Freedom in Five Minutes

What scars do you have? Some people see a scar as an imperfection on your skin, but there could be an amazing story behind that. Trophies come in a variety of forms. And they can be anything from medals and status to scars on your body. So, what trophies do you have that you have a story around?

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com and we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this: Trophies Come in Many Forms When You Work Hard for Them. That and more coming up.

Dean Soto 0:00:35

Good morning. Daylight Savings Time. At least as of recording. So this might actually be a little while because I pretty much record every day —+ just about every day and my guys are amazing and they do a lot of actual content around these podcasts. Often, they are delayed quite a bit so if you're wondering, "Why the heck is he talking about daylight savings and it's closer to Easter." Don't worry about it. Just go with it.

Dean Soto 0:01:06

It's more about the story anyway, right? It's more about the story. All right. So, it is a beautiful morning today. It is still having all these amazing yellow wildflowers and everything is blooming. We have our lupines. If you've ever seen lupines, they're like lavender — I don't even know if it might even be the same thing as lavender. I'm not sure. But it's just a beautiful purple flower all over the place and I see the new lupine bushes like that have been planted that are kind of wild and all over the place popping up and everything absolutely amazing — even got a small little manzanita doing its thing that'll have some berries later on yeah it's just absolutely amazing so so yeah

Dean Soto 0:02:00

Oh before I get into this why don't you go to Google. Type in Freedom In Five Minutes podcast and subscribe via Apple iTunes. Won't you go do that? Do it. Do it. You can subscribe to iHeartRadio. You can subscribe to Spotify. If you go to Spotify and you type in Freedom In Five Minutes, you'll find the Freedom In Five Minutes podcast. It'll be up there, alright. So, it's not the five minutes to freedom album or whatever yeah.

Dean Soto 0:02:36

I actually was like oh man I'm not gonna actually name this podcast freedom — I can't name it five minutes of freedom because somebody else already made an album. It keeps on popping up and everything. But it's Freedom In Five Minutes. Complete opposite. Five Minutes comes later. I was recently on a podcast where the podcaster kept saying five minutes to freedom and I'm like...god alright

Dean Soto 0:03:10

So. Jiu-Jitsu. Let's talk about this a little bit. I started Jiu-Jitsu about a year ago. I've talked about this in another episode. I started in February of 2019. The whole idea was I needed a 90-day target. I was part of the Wake Up Warrior community. We were in the Kings' 90-Day Challenge. It's the way that they do things in the Wake Up Warrior. Every 90 days you create a target for your body, for your spirituality, for your business, as well as your family. Something that you're gonna do with your family and something that I still do today.

Dean Soto 0:04:08

I do it off and on. I need to be much much better about it but something that I still do to this very day and during that time I knew that you're not supposed to create targets that are like, "I want to get to a hundred and eighty pounds." because weight is not really something that you can truly be accountable.

Dean Soto 0:04:36

If you sign up for an Ironman or for a Jiu-Jitsu tournament or something where you've paid money, you've gone into it. you have to actually do it. It becomes much much harder to say, "Yeah I'm good. I don't need to do it."

Dean Soto 0:04:50

Especially when it's something that you really truly want to do. So that was my body goal for that time and it was interesting because I had always wanted to do Jiu-Jitsu. But there were two things stopping me. One I wasn't sure about rolling with the opposite sex which I think I talked about in previous episodes. I always just felt uncomfortable. I don't know, it was just something that was kind of odd to me. I definitely got over that. It's cool because my Warrior Brothers were really helping especially with Jiu-Jitsu. it's a great equalizer of martial arts. You're helping them if they were ever in a really bad situation. To be able to at least have some sort of self-defense.

Dean Soto 0:05:49

So, that was cool. The other thing was I just actually didn't believe that I would be that good at it — that I would be able to even compete. I was relatively out of shape. I just was not in the greatest shape at that time. I was about 215 pounds going on 220. It didn't seem like it was gonna be in the cards. The cool thing was — the really interesting thing was that I did it anyway. I did my first tournament about two months later.

