Josh Hadley 3:35

Well,Mario, I’m super excited to be speaking with you. Selfishly I know, I’m going to be getting a lot of value and just how do I how do I shift my own mindset? And how do I you know, uplevel my business in half the time, right? And Mario, I want to first dive in with the cool fact about yourself that you are a TEDx speaker with over 1 million views. Number one, they don’t just take anybody to become a TEDx speaker. That’s number one. But then number two, not every TEDx speaker has over a million views. So Mario, tell me more about that, like, how did you get selected as a TEDx speaker? And how did your your speech go viral?

Mario Lanzarotti 4:20

Thank you, Josh, for that question. I think it’s an interesting story. Because, you know, one of the principles that I like to share with my clients that really have helped me create quantum growth in my life and also for my clients is this very principle that I call who, before what so a lot of times when we have new ideas, when we have new dreams, big dreams and things that we want, and we want double the revenue, we want to create a new business, we ask ourselves unconsciously or consciously, well, how do I even do that? Right? You might have not done something that’s completely new to you. So you go into research mode, you go on online, you buy a book, or you listen to a podcast, you watch a video, right? And that’s all great. But oftentimes what happens is, it costs you way more time, way more energy, which then leads to way more money. So what I did is I am part of the network, which is called the Bellwether Alliance, where the objective of the organization is to help its members create generational wealth for the purpose of generational impact. And so, in that network, I connected with a gentleman called Reggie Walker, he’s an NFL ex NFL football Pro, and we hit it off, we had a great conversation. And at the end of the conversation, he asked me, Hey, man, what can I do for you? And I said, Well, do you know any bigger podcasts or platforms where I can share my message of helping people free themselves from the thoughts and feelings that are holding them back? And he’s he tells me, how about a TEDx Talk? And I thought, Josh, he’s kidding, right? I’ve never met this guy before. We’re at a great connection. But I thought he’s just, you know, positioning me to then tell me Oh, it’s just $20,000 for you. And I’m like, in my mind, I’m like, that’s probably worth it. So I said, well, that will be a dream. And I said, Where’s the cash? How much is it? And he’s like, nothing, you know, for you. Either you have a great message, I want you to be on board. And I was like, Are you serious? And it’s like, yes. So that was one conversation, I was on board. And, you know, for me, when it comes to sharing my message, I had a conversation with myself, because I looked at it a few TEDx Talks. And one of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of entrepreneurs that use TEDx Talks, they use it as sort of a soft pitch, and they talk about their business. And I was like, I already feel turned off by messages like these, I don’t want that I want to create a message that comes from the heart that speaks to people so that they can take what I share and apply to their life. And so I let go of the idea of selling anything I simply wanted to serve. And so that alone, shifted the way that I positioned my speech. And then what I did is I simply before the speech went live, I asked people once the speech goes live, if you like it, can you share it. And because one of the principles that I just mentioned is so powerful is like serving over selling, I’ve made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. Because it’s part of my human nature, I believe in helping each other supposed to be the priority, and not doing it from a place if I help Josh, he’s going to make an intro. And then I’m going to get something out of that. No, I just want to help Josh, because that’s who I am is my nature. And well, when the talk went live, people started sharing it like wildfire, and it just exploded. And now in like 10 months, it’s over a million views. I haven’t used any ads, no agency, and it continues to open doors. For me,

Josh Hadley 7:40

that’s incredible. There’s a couple things that I take out of your story that applies directly to ecommerce entrepreneurs as they tried to grow their business. Number one, you talked about the who, not how, right. And I think that is so important, a lot of us go to these e-commerce or Amazon conferences, to learn about the latest hacks, or strategies that are going to like really propel our business forward, to make more money to make more sales. And really what we should be focused on, if you want to take your business to eight figures and beyond is all about establishing a team of people with amazing superpowers, right? You bring in somebody that knows external marketing, right? One of the things that we always talk about in the e-commerce space is like, hey, how do we drive external traffic to Amazon that can convert, guess what, there’s already experts that do that. So bring in an affiliate manager that already knows how to work with influencers that already has that network. And you’re going to get there probably 10 times faster than somebody that say, Hey, I’m going to learn this and do this myself. Because number one, your your time is very valuable. And now you’re investing it in something you’re not an expert in, and it’s going to slow you down as well. So I think that’s kind of lesson number one that I pick out for our e-commerce audience. But lesson number two, is you mentioned serving before you’re selling. And I think that so many people when they select the products that they are going to sell to the world, they’re focused on, oh, how many sales am I going to get? Like, I just want to get into a niche where there’s a lot of sales happening. I don’t really care what the product is, I just want to make money. And if you are establishing a brand that is going to scale to eight figures and beyond. You need to serve somebody’s needs first and foremost. Because if you identify your audience, and then you tweak your product, to actually cater to the needs of those customers in that audience better than the existing competition, that is where your business is going to grow exponentially. And again, that that shift in mind set is, you got to stop creating need to products just because you see somebody doing XYZ doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. Actually go and interview customers, talk to them, serve them, and watch your business grow. At the end of the day, that’s what business is all about is serving others. And so those are very, very basic, like, business 101 strategies, but I think all of us overlook those from time to time. Yeah, if you if you

