Roy
Yeah. It's a, it can't be a detriment, but I'll speak for myself. That when you enjoy what you like, it's like, you never work. You're having fun or that's your hobby, but you can still tend to overdo it. You still have to, I've got somebody that can tap me on shoulder and say time to turn it off and let's have a little us time and, take that time for our relationships instead of, but it's not a drudgery in that, but that can be a drawback because it's not a drudgery. It's fun. There's always like 10 other things to do. And you're always scrambling around that. It can get you in trouble if you're not careful. So, the other thing I, like you saying about drinking water, sleeping and eating. Cause I, I used to have a note over my desk that I had like six or eight things that, I needed to do every day.


00:27:18

Roy
That's it because sleep is so important to us, being happy and healthy, which kind of leads us to the next thing is our happiness. It's a tricky thing because I think on our vision boards, a lot of times we want to put the big house, the fancy car, all these, monetary gains, things like that objects. Very seldom, when I see these, do I, you see people with relationships or health or all those things. I, I guess let's just talk for a minute about that false sense of happiness. I put the big house up there and so I'm working work in, I get it. It's like, okay, now what, there's that let down, you don't get that emotional high. Like I achieved it. It's it's there it's because that's really not where that happiness is going to come from.


00:28:18

Steve
Right. I mean, you were sold a bill of goods because you probably saw some big motivational guy who in a video and he's there kneeling next to her, his Lamborghini with the yacht in the background and the mansion and all that. What most people don't know is all those videos. Most of them are all just rented anyway. Yeah. Those videos, but you were sold what somebody else's opinion was of happiness and you're not emotionally tied to it. Yeah. You were just told that. That's what it is. W you follow that and all of a sudden, if you do happen to achieve it, Hey, rock on good job. You're not emotionally connected to, which is the approach. I try to tell people and some of the people I talk to and say, Steve, all I want is a cabin in the woods with a really good wifi signal.


00:29:02

Steve
I'm happy because I can go fishing at lunchtime or I can go snowshoeing in the winter. They said that, and I, I sit there and I watched them while they're telling me the stories. That's my favorite thing is telling me the story behind that, like, why you want it when I see them light up, I go, okay. I believe you. Yeah. What can we do to get you there? Yeah.


00:29:20

Roy
I'm going to tell you my story because it ties in, it's funny you say the cabin in the woods with wifi. I mean, I've got two or three right at this moment. We're working on the wifi, but, about six years ago, I just made a decision to, sell everything and move out to a little cabin in the woods. And, it sounds counterintuitive, but I'm the happiest now because I don't have all these, all this stuff. I mean, it's just stuff to keep up with, but I get to wake up in the morning and see the deer out in the back feeding, I got woke up last night with, my, one of my cameras outside going off. It was a little family of raccoons that was running across the front porch. So, to me, those are the things that really bring me joy. Every time we get out, walk around and go walk the dogs and all that, it's like, eh, it just makes me well up that, with that happiness.


00:30:20

Roy
It's, like I said, it's counterintuitive because we took a huge step. What a lot of people would say a huge step backwards, but it's been the most awesome thing because this is what we enjoy. This is what we want. And, people talk about being on vacation. I'm like, were lucky. We were on vacation every day. You know, we live in paradise. All we have to do is step outside. I guess the point with all that is just be very selective and be very thoughtful and mindful of what we put on these boards that, what do we want to achieve? What is really going to bring us that happiness?


00:30:56

Steve
Yeah. Most definitely. I, sometimes I have people that say, well, Steve, I've got three or four different ideas. I don't know which one's going to make me happy. I said, okay, you have a mirror in your house anywhere. Yeah. All right. You get the pictures. I want you to look in that mirror and I want you to hold up the picture in the mirror and look at it and then look at yourself. Whichever one makes you smile the most start there, because that way it's really you and it's your heart and it's your mind. It's your, who you really are. Right. That you're going to be that tied to it. I mean, there are people out there and I've seen these by our vision board starter kit. We've got a picture of a house, sit, a car and all this stuff. Like, really somebody asked me to Steven should make a vision board starter kit.


00:31:40

Steve
Oh, hell no, because I don't know what you want. Right. Right. I would never do that to somebody it's all about you. If the lessons I share inspire you to dig deep in yourself and find it rock on, we win. Yeah. To tell someone what success is and have them buy into that, boy, that's going to be a hollow victory when they yeah. They scrape in their way to the top of that hill thinking that's where the happiness was. Well, it was your credit card has already been charged and you just bought somebody else's dream. Yeah, exactly.


00:32:12

Roy
Yeah. We need to really make these personable. And, I think, just give it some thought, it's not something I think you can just put together. I like your idea about holding the picture up in the mirror and saying, this is really me. Because, sometimes it's not, sometimes it's what we expect, what we think society expects of us, which it's, that's just, that leads to a lot of heartache. Yeah. And some of us are again, because.


00:32:41

Steve
Some of those victories are really all over. Yeah.