Dean Soto 0:06:33

I called the gym — I was looking at all these different gyms and it was kind of a good thing because there were all these gyms that were only open in the evenings. I got into Google. Being an entrepreneur, I can go anytime. I don't want to go in the evenings. I want to be able to go whenever I want. So I go on Google and I see one.

Dean Soto 0:06:58

Jim says that they open at 8 o'clock in the morning well they do open at 8 o'clock in the morning but I'm guessing Google got it wrong they only opened on 8 o'clock in the mornings on Saturday so anyway I call this guy I think they had a ClickFunnels little funnel I put in my name and everything like that and then

Dean Soto 0:07:22

Rudy calls me back. It's Fresno Ultimate Martial Arts. Rudy calls me back and I'm like, "Yeah. You know I really want to do a Jiu-Jitsu tournament."

Dean Soto 0:07:35

It was part of my business things. In about two months. And he's like, "Oh, Whoa. Yeah. I think we'd get you ready by then. That'll be really tough but you're gonna have to really work at it."

Dean Soto 0:07:48

I was like yeah I have to. I'll just keep calling around to anybody who will take me and help me to do that.

Dean Soto 0:08:07

He's like, "Yeah. No problem. We'll try and make it happen."

Dean Soto 0:08:11

So I went over there, signed up, and then realized that it was Tuesdays and Thursdays in the evening. And I'm like, "What?!"

Dean Soto 0:08:20

And then on Saturdays, you can roll at around 7:30 in the morning but it ended up being a really really cool thing because the community and the instructor were just so welcoming and so awesome.

Dean Soto 0:08:36

Everyone's so positive and in fact, it was neat because I went to my first Jiu-Jitsu tournament in April or May of 2019 and ended up getting third place in No-Gi and got a little trophy — that was my first trophy in Jiu-Jitsu.

Dean Soto 0:09:01

I was like wow that's really really cool and for a while, nobody was doing much in the way of tournaments and the next tournament that came up with it was a few months later after that and because of that, the whole tournament thing of me doing that, we ended up having five or six people do a tournament. Out of those five or six people, I want to say five of them ended up placing and actually getting medals which was awesome. The pictures that came from it and everything was just really really cool.

Dean Soto 0:09:42

To see that it went from nobody competing to one person competing to five people competing and now in April I'll be doing another tournament and we'll have multiple people doing the tournament over here in central California. I might even do one down in Southern California a few weeks after that.

Dean Soto 0:10:13

That was trophy number one. Trophy number two was not exactly a trophy I expected and wanted. Trophy number two is on my right ear. If you were me, at least. But if you were looking at me it would be my left ear. It is becoming a cauliflower ear.

Dean Soto 0:10:41

I went for a full year doing jiu-jitsu and nothing like that happened at all. Nothing like that happened at all. All of a sudden, I actually don't even know when it happened or how it happened or whatever. But my ear started to swell up and it's been this way for about two weeks now.

Dean Soto 0:11:06

I get a lot of people saying, "Hey are you gonna drain it? Are you gonna do this, you're gonna do that?"

Dean Soto 0:11:10

It's annoying and it's kind of slowed my roll which I think I needed to do anyway. I think I was doing a little bit too much.

Dean Soto 0:11:24

There is someone shooting right now. We're living in the country so people shoot quite often.

Dean Soto 0:11:39

All that being said — it sounded like an AR15. Anyway, all that being said I have people who say "don't worry about it" as people say "drain it"

Dean Soto 0:11:57

People are like, "Oh my gosh that looks so bad."

Dean Soto 0:11:59

All in all, I'm like, "I like it." It's definitely not aesthetically pleasing but it is a trophy. It took me a year to get that thing. It's something that wouldn't have been there had it not been for me doing Jiu-Jitsu and you might be thinking, "Well that's really dumb. Why would you want to have that as a trophy or whatever."

Dean Soto 0:12:41

Well, I don't know why quite either. But I have this thought that this type of stuff doesn't happen quite often. As I said, it took a year to get this. It took a lot of hard work. It took a tournament and it took a lot of learning. It took a lot of different things. It took a lot of things that people could say, "Oh well, you should drain it because you're gonna be stuck with it for life or whatever."