Mario Lanzarotti 10:27

think about a Josh, you know, what you said is brilliant, because scaling businesses really isn’t about doing any sort of complex individual tasks. It’s not like you got to figure out the magic formula that will get you up Mount Everest? No, it’s like, the consistent training, the consistent showing up building the relationships with your cluster with your customers, developing a service or product that is on a level of excellency, that requires you to do research, to talk to people to get feedback from your clients to then tweak and make improvements, right? It’s the consistency in showing up that will do these things for you. But we don’t do that, right. And that’s my job as a high performance coach is to really help you do the things consistently that you know, are going to lead to the kind of results that you want in your business. And relationships is really where the magic is that and you know if I can speak into one of my recent examples with one of my clients, so he runs a big email marketing agency, and when I joined, the business was tanking, you know, it wasn’t working out. And so I asked him, Why do you think that is, and so the first thing he told me is like, people are not doing their job, people are not doing the kind of action that he’s asking them to. And I was like, Okay, this looks pretty clear to me, is like you’re surrounding yourself with the C or B players, when you want to be an A-player. And this is something that I see a lot. And this comes from a place from two places that I see with business owners. Number one, is this thing that we call the pleaser, right? This archetype of the pleaser, what the and it’s very common in entrepreneurs, because it’s a very, it’s very much in alignment with being a serving type of persona. If you have a nature of serving other people, there’s a good chance that you also have these pleasing patterns. And what happens is in the beginning of your journey of entrepreneurship, it’s really helpful because you help a lot of people, people are like, Oh, wow, you help me, I’ll help you, I’ll make an introduction. So it’s really great. But as you get higher and higher up the ladder, you keep that mindset of I’m going to put other people’s priorities before mine. Guess what, when a B player shows up, Hey, Josh, you know, can you help me out with the job and you know, yeah, that’s okay, I’ll give you a chance, you know, and then you do it once, no problem. But you do it twice, you do it three times, four times. Now you got to deal with somebody that isn’t on the level that you need. Now you got to go in and clean up the house, now you got to fix the problems that the person was supposed to be doing. So what I did with my clients is we cleaned up, we said, you know, you need A-players. So he started hiring A-players left and right. And then the next thing that you see with entrepreneurs that prevents this step is control. A lot of entrepreneurs are so attached to being in control, and they pride themselves. But the thing is, if you focused on being in control, you’re also focused on keeping things the way they’ve always been, which means you prevent innovation, which means you prevent new insights, which means you are stuck in the kind of position that you always add. But the idea is, and this is the law of the architect, you as the business owner are supposed to be removing yourself more and more and more until essentially you become redundant. And the business is being run by other people. And you can sit back started another one, or just travel around the world, whatever your thing is. So you need to learn how to give up control. And you need to learn how to surround yourself with only A-players. And I did this with my client. And after three sessions of working together his business grew by 600%, which I think is absolutely miraculous. Yeah.

Josh Hadley 14:10

I mean, that that is simply amazing. And it really comes down to very simple, again, business 101 principles, but there’s something important that you elaborated on, you know, in regards to hiring B players. And there’s something when I had my interview when I interviewed Michael E. Gerber, the author of The E-Myth, the question I asked him out of his I mean, he has decades of experience helping systematize businesses, right? How do you bring in team members to take over and actually run the business right? And again, hiring A-players is so important, so I asked him the questions like how do you identify an A-player versus a B, C, D. E, F G players, right? His analogy that he shared with me is one that’s last left a lasting impression. And it’s the way that we have kind of modeled the rest of our hiring processes. And the way we vet candidates, and it’s this, the analogy he shared is, you know, what is the hardest military group to get into in the United States? Well, it’s the Navy SEALs, okay. In the Navy SEALs training program, you don’t just sign up, you don’t just apply to be a Navy SEAL? And they say, Oh, great, it’s a warm body, we’re going to take you, right, you have to grow, go through a vetting process, then you go through their training, right to see if you can make the cut physically, mentally, can you withstand the pressure that is going to be needed for that type of role as a Navy SEAL? And you have to go through hell and back in order to actually make it as a Navy SEAL? So how does this apply to a business? One of the things that we have done in our hiring SOPs is that, yes, people apply, and they send us their resume. But then the first thing that we have people do is we have them take an assessment. It’s a personality assessment. And there’s also like an IQ assessment. It’s not an IQ score. But it’s something similar to that. The website we use as criteriacorp.com that facilitates these assessments. But that’s the first thing that takes an hour of a candidate’s time. Like this isn’t easy, right. And I think most candidates, when they’re applying for jobs, it’s kind of this spray and pray approach, right. And so they’re just trying to blast out their resume and apply to as many positions as they possibly can at once. And one of the important things is like, when you have a barrier like that, you’re gonna weed out candidates that aren’t willing to invest the time. So not only do we do that first assessment, but then the second thing we ask people to do, once they’ve passed, that initial assessment, is actually complete a test project, for the specific role that we’re hiring, like real life scenario, we’ve created a case study, they have to go solve the problem, just like they would, if they are in that role that we have for them. And so from there, we actually vet those candidates, we see how they would actually perform on the job. And again, this test project is going to take them two to three hours, to actually complete, if not more, and at the end of the day, we have seen a strong correlation with how they perform on that test project is in direct correlation with how they perform on the job, the interview doesn’t really matter. It’s that test project. So anyways, I want to share that with the audience. Because yeah, how are you hiring A-players is going to be a transformational shift in your business. So Mario, I want to dive into I know you’ve got even more case studies to share with us. I want to hear more from you like our audience, our seven figure ecommerce business owners that want to scale to eight figures and beyond. So what are some of the strategies, tools and maybe case studies that you could share with us that can cause a mindset shift in a business owner? To get to eight figures and beyond in half the time?

Mario Lanzarotti 18:13

That’s a great question. And what I would look at if I was a business owner was seven-figure level is, you already know the business kind of business practices and the typical habits that you need to follow to scale up the business because you are at a very high level of success that most entrepreneurs aren’t or might not even get to. So at that point, it becomes really, really important for you to be crystal clear over what are the actions that you need to take in your business to grow. And that might be you know, you need to hire, like we just mentioned, the kind of team were made up of A-players. But what’s more important is you need to have very strong boundaries. Because the tendency in a business, especially at a seven figure level, is the whole company looks at you as the leader of the business for direction and for guidance and for advice. And so what happens is, if your door is always open, which comes back to my point of the pleaser, you’re not going to be able to stay focused, you’re going to be able, you’re going to be distracted, you’re going to get into company policies, politics, you’re going to get into the relationships there, right. So all of that is where your energy then gets gets held up. And you’re not going to have the kind of focus the kind of quality in your thinking that will allow you to make the decisions that create the kind of eight-figure growth that you’re looking for. And oftentimes, at that level, it’s not even the growth doesn’t even happen per se on a mindset basis in the business, but it happens in your personal life, because you might have experienced this yourself, Josh, but the higher you grow, the higher you go the ladder of success. It’s what the thinner the air becomes, and the more lonely and so what I often see, especially in men, is that they build up so much stress around this persona of who they are. And they, they pride themselves with being the problem fixer and the provider for everyone in their life, that they forget that they themselves are also a human being that has needs and desires. And so one of the things for business owners that I highly recommend is to have an intimate circle of people that you trust, where you can be vulnerable, where you can open up where you can say, hey, on the front, looks great, I got the house, I got the yacht, I got the kids, I got all of the things that I’ve ever wanted. But on the inside, there’s something missing, and I’m not quite sure what it is. So you need to take care of your inner well being. Because if you don’t, you’re lacking the kind of mental and emotional capacity to consistently make the decisions in your business that are required to get to an eight figure level.

