Does the thought of leaving the perceived safety of your 9-5 to become an entrepreneur scare the life out of you? If the fear of failure is holding you back, then today’s episode might help by shedding some light on a few common misconceptions about the risks of becoming a business owner.
This week on the podcast, Kristen is talking about why people fail in the entrepreneurial space with the author of Unlocking Your Potential, Jeff Lerner. From humble beginnings, Jeff started as a broke jazz musician and now builds 8 and 9-figure businesses. So when it comes to separating the good from the great in business and knowing how to set yourself up for success, he knows a thing or two.
Here’s what they’re talking about:
- Why Jeff believes employment is riskier than entrepreneurship
- Explanation of the time-money trade and why it might sabotage your growth
- Learning to become comfortable with risk
- How self-esteem plays a part in your success (or failure)
- The pitfalls of people pleasing in business
Success doesn’t come from learning how to create the perfect offer or the perfect Facebook Ad. It comes from investing in skills and personal development needed in order to grow not only your bottom line but also your confidence.
If you’d like to listen to Kristen’s interview with Jeff on his podcast, Unlock Your Potential Click Here.
To get your copy of Unlock Your Potential, Jeff Lerner’s new book, click here.
And if you want to check out Jeff’s podcast, Unlock Your Potential, on Apple Podcast or Spotify: Click here to listen.
Visit jefflernerofficial.com to learn more about Jeff and growing a business in the modern world.
Looking for a way to maximize your sales this upcoming holiday season? Then now is the perfect time to download your copy of Kristen’s new Monetize and Maximize Holiday Guide. Inside you’ll find simple and effective strategies designed to turn the last quarter of the year into your best. Click here to buy now.
Thanks for listening! Do you have a question about network marketing? Kristen can help! Drop your question here, and she just might answer it live on the podcast: https://Kristenboss.com/question
Connect with Kristen:
If you’re ready to learn the simple process of running your social selling business online, you have to check out Kristen’s live group coaching program! The Social Selling Academy: www.thesocialsellingacademy.com
Do you have a business full of customers and almost no builders? You’re in need of a reboot! Learn the three skills you can learn that will completely change your recruitment game. Check it out here.
Transcript for Episode #136 Why People Fail with Jeff Lerner:
Kristen Boss (00:00:05): Welcome to Purposeful Social Selling with Kristen Boss. I’m your host, Kristen Boss. I’m a mindset and business coach with more than 15 years experience in both the product and service based industries. I believe that social selling is the best business model for people wanting to make an impact while they make serious income. This is the podcast for the social seller who is tired of feeling inauthentic in their business and desires to find a more purposeful and profitable way of growing their business. In today’s social media landscape, in this podcast, you will learn what it takes to grow a sustainable business through impactful and social marketing. It’s time to ditch the hustle and lead from the heart. Let me show you the new way.
Kristen Boss (00:00:48): Hey, friends. Today I have my friend Jeff Lerner on this episode to talk about why we believe entrepreneurs fail and what skills it takes to have a successful career as an entrepreneur. If you don’t know who Jeff is, he’s the author of Unlocking Your Potential. He’s also the chief vision officer of entre, which is the world’s first unified physical, personal and professional development platform and one of the fastest growing education companies in the world. What’s cool about Jeff’s story is he actually started as a broke jazz musician to building eight and nine figure companies. He also has a top rated podcast he speaks. He’s also a father of four kids and a committed husband. He’s just an all around great guy. I love this interview with Jeff. We have just such an honest conversation about what we think separates the good from the great, why people quit, why people fail, and what we think it takes to have real success in this amazing thing called entrepreneurship. Can’t wait for you to listen. Enjoy.
Kristen Boss (00:01:57): Hey Bosses, welcome to another episode. Today I have my friend and guest, Jeff Learner with me and you guys. You are in for such a treat. Jeff has a wealth of value to share with you. I always try and bring on guests that add to the conversation, bring another perspective that maybe you haven’t heard before or maybe just to validate my perspective that I’m trying to give you week after week after week. But sometimes you need to hear it from somebody else with a different experience. And so I’m so excited to have you, Jeff, on the show. It’s going to be fun. We’ve got a lot to talk about.
Jeff Lerner (00:02:30): I am so excited to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this since our, When were you on my show? Like couple weeks?
Kristen Boss (00:02:36): I think it was just, yeah, two weeks ago.
Jeff Lerner (00:02:38): Yeah, I’ve been so excited for part two. I feel like it’s really just one episode in two parts. At least that’s kind of how I’m feeling.
Kristen Boss (00:02:45): So that’s how I felt too. So listeners, you can go over to Jeff’s podcast. We’ll link it in the show notes and you can look up the episode where Jeff and I are talking on his show. And it’s going to be kind of a continued conversation because honestly when I get to talking with Jeff, I’m like We could go for hours. There’s a lot we could say. It’s very fun. And also I feel like I have a kindred spirit with Jeff. I’m like, Oh, we see so many things eye to eye. We agree on a lot of things and how we see entrepreneurship, how we see business. So it’s super fun. And something I was thinking about for this podcast episode is I was thinking when I started out as an entrepreneur, I really had to pay to get in rooms to have access to these types of conversations.
Kristen Boss (00:03:26): So I feel like it’s a real treat for my audience to hear conversations that I had to pay to get in into rooms to hear people think like this and talk like this. So I’m excited to dive in a couple things I want to talk about. I have your book, Unlock Your Potential in front of me, and you say something in the cover of your book, and it kind of floored me. I knew these statistics, but I didn’t see the hard data. And I read that 54% of college graduates regret choosing to invest in a degree and more than 70% of Americans detest their jobs. And this was pre pandemic, right?
Jeff Lerner (00:04:01): Yeah. Yeah. That’s funny about both the marketing for the book and the content of the book itself is that it was all true two or three years ago when I was writing it and doing the research. And it’s all just twice as true now since the pandemic happened and the book was released post pandemic, but most of it was written pre or during pandemic.
Kristen Boss (00:04:23): Yeah, I would agree. I would think that the statistics are probably even more so now with people just unhappy with their jobs. Maybe in some cases it’s a little better with remote capabilities. And I think entrepreneurship has been more lucrative than ever. Because I think when people got a taste of working from home, I think we did see kind of a surge in the entrepreneurial space of people saying, Okay, I think I want to really test this out and see what this entrepreneurship is all about. And I love how there’s a lot of data in your book and it is, I love how the flow of it goes. I was like, Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. Even to talking about money, why people fail. So what do you think when people say, Yep, I want to do entrepreneurship. I do think there is a little bit of star eyed honeymoon hopes and dreams that people have when they choose entrepreneurship. So what do you think some of the, maybe, I don’t know, the mishaps or the myths that people have when they choose it and then they have their awakening to like, Oh yeah.