Dean Soto 0:13:26

it took a lot of hard work. It took a whole bunch of different things. And to me, if it stays, it stays. If it goes, it goes. I have a scar! I have scars all over my body from different things throughout my life and each scar has a story and those are physical scars and even emotional scars. Things that I do without even knowing that also have a whole reason. And a whole story behind them.

Dean Soto 0:14:00.929,0:14:07.619

I don't want to let those go because those give me power and this gives me power as well. This gives me a powerful story that I want to be able to share with other people. I want my kids to look at my ear and say, "Hey, Dad! How did you get that ear?" and be able to tell them the whole story of how hard I worked to get this thing.

Dean Soto 0:14:34

Trophies come in a variety. They come in a variety of different types. What's the whole purpose of this? Why is this so important? Well, it's important because you have things in your life, you have things in your business, you have things in your family. You have scars. You have things that you work for. Trophies that you worked for, have a huge story around them. It's conventional wisdom — it's the conventional type of people who say "Whitewash it over." "Don't forget about it." Yet you get rid of that scar because it looks ugly.

Dean Soto 0:15:32

A scar is a blemish on your body. A scar is a blemish on your soul. That scar is a blemish on your character as scores of lemon. But there are things in that scar that are priceless. There are things in that trophy that are priceless that nobody except you and God knows.

Dean Soto 0:15:52

Nobody except you and God knows. There's a thing in the Bible where it says — I believe it's in Revelation — that God will give you a stone and on that stone is written something that only you and God know. Out of all the billions of people and quadrillions of angels and whatever else is out there. Only you and God know. And guess what? That's the same thing as the trophies that you have won. The trophies that you have earned whether it's a scar. Whether it's a literal trophy. Whether it is a congratulation. Whether it's your marriage and your wife giving you a love note or your husband giving you a love note or whatever it is that is a trophy of hard work that only you know the value of truly know the value of.

Dean Soto 0:17:15

You can communicate that to the other person but only you know the true value of that trophy. So what scars do you have? What trophies do you have that you have a story around? I challenge you this week to at least document or share a story just like this with somebody.

Dean Soto 0:17:44

I never used to be good at stories and I'm still getting better at stories. In fact, it was only about two years ago that I learned a really good structure for telling stories. That's really helped me to be able to do podcasts like this. To be able to share in a way that's cohesive. That structure goes: What, Why, Lesson, & Apply. I learned this from Garrett J White from Wake Up Warrior.

Dean Soto 0:18:18

What, Why, Lesson, & Apply. So, what do you want to talk about? So, like today, it was on trophies and the story behind my cauliflower ear and how that's a trophy.

Dean Soto 0:18:31

Why is that important? Why is that important to me? Why is it important to you? What are the lesson that you're going to get from it and the lesson that this story is trying to explain? And then, how do you apply it in your life? Hence, the challenge to actually document or share that trophy this week. All right. What, Why, Lesson, & Apply. It's very powerful.

Dean Soto 0:19:02

Okay. So what trophy are you going to share? What scars are you gonna share that only you know and only you have learned? Because these scars that I have are what brought Pro Sulum to where it is right now P R O S U L U M .com

Dean Soto 0:19:23

It's why I can work five minutes and have a process be created and boom it's done. It's why I'm able to have a wonderful staff that has an amazing culture who write this content when you look at the blog who are just absolutely amazing people. It came from a lot of this work.

Dean Soto 0:19:56

What, Why, Lesson, Apply. What, Why, Lesson, Apply. Go and do that. What is your scar? What's your trophy? Go check out ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com as well as Freedom In Five Minutes. It got me all sentimental...

Dean Soto 0:20:16

I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode

Plant seeds for your business by constantly posting your content. Doing this lets you develop a backbone for prospects to funnel through.

It does not matter if the content that you are putting out there is short form. The important thing is that you are constantly sharing your ideas for prospects to see.

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulm.com and we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this: The Key is to Sow as Many Seeds as Possible. That and more coming up.

Dean Soto 0:00:30

Well, good morning on this chilly day. It's overcast. Hopefully, it starts raining over here. We're out with the Luna Meister doing our normal walk. She's sniffing around. We are at it again.