Josh Hadley 20:56

That’s fascinating. I think that that personal personal aspect is so important. I love what you shared in terms of, you know, to take your business to the next level, you have to be making really difficult decisions and strategic decisions for your business, not living in the day to day grind of your business, so to speak. And what I love is if you focus on yourself first and cleaning up your own personal life is going to make being able to make those strategic decisions easier. So Mario, I’m curious, like, as you work with your clients, what are some of those tools or, you know, use cases of how do they clean up their personal life so that they can show up, have that clarity of thought be confident in how they’re moving forward? And again, release control, stop being the pleaser, and allow other team members to grow? Alongside them? All right.

Mario Lanzarotti 21:50

Yeah. So that’s a great question. And one of the best ways to approach this is to look at the law of open cycles. And if I can ask you, Josh, right now, if you look at your computer browsers, how many tabs do you have open

Josh Hadley 22:04

right now fortunately, only three because before I ever hit record on the podcast, I have to restart my computer. But if you asked me this question, before, I had to restart my computer, probably 20, 25 On any given moment,

Mario Lanzarotti 22:19

beautiful. So that gives me a clue of how your mind is working. Because if you look at a computer browser, the more tabs you have open, the more of the computing processing power is being used for all of those unique different tabs, right, which means the entire power of the computing processing power isn’t really used at its optimum level. If you look at the mind, the mind works in a similar fashion, where we don’t have any open tabs, but we have open cycles. So what that means is for a business owner, you have, for example, things that you have given your word to, things you have committed to. And this goes back to being people that love helping other people, what we do is we often say things like, oh, yeah, I’ll I got you. I’ll help you out. Sure. I’ll do that. And in hindsight, you think, is that really the best use of my time? And now you have a little conflict with yourself? And yeah, I’ll do it tomorrow. And yeah, but I got a big project. I’ll do it next week. And so you keep delaying your word. And you do that over and over again. And guess what, in the back of your mind, what’s working is, Hey man, you haven’t completed your task, you haven’t done what you said you weren’t gonna do. So that continues to work. And you can find open cycles, also, with yourself started the new year, this year, I want to quit drinking, and I’m going to get fit. And I’m going to work out four days a week, and I want to stop meditating. And I want to do X, Y, and Z, first month, January, everything looking great February. Okay, you know, 90%, March, everything starts to fall apart. So in your mind, because you haven’t closed the cycle. What happens is, that’s still running. Oh, man, you you said you were going to do workout four workouts per week, but you’re only doing one, what’s going on there? Right. So all these these cycles are working. Another way of looking at that, and this is particularly true for male business owners is an open cycle is say, you and I are friends. And I am currently struggling with a lot of stress. Because you know, business is taking up a lot of my mental capacity. And then you and I meet and you asked me hey, Mario, how are you? How are you doing? How are things? And I’m like, yeah, yeah, you know, a little stressful, but you know, it’s all good. I got to figure it out. You know, it’s one of those things, but on the inside, you’re feeling overwhelmed. You’re feeling stuck, you’re feeling angry at yourself. And you are might You might even be experiencing symptoms of burnout, but you don’t say those things. So you keep it in the back of your mind. So you have another open cycle. So the typical business owner runs around with a plethora of open cycles at any given moment, which means they cannot focus, which now means they revert to distractions to avoid the discomfort that comes with, I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing. So that all comes together, and maybe we go back to our conversation earlier, then you revert back to quantity decisions, which is just take more action, just do more, because then you feel, okay, I’m doing a lot of stuff, you know, there’s momentum, things are happening. But are you really doing that kind of actions that give you leverage, where you take one action that leads to momentum to big momentum? No, you’re likely not doing that. So that’s where I first look at. And, you know, when I do that with people, all of a sudden, they come back to me, one of my clients, I coached him, I’ve been coaching him for three years, started in his parents’ basement, essentially. And now he’s, he’s got to seven-figure agencies. And one of the thing for him was an open cycle related to not communicating his feelings, and also not really communicating what he wants, especially when it comes to finances. So in his example, he would often text financial conversations are last slack, because he felt more comfortable, but he wouldn’t do it in person. So they would have a meeting about important steps in the business, and he would just not address it. And then later on, he would text it. And that would create so much confusion, so much time, because sometimes days or weeks go by, and then there’s a sense of resentment that you’re harboring towards your partners, because you’re like I said, we’re going to do 20%. But actually, I’m not happy with 20%. I want 40%. And so you’re carrying that resentment. And so what happens is, there is a lack of trust in that relationship. And whenever there’s a lack of trust in any relationship in your business, guess what? Performance suffers, because you cannot perform at your best if two people or more are not trusting each other. In fact, if you look at Google, who was one of the most ravingly successful companies of all time. They did a study called a on all their compartments and departments of teams. And they looked at what is it that makes teams perform at the highest level, they looked at different factors. And the one factor that they found that supersedes all other factors was psychological safety. Now, what the heck is psychological safety? What does that even mean? What it means is that people are comfortable to be who they really are with other people think about how important that is charged seven-figure entrepreneurs are likely to have a team. And they are likely people that have brilliant ideas that can save you time, money and energy. But oftentimes those people will not speak up, they’re afraid they’re afraid to be themselves. And so with my client, that’s what we did. And again, as I said, with that process, he scaled to multiple, seven figures. And now he’s going further. And guess what, he’s a true leader, now. He embraces what he feels he communicates it. And so he doesn’t create conflict, and he moves through stuff fast.