Jeff Lerner (00:05:27): This is what it is. Oh my gosh. I mean that’s such a huge monumentally important and dense question. And actually real quick, let me unpack that 54% stat. So it was interesting, that was sort of how the publisher articulated that stat. But what the actual data point was is that 54% of college graduates are currently employed either unemployed, meaning their degree, did not help them get a job, or they’re employed in a job that did not require a college degree. And so essentially the debt that they took on that both the opportunity cost and the time they spent and the debt they took on or whatever they did to pay for their diploma, that none of that actually netted into any economic benefit for them because either they’re unemployed or they didn’t need a degree to get their job anyways. And that’s stats like that are just all in that completely surround the fundamental question of the value of college education.
Jeff Lerner (00:06:31): I’m not saying I’m antico, nobody should go to college, but when you actually do the economic analysis of college degrees in student debt and what it all amounts to in this country you make up with, and my book flushes this out, you end up with a very strong sort of macro argument that it says based on the goals that most people have for their lives, the fundamental premise that entrepreneurship is risky and employment is more certain is actually completely backwards. I agree based on the goals that most people have for their lives, employment is actually risky because there’s virtually no chance of you actually achieving the goals that you have for your life, assuming you want a prosperous retirement and an abundant net worth and the ability to do the things that you’ve always, you’ve delayed gratification, waiting your whole life to do. And the math just doesn’t really work anymore that well around having traditional jobs for most people.
Jeff Lerner (00:07:32): I mean nothing is black and white strictly. And then entrepreneurship, there’s some other stats. You’re 11 times more likely to achieve a million dollar net worth as an entrepreneur than an employee. Boom. Hear that again. And I’ll flush out that data. And by the way, I realize I’ve not actually taken on the question you asked me about why people fail all that stuff. Good. But I just, I want to set the stage because you and I agree on something that is not yet mainstream. Conventional wisdom society is now at this point where it’s like, ooh, entrepreneurship’s kind of intriguing and oh wait, I’ve seen some stuff about it and I’m more open to it than I might have been 10 or 20 years ago. But people aren’t coming outta high school going, I want to be successful, I want to have a great life. And I am 11 times at the bare minimum of what I consider to be a great life financially.
Jeff Lerner (00:08:26): I’m 11 times more likely to achieve it as an entrepreneur. And by the way, as you go up the economic scale, that number just increases. If you get up to a net worth of an eight figure net worth, it’s like you’re 150 times more likely to achieve it as an entrepreneur then as an employee. Now, I mean, if you get to a nine figure net worth, it’s statistically the employment option isn’t even an option. It’s like only entrepreneurs unless you randomly are end up as executive vice president at Goldman Sachs for 30 years or something. It’s an anomaly at that point to get wealthy, not as an entrepreneur. But anyway, to just flesh out that statistic. There are, I want to say, and forgive me, it’s been a little bit, there’s 6 million millionaires that are employees in this country out of 150 million employees. So you basically have a 4% chance of becoming a millionaire as an employee having a million dollar seven figure net worth as an employee. Out of 150 million employees, only 6 million of them are actually have a seven figure net worth. So out of the remaining there’s 31 million small businesses now, sorry, there’s 20 million millionaires. So now the numbers are all coming back. So you have 6 million of them that are employees. Out of 150 million employees, that’s one outta 25. You have 14 million of the millionaires that are entrepreneurs out of 30 million businesses.
Kristen Boss (00:09:44): So what does that tell you?
Jeff Lerner (00:09:46): So 45% of business owners become millionaires and 4% of employees become millionaires. Thus 11 times more likelihood, almost a 50% probability of becoming a millionaire. If you can just keep your business open long enough for it to be counted in the census data.
Kristen Boss (00:10:03): And then we could talk a little bit more about, okay, so why aren’t we seeing more millionaires? Why the entrepreneurs that are choosing that, seeing the odds and reaching a million dollars. I can go on that all day, but I do want to add to the ST statistics as well. I heard Alex Hermo say this and he said, I think it was like 50% of kids that graduate high school today. So I don’t know if they’re still considered Gen Z or if they might be the cusp of the next, but they believe they’re going to be millionaires one and two graduates of high school believe they’re going to be millionaires specifically through the realm of entrepreneurship, which I think is pretty fascinating for me. That thought did not enter my mind in high school. And I do think, I love hearing how many millionaires there are because I think, I know for me, before I made a million dollars, it seemed very scarce.
Kristen Boss (00:10:53): I didn’t know anybody that made a million dollars except for people that were in Masterminds, people that had podcasts. It seemed like so few people made millions. But then I can’t tell you how often there’s, Oh my gosh, there’s millionaires everywhere. They’re everywhere. And they’re like, I call them kind of, my husband calls them secret millionaires. He loves to go around and be like, Where Beat up shoes? And he’s like, I love that. People don’t know. It’s so fun. But secret millionaires in the sense of, I can’t tell you how many business owners I know that have less than 5,000 followers on Instagram with eight and nine figure businesses. And it blows my mind and I love it.
Jeff Lerner (00:11:26): Right? Yeah, I mean, one of the great books about this subject, admittedly, and it’s aged pretty well, it’s about 20 years old now, but it was called The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley, and he was an economist. Oh, I think he was an economist. No, no, he’s an academic. And he went and studied the distribution of millionaires. And did you know there’s actually a much higher preponderance of millionaires in blue collar neighborhoods than white collar neighborhoods based on net worth. And the reason is because blue collar neighborhood, blue collar millionaires, they own service businesses. It’s roofers, it’s plumbers, it’s electricians, it’s HVAC people, it’s the guys with the vans, with the stencil logos in their driveways that have legitimate seven, sometimes eight figure net worth based. They got a service business with 12 apprentice electricians under em or whatever. And it’s all the attorneys and the CPAs and the MBAs and driving around the white collar neighborhoods with their least BMWs in their Lexuses.
Jeff Lerner (00:12:30): They don’t have the net worth that you find in the more blue collar neighborhoods because they’re all living on credit and they’re all still paying off their $300,000 worth of student loans from 15 years ago. So anyway, to your point about the young people, Young people have gotten the memo and I have four. Four, we were just talking, I have four kids, three of them are teenagers, which means about 30. I have about a circle of probably 30, 35, maybe a few dozen teens in my world that are friends of my kids and they all want to be, and of course they know that I run an entrepreneurial education company. So they talk to me about stuff. Sometimes they don’t even talk to their own parents about what they really want to do with their lives. They talk to me and my wife and they’re like, Yeah, I can’t wait.