Dean Soto 0:00:44

So, when I first started doing anything entrepreneurial, I ran across a guy who is obviously very popular. Pretty much everyone knows him in the business world and that is Mr. Gary Vaynerchuk. When I first started, I read his book Crush It. Crush It.

Dean Soto 0:01:11

So, I read his book Crush It and I immediately started — or so I thought — crushing it. I just was putting out a whole bunch of different content. I was reaching out to a whole bunch of people. I was literally killing myself trying to build my business at the time.

Dean Soto 0:01:33

One of the things that I noticed right away was that it was very difficult. It was extremely difficult and I was literally like killing myself. I'd be up to one or two because you know he even talks about in the book like oh you should be up at all hours of the night.

Dean Soto 0:01:56

A big part of that — I actually for a few years ended up not liking Gary Vaynerchuk at All. I honestly didn't because I was burning myself out a ton mainly because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't have any sales experience and I didn't have really much of anything else and so I'd be up late.

Dean Soto 0:02:28

If you go and search, you'll see some of my older Pro Sulum videos where I'd be up at 1 o'clock 2 o'clock in the morning talking about gosh I forgot what that Google product was. It was like a Google communication product.

Dean Soto 0:02:45

Sorry, I'm eating some miners lettuce right now. What was that? It kind of — almost kind of looks like slack but anyway... They shut it down a long time ago and I was talking about that and how it only just really kind of random things. But those YouTube videos are still out there where I was trying to put out all this massive amount of content but really having no place for you to put the gas. The gas would just kind of spill all over the place.

Dean Soto 0:03:19

If you had a car and you went to the gas station and you didn't know where the actual gas tank was and so you just kind of start spraying the car with gas hoping that somehow the gas is going to get inside the car somehow.

Dean Soto 0:03:38

Of course, you look retarded which is exactly the way I looked. But you know, you're spraying gasoline all over this car and because of that, you end up just making yourself look like an idiot and your car doesn't work. That's the same way it was for me. I didn't really have a sales system. I didn't have anything to sell people and so it was just this massive amount of content but nowhere for them to go and actually buy things which would then sustain me to continue to do more content and back and forth back.

Dean Soto 0:04:21

For a long time, I avoided doing content in general because of that very reason I avoided. I had burned myself out so much that I would do content, I would see some results and then I'd stop and I do content I see some results and then I would stop because I just really didn't like that feeling of I really didn't like that feeling of you know I don't want to put it off of starting and burning myself out with all of this content that's being put outright.

Dean Soto 0:04:59

Well after a while I definitely noticed when people did. When content was being made on a regular basis, people did interact and found it valuable. You're always your worst critic. And so, I'm thinking, "Whatever it's not that big of a deal. I'm not that great at whatever it is I'm trying to explain."

Dean Soto 0:05:29

But over and over again as long as the content was being put out, people were refining value of some sort over time. But I still would consistently stop. I would consistently just put something out and then stop. I was a good consistent stopper because I really didn't have a system for all of that content.

Dean Soto 0:05:54

Fast forward today, I have a system that was developed by me as well as it was developed by — it was actually refined by my core 5 staff really really well. It was made into something that's really really awesome.

Dean Soto 0:06:19

So, whenever these podcasts go out, they do the blog post into transcripts. They do the show notes. They do all this different stuff and it turns into something that's really awesome.

Dean Soto 0:06:31

That allows me to focus on the content while they create the backbone around it and what's been really neat is that it's allowed me to sow seeds.

Dean Soto 0:06:47

It's allowed me to sow a lot of different seeds whether it's video or audio. I'm going to be into some more video type stuff so that when videos come out there will be clips and there'll be different things like that based around those videos and put on two different types of content syndication formats and things like that.

Dean Soto 0:07:16

But one thing that has allowed me to see is that the more you sow, the more that you're going to reap. Now, one of my mentors Jermaine Griggs mentioned before is that done is better than perfect. Done is always better than perfect. The more that you are able to just put something out there and obviously you don't want it to be crappy but the more that you're able to put something out there for the world to see and the more chances there are that somebody's going to see it and find value.