00:32:43

Roy
Yeah. Some of us, we're lucky enough to find out what we really love and what we really want and are blessed. Some people, I think, I guess you just have to do a lot of soul searching and a lot of reflection, take some time out for yourself just to be alone with your thoughts. I think that's something that we don't do enough. These days we've got so much stimulation with computers and phones and go in here and go in there that we really need to take more time to just be with our thoughts.


00:33:13

Steve
Yeah. And, and I, I recommend to people, even if you burn it after I don't care, put pen to paper, write in, just go be brutally honest with yourself about start off with what you love most about your life right now. Like what's really going well, what's making you happy. It could be the tiniest thing that you make the best pancakes of anybody you've ever met. Awesome. Start with that. I make great pancakes and just start from there about what you like, and then switch gears and say, all right, what's not perfect yet. Yeah. And then this is nothing I've created. I mean, other people may industry say this. I want people to understand that I'm sharing what has come into my circle. I then share back. That's one of the best things is I put pen to paper every day. I start everyday with three moments of gratitude, the things I'm thankful for.


00:34:00

Steve
You want to talk about fueling your fire. You write down the three weirdest cool, fun, awesome, positive things that happened to you yesterday in less than a line each five years later, you did it. Right. You're going to feel that same joy just by reading it. And I've proven it over and over. Yep.


00:34:16

Roy
Yeah. Very important. Especially, in today, I think sometimes we can get hung up in that negative, but we do have some, most of us, there are people that have tragedies and I don't want to make light of that or be little them. We do go through those periods in life, but like went on a walk this morning and it was nice and crisp. When were coming back, the base, which is quite a ways away, they were playing, the, national Anthem. I just, were just talking amongst ourselves, like how cool is that? that we can hear this national Anthem from the base where we are, it's coming across some traffic and other stuff, that you'd think would cut it off, but it's just those little bitty things. I think when you have a clear head, you can just be, thankful for other people might consider that to be corny stuff, but it's really something to be, that we are thankful for.


00:35:15

Steve
Yeah. If you can find those moments every day, I mean, gosh, at the end of 2020, I saw these things on social media, Facebook described 20 in three words and I saw like 20, 30 different versions of total crap storm just in a row. I mean, I'm not even going to say what some of the words were because I want to respect your show when I wrote, learned new ways. Yeah. Because it did, it taught me, if anything else, the isolation and happened to switch to virtual actually is inspired me to, with my digital team, create new ways to deliver my programs and products throughout the world that we hadn't even thought of prior to that. Right. Now that's the basis of the core part of what we do. I can't say it was a throwaway year and I still managed to even in 2020 even been in the pandemic and one of my business just getting a wrecking ball to it, the DJ business is just gone because there's no events.


00:36:10

Steve
Yeah. I still wrote about a thousand moments of gratitude. Wow. Last year in the midst of it all. I've got close to a thousand reasons why last year was pretty dang good. Still despite everything else not to minimize. Cause I know a lot of people, I was hit very hard by it, but I choose to just keep finding that little bit of light coming through the clouds, even though where it is, storm it out there. Yeah. I just keep trying to follow wherever that lights hit and I want to stand there and look up through. Yeah. And you.


00:36:40

Roy
Know, my, I think my priest put it the best that I've heard in a while is that our minds are grinders and they grind 24 hours a day, seven days a week. We get to choose what we grind through there, whether it's the negative stuff that we pick up or the positive. And, I think in our previous conversation, we talked about this, that as long as we're grinding positive, there's no room for that negative, to move in there that we can kind of keep it pushed out. Not that we're not going to have a bad day. Not that something's not going to upset us, but when it does, we can think about, yeah, that went really bad, not happy, but let's think about what I am happy about for about five minutes and put that smile.


00:37:24

Steve
If nothing else, it puts us in a good place to take the next step. Like we're not just taking that negativity because what a lot of people fail to remember, we are 100% responsible for how we react and respond to what happens to us. It's on us too many people forget that, negative in negative, right. Back out nag notified. Yeah. Unfortunately. Yeah.


00:37:50

Roy
Yeah. We control our joy and I think that's, I will say that I have been guilty of this and it still happens is something bad happens in the morning and it just wrecks your whole day. I mean, you have to tell the wife and the kids and the dog stay away from me cause it's bad. He, at the end of the day, you think, well, why did I let that thing wreck my whole day? Because again, so many other great things, but then it kills your productivity. It kills your creativeness. It just really can set you on a bad path to spiral out of control. Best to, be in touch with yourself, pick up on those feelings so you can, kinda redirect.


00:38:32

Steve
Yeah. Or that it happened to me. Very, very. As you're saying that you see me nodding, I'm like I'm reliving a recent experience where I was trying to do an act of kindness and help a family member. I was frustrated because I had to help somebody else I felt should have been helping. Yeah. I had a compressor in the back of my Honda CRV and it rolled in the corner and the handle went right through one of the side windows and smashed it to bits. That day nobody wanted to come hear me. I finally got myself back under control. It took about a day and a half. I realized, look, nothing good has come from this, me being this way. I threw my little tantrum, I stomped my feet. I said a couple of loud words that my mom would probably roll her eyes at and get over it and went out and earn the money to pay for the replacement of them.