Jeff Lerner (00:13:18): I want to be a creator. I want to, A lot of them aren’t even necessarily planning to go to college or because they see business ownership as the path. And it’s interesting because even though they’re maybe a little more naive about exactly how the math works, because they’ve seen their parents toil for decades and now their parents are in their fifties and they’re hearing the conversations are all about how are we ever going to retire? Or especially lately like, Oh my gosh, we refinanced our house and now it’s underwater and they’re feeling the energy of their parents who are having serious financial struggles and they’re just understanding that this 40 years of time for money trade is kind of a raw deal. But adults, I mean in business school, we learned about the sunk cost fallacy that whatever money or time or energy you’ve put into something should have no bearing on the decision you make in the present about how to go forward in the future. That’s like effective business principle 1 0 1. But that is not how the human mind tends to operate. The human mind is, I went to the college, I put 20 years into this career. I don’t want to come up for air and admit that I’m on no sort of road to a happy retirement. And I should probably consider a pivot mean some people do. I know because I have a program for those people, but the majority don’t. They don’t want to admit it.
Kristen Boss (00:14:44): You want to know how, I know we were talking about how it’s not mainstream yet. This idea of the economical viewpoint of college education and how people don’t fully see that yet. And as far as the investment return on investment and so forth, I know that it’s not mainstream yet because I don’t know about the cost of your program, but mine is a, it’s $2,000 lifetime program. They have access to it for life, and they’re coming in to learn all the skills that are required to make a profit, grow their networks, grow a business. And it’s not just like the how, but, and it’s developing lifetime skills that they could take literally anywhere. And I see them have a pause with that investment, they pause, they, I don’t know, am I worth it? But they also had no problems with $50,000 of student loans and it’s just like that they’re still not seeing the same return on investment. I’m like, let’s just think about compounding. I love the idea of compounding return on investment, especially when it comes to investing in skills as an entrepreneur, because you’re going to have a faster compounding return on investment than you do the traditional education path coming out of college if you really do the math.
Jeff Lerner (00:15:55): Yeah, I mean, yeah, I agree. And I mean I experience the same thing all the time. Our core program is a little more than yours, but it’s still four figures. I mean, it’s a lot cheaper than college. I mean, heck, it’s cheaper than community college. It’s not. And you do the roi. I mean, I think about, for me, and admittedly I’m probably an outlier, but I pay my initial course to get me into entrepreneurship. Back in 2008 was, as it turns out, $2,000,
Kristen Boss (00:16:28): So was mine.
Jeff Lerner (00:16:30): Yeah. And if I sit and I calculate the roi, like I’m not even going to do the math because it’ll just sound like, oh, lemme tell you the number. But it’s been really good. Same generated a pretty big return. But it’s interesting because I think that it, honestly, if you go watch all my YouTube videos, I have 900 videos on my YouTube channel, and I wouldn’t be surprised if half of them or at least several hundred of them talk about neurology and brain chemistry. Because the actual answer to your question is just in how the human brain works. We are still running around with basic programming that says, when you’re in the cave, you’re safe. Now you might be dirty, you might be stinky, you might be miserable, you might be hungry, but at least you’re not getting eaten by a sabertooth tiger or a bear or whatever.
Jeff Lerner (00:17:25): And if you go outta the cave, well there could be a bear. And we literally walk around basically living like that neurologically, even though we live in a world where I actually think that the ability to intelligently calculate and tolerate risk is the new adaptive survival mechanism. We’re all trying to survive by avoiding risks, not realizing that all we’re doing is slowly killing ourselves or slowly choking ourselves off from the possibility of a life. If we could just learn to entertain marginally more risk, not exorbitant risk, but the risk of, I will spend a couple thousand dollars on skills that have virtually unlimited upside and I will allocate 10 or 20 hours a week to developing a side hustle and ignoring the naysayers and ignoring the boo hoos and ignoring all the advice from people whose lives I don’t want. And in fact, the undesirability of lives, theirs are the reason why I’m so frustrated in my own, because mine looks more like theirs than I really wanted to.
Jeff Lerner (00:18:36): I will do these things and I will tolerate it for a year or two years. Here’s the thing. Most I know, most people I come across are on a 40 year guaranteed unhappiness, retirement plan, I will work for 40 years. I will invest most of my time and livelihood and earning potential in the best years of my life, banking on a math problem that is not going to resolve. And when it gets to the end, I will be frustrated and say, woulda, coulda, shoulda. Oh, well now I’m out of time. That’s basically a guarantee for most people. And so the idea,
Kristen Boss (00:19:10): The guarantee, they’re like, Oh, it’s certain.
Jeff Lerner (00:19:12): But it’s guaranteed plate of poop. Why wouldn’t you rather take a shot on grilling an amazing steak and be like, Well, I might over, I’m sorry, I don’t want to offend your vegans, but like a tofu burger, whatever. What do they call that? The impossible burger?
Kristen Boss (00:19:30): Beyond Burger, whatever.
Jeff Lerner (00:19:31): I would this sting and I might overcook it and it might be a burned piece of garbage, but there’s a good chance that I’ll get a really good meal here, a 45% chance, let’s say, as opposed to the guaranteed nutritional deficiency, slow painful death program. But our brains, our limbic systems literally are amygdalas and our hippocampus and our hypothalamus. There’s little nodes in the brain that are like, Don’t take the risk. You’ll be safer if you don’t. But in fact, you’ll just be safe right up until the point when you’re dead and you never got to live. It’s crazy. I don’t know, Sorry, I’m kind of repeating myself now, but No, I love it. You tap into something I feel really strongly about
Kristen Boss (00:20:17): No, I feel really strongly about this too. And my listeners, they hear me talk about the brain all the time. And if we do not become the higher evolved creature in entrepreneurship, if we do not learn to access the prefrontal cortex, the higher reasoning part of our brain faster, because that’s what I think growth is, it’s learning to access that part of your brain faster. Because often we default to the primal part of our brain that’s like, stay safe, stay small, stay secure. We have to worry about, when I think about the hierarchy of needs, a lot of times we just stick with, Okay, well, if I go and do something risky, most of the time what I think people think they’re risking is their sense of belonging and the sense of belonging. If you think about survival tactics, we were not made to survive alone. Being away from the tribe literally meant certain death. So when you do something against the grain, when the majority of your friends, your family, your relatives, people where you don’t even want their life, but all of their opinions and your circle, your entire circle around you says, this is how we live. When you decide to live differently, your sense of belonging is immediately threatened. And therefore your brain’s like certain deaths, certain deaths defaulted back to what we know, even if it causes an internal emotional death of not realizing our potential.
Jeff Lerner (00:21:36): He just summed up my whole worldview for me. So thank you because that’s exactly what I literally, I say this stuff all the time but the origins, tribalism would, in our company on we talk about collectivism, like collectivist thinking, thinking about the collective. And I quote, I, I’ll go there, I’ll I rand, and I know she’s a trigger for some people, although most people nowadays are like, I don’t know who that is, but the people that do, half of them are triggered and half of them love. But she said, civilization is the process of setting man free from men. And in other words, progress is about freeing the individual from the collective i e man free from men. And I just believe that, I believe that is our work, that is our calling as entrepreneurial evangelists, is to set individuals free from the collective consciousness that says, we’ll all be safer together if we’re all individually a little more limited. The tall, the tallest nail gets the hammer, the tallest nail now in the modern world wields the freaking hammer.