Dean Soto 0:07:57

In fact, just recently I've been hammering LinkedIn with content because I want out not just because of lead generation which that's a big part is there's literally no way I can continue doing what I'm doing unless I had customers coming through multiple channels right.

Dean Soto 0:08:17

There is literally no way it's just not going to happen. It's not possible. But I hammer LinkedIn because that is where I can meet and interact with my target market — the people that would find the most value in what I'm talking about, what I'm saying, what I'm doing.

Dean Soto 0:08:47

So much so that not only — so I'll give you kind of a seek the secret sauce at least for now of the way that we target LinkedIn and I might actually end up changing this in the next few weeks to even be more powerful because I have been seeing results and I have been able to bless people who have become clients of ProSulum through LinkedIn — through that avenue.

Dean Soto 0:09:24

The first and foremost is that I try to automate as much as possible the actual connections in LinkedIn so this is my way of sowing seeds. If you've listened to past podcasts you'll know that there are three ways of automation.

Dean Soto 0:09:47

There's the manual automation — something that has to be done by someone. There's automatic automation, the technological automation where something can be done completely by a computer program.

Dean Soto 0:09:59

And then, there's the hybrid automation where part of it's done by a computer program or some kind of automated thing. And the other part of it's done by the person.

Dean Soto 0:10:18

It's kind of a mix of the two. Well, with the LinkedIn automation I utilized a lot of stuff to connect with people — to reach out and endorse people, add value to people's lives and then I also have a calendar that is more of a manual automation thing where I create content based around a specific topic every day and that content all of that allows me to connect with the right people.

Dean Soto 0:10:50

It allows me to scale. It allows me to scale the messages that I put out on a regular basis and it allows me to then sell over time the concepts that I have so that's to bless more and more people over time.

Dean Soto 0:11:20

So, all that being said, I have all these things going on from that automation standpoint. I create all this content, and put all this stuff out and this is not about me.

Dean Soto 0:11:40

Look at all the stuff that I'm doing you can do this too in your respective platform where you can utilize all these different tools to kind of till the soil so to speak. And then so when you are planting seeds when you are putting content out there when you are asking for a sale when you are talking about your business the soil is already tilled so that you've given so much value ahead of time.

Dean Soto 0:12:07

When somebody's ready to buy, they buy not because you had to sell them on the spot and you know they didn't have buyer's remorse and things like that but because you have given so much value ahead of time that they are they have really now had no choice not to buy because they see that, "Wow if you're giving away all this value why would I not — like, whatever I'm buying from you has to be even better, right?"

Dean Soto 0:12:38

What's the point of all this? The whole point of all this is that once you have developed kind of a system like a backbone to keep. to that where you know where you're gonna send people in order for them to purchase and to put fuel into the car that is your business once you have figured that out. And the more that you can put ideas out there on a regular basis and it could be short short short ideas.

Dean Soto 0:13:12

If you ever go to my LinkedIn profile and you check the content that goes out, it's relatively short like all my videos are less than 10 minutes long. Purposely because of LinkedIn all of my posts are relatively short.

Dean Soto 0:13:31

I share a lot of different things that are interesting to me and comment on them — kind of curate them. And it's through that — it's through that that I'm able to share, I'm able to get people on board on my mentality — and kind of indoctrinated into a different way of thinking that's going to benefit them and over time it just means more and more clients more and more customers.

Dean Soto 0:14:10

and so what can you do right now in your perspective foot platform whether it's LinkedIn or Twitter or Facebook or wherever where you can just continually sow seeds where you can continually sow more and more seeds that allow your company to grow that allows your company to bless other people.

Dean Soto 0:14:31

I want to challenge you to do that right now. I do have this one calendar. It's not mine and I'm not gonna get any affiliate income from this at all but I think her name is Lindsey Padilla it's on Wednesday. It's called On Course Social. She has a really good calendar for like the next three years It will give you ideas of what to post every day for your social media accounts and I found that it has been awesome so definitely want to check that out and yeah I would just Google search her. I think it's Lindsay Padilla. Do a Google search on that pretty awesome resource. It works well and it only gives you one tip a day so you gotta have to fill in everything else. But it's a great start.