Josh Hadley 28:05

Makes a lot of sense. So Mario, my follow up question to dive deeper on this kind of like root issue is, number one, what is your advice as it relates to identifying these open cycles that may be living in an entrepreneur’s life that is preventing them from showing up as their best self to be on top of their game? And, you know, ultimately, leading them to a life of just kind of being distracted and not realizing their full potential?

Mario Lanzarotti 28:35

Yeah, great question. So what I would do, I would look at myself, and I would, I would ask myself the question, What have I said yes to that, if I’m really honest, I don’t want to be that’s the first question, you ask that question, you’re gonna get a lot of opportunities for you to clean up and say, You know what, I don’t want to be doing this anymore. That’s the first one. Another big one is ask yourself the question, what is it that I that I’m doing, because I think I should, but if I’m really honest, I don’t want to that will open so many conversations for you. And this one is particularly important. Because anytime you are approaching anything in your life, from a place of I should, you are coming from a place of guilt and shame. Reason being, the fact of the matter is, you’re not doing it, but now your mind is telling you I should be doing it. So now you are evoking shame and guilt from yourself. And some people might say, well, that’s great, because with shame and guilt, that’s going to move me into action. Right? And I will say yeah, yes, there’s some truth to that. But the problem with this kind of way to pushing yourself into action is it’s extremely unsustainable. You know, you’re relying on willpower. So you have these what you find is you have these high highs and low lows, but you’re you don’t have the middle way. And, on top of that, what I see a lot happening at the moment is, a lot of entrepreneurs are quite numb, they don’t really feel anything anymore. Because they so they’ve been punching themselves so much into action. And so also another thing that’s really, really important to know when it comes to human behavior is, whenever you’re using shame and guilt, your your state, your mental and emotional state goes into a fight or flight state. So now your mind is panicking. And it’s looking for safety, it’s looking for a way to get you back into that feeling of Everything’s under control. And there is nothing more that gives people that feeling than the past, because the past is predictable, past lifted, and will happen again, I can predict it. So what happens if you shame yourself into I shouldn’t be doing this is your mind will revert back to old patterns. So you repeat the same story over and over again, which means no innovation, no quality decisions, no quantum growth. And so that those are the two places if you just start there, you’re gonna get a lot to work with. And that will help you to shed some of that extra baggage that you’re holding on to, or extreme focus and clarity and that sense of inner peace that so many people want.

Josh Hadley 31:08

Yeah, I love that. Those are some great questions to ask. Now I want to dive even deeper here. So let’s say we’ve identified what those open cycles are in our life. How do we close them?

Mario Lanzarotti 31:21

Great, great question. So first things first, if you want to change any behavior in your life, whatever it is, business related, personal related smoking, watching porn, drinking over eating doesn’t matter what it is, the first step always is awareness. By awareness. I mean, you need to become aware of what is playing in your subconscious mind. So give you an example. If you find yourself getting distracted, maybe you check social media, you check your favorite blog articles, you watch the news, you listen to the radio, whatever you do, whatever your thing is, if you want to stop the distraction, you need to take a look at what leads to the distraction because there is a mental conversation taking place. The conversation might be like, Ah, this is difficult. This is annoying. This is a waste of time. I mean, why am I even doing this? You know? Great. Now you have a clue then, and you want to be the detective, right? You want to be the detective of your own inner world, then you go to okay, how does that make me feel? If I tell myself it’s a district, it’s a waste of time. What is the feeling that comes up? Okay? There’s a feeling of frustration. There’s a feeling of anxiousness because I’m like, Oh, I might be wasting time here. I’m missing out on doing something better. Great. Okay, now you go into the body. Okay, where do I feel that in my body, if it’s an anxiety, anxiety usually lives in the chest area? You go into the sensation? How does it feel okay, it feels straining, okay, it feels heavy. It feels like a vibrating sensation you want to label without giving it meaning. You don’t want to say, oh, it’s bad. Oh, it shouldn’t be No, it’s just what it is. Once you have those three steps, then you go on to the next, then you go into what I call, being able to make a conscious decision. Because normally at that point, what happens is at that point of view behavior, you feel that sensation, now your body just wants one thing and wants to run away from it. So it grabs the phone, so it grabs the donut or the sugar drink, whatever. At that point, you have an option. By doing two things, you take a deep belly breath through the nose, you’d be surprised what a single deep breath can do as you do that, you take about three, four or five breaths, you notice how your body starts to calm down. As your body starts to calm down, you revisit the situation and you ask yourself, Do I feel confident and safe enough to proceed with the behavior that I want? Or do I need more time to rest because option number two is quite relevant for many, many entrepreneurs because they’re constantly burned out, and they actually need more rest. So if you follow those steps, listen to the conversation in the mind. How does it make you feel, check in where it is in the body, take three to five deep breaths, then come and make a conscious decision to either proceed or to rest. If you follow that chain of events, I promise you, Josh, you’re gonna make quantum leaps forward in your life as a leader, and on the bottom line of your business.

Josh Hadley 34:20

I think that is so impactful. And Mario i I’m gonna be vulnerable here with the audience. And I want you to kind of break things down for myself because I see this is something that even reoccurring for myself. Yeah. And I love the actionable strategies that you just provided everybody to close those open cycles. And I’ll use my use cases, one that we could dive into as a case study, so to speak, you know, whenever I am, whenever I’m leading the business, and there’s a somebody comes to me with a question, or I need to create an SOP or I need to make a a difficult decision. Right? What I have noticed is when I’m not 100% clear exactly what the next step should be, I know it’s going to require some extra effort for me to either learn something new, or to really think, you know, strategically, to make sure I’m making the right decision. I immediately kind of go to my phone, or I’ve got numerous tabs on my computer, and I go check my, my sales on Amazon. Okay, how are things looking? Oh, well, how’s my advertising performance going today? What’s, how much are we spending? Right? Like, just little things of like little dopamine kicks, right? Because I’ve got this obstacle that’s now facing me, I know what I need to do. I need to actually push through and sit down, get quiet, and think through the process. I know, that’s what I need to do. But instead, I’m immediately go into my phone. Is it TikTok? Or is it Oh, I got a I got a notification or a text. Right. And so I’m, I’m always distracting myself. Yeah. What’s your recommendation? Again, I think that process is something I need to actually implement. But any other advice or recommendation you would provide? Because I feel like entrepreneurs are constantly making decision after decision. And you can get burnt out. And when you face really big decisions you have to make, that’s where I think most people turn to those bad habits. Yeah.