Kristen Boss (00:22:54): That’s so true. But let’s just go back to visiting.
Jeff Lerner (00:22:59): Sorry, can I say that word I said that little word?
Kristen Boss (00:23:02): I don’t know. I’ll just put a little E on our podcast. You’re good,
Jeff Lerner (00:23:06): Okay. Okay. I’m sorry.
Kristen Boss (00:23:08): No, you get to graduate and have my first E on my podcast. Right?
Jeff Lerner (00:23:12): Well, I’ll try to keep it in line from here.
Kristen Boss (00:23:15): Totally fine. But let’s like, okay, let’s go back to this concept of like, okay, we talk about this concept of increasing your capacity for risk because I think it’s fascinating that both of us, our first investment was $2,000. I remember at the time that felt enormous risk to me. And then you learn to normalize that level of risk and then you slowly extend the boundaries beyond that. And then it’s like, okay, now and then I remember I turned around less than 90 days later and invested $25,000. And that was like, okay, now I’m learning to feel safe with that. And then I think the following year I invested over a hundred thousand dollars. So it’s just learning to increase my own personal threshold of risk and my own tolerance for uncertainty knowing. Because when you think about risk, what it is is a measure of uncertainty and how much uncertainty are you willing to tolerate? And some people, it’s none. They like the idea of entrepreneurship, but when they get into it, they realize, Oh, this isn’t like a sure bet day one or even year one. Let’s talk about that a little bit more about why people fail and drop out of the game of entrepreneurship because it’s a game.
Jeff Lerner (00:24:29): Well, I’m going to be blunt and bold and jump right to the provocative answer to your question low. Let me explain what I mean. Yeah, let me explain what I mean. I, in fact, I’ll sort of bring some themes together here. So I don’t think the purchase agreement we’re in the last phase of redlining the purchase agreement right now. So we’ll probably fund it next week, but next week I’m going to literally send wire somebody seven figures for a stake in the business. I believe that I am going to bring enough value that I’m going to be able to take what they’ve already started and add enough value to it. I expect to have all my money back in two years, and at that point probably be generating a hundred percent per year cash on cash return off the initial investment. Why? Because I’m really freaking good at what I do, and I know how to do that.
Jeff Lerner (00:25:33): And if I didn’t see it that way, it would be because I had a lot of self doubt and I wasn’t so confident in my abilities. Now admittedly, I’ve earned this level of confidence. I’m not delusional. I’ve earned this level of confidence through progressive, iterative leveling up of sequential stacking wins and accomplishments and making progress. But at some point, just to get started, just for the first domino to tip, I had to have enough intrinsic confidence in myself to say, I will take a risk. It will be a risk worth taking because I will make it a good bet because I’m really betting on me. And at some point I have to decide I’m, at this point, I think I’m the best bet for me. But at some point I had to decide I was at least a good enough bet worth making. I mean, they have a billion dollar jackpot right now in the power ball.
Jeff Lerner (00:26:31): If so, I’m in Utah, and I saw in the news at the gym this morning that there’s like a whole flood of Utah’s driving to Wyoming, driving to Colorado, driving to Idaho just to go to a gas station and spend a dollar hope trying to win the cash payout. If you take the cash option, it’s 497 million. I promise you that I am. For me, with my dollars, I’m a better bet than Powerball. And yet society normalizes Powerball and thinks that you and I are crazy because we take these gambles, but that’s because we have higher, call it self-esteem, call it confidence, call it whatever. We have a higher appraisal of our own of the return on investing in ourselves than other people do on the return investing in themselves. And until you deal with that, it’s always going to sound crazy to do what statistically is actually probably your best bet at the life you want.
Kristen Boss (00:27:22): Hey, bosses, we are just weeks away from the holidays, before you know it, it’s going to be Thanksgiving and then it’s going to be Christmas. And with that, this is the time of year where you have the most potential to truly increase your profits with your social selling business and reach your audience in a new way. That’s why I’ve created a $7 holiday guide for social sellers. You guys, I’m giving my best stuff away because I want you to have massive profits this holiday season. So if you want to go ahead and grab that, we got that at the link in the show notes, go ahead and download it. I promise you it’s going to be worth your while. Follow the steps and you will see a noticeable increase in your engagement, your connections, and your sales back to the show.
Kristen Boss (00:28:08): I’m really glad you talked about self-worth, and I want to even nuance it further and say, reiterate that you didn’t say fake it until you make it. It was earned confidence through layers of achievements, layers of doing the hard thing, layers of proving to yourself, Yes, I do what I do, I do what I say I’m going to do, I’m going to follow through. I am my best bet. And for me, my first bet was on me $2,000 being like, Do I believe I’m capable of making $2,000? Yes, I do. And I also remember thinking, not viewing it as luck. And I think some people, when they look at investment or a decision like that, they kind of, they’re like, Okay, I’m going to spin the wheel and hope and hope it works out for me. That was not my mentality at all actually. It’s never my mentality in my business.
Kristen Boss (00:28:59): It’s like, No, it’s my job to make it work. I’m in charge. This isn’t a matter of luck, this is a matter of me putting in the time, putting in the effort and following through. I didn’t spin the wheel and oh, let’s see what the universe says about this $2,000 investment. It’s like, No, I’m going to go all out and I know I’m capable of that. And then once I remember made my $2,000 back, I’m like, Great, now I’m going to do 25,000, then I 10 x to that. I was like, Now I’m going to invest a hundred thousand, then I 10 Xed that. And so it’s just building your confidence through taking the action and following through. Not fak it till you make it.
Jeff Lerner (00:29:38): Yeah. I mean, fundamentally, do you believe that you have the ability to learn the skills and then do the work to implement the skills to produce a result that millions, roughly outta par with what millions of other people have accomplished? It’s not like you and I are like these, It’s not like we’re saying we’re talking about climbing Mount Everest here. Although even at this point, tens of thousands of people have climbed Mount Everest are like we’re talking about. I mean, I interviewed a guy on the pod on my podcast the other day who walked solo resupplied across the Antarctic continent. He’s the only person in the history ever done that. We’re not talking about that. We’re talking about a couple grand to learn skills to make back a couple grand. And so I think you really have to ask yourself, it’s like a gym. Do I believe that if I will show up three days a week or seven days a week or whatever, and I will burn calories for an hour, that I will eventually get the result of losing the weight I want to lose?