Dean Soto 0:15:37

What can you do? What seeds can use today in your business and in your platform that allows other people to find a ton of value in what you're doing? All right, so this is Dean Soto I'm gonna finish the rest of my day and I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Have you ever felt stuck on your plateau like you're no longer progressing? At some point, you must have whether it be in life or business. What if I told you that your plateau is not an impediment but a nesting ground for your power?

In this episode, Dean talks about how to make the best out of the time spent on your plateau to prepare yourself for the next level.

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Automated Transcription Below

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto, founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Dean Soto 0:15

Today's topic is this: Your Power Comes From Your Plateau. That and more coming up.

Dean Soto 0:29

Well good morning everybody. We're on a walk with, yes, you guessed it. The Luna Meister. We're out and about with all the yellow, white, and purple flowers.

Dean Soto 0:43

Just absolutely loving all of this. She found something that she really wanted to sniff. So she's out there sniffing. Oh, man.

Dean Soto 0:54

Well for those who do not know. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is very difficult. So for the last ... wow. It has been going on for a year. It will be for one year. Wow. For a year. I have been practicing, Oh no. It's been a year. Because I started in February last year.

Dean Soto 1:21

Over a year I've been practicing Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Something that I had always wanted to try and got into it because of the Wake-Up Warrior program. All of the Wake Up Warrior stuff. It was one of my goals.

Dean Soto 1:38

Last year about February, one of my targets was to compete in a Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament. That actually happened within 90 days of setting that target. I competed in my first Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament, ended up getting bronze, on no Gi, and ended up not getting anything on Gi as a uniform that you use in jujitsu.

Dean Soto 2:05

No-Gi is basically without that uniform. I ended up getting a bronze and, it was something that was really cool. It was a pivotal moment in my life.

Dean Soto 2:18

I never thought I would continue and just keep on going, but it's something that has continued to challenge. It's Like chess. It is a chess match every time and you learn more and more every single time.

Dean Soto 2:35

One of the things when it comes to jiu-jitsu is that you have these plateaus. For a couple, I want to say a couple of months now, this has happened two or three times.

Dean Soto 2:54

I'd get to the gym, we'd be doing our normal training class. Basically, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the normal training class is where you're actually learning something. You're hitting. You're being taught something.

Dean Soto 3:14

On Saturdays mornings we roll. It's just sparring the entire day or in the entire time that you're, at the class. You're rolling, you're just putting into practice everything that you had learned.

Dean Soto 3:33

Well, Over and over again, I would consistently get submitted by the same guys who had been, they'd been doing this much longer than I have, but they were continually submitting me. I'm like, gosh, and submitting means they won.

Dean Soto 4:01

They either got me in an arm lock or a choke. I'm like, man, I just am not getting better. One guy, in particular, he's our resident blue belt in jiu-jitsu. If you don't know it, there are only a few belts in jiu-jitsu. It's White, Blue, Purple, Brown, and Black. Okay. They do have a red belt, which is like you have to be in for like 40 years or something like that to get it. But it's very hard. It takes a long time to get from belt to belt.

Dean Soto 4:37

Just going from white belt to blue belt, it's a bit of a... you definitely have learned a ton. Okay. You're much better than your typical white belt.

Dean Soto 4:52

All that being said, the resident blue belt — he would submit me usually in 15 to 30 seconds, maybe a minute if I was lucky. It was just getting so frustrating and so I would take a little break from it.

Dean Soto 5:10

I'd be speaking at work or whatever, take a break, go back. It was just — it was happening and happening. One thing that happens in jiu-jitsu is that these plateaus — I think that they're there, they naturally happen because they do two things.

Dean Soto 5:35

One is I think that they provide a constraint and it allows you also to build up different types of muscle memory for the different things that you're learning. No, I don't know. That's just a theory.

Dean Soto 5:52

The last week or two, Oh my gosh, the same guy who was submitting me, in 30 seconds, couldn't submit me at all in five minutes. Certain people who I have gone against over and over again and lost, I've been able to submit.