Mario Lanzarotti 36:30

Great, great question. And also, before we go into that, Josh, I really want to acknowledge you because you having a well known podcast with people that are listening to this, you have a reputation and you deciding to open up about this, I think just shows that you’re a powerful leader. And I really respect that I don’t think that’s just something that’s normal that everybody does. So that’s first, that’s number one. And number two is so you need to first understand the nature of distractions, right? Most people look at a distraction from a place of like, Ah, man, I’m distracting myself. I shouldn’t be doing that. That’s stupid. Why am I doing that? So my first question is to you is like, how do you feel about the fact that you are, in your own words, distracting yourself?

Josh Hadley 37:16

Yeah, I think I always kick myself in the rear. You know, I’m like, why? I just wasted 10 minutes. Right? And so it’s more of this. White, why do I keep wasting my time? I know better, so to speak, right? Yeah. And it’s just more of that kind of, you should be doing this, right. And it’s kind of that mental baggage of just buckled down. You’re not mentally strong enough, right? Like, you’re keep trying to distract yourself, like what’s wrong, like, step up and hit the ball? Right? Good.

Mario Lanzarotti 37:47

Awesome. Thank you for sharing that. And now I know, your relationship to the your own behavior that you have is one of judgment, right? You’re in resistance to the way that you’re acting. Now, let me ask you another question. Do you have children? I do three. Beautiful, how old are they?

Josh Hadley 38:04

So we got a seven year old and we have a four year old and a two year old?

Mario Lanzarotti 38:08

Seven, four and two. Beautiful. Okay, so let’s take, let’s take the four year old one, right? And let’s just say that your four year old is taking is he, he or she already riding the bike?

Josh Hadley 38:19

She and no, she is not a fan of the bike right now. Why not? She is scared that she’ll fall over. Oh, man,

Mario Lanzarotti 38:29

this is a perfect example. So let’s take her wonderful example. Right? So one day, she comes to you and she’s like, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, I’ve decided I want to ride the bike. And you’re like, beautiful. I’m so happy. My daughter is finally approaching this. I’m so proud. Great. So now she’s getting ready first time you know, she gets on the bike. And she goes digital bull. And she falls over she may be slightly hits her head. You know, a little bit bruise. She’s crying. She’s all over the place. And she’s like, Oh, Daddy, Daddy, she comes to you describe? I’m so stupid. I can’t ride the bike. I will never be able to do this. I shouldn’t be falling on my face. I’m such an idiot. Would you say to your daughter? You know what? That’s so beautiful. I agree with you. You’re so stupid. You will never be able to ride the bike. You know? You’re just doing it all wrong. Would you say that? Sir?

Josh Hadley 39:17

Of course not. Why not? Because none of those statements are true. And everybody has to practice and learn, right? We learn even the walk by falling down.

Mario Lanzarotti 39:29

Ah, okay, good. So you know how to handle this in a conscious way with your own children. Yet the way that you approach it with yourself is not so conscious. See, what happens is all of us regardless of our age, we have what we call an inner child within ourselves. It’s the archetypal construction of when we once were young, that part of ourselves is still very much alive within us. And so it is this part that responds to things not working out the way that we think they should be working out, just like a child getting on the bike thinking, Okay, I’m gonna write this now it’s gonna go perfectly falling over that, oh my god all over the place. So there’s a little Josh inside of you that when when you think about the big difficult decision that you’re about to make is shit scared Excuse My French is just like, oh my god, oh my god, something bad’s going to happen, I don’t know what I’m going to do. So when you approach this part of yourself, and you say, Come on, man, get your shit together, you should be you know what to do just already do it. And I bet that, you know, when you get more frustrated, the language that you use is stronger towards yourself, because you want to evoke that reaction out of it. So that’s number one, just to understand that you’re actually re traumatizing little Josh inside of you, just like you would not do it with your daughter, because she would be even more scared. When we leave our comfort zone, what we need to do is we need to do it with a loving awareness. It’s like the way that I would approach yourself and this is what I do with my clients is to be super kind to yourself. And I talked about this in my TEDx Talk, is instead of saying Come on, Josh, just get your shit together. It’s like, Hey, it’s okay. And you chicken, what is it that you need right now. And oftentimes, when there’s a sense of anxiety, what you need is a sense of reassurance. Let just like when your daughter comes to you, you say, It’s okay, honey, Daddy’s got you, that’s fine, you know, you can just do it again, you know, like, we’re here to learn and to practice. And you know that these things are natural. If you talk to yourself, that way, magic is going to happen. Because in that moment, you’re going to do this, ah, you’re going to feel a sense of ease and release. And the Eastern release is what you’re actually looking for on your phone. When you’re going through social media, or when you’re going on your Amazon account. And you like things under control, you can do that by talking to yourself with a sense of loving awareness, and taking deep breaths. And to go a level deeper. Yeah, what happens is there are these are coping mechanisms, right. So a distraction is really a coping mechanism with an underlying sense of pain. And that has created in the past, like we call it trauma, like it could literally mean, you’re in a classroom, and a teacher asks you, Josh, two plus two, and you’re like, it’s seven. And then everybody looks at you, and starts giggling and laughing, and you’re, and you are mortified in that moment. So what you learn in that moment is, it’s not safe to put myself out there, it’s not safe to take a risk. And so these things then form behavioral patterns that show up in your business. And so a distraction is really a coping mechanism. It’s a cry for help within yourself, where there’s a part of you saying, I’m scared, help me, and you’re like, Okay, here’s the phone, distract myself from that pain, don’t go into the pain. So if you want to really transcend this, and you want to move through it, then you need to feel the pain, you need to feel your feelings, which entrepreneurs are notorious for not doing. I’ve spent most of my life denying my own feelings, because I thought that’s actually productive. But it’s the opposite. The more you feel, the more you heal, which means you can release that stuff, which means now you no longer show up with the guilt, the shame and the anger. Now, now you are clear, now you have peace. And if you have peace, you get to live your life from a place of deciding, it’s no longer this, this franticness of like, okay, I have to do this, and I must do this. No, you’re like, I decide, this is what I choose to do, because I enjoy doing it, because that’s what I want to do. And that’s when your life truly starts to change.