Jeff Lerner (00:30:46): And it’s just math. It’s literally just math, calories in calories out, work output in work output out or work production, work product out. But it’s all on the basis of skills. And I think there’s all the reason we’re talking about neurology, it’s brain chemistry and it’s like personality and it’s emotion. So there’s a hard neuroscience, and then there’s a soft psychology aspect where it’s like, what’s really going on for people? Either they have enough of a track record of not keeping promises to themselves that they doubt that even if they spend the money, that they’ll actually do the work. And by the way, I mean Ed Myles gave the best definition of confidence I’ve ever heard, which is confidence is knowing that you have a track record of keeping promises to yourself, to yourself. And so if you’re lacking confidence, which is what I said, self-esteem, confidence, whatever, it’s just because historically you’ve spent the money or you’ve joined the gym, or you’ve put yourself under pressure one way or another and you choked or you didn’t show up, or you lacked discipline or willpower or follow through or whatever.
Jeff Lerner (00:31:53): And so now you’ve taught yourself that that’s what you can expect from yourself. And so I mean, that’s fine. I’m not here to make anybody wrong for having human struggles. We all have human struggles, but you have to choose, do I want what I say I want? And if so, am I willing to look hard at myself to change my behavior and my follow through? Or am I going to stop saying I want this and acknowledge that I just want to settle. And honestly, I can accept either one from a person. It’s the dissonance of it’s not fair. There shouldn’t be billionaires. People shouldn’t have outlier outcomes in their life. People shouldn’t have great lives. We should all have equal outcomes, or I should be able to have that too. But I’m not going to do the same work. I’m not going to follow through, or I’m not going to take the same risk. Thomas Jefferson said, There is no greater evil than the equal treatment of unequal things.
Jeff Lerner (00:32:54): And so people are trying to have the equal outcome without doing the hard work of saying, Well, I’m, why am I even scared to spend a few thousand dollars? And I’m not here to pitch your, to be clear, don’t, I’m not like an affiliate of Kristen’s course or something here, It’s the fundamental question. It’s like, how do we get in and rewire our brain? And that is why, for example, in my educational platform where we have thousands of people coming to become entrepreneurs, we launched a whole series of personal development seminars because people think that it’s about learning to run a Facebook ad or learning to write high converting sales copy or learning to structure the perfect offer or learning to do. It’s not, I mean that those are important things, but if you get yourself in the right spot where you’re consistently taking action with the right focus and you’re saying no to all the things that aren’t in alignment with your goals, eventually you’ll learn the things you need to learn just by default because you’ll know you need to get what you want. But it’s really the work on ourselves.
Kristen Boss (00:33:55): I really appreciate that you mentioned the dissonance, because that’s where I work on my students with this. I’m like, Okay, we need to either change what we say we want or change our behaviors because you saying, I really, really, really want this goal. But if you’re to have a hard, honest look at your habits, your decisions, how you choose to do things, if that’s not lining up with what you say you want, you either need to say, I actually, I think I want this, but I really like the lure of it. I think of entrepreneurship. There’s a lot of lure to it. I think people want the lifestyle, the cars, the money, and all of those things. They get caught up in the lure, but then when it comes to the work, they’re like I don’t know. Lately I’ve been seeing a pervasiveness of entitlement of why isn’t it happening faster, sooner and easier? And I’m like, This is not the game we play. And you and I, we could go all day talking about the skill of delayed gratification in order to hit your goals. And most people, they don’t have that. They don’t want to play delayed in grad, delayed gratification cause they want instant gratification. Back to brain science, I want dopamine all day long. Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine.
Jeff Lerner (00:35:08): Yeah. And I think that it is fair to ask what’s happening. I mean, know, there’s a lot of popular science and conversation around how social media is rewiring our brains and our attention span spans are shortening. And our toler, like you said, our desire for immediate gratification is intensifying. But I think there’s a more pervasive and really pernicious happening in society right now. And I’m just going to go there. It’s kind of a weird thing, but I’m just thinking it so I’m going to say it. Have you ever seen the movie Never Ending Story
Kristen Boss (00:35:50): Yes, of course.
Jeff Lerner (00:35:51): Okay. Remember that nothing,
Kristen Boss (00:35:54): Yes
Jeff Lerner (00:35:56): Nothing is destroying our world. And he says in the movie, he says, It’s the emptiness that’s left basically when people let go of their dreams. And I think that, and it’s such a perfect word for, I mean, there’s a reason this movie was like era defining for a whole generation of us. I’m kind of dating myself here, but it’s, it nothing is the perfect name for it because it’s not even something, it’s just the nothing. And this is what happens when people really stop believing that dreams can come true. And the kamora, the wolf looking thing, he says, People who have no hope are easy to control. And you can tell, I watched this movie a lot when I was a kid, but by the way, it’s probably why I am the way I am like this. And a few other influences at an early age.
Jeff Lerner (00:36:54): It’s like, Oh, I don’t want the nothing. I want something. I want hope. I want dreams. I want a freaking lock dragon. And so anyways, in my book, in the chapter, I think it’s in the chapter that you alluded to earlier about why people fail. There’s an experiment that was done in the 1950s by a scientist at John’s Hopkins, whose name I want to say it was Kurt Richter. And they would never allow somebody to do this experiment anymore because it involved some amount of cruelty to animals, but we can still learn from it. And basically what he did was he would put rats in a beaker of water and see how long they would swim before they drowned. And the answer to that question of how long will a rat swim before he drowns was basically a couple minutes. After a couple minutes, a rat just gets tired and drowns.
Jeff Lerner (00:37:48): And so then he put more rats in the water. And now that he knew roughly how long it would be until they would give up and drown about 10 seconds before they were going to give up and drown, he would reach and he would pluck him out and, Hey, Mr. Rat, you’re saved. Haha, just kidding. And you throw them back in the water, right? Super sadistic guy, obviously. Right. How long do you think the rats would swim that now had a belief that if they just hung in there, he might save them? Remember before it was like minutes. I think it was two or three minutes before.
Kristen Boss (00:38:22): Yeah, my first guess with you was five minutes. I was like, what? Five minutes? Double the time.
Jeff Lerner (00:38:28): Days.
Kristen Boss (00:38:29): That’s crazy.
Jeff Lerner (00:38:31): Days a thousand times longer when they have hope. And this is why I think in the world today, and this is why I think that social media to some degree, and you’re two people that we get a lot of productive utility out of social media. So I’m not here to throw the baby out with the bath of water, but I think that there is a pervasive, honestly, it’s kind of the nothing, it’s just sort of a cynical emptiness, despondent sense of futility. There’s no point is a lot of people on the internet see the trolling culture of like, Yeah, I’m just here to tear stuff down. There’s no point in trying to build anything or be constructive. And I think that we as a society have a serious case of existential hopelessness because I actually believe that if people really thought their efforts would pan out, they’re literally capable of a thousand times more than they’re willing to do.
