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What's up, guys? Welcome to another episode. I have a quick one for you today. In one of my emails, I was writing about confidence. And you know, as I'm preparing for this Jim Pranos event, and if you've not been tuning in, I'm doing a Sopranos, the show, the Sopranos themed event for my next mastermind meeting called the Jim Pranos, right? And so, you know, I always like to, and obviously the majority of the conference is going to be about growing your business and making more money and all of that. But I always try to lace in some fun stuff and link it back to the theme, right? And so the theme is taking it from the sopranos. And there's a lot to learn from Tony Soprano, you know, about leadership, about team and and all of that. But one of the things that, and I'm re-watching the show, but one of the things that he just has beyond anyone else is this extreme amount of confidence. Right? This extreme amount of like when he goes into a situation, he is w so certain at what he's saying, and there's just a there's just a ton of confidence. And I think that's what you know makes people drawn to the character, and even why people want to follow him, and why, you know, a lot of the women in the in the show throw themselves at him, uh, even though he's not like a great-looking guy, but it's that he just exudes this confidence, right? And you know, I, you know, I'm not saying I'm Tony Soprano by any means. It's something that I've had to work on over the years of becoming a more confident person, right? And I've had to do a lot of work because I in my nature I'm a I'm an anxious person for sure. If you ever met my dad, you'd be like, oh, you're you're you know, Vince is just like your dad. He was an anxious guy too, a great guy, but anxious, right? As I am. And I've had to do a lot of work to be less anxious and be more confident. It's uh something I still work on today. But it the most probably the most important thing I've ever learned in any book was the four cornerstone recipe for confidence. And I learned it from Dan Kennedy, who was wrote a book with Dr. Maxwell Maltz, who was Maxwell Maltz was the he was the author of a book called Psychocybernetics, which is basically like a very old school personal development system, if you will, that was based around, the premise of the book was based around all progress starts with your self-image, your your picture of your yourself, right? That's kind of the premise of the whole book. But they talk a lot about confidence. And they outline this four cornerstone part of confidence that I'll share with you today that's really been able to help me. And the first part of managing your confidence, of not just have being confident, but protecting your confidence, right? Protecting the confidence that you do have. The first piece is to manage the voice inside of your head. And you know, I know that for me, that voice tends to be really loud. And honestly, sometimes that voice is a real dick and can be very mean to me. And some so sometimes what we have to do is just learn how to handle it and deal with it. Because the one thing, and I I didn't know this, but the one thing you have to understand is that voice is never going away. It's just not. Right? It's not gonna go away, it's gonna be there. The question is, when the voice inside of your head says something you don't like, do you respond and do you react to it? And that's what it's all about navigating it and learning how to handle it. And I have learned how to do that through meditation. Through, I got certified a transcendental meditation, and basically what it does is it basically desensitizes you to the voice inside your head where you're not always reacting to the things that it says. You're not always reacting to the negative thoughts. You essentially can hear negative thoughts, you can beat yourself up, but then you're not reacting to it as emotionally. So it can be there, you can sit with it, and then you're not reacting to it. You're not letting it ruin your day, if you will, which a lot of times we do. You're not letting it drive all of your actions, right? You don't want to be driven by the actions of the voice inside of your head, especially that you know there's, you know, I've done a bunch of stuff on this, and one of the things I learned from John Carlton is the four the four different voices in your head. I'll talk about that on another podcast. But I I think that that one of the pieces is winning the game in your own mind. And that's a that's a big piece of what they talk about as a cornerstone of confidence. If you're constantly getting derailed by your own thoughts, it's a tough place to play. And again, for it there's so many strategies to do this. For me, meditation was a very, very helpful thing. It's been a practice and a part of my life for a very, very long time. All out of 100% out of necessity. 100% out of my mind's fucked up and I need to do something about this. And that's what was helpful for me. So that was the first that's the first cornerstone. I'm trying to keep this a short uh episode, but I could talk about this stuff for a long time. The second cornerstone is skill development. Think about when you sh started training people before you trained anybody, you did not have a lot of skill in that department, right? You had to learn and you had to grow. And then eventually what you did is you acquired a skill to look at the human body to see it move. You acquired all these different strategies and ways that you're going to get a result, right? That you weren't born with that. And I would imagine two years into your career as a personal trainer, you have more confidence because of the skills that you've developed, whether you develop them through going to seminars, whether you develop them through taking courses, whether you develop them in college, whatever, you know, certifications, things like that. Over time you've developed skills, and those skills have given you more confidence. So in my world, right, in the business side of it, uh, marketing is a skill. I didn't open my gym with knowing anything about marketing. It had to develop a skill, uh writing emails, doing this podcast. This is a skill that I've just developed over time, and just like you guys, you have to put the work in to you know develop the skills that you need to get what you want.