Josh Hadley 43:42

Mario, this,this is amazing. You’re bringing up even one layer deeper inside myself that I’m going to open up and hear you kind of diagnose this as well, one of those inner thoughts in my mind when I’m having to make either a difficult decision, or I have to slow down in order to like create an SOP or to hire a team member. Because, you know, that’s that’s the next step. That’s what needs to happen. My frustration is I think that those should, what are the things I know I should be doing? And it’s more along the lines of I should have $100 million business. Hmm, I look at all the other successful e-commerce businesses. I feel like I’m just as capable as they are. But I’m doing something wrong. I’m spending too much time on these little tasks. And I’m making this little decision like why am I not at that? 100 million dollars? Yeah, already. And what would you say to that? Like, I feel like that’s what’s kind of like deep down like I have this vision of I love my potential, but I’m not there yet. Right. And so I beat myself up.

Mario Lanzarotti 44:54

Yeah, this is a classical one. And again, I want to honor you for stepping one step further. They’re out. And I think a lot of your listeners will be will resonate with that because they look at where they are. And then they tell themselves, I’m not where I’m supposed to be, there’s so much inside of me that can be brought out. And you know, it’s true, there is so much more inside of you that can be brought out. But the reason it’s not already out is because actually, you do not want the 100 million. Because if you have the 100 million, you know that there is something that’s going to increase, often in a mental perspective, the amount of problems will increase, right. That’s why they say Biggie made the song, more money, more problems, more responsibility, more, more being on your own, because you know, you’ll climb the mountain even higher, and so less people to relate to, if you’re the 100 million guy in maybe in your family, you’re the only one. And so nobody really truly knows how Josh feels when Josh is by himself. And so all of that is what I call a self sabotaging mechanism, where you tell yourself consciously, yep, I want the 100 million dollar business. But unconsciously, you are scared of that. Because here’s the thing, what a self sabotaging mechanism is it’s your conscious mind working against your unconscious mind. And if you ever seen the picture of the iceberg, where you see the tiny peek above the water, and the huge body underneath your unconscious mind is makes up about 95% of everything. So if you were like, yes, I want that $100 million business, your unconscious mind? No, bro, no, no, no, no Not gonna happen. That’s way too much. So first of all, I would have you look at the reality of the way that you’re showing up and divorce this idea that what you want is the 100 million dollar business. Because if your behavior shows the opposite, what you really want is you want to stay safe, you want to stay in control, you want to stay in your comfort zone. And there’s nothing wrong with that. That’s the first realization that I would bring in. And then second is to look at what is it that’s missing for you, if you truly want to get to that 100 million dollar level, there are certain needs that you have that are currently not being fulfilled, it might be more of a support system, it might be someone like a coach or a mentor in your corner, it might be a place where Josh can just go into and just be Josh and just drop all of the accolades of I’m a successful man, I’ve built this now like I just drop all of that, I just want to be Josh, and I don’t want to be judged for being Josh, maybe it’s not right. Or maybe it’s having a partner to grow this business with you write there’s some there are some unmet needs that you have that essentially get triggered with the idea of going up even higher. And so those needs are calling for you to fill them up. And as you do that, it’ll be much more effortless to go to the 100 million dollar level.

Josh Hadley 47:58

I love that. I love that Mario, this is a, this has been a great session, even for myself, but I hope that it’s been applicable for the listeners, because I feel like these are some some things that, you know, I have internally that I feel like I’m probably not alone, Mario, are there any other like case studies that you would like to share with the audience of ways that they can unlock, you know, some of their mindset shifts to help them grow faster?

Mario Lanzarotti 48:26

Yeah. So another another. Now dear brother of mine, he’s a previous client. He ran he he’s actually the one running the e-commerce company. So he’s a he’s a serial entrepreneur is an investor in real estate and runs an e-commerce business out of New Jersey. And so when we started to work together, he was very much struggling to trust himself. And when I say struggling to trust himself, what I mean is there’s a lack of confidence. He was pretty much all over the place. He was the kind of guy that just does it all by himself, lone wolf syndrome, not having the team to rely upon. And he wanted all of that, right, he told me, and what we discovered was that he was operating from a scarcity mindset. A scarcity mindset is a mindset that relies on two beliefs. I’m not enough, and there is not enough. So there’s not enough money. There’s not enough clients, there’s not enough business opportunities. And you can see it in recessions. This flames up massively in people where they go into hibernation, or they go into saving or withdrawing. And if you look at the history of recessions, many of the most fundamental companies that a Fortune 500 today have been created in a recession. So something tells me that you know, there are huge opportunities. So he was operating from a scarcity mentality, which meant that he was more risk avoidant. And so what I did with him was one shift. I helped him tap into an abundance mindset and the abundance It comes from no longer blaming yourself. And this is a huge thing for entrepreneurs. And we talked about this earlier, because it’s so ingrained in people’s idea of how you create forward momentum, I just gotta be the ox, you know, this rubbish, just keep going, just work harder, just do more. And that just simply denies you have the opportunity to create a system and a team that supports you to be the quarterback. And for him, we did the shift. And what I did with him was, I understood that he was holding on to a past investment that he made a six figure investment that he made that didn’t go well, essentially, he got scammed. And he would tell me, it’s like, Dude, I knew something was off. But I didn’t listen to myself. I was too greedy. And so I said, I understand that’s what you did. But how do you feel about that today, and he still beat himself up for it, which meant he was avoiding to invest more money into bringing on bigger teams. So what I helped him do was to forgive himself, and to let go of what happened in the past. And the moment he did it, I guided him through a certain meditation that I do with my clients, one on one, two days later, he calls me, dude, I pulled the trigger, I made the investment, he brought on a new sales team, a sales coach. And then a week later, he’s like, Oh, my God, man, business is just going up. This is incredible. I am loving it. And all we did was a shift in his mind, from scarcity to abundance, through forgiveness, and through accepting,