Jeff Lerner (00:39:32): But what you and I bump up against, I suspect both of us very often is people that they get all excited, they get on because we’re kind of conditioned on this up and down dopamine rollercoaster. They get on an upswing, they decide I can do it, and they take a big chance and they spend a couple thousand dollars. And we as a society are very conditioned to get a massive flood of dopamine from buying stuff. So we double down on it. We’re feeling the dopamine of inspiration that we can do a thing because we saw an ad or we found, we listened to a podcast and we got all pumped up. Then when we buy something, we get another hit of dopamine because we bought something. It’s retail therapy basically. And then two weeks later, all the dopamine is worn off. And what we’re left with is what are we fundamentally believe is true about ourselves and about our life?
Jeff Lerner (00:40:20): And in that void we give up. But I think that the reason I’m in the business of unlocking human potential is because I do believe I’m an optimist. I believe that there is something there’s a connection inside each of us to call it, call it source synergy, call it universal intelligence, call it God. I don’t really care what you call it, but whatever it is, it’s the power that set all this craziness in motion. And I think that when we are really, really connected to whatever the answer is to the question of why humans, why consciousness, why sentience, this species that’s capable of self-reflection and capable of imagination and capable of understanding that choices made in the present can impact and move us toward a desired future. Why did we evolve all these abilities in our mind? And Jim Ro or Jim Roan and Bob Proctor both talk about this.
Jeff Lerner (00:41:17): Why did we evolve these higher faculties in our mind if we weren’t supposed to use them? And if we are supposed to use them and we ask why, then that is true. Then I think what we get to is there is this thing. There is this place that we can go to that unlocks a completely different gear of potential and effort where we can be successful. But I would argue, and the reason why people in my life think I’m kind of extreme is that it’s very, very hard to operate this way. If you’re eating a diet, and I’m using that as a metaphor, a mental, psychological, spiritual, emotional, toxic or empty, nutritionally bankrupt diet. And if you’re feeding yourself crap, then you’re going to feel like crap and never know what you’re capable of. And I’m not just talking about food, I’m talking about society nowadays. Oh
Kristen Boss (00:42:11): Yeah. I think that’s what we have in common that serves us really well is I am an optimist. I’m an eternal optimist, and I’m always going to be looking, assuming there’s a solution, assuming it’s going to work out. And I really always believed in the inevitability of my goals. I wasn’t sure of the timing of them, but I am an optimist, and I believe, okay, I can always control my thoughts, my feelings, my behaviors, regardless of the circumstance that’s presented to me. And this idea of the only way you’re able to really preserve and protect your optimism is if you’re really being aware and selective of your cognitive load. What are you letting in? And I don’t know about you, but I almost watch zero news. I curate my intake. I limit my intake of data so much to preserve my decision making. So I don’t have decision fatigue to reduce the cognitive load that I have when I’m approaching my business and the intake of just negativity or people that always have something to complain about. I have zero tolerance for it. I’m like, Nope. Nope.
Jeff Lerner (00:43:16): Yeah. I mean, I’m a hundred percent the same way. And frankly, most of the really successful people I know are the same way there. There’s a certain almost aestheticism about the way that really successful people choose to live. And it’s not because we’re superior, we think we’re better than the rest of the world. It’s just like I’ve decided on a standard and part, the hardest thing about having a standard is rejecting everything that doesn’t meet the standard cause that can make you unpopular. But the reality is, I have a standard for the energy and the tone and the drive and the fo of the people and the content and the media and just everything that I consume that ultimately calibrates and wires and tunes my mind. I have a standard, Most stuff doesn’t meet the standard. And so I’m more will more frankly. You pick what you’re more afraid of. I am more afraid of having a toxic mind than I am of having people think I’m weird.
Kristen Boss (00:44:24): Amen.
Jeff Lerner (00:44:26): I’m just, And I think most people are more afraid of people’s judgment than they are of any amount of toxicity of their mind based on stimuli that they allow into it. But then, so there’s like step one is draw a line in the sand and say, Okay, from today, moving forward, I, I’m changing my standards. I don’t, will no longer let this stuff into my life. And then at least you create the space to do the work retroactively and say, Okay, prior to drawing the line in the sand, I had a lot of crap happen to me. Whether it was as a child, as an adult, a lot of it takes time to wrestle your environment for control. And prior to doing it, you were living somebody else’s, some probably many other people’s agendas for your life and you didn’t have your defenses up.
Jeff Lerner (00:45:17): And there’s probably a lot of work to do there too. A lot of healing, a lot of cleansing, a lot of renegotiating. And this is actually the work. And the reason I’m such a proponent of entrepreneurship is not because I actually believe the world needs more entrepreneurs. To be clear, there’s 31 million businesses in the United States. I mean, you could argue that there we don’t need anymore. And admittedly it’s a higher proportion in the US than other countries. But you could make the argument that the world doesn’t need more entrepreneurs. But I think you could make a strong argument an equally or probably even stronger argument that millions and millions of human beings need entrepreneurship. Whether or not the world needs them to be entrepreneurs, they need them to be entrepreneurs. We need ourselves to be entrepreneurs. And the reason why is it’s the only incentive or crucible or what catalyst, I don’t know what the exact right word is, but it’s the only one that I’ve found that can give people a good enough reason that it’s sort this convergence of all the things you want to do.
Jeff Lerner (00:46:30): You want to get in better shape, you want to feel better, you want to eat better, you want have more energy. You want to communicate in a more evolved way. You want to have better higher quality relationships. You want to have more money, you want to have more optionality. You want to do all the things, but you’ve always wanted all those things. And for some reason, there hasn’t been a good enough reason to make the changes, to make those things your reality. But if I can tell you that you can make more money doing something, that’s the one that’ll kick a lot of people in the butt to actually do the work. And in entrepreneurship, I can tell you that you’ll have more energy. I can tell you that you’ll have a better marriage. I can tell you that you’ll have better sex. I can tell you that you’ll have more or better, a lot of different things. But for whatever reason, the way we’re hum, we’re wired a lot of times money is the thing that we’ll work harder for than anything else. That’s actually the fundamental reality of society, is that most people spend most of their time and most of their energy working harder for money than they do for anything else. So the fact that I can attach a financial outcome to all these other amazing changes you can make in your life, that’s why entrepreneurship’s so powerful
Kristen Boss (00:47:35): Amen to that. It has been a huge catalyst for change in my life. And this is why I think growth and grief happen, I think simultaneously, because every time there was massive amount of growth required of me, it meant either letting go of a past version of me that I was like, You no longer serve me. And there was grief to that. Or maybe it was letting go of relationships and those opinions of those relationships maybe. And I’m still in those relationships because maybe it’s family or people you can’t just cut ties with. It’s more so, Okay, I’m going to reframe this relationship in my mind. And now there is a certain grief to that. There is a grief that I’m no longer going to that person for the answers. There is a grief in these people now don’t understand me or see me the same way. And I find that most people don’t want the grief, so they forfeit their growth because the grief feels too hard. And I think we just have to learn to sit with a lot of compassion for ourselves and be like, Okay, this is part of the human experience. And grief comes with growth a lot of the times.