Dean Soto 6:22

My body would start doing things that I knew in my head and I had tried and failed, but now have been able to actually pull off and it was like a switch. Just flipping. How the heck did that happen? I don't know.

Dean Soto 6:47

It's happened two or three times in this whole ordeal, this whole learning, resilient jiu-jitsu to the point where now I go in against some of the younger folk. I can't believe I say that. 39 he's going against some of the younger folk where I would be, panting and I would be like, I'd have in the back of my mind they're going to outmaneuver me. They're going out.

Dean Soto 7:23

I do all these different things. Like as they're doing whatever they're doing, I'm just calmly rolling him over, calmly putting them into a submission hold calmly doing things where I'm like, what the heck happened?

Dean Soto 7:45

This breakthrough of plateaus has happened over and over again in this particular— However if I look back on life. If I look back on business, spirituality, my body, my health, these plateaus come very often and a lot of the times we see these as bad things. We see this plateau as a bad thing.

Dean Soto 8:25

Gosh, I feel stuck.

Dean Soto 8:30

Well in that instance, there are certain things that you are learning. There are certain things that you are learning in those plateaus that you might not even realize that you are learning.

Dean Soto 8:46

People who are Pro Sulum customers who have a Virtual Systems Architect, a lot of the times they become customers because they're in a spot where they cannot get out of this constraint — time.

Dean Soto 9:03

The constraint is they're working tons. A lot in their business. Or the constraint is that they're tired of when they stop working, their business starts declining and they see that plateau. They've been in that plateau for a while.

Dean Soto 9:24

I've had one recent customer, who just came on, who had been researching a lot of different ways to start systemizing what he's doing a lot of different ways, but never really pulled the trigger and that's not because he's not action-oriented, but because during that plateau process there's something about that process about being in that particular situation.

Dean Soto 9:54

There's something about that situation where the wheat is being separated from the chaff, right. The good is being separated from the bad, the good idea, the good system, the good thing is being separated from the bad and there's a problem, right? There's a problem and obviously there's a possibility of fixing that problem.

Dean Soto 10:27

For me in jiu-jitsu, the problem is getting submitted by these bigger guys, these or these guys that have been around for much longer than I have and there's the possibility of improving my technique against these guys or finding some way to improve my technique against these guys. But often what's lacking is that path that's in the middle.

Dean Soto 10:56

What path do you take to get there? And this is something I learned. That is the whole framework. There is something I learned from Garrett J White at Wake Up Warrior. Very powerful.

Dean Soto 11:09

You have a problem. You have the possibility, but you need to have that path, and not all paths going to take you to that possibility, right? Not all paths are going to take you there. Some paths might take longer, some paths might take shorter, some paths might not take you there at all.

Dean Soto 11:28

During that plateau, the reason not to be scared, the reason not to fear, and to think that you're going to always be stuck there is because that process is there to help you to make a good decision. On which path to take to reach possibility.

Dean Soto 11:55

Now for me with Brazilian jiu-jitsu. One, there were a couple of paths that I took. I took a course, an online course called Keenan Online. K E E N A N Online. It's Keenan Cornelius. His course, super cheap, but he goes through pretty much every technique in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. And so that helped out a lot.

Dean Soto 12:29

Then, there's an app on the iPhone called BJJ over 40, so Brazilian jiu-jitsu over 40. That might sound like, well, why do I want to learn how old guys do jujitsu? But one of the things is the stuff that he teaches works for everybody, but the whole idea, the whole point is to use as little energy and as little movement as possible.

Dean Soto 12:59

Those two things over time completely allowed me to take that path to the possibility of defeating those people in Brazilian jiu-jitsu who had been plaguing me for so long. But the same thing goes with business.

Dean Soto 13:19

For me, I did not want to hire a massive amount of employees. I did not want to make seven figures plus in revenue over time, I did not want to have to deal with W2's and deal with payroll and worker's compensation and insurance and all this other stuff. I had to find courses and mentors that taught me how to do that,

Dean Soto 13:57

How to build systems — how to build automated systems through technology or systems that other people use. I had to find that path, right? So the plateau gives you the power to find the path to the possibility. That lets you solve your problem.