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And so that's the second piece is like, what do you need to do to what skills don't you have? Or what skills do you have, but they're not good enough for where you want to go? Right? Maybe your leadership skills aren't good enough right now to take your business to the next level, and that's a skill that you need to develop. Maybe your marketing and sales knowledge, maybe you don't have those skills. Maybe you do not have the marketing and sales skills that you need to get past 100 members. And it's just something that needs to be developed, and that's the beauty of this confidence thing. In order to feel more confident, sometimes it's just a skill set away. The third cornerstone of being more confident is knowledge, right? What knowledge needs to be acquired, and knowledge is different than skill. Skill is you know your ability to do something. Knowledge is your you're you're acquiring these different levels of things that you know to be able to be more confident and to be able to get more results in the things that you do. So you're acquiring more knowledge as a marketer, you're acquiring more knowledge as a leader, you're requiring more knowledge, right? And it's always this constant growth period of growing. One of Warren Buffett's rules is learn every day. So you should be constantly learning and growing every day. We had a mastermind call today, and I was giving them knowledge about their marketing and about how to diversify their marketing, how important it is today to diversify the marketing. Okay, so the first is navigating the voice inside your head, second is developing new skill sets, third is acquiring knowledge. All of this is to help build your confidence. The last one is your ability to relax. If you're constantly tense and you're constantly anxious, it's very hard to feel confident, especially when you're going to do something. It's like think about you know, if you go out and do a talk and you're really, really tense and you're really anxious, you're probably not going to show up the way that you want to show up. Think about if you're training a session and you're so anxious and tense and your body doesn't know how to relax and you're tight, you're you're not gonna perform the way you want to perform. And when you feel like that, you're not gonna feel confident. And so that's the fourth cornerstone is your ability to relax. Now, I have had a lot of experience here because I will tell you this I was a really bad football player in college simply because I did not know how to relax. So Joey asked me, my son asked me recently, why didn't you play in the NFL? I said, Well, son, first of all, I never had a chance to play in the NFL. But second of all, I could have been a decent college football player, but I was a below average college football player because of my inability to relax. My inability to control the anxiety to have when I get out onto the field. I went out there, I played tense, I played tight, and because of that, I got hurt a lot and I sucked. And if someone just taught me how to breathe, if someone just taught me how to relax and just go out there and play, I would have been a much better player and I would have been much more confident out on the field. And so through that period and through 20 years of business ownership and opening gyms and starting businesses, I've worked on that. And I will tell you, there's one thing that I've learned that worked has worked better than anything else that I've ever had. And if you do this, it has the possibility to change your life. And I'm going to share it with you, knowing that if you suffer from anxiety and you suffer from being tense and you have an inability to relax, this has the potential to change your life as it has done mine. It's something I learned from a doctor named Lee Lagos, who is mentioned a lot on the Tim Fair show. She happens to be Josh Waitskin, who is like the chess champion, his coach. And basically, she has this concept called resonant frequency breathing. I think I I got it right. And basically, she says there's a level of breathing and a certain amount of breaths per minute where we thrive, and then there's a level of breath per minute where we're gonna feel garbage. And I have found that my pace is when I and when I do this, I'm a different person, right? I breathe through my nose for four, in through my nose for four, and then out of my mouth for seven, seven seconds. So in for four, out for seven, and I do it two times a day for twenty minutes. It's a commitment. I'm gonna tell you that right now. A lot of people will do the first week and they'll stop. But if you can get past week two, and you can do this consistently, and it's twice a day for 20 minutes, in for four, out for seven, if you do this consistently twice a day, and you can get past two to three weeks, and you can go all the way to ten weeks, that's the goal. That's Lee Lago. So she talks about that the magic, it's ten weeks and twice a day. I will tell you, there is nothing I've ever done that has been more impactful to controlling anxiety and and can my and improving my ability to relax than this. And it's so simple and it's so stupid, it's literally just breathing. But there's something about when you start, it starts to come together. It just has been a game changer for me. So those are the four cornerstones to confidence. Why are we talking about confidence? Well, Tony Soprano was a real confident guy. Gym owners need to be confident. You want to be a confident leader. You you want your staff to feel you know that you have things under control, even when you don't. And that is your confidence, your ability to do that is being confident, right? So that is a really it's a really important thing for you to lead your business and lead your organization, lead your family, and to have that level of confidence. And the thing is, it's really it's about it's a mechanical process. It's a mechanical process of manage of learning how to manage the voice