Jeff Lerner (00:48:44): Yeah. I love that statement about the grief and growth. It reminds me of, So when my wife Jacqueline and I, we started going to therapy pretty much right away. We made a preemptive strike on ourselves, Let’s get therapy before we have problems. How about that? And amazing. Yeah, it was great. Mean, it was neither of our first marriages we’re like, Okay, we can do better. Learn how. And we made the investment. We invested a lot of money and a lot of time and a lot, mostly just a lot of time and a lot of dedication and willingness to be clumsy with each other so that we could practice new ways of communicating and so forth. But anyway, one of the things that we did on the advice of our therapist was this exercise where we drew rings on a piece of paper, kind of looked like an archery target with different circles, different rings, and on a poster board.
Jeff Lerner (00:49:42): And we put ourselves at the center, and we actually took chess pieces and we labeled them as the different relationships in our life. And we said, Okay, based on where we are right now, let’s put the people in the right ring. And so these are the people that are in the closest ring. This is our inner circle, and these are the people that are our next closest ring and maybe the outer rings people we only occasionally have contact with, or maybe somebody we work with or something. And then we said, Okay, this is our life right now. Now let’s actually evaluate the positive energy contribution of the different people in the different rings. And let’s reorganize. Let’s move the pieces in or out based on the goal of optimizing our daily experience to feel the way we want to feel. And there was a lot of shuffling, There was a lot of moving people out further out to more remote rings.
Jeff Lerner (00:50:38): And that’s kind of what you’re saying. You don’t cut them off altogether, but to move something, somebody from the innermost ring to the fourth ring out of five, and to really take the time to do it visually and spatially and tangibly with actual little figurines, hell put their picture on the chess piece, make it look like them, and move them out three R rings and go, Okay, they’re going to live out there now. They’re going to live a little more on the periphery because they don’t support my dreams , and if they could earn their way back in closer by supporting my dreams or by showing up differently or by finding new ways to communicate with me that don’t make me feel hungover because they’re so toxic or whatever. And eventually there’s people that you just have to knock them out of the rings,
Kristen Boss (00:51:28): I think so.
Jeff Lerner (00:51:29): It was really powerful.
Kristen Boss (00:51:30): That is super powerful. I love that visual too. And I just think some people, they assume because they have either history or blood relations with people that automatically, that means they should be in the inner rings and they feel a sense of guilt or they feel bad, or all of the other stories they have for, Oh, I’m a bad person for moving them in the outer ring instead of, again, man, people pleasing can really destroy business if you just let that rule your life. And I just noticed with people pleasing that that inhibits a lot of people’s growth. And they’re like, Okay, I can’t put that person on the outside and I don’t know, I don’t want to hurt their relationship or whatever it is. But understanding, you’re not announcing to people like you are now on my fifth ring , right? You’re just like, it’s for your own context in order to protect your energy, protect your optimism, and protect your growth journey, Right? Cause that’s so key.
Jeff Lerner (00:52:23): Yeah. It it’s, And it’s something that, again, it taps into that, that it’s the same fear centers that we’ve been talking about, the tribal instinct, the need to belong. And I get it for tens of thousands of years, the idea of being my, and I can say this cause I’m an only child, so there’s no way I can mean this, but my sibling is really toxic, or my sibling is really, really fear based. Sibling is really stuck in the past and just can’t evolve or can’t let go, or can’t move on and doesn’t want to, right? It’s not, we haven’t talked about it, but they just, they’re like a broken record. And so historically, if you’re, I, therefore I reject the or something, Game of Thrones, I banished to the forest. And okay, you might be like, there could be serious repercussions for that. And by the way, same thing with money. I remember,
Kristen Boss (00:53:24): Yes.
Jeff Lerner (00:53:24): This is one of the great reasons to read and know about other times, for a long period of human history, there was something called debtor’s prison where if you owed money and you couldn’t pay it, they would send you to the go log and for 20 years of hard labor and you’ll just die in Siberia or whatever. We don’t live in that world anymore. What are people so afraid of? Like, Oh my gosh.
Kristen Boss (00:53:49): Yeah.
Jeff Lerner (00:53:50): They literally act like there’s debtors to prison or a life sentence. If you can’t pay your bill, and I’m not saying people should be reckless, but I’m saying again, what we got to choose what we’re more afraid of. Are we more afraid of getting, reaching old age knowing that we never took that shot, We never been on ourselves, we never dealt with our trauma. We never developed a good enough relationship with ourselves to renegotiate and become confidence by keeping progressively larger and larger promises to ourself and eventually taking that risk to unlock what’s possible for ourselves. Are we more scared of that than we are of, Well, if I spend this money and it doesn’t work out, I might have to have a hard conversation with my spouse and say, Look, I took a gamble and we’re going to need to downsize from 3000 square feet to 2000 square feet.
Jeff Lerner (00:54:42): What the average person now, I mean, you talked about Maslow’s hierarchy and which is, what is it? It’s first of all, you need air and food and water, shelter, and then you need shelter. And so we’re at that second level of I need shelter. And a lot of people interpret that of I need a four bedroom house in the suburbs. There have been a lot of other historical definitions of shelter than 3000 square feet with an $800 a month air conditioning bill. But we’ve just got in our minds that I can’t down there taking care of my needs when really I’m completely confused about the difference between a need and a want and a preference. I would prefer a four bedroom house in the suburbs, but I don’t need it. And that could literally be the prison, the mortgage on that property and the fear that it surrounds it. And the fear around even having the conversation with my spouse about reconsidering this choice for our lives. That could literally be the glass coffin that surrounds you your entire life and keeps you from every ever discovering what you could have done.
Kristen Boss (00:55:52): And I see people reach their threshold because they’re like, Well, I don’t want to risk this, these belongings I have, or What if I have to downsize in order to scale my business? And we could talk all day about this, but one of my last thoughts is, and we had talked about this on your podcast together, is I waited so long to scale up my lifestyle. I lived on such a small percentage of what our earnings were, because I was always like, I’m putting this into growing skills, growing assets, growing my business, playing the long game. And I do see people get very excited once the cash starts coming in and they want to immediately upgrade the lifestyle. And what I notice is they get to that point where now they have to bring in enough money to accommodate their lifestyle, and then they become very scarce with growing their business or investing in their business. And then they end up stalling out completely and they wonder why they’re not growing anymore. It’s like, well, glass ceiling, here you go. You just created your own glass coffin.