Josh Hadley 51:33

that’s amazing. I think that that mindset shift from scarcity to abundance is so so so important. You’ve got to see the world, there is more than enough to go around, it goes back to you know, my same, you know, deep underlying issue is I look at, you know, other people have done 100 million, it’s like, oh, well, because they’re successful, I can’t be successful, or, or vice versa, right. Because I’m successful, I need to make sure other my competitors are constantly lower than me, instead of, hey, there’s more than enough room to play here, go and be who we are, and truly serve customers. And just watch the growth expand from there. When you’re focused on comparing yourself to others. I feel like it’s where the most damage comes compared to focus on comparing yourself to who you were yesterday, or who you were a year ago. And that’s kind of some of the things that I’m taking away from you, Mario is, you know, take that in herself. And I just need that self assurance to be like, Yeah, guess what, you’re not at that 100 million dollar business right now. But guess what, you’ve made some key decisions that have got you to where you are today. You are on that path? Yes. You’re not there. Now. You are on the path. Yeah, keep moving forward. Right. Instead of this shaming, like, I haven’t hit that goal yet. I think it’s important, Mario, are there other examples? Because I think these examples are going to relate to our audience in so many ways. Other examples you want to share and case studies.

Mario Lanzarotti 53:06

Another thing that I often see is this idea that, and it’s similar to what you shared is that success, money and you can add any level to success or money you want this matter is hard. It has to be hard. And so I used to believe that for the longest time, and at some point, I just got so fed up with it. I was like, Why does everything always have to be hard? I don’t like that. Like, I want it to be effortless. I want it to be fun. I want it to be smooth. And so another client of mine, he runs an agency, an agency business. He’s close to seven figures, very high six figures. When I came into this business, he told me it’s like, Dude, I want to streamline things. I want to focus more on clients that I absolutely love, which is another whole we can do a whole podcast on people working with clients that they don’t like, just because the money and I’m like, that’s the worst thing you can do because you’re making the entrepreneurial journey, just all about suffering. So he said to me, I want to have better clients with more revenue, shared deals, and just a lot smoother people that I love working with cool. Sounds super simple as like, how many of those do you have right now? And he had like five clients. And he’s like, I got one of them. I was like one, okay, tell me about this person. So he told me about this client, very well established coach has a clear idea of his target audience, all we need to do is insert ads with a webinar strategy, which will generate an additional $60,000 in monthly revenue, like, wow, amazing, awesome. As it as it, how do you how are you going to find more of those? And he’s like, Ah, man, I don’t know. It’s hard. And I could see him his mind going down. I was like, are you ready for a breathtaking idea that is going to land new clients like this? And he’s like a tongue as like, Have you considered reaching out to your client and asking them to introduce you to other clients? And he’s like, No, I haven’t done that. I’m like Why not? Any things and things? Oh, because it would be too easy. I’m gonna say, ah, isn’t that interesting. So if you have this belief that everything has to be hard, your mind will literally deny you to see the opportunities that are right in front of you to make things easy. And that’s what he reached out to the client. He’s like, Hey, man, I love working with you. You love working with me? Can you introduce me to two more people like you? Well, within two days, he had two new clients, it cost him nothing.

Josh Hadley 55:28

Yeah, amazing. I mean, there’s so many principles, just like that, that we could go on for days Mario, sharing these things. But this has been such a fun conversation Mario. As we begin to wrap up here, I love to leave the audience with three actionable takeaways from each episode. Here are the ones that I’ve noted, they probably apply a lot to myself. But I think that any entrepreneur listening to this could apply these principles and the strategies into their life, and start to experience some mindset shifts. So action number one is Who, Not How. This goes exactly back to that last example you just shared, he reached out to somebody, right, one of his best clients, he reached out. Same thing if if you’re trying to figure out how to get into retail, or if you’re figuring out how to get into, you know, driving external marketing into Amazon, don’t go sign up for another course, if you’re an established seven figure business, then you need to cast that vision. And understand that you are going to be you’re investing for the long term by bringing in an expert that is going to get you there 10 times faster than you could on your own action number two, and strategy number two, would be serving, over selling. And I think this is an principle that applies at every time in life. Even whether you’re parenting, whether you are selling products in your business, whether you’re trying to build a consulting business, no matter what it is, if you get down to the core root of everything, it all comes down to serving somebody else, by paying attention to their needs, and better serving them. When it comes to marriage. It’s the same thing, it all boils down to service and love for somebody else, identifying what their problems are, and seeing how you can benefit and provide a solution to them. And it’s amazing, when we focus first on that, how beautiful life can be. But yet we get so focused on our serving our own needs. First, that sometimes if we step outside ourselves, and what we want, and we approach other people and serve them, we end up getting what we want, in a much more beautiful way. And last but not least, a third strategy here is having a sense of self assurance, and self reassuring yourself using that, you know, my daughter falling off the bicycle bicycle analogy. When you hit an obstacle in your business, you need to make a difficult decision. Or you’ve made a mistake, rather than saying how dumb am I? Why did I do this? Taking the step back to say like, this is part of the journey. As a business owner, it’s all about constantly making decisions, seeing what worked and what did not work, and pivoting and making changes, just like riding a bicycle. Okay, I can’t lean too far to the right, that’s not gonna work. I need to stay in the middle. Right? Those are things you learn only through experience. So I love that that’s something I’m taking away is like, give myself that self reassurance. Say like, solid, good. You’re you’re on the path, keep going, step up and make this decision. And guess what, if it’s not the right decision, it will become apparent. And we can pivot and make a new decision later on. So those are my three actionable takeaways for the audience. Mario, is there anything else you would add to these three strategies?