00:39:24

Steve
So.


00:39:24

Roy
No, and I think that's, we have to let ourselves feel that way. We can't not feel the upset, but I think it's, like how long do we let that go on? And, it's such a such good advice to just have our little, have our moment and then pick it back up and put the smile back on and figure out how we're going to get past this.


00:39:48

Steve
I think we should actually videotape ourselves having our little tantrums. When we're better look back at it and go really? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Again, oh my gosh, that's adorable. Look at him, throwing his little fit, look at what we stomped this feet. He's giving the finger to the door and it's some of it just comes off real silly when we get back in a good head space and we got to blow off steam now, and then it happens. It just does because I can't stand the people who say every day above ground's a great day, because that is the biggest steaming pile of crap ever. They're not all good, but it's how we react and respond to what, how we choose to proceed. That's that's what makes it a good and kind of tying.


00:40:34

Roy
That back to, our eating, drinking water and, getting our sleep and our exercise because that's the other thing, I try to, if I can get out and take a few walks every day, it makes me feel so much better, but I tend to handle adversity better when I'm, doing what I need to be doing for myself. We'll put it that way. I don't know how, when I'm taking care of me, it's like adversity doesn't. If you've been up all night eaten, been through the drive through the last three meals that you had, some little bitty thing will tend to set you off versus, when we're in a good space, we can deal with it.


00:41:16

Steve
Yup. Yup. It starts right from the get go first thing in the morning. I mean, I used to be like, grab some toast or if there's some leftover bacon or what we call paper bacon, you can cook it in the microwave in like 26 seconds. One day I said, look, I'm just feeling sluggish by nine o'clock. As I got bacon grease in my blood stream. I started just this mantra in my head. I said, let's take a trip to mango swamp. I started making smoothies with, either kale or, collard greens are real good for your heart. Mango or pineapple, a banana, some yogurt, some cinnamon in there too. Cause that's good for an appetite suppressant and some coconut water. I just started making these smoothies a couple of days a week and it only takes me a couple minutes. Yeah. And it tastes so good.


00:42:07

Steve
Ours got to remember to rinse the cups cause otherwise the kale gets stuck inside the straw and then it won't come out. My wife doesn't like that word. I just, I get up in the morning and I'll just be like, I'm feeling tired. I bet to get down to mango swamp. And I just gave it that name. So, someday I'll have a smoothie stand called mango swamp. Nice. It gets me in a good spot. I got better energy all day. It's these little decisions we make in getting enough sleep. If I'm not feeling it in the morning, I'll hit snooze and go back to sleep for an hour and wake up better. I just always do.


00:42:40

Roy
Yeah. When you, when you open up your smoothie truck, if you'll, park it at Hampton beach out there, I'll be one of the first customers lining up.


00:42:49

Steve
I'm going to put it right near blinks fried dough, which is legendary out that I'm just sit there and cry because I'll actually, I learned how to make fried dough as well. So, but the mango small swamp smoothie is probably a little better for me than all that fried note. Right. Exactly.


00:43:05

Roy
All right. Steve, we appreciate you taking time out of your day to be with us for sure. Today. It's been an awesome conversation. A lot of great things to think about before I let you go. A couple of questions first off is what is something that you use in your daily life, professional, personal what's something that you do that you really feel adds value?


00:43:25

Steve
I think the greatest thing I ever learned was the lesson I got from one of my grandfather and he never actually said it, but he lived it. It was just real simple leave at least one situation a day better than you found it. It could be with a kind word, an act of kindness. You could just smile at somebody cause you never know how their day's going. Right. If you just look for that opportunity to keep your head on a swivel. If you're one of those people that says, well, I never have ideas. Next time you go grocery shopping. If you see an abandoned carriage out there in the parking lot, don't complain that people are lazy and left it there, put it back in the corral or bring it all the way back to the store. If you can even better wipe the handle down and offer it to someone else.


00:44:05

Steve
Awesome.


00:44:07

Roy
Yeah, I think once we, once you do that enough, you'll start picking up things, but there's always something we can do to help somebody out. All right. Well, great. Well, Steve, how can people reach out and get ahold of you and get started, letting you help them coach them through this process?


00:44:24

Steve
Yeah. It's nice and easy. If you go to motivationalfirewood.com. Everything I have is right there under that roof. So motivationalfirewood.com.


00:44:33

Roy
Okay. Awesome. Well, thanks again, Steve. We appreciate it. A great conversation. You can find us of course, at www.thebusinessofbusinesspodcast.com. We're on all the major social media platforms. A, a video link of this will go up on YouTube as well when we get the, episode published. Until next time, take care of yourself and take care of your business.

www.motivationalfirewood.com

www.businessofbusinesspodcast.com