Jeff Lerner (00:56:51): And by the way, I mean, I can only share from my experience, I’m not going to presume to know what other people are feeling, but I know for me that having my head down and making forward progress in my business is so fulfilling and so rewarding that my need for those external validations or trappings, it actually diminishes. I don’t need a boat. I mean, maybe if I, I’m obsessed with fishing. I might want a boat, so I have a thing to fish from, but I don’t need the stuff to show off and show the world how successful I am. Because just the experience of succeeding is so fulfilling that it kind of removes that need for the dopamine hits. So then it begs the question of, well, why would I still do those things if I, let’s say I make my first a hundred thousand dollars in my business.
Jeff Lerner (00:57:44): Why would I want to celebrate with an $80,000 car instead of just reinvesting in my business? It’s only going to be because I’m trying to show other people, See, this did work, this did pay off. I was successful. I was right. You were wrong. Let me rub it in your face that you ever doubted me. We’re still being controlled by other people. in that scenario. And for me, entrepreneurship done well is so fulfilling. I find myself needing less and less and less. And to be clear, I have a really nice life because I have family and I want to show my kids to some degree. It’s valuable I think, to show yourself and others that hard work does produce a visible level of success because people tend not to believe. People don’t believe like, Oh, so you live in an 800 square foot apartment, but you really have 20 million in the bank.
Jeff Lerner (00:58:37): I don’t believe you. And then you got to walk around showing people screenshots and you’re just a huge fool. right? Yeah. So there’s some value in showing yourself in the world that you’ve been successful. But for me a lot of it is more of just like, I want to show my kids that prosperity and security come from this type of work and this type of risk adjusted approach to life. But literally for me, I don’t need any of it. And maybe that’s sounds hotty, but I truly don’t because I get all my fulfillment every day at work.
Kristen Boss (00:59:09): I feel the same way. It’s the same. Sure, I went and bought a couple fancy things, but at the end of the day, I think you’re right in the sense that it does diminish instead of, But for me in my business, what’s the most fulfilling thing? Seeing students win, seeing lives change, seeing the impact we make in the world. And that’s why we sign up for what we do. Right?
Jeff Lerner (00:59:27): Yeah. It’s actually, it’s gross. I’ll even say, and frustrating. I bought a nice car. One of the reasons I bought a nice car is because I shoot ads or I’m like, Hey, my name’s Jeff Lerner and I’d like to teach you about how to be a successful entrepreneur and invite you into this other way of being in the world. And people are looking, they’re looking at the background, they’re looking at what car you’re in, They’re looking at what house you live in. And it’s like, actually, I mean, I’ve done tests. In fact, I was literally, I went on this whole rant with our video team this weekend about, I just want to shoot a video where I’m like, Okay, on the, here’s a spectrum. There’s the super annoying, obnoxious guru who rents a mansion and lies to you, And then over here there’s like, just call it the truth and the public teach me to live in attention between these two because all I want to do is tell you the truth, which is work really hard, be imaginative, apply yourself, learn new skills, and you’ll get fulfilled, fulfilled that you won’t worry about money and you don’t even really care.
Jeff Lerner (01:00:39): But you won’t click on that ad. The general public, they won’t click on that ad. They want to click on the ad with the guy, with the Lambo, with the thing. But then they also want to be cynical and snarky about all these losers on the internet that rent Lambos and try to look like the thing. But
Kristen Boss (01:00:56): They’re the ones.
Jeff Lerner (01:00:57): The ones teaching us that. That’s what they respond to. And we’re always over here trying to thread the needle of how do I enroll people into this amazing possibility that’s not just about having lots of money and doing douchey stuff with it when that’s actually all they seem to be looking for. It’s the great burden of my existence as an entrepreneurial educator. And I’m sure you can relate to it too. It’s
Kristen Boss (01:01:23): A passion of marketing
Jeff Lerner (01:01:25): Yeah, it is. It’s frustrating, right? It’s like selling a workout program because of how good it’ll make you feel instead of the sticks pack apps. Exactly. Nobody’s going to click on how good it’ll make you feel.
Kristen Boss (01:01:38): Exactly. Well, as always, we have packed so much value into a single little over an hour. People are going to be like, I’m going to have to listen to this twice. There’s so much good stuff that we both dropped. As always. It’s so fun chatting with you, Jeff. We’ll probably do it again because I’m, I mean, the amount of topics we could talk about it’s just been great having you.
Jeff Lerner (01:01:59): It’s endless. And I love, love these types of conversations with great entrepreneurs. Because what you find is, and I I’m sure you’ve experienced this on your show too, is you talk to hundreds and hundreds of successful entrepreneurs and there is a different way of being and thinking and operating in the world that’s very consistent. I mean, we all have our different angle on it, but it’s like, I remember a guy, therapist of mine told me he’s lies, dishonesty, The lies we tell ourselves and the stories that we enroll ourselves in that aren’t true. They have to be very creative and very unique. I was bullied when I was a kid because I wore purple shoes and on a Thursday, and it was like they were serving tacos in the lunchroom or something. The truth tends to be very similar, and I think that’s one of the beautiful things is from having hundreds and hundreds of conversations with successful people, what I found, the reason I believe that entrepreneurship is truth in a very spiritual and philosophical way is because the belief set of the people that do it all seem to be gravitating towards a central realism rather than having to be extremely creative in the stories we tell in order to explain and make excuses and not succeed, so to speak.
Kristen Boss (01:03:25): Yeah. I do believe there are universal truths to entrepreneurship and having success. And you meet enough people, you’re like, Oh, we all have these core beliefs, these core skills, and these core mindsets and views in how we see things, which is why we all got to where we are. So I think it’s good for my audience to even hear like, Okay, I’m noticing a thread between these people. I just need to adapt these skill sets, these habits, these beliefs, and learn to be an optimist and sign up for the hard work. So this is so good. I’m going to be pointing people to your book, Unlock your Potential in the show notes so they can grab it. It’s so good, Jeff, it’s just been great having you and we’ll look forward to having you on another show.
Jeff Lerner (01:04:07): Thanks, Krist3n. It’s been a joy
Kristen Boss (01:04:13): That wraps up today’s episode. Hey, if you love today’s show, I would love for you to take a minute and give a rating with a review. If you desire to elevate the social selling industry, that means we need more people listening to this message so that they can know it can be done a different way. And if you are ready to join me, it’s time for you to step into the Social Selling Academy where I give you all the tools, training and supports to help you realize your goals. In the Academy, you get weekly live coaching so that you are never lost or stuck in confusion. Whether you are new in the business or have been in the industry for a while, this is the premier coaching program for the modern network marketer. Go to www.thesocialsellingacademy.com to learn more.