Mario Lanzarotti 59:12

I would say the open love open cycles. So taking inventory of the what is it that I’ve agreed to doing? But if I’m honest, I can’t or I don’t want to plus, what is it that I’m doing because I think I should but if I’m really honest, I don’t want to be doing and taking an inventory of that and then closing the cycles by letting people know hey, I overcommitted I’m sorry, I can’t do it at this time. Let’s move this to January next year, whatever. And also making peace with Hey, I’ve overcommitted with myself. I’m not going to go to the gym four times, I’m going to go two times I’m not going to get up at 5am going to get up at six right so to get back into alignment, where you close those cycles so you have that additional focus in that energy for you to make bigger and better decisions.

Josh Hadley 1:00:00

I completely agree Mario, I couldn’t have said it better. So yes, closing those open cycles taking inventory of that foundational, I think above all else. Yeah. Mario, I love to ask each each guest three questions here as we wrap things up. So my first question here is what’s been the most influential book that you’ve read? And why?

Mario Lanzarotti 1:00:21

Great question, the book that comes to mind. And I’m sure there’s many, many others that I’m not thinking about now is The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. And the reason being, it really teaches you how to live in the present moment. And oftentimes what I find is people talk about present moment as if it’s some sort of lofty spiritual kind of thing that you may be doing once you have generational wealth, and you don’t need to think about money anymore. No, quite the opposite. Living in the present is probably the number one PAC to high performance. And in that book, you really learn how to live in the present moment. And I’ve probably read the book like four or five times. And every time I learned something new,

Josh Hadley 1:01:03

amazing. I’m going to have to dive into that, that sounds like that can I can experience a lot of mindset shifts there. One other book I want to share with the audience, as it relates to our conversation today is the book The obstacle is the way I don’t have the author in front of me. But Ryan has won something, I think you’re familiar with it? Yes. I love a lot of those principles, because it is some of those difficult things, you know, when I have to make a difficult decision, or when we are making mistakes, and things start to fall apart. That’s typically where the best growth can come from, and better decision making can occur. So another good book, lots of principles to unpack there. Mario, let’s dive into question number two here, what is your favorite productivity tool or new software that you’ve recently discovered that you think is going to be a game changer.

Mario Lanzarotti 1:01:55

So I’m a very classical person, I like to stay away from technology as much as possible. Naturally, you and I are connected through technology. So that’s beautiful. But there are two things that I use. One is the Pomodoro app, the Pomodoro Technique. So I have like an extension on my Chrome browser. And I stick to it very rigorously, right, you do a 25 minute work, five minute break. Now when I do the break, he is what to add to that. And that is breathing, deep breathing. And as I showed you earlier, you breathe into the belly, which which means every 25 minutes I get this boost of being present, I get this boost of being clear of increasing my ability to focus. And it just makes my day incredibly productive. I mean, I get so much done. And at the end of the day, I’m still feeling very good and very much centered and present. So when I didn’t spend time with my wife, it’s high quality time. But that’s because throughout the day, I’ve been giving myself these mini refuel moments. And it’s beautiful.

Josh Hadley 1:02:59

That’s amazing. I love that hack. That’s probably one of the best hacks that somebody has shared in terms of productivity. Today, I think that the deep breathing, that’s something that I think I want to implement as well into my own routine, I love setting aside those time blocks, for sure. I do my breathing in meditations in the morning. But incorporating that throughout the day, I see how that can be super powerful. So yeah, take note, and thanks for sharing that Mario. Yeah. Last question here, who is somebody that you admire or respect the most in the entrepreneurship space as a whole? And why should other people be following them?

Mario Lanzarotti 1:03:39

So the person that comes to mind is Alex Hormozi. And I really appreciate his dedication to delivering outstanding value mean, I read his book, The $100 Million Dollar Offer. And there’s so much value in that in that tiny little book. And I think it’s even free. And then plus, on his website, you’ll find so many insights tools on really scaling to seven figure businesses. And yeah, that just the way that he communicates is very simple. And it’s brought down to a language that everybody understands. So I highly recommend checking out his content plus, the way I mean, there’s even a phrase Hormozi Style videos for these shorts on like YouTube and Instagram and he’s mastered the art. So I think definitely someone worth checking.

Josh Hadley 1:04:30

Totally agree. He is definitely one to follow. It drops a lot of knowledge bombs, as it relates to business and different strategies people can implement. Yeah, Mario, this has been a very impactful conversation for myself, as well as our listeners. If people want to learn more about you, where can they go? And I also believe you have some freebies to give out to our audience as well. So why don’t you tell us more about that?

Mario Lanzarotti 1:04:56

Yes. So thank you for asking that question. And Josh, I’ve made it very simple for your listeners and viewers. So if you go to my website, it’s my full name, Mario Lanzarotti. So M A R I O. And then my last name. MarioLanzarotti.com/welcome-eb. And that’s for eComm Breakthrough. If you visit that site, then you will find three calls to action. One is you can watch my TEDx Talk on overcoming self doubt that has over 1 million views. The other one is that there is a free 30 minute training on how to make more money and a half the time where I share some of the tools and practices that I offered today. And that is really doesn’t matter what stage of the business you’re at, these tools are universally applicable. And three, if you would like to get in touch with me and maybe talk about coaching, or just connect and share with me what you appreciated about the interview today. Then you can also do that there. My all my social media, social media links are there. Yeah. And I would love to hear from people. What part of this conversation really resonated and how are they going to apply that?

Josh Hadley 1:06:14

Awesome, Mario, thanks for putting that together for our audience. And I encourage our audience to go take advantage of what Mario’s put together there, especially at least pay attention to the 30 Minute free training of how to make more money and half the time. I mean, why not? So Mario, thank you so much for your time today. It was a pleasure having you on the show.

Mario Lanzarotti 1:06:36

Josh. Thank you, your champion. I really enjoyed our conversation, and I look forward to listening.

Outro 1:06:43

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