in your head, of acquiring skills, of gaining knowledge, and and doing the work and learning how to relax your body and be calm under times of stress. And all of these things, well, what Maxwell Monks calls unshakable self-confidence. It's a really powerful place to play. And so we're talking about this because we have the Jim Pranos event coming up, and it's coming up in February. It's on February 27th, 28th, and March 1st in Orlando, Florida. And it's a three-day event, and we are, man, super excited about it. We're talking about it all the time. We're got our staff excited. We got all kinds of crazy things planned for it. But at the end of the day, we're gonna have some fun because it's a you know a themed event. But at the end of the day, what we're really trying to do is give you the skills and knowledge that you need to grow your gym. Right? We're gonna help you. The tagline of the event is be the boss your business needs. And that's what I want to do in the three days is help you become a better boss. Help you be a more confident person, help you be a more confident leader, help level up the people around you. And again, if you become a better leader and the people around you get better, you're gonna have a better business. And that's really what it's about. We're gonna learn, you know, I'm bringing Mike Waldron in, who's my CFO. He's gonna teach you how to know your numbers. I cannot tell you, man, you want to be more confident. You will be more certain and feel more in control of your business than you ever have if you start really getting a grip on your financials. There's probably nothing that causes gym owners more stress than not knowing what the fuck's going on with their numbers. They're like, I don't even know what's going on. And then they see their bank account going down and going in the right direction or stalemating, and they have no reason and they have no idea why. And they have no idea why, because they don't know how to look at data. They don't know the numbers. They don't know what's happening. And so one of the this is one of the biggest pieces that you need. We got Thomas Plummer speaking. Thomas Plummer is the legend. The fitness business legend, the godfather of fitness business is Tom Plummer. I'm super excited for you guys to see him in person. Got G.R. Hoff from Jim Member Machine. I believe this is the best marketing agency in the fitness industry. Guys, like super wealth of knowledge about how to generate more leads with digital. Those are my three guests, and obviously the SPF team is in will be in full force. Joe Hashi, Carly, Leo, Ben Stocks will be speaking about social media and email marketing. It's going to be a really great event. And I really hope if you're listening to this and you own a gym and you want an event that's really going to help you get clear, get focused, increase your increase your confidence. Like, I promise you, you you'll you'll come to this event, you'll learn skills, you'll develop, you'll get knowledge, you will, you know, I don't know if I'll be able to teaching any breathing and meditation stuff at the event. I don't think I will. I mean, obviously, if you want to grab me on a break and I can teach some stuff to you, that's fine too. But at the end of the day, you're going to be, you know, hanging around for a weekend with a bunch of people that are excited about business, they're excited about gym ownership, they're excited about life, and just want to win. And that's an environment you want to put yourself in. So if you're listening to this and you're running your business all by yourself, and you're the only voice that you have is the voice inside your head, meaning you're not having outside conversations with other business owners and other gym owners, you're not discussing the challenges and the problems and the things that you're facing, that's causing a lot of inner turmoil and inner stress for you. And sometimes the best thing to do is get outside the four walls of your gym. That's a lot of times where the breakthroughs happen. Some of the breakthroughs happen when we get on the plane or we get in the hotel, we get outside the four walls and start thinking about what our business needs. Start thinking about what you need to do to take your leadership to the next level. It's going to be an amazing event. I'm super excited for it. So grateful for this opportunity to coach business owners. I love the fitness industry. I was talking to my guys today. It's like what we do matters so much. It's like so important. It's like what we do is so important to provide a place where people can get healthy and fit and strong and confident and you know feel better about themselves. It's like, and that transfers to their families, and just you get to do that. You get to rest your head on the pillow at night knowing that you're providing value to people's lives. And you know what I what you also need and deserve is to make a lot of money at the same time. And that's what's not happening. There's a lot of people that are doing what that are loving changing lives and they're doing it, but there's not enough people very happy with their financial situation, and it's causing them a lot of stress. And so if that's you, I want you to come. I want you to come to Gimpranos because you never know who you're going to meet. You never know what you're going to learn. And for the risk of a plane flight and a very cheap ticket, and if you're listening to this before January 31st, you better jump because the price is jumping big time. It's a Tony Perso, it's a Tony Soprano price increase on January 31st. So you better get in early. Gimpranos.com. Link is in the show notes. I want to see you there. Vinny Soprano is requesting your presence at Gimpranos. Check out the link, read the page, read all the stuff. Reach out to me personally if you want to. Vince at GabrielFitness.com, happy to chat with you if you want to chat with me first. But gimpranos.com, get all the info, and hopefully I will see you there. Peace, man.