Dean Soto 14:26

What are you plateaued in right now in this week? What I want you to do is enjoy the plateau and start researching ways to get on the path to getting to the next level of that plateau, but don't get anxious about it.

Dean Soto 14:50

Don't get frustrated by it. Enjoy it. Enjoy being on the plateau because just knowing that this is going to lead you to the next level, whether it will, whether it's now or a week from now or a month from now, you will reach the next level.

Dean Soto 15:13

It's just right now your subconscious is finding the absolute best way to do that, and so just trust that God, your subconscious, your talent is helping you to find a way to break through to get to that next level. All right.

Dean Soto 15:35

This is Dean Soto. Go to google.com type in Freedom In Five Minutes podcast and it will come up with your favorite podcast apps. Go and subscribe.

Dean Soto 15:47

The more you subscribe, actually, that was about to say the more you subscribe, the more value you're getting. You can only subscribe once but go ahead. Subscribe. The more that you listen, the more value you're going to get. So go check that out. Go to ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com.

Dean Soto 16:05

If you want a Virtual Systems Architect that can literally automate your entire business in five minutes — in as little as five minutes a day, go check that out. Get yourself a Virtual Systems Architect and I will see you, my friends in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Change is inevitable. At some point in your business, you will be forced to change mindsets, habits, or principles.

If you want to change your habits, place yourself in a totally new environment, and get used to it as quickly as you can. The more that you restrict yourself or your business in situations like that in short periods, the more you are able to grow!

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto, Founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com and we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this: "Getting Used to Your Environment as Quickly as Possible." That and more, coming up.

Dean Soto 0:32

Good morning. We're here with the Luna Meister. Luna, are you here? Why are you running away from me? Where are you going? Go get them, Luna. Go get whoever you're sniffing out.

Dean Soto 0:44

Good morning. It's starting to get a little warmer here in Central California. And the rain is not coming. What the heck guys the rain is not coming. A very dry season again. Anyway, not to be depressed or depressing at all. Anyway, I just wanted to say good morning to you and do a little podcast. What I like to call a podcast episode. So not too long ago, I had been building this cat house for a while.

Dean Soto 1:24

It's a four by four foot wide by eight feet long by I think the top of the cat house is probably around six feet from the very top of the gable. I've been building that thing for a while and I had actually completed it. And it was the first time I ever did a gabled roof. Right?

Dean Soto 1:50

If you don't know what a gabled roof is... So, a gabled roof, if you don't know what that is, it's basically like an angled roof with those composite shingles. It's kind of like what you see in every typical suburban house. And it's gabled so that the water runs off it or the snow runs off it and so on and so forth. Right?

Dean Soto 2:07

So it's angled. Well, it's the first time I've ever done that. And it was cool. It took a lot longer. There was this one YouTube channel that I watched. And the guy was like, "Yeah, well, it took about a good eight hours to do."

Dean Soto 2:22

Of course, he had been building all his life. So he went super fast. Whereas, I literally took like two weeks to do. But it's done. It's awesome. It is fantastic. And so what did we need for this cat house? Well, we needed some cats, right? We need to get some feral cats in there. And I talked about this in podcasts. I talked about this in a couple of things.

Dean Soto 2:46

So we were like, you know, where do we get these feral cats? We were looking at the SPCA. We're looking at a bunch of other places and a lot of the time, these are gonna be barn cats. They're cats that are gonna be out and about in a barn right there.

Dean Soto 3:01

They are essentially not the type of cats that are going to be in our house as pets and so on and so forth. And because they're barn cats as well, as long as I have my gate, also my fencing all secure and everything like that, they'll be good but you never know. There are coyotes. There are owls.

Dean Soto 3:24

I saw an owl last night, and you could hear it. We have great horned owls, we have all these other different things here that would love to snack on a little kitty. And so these places that we wanted to get cats that were looking for a home. As far as I could tell so far, we still keep on looking because we want to get more.

Dean Soto 3:53

As far as I could tell so far, these places want you to sign a thing saying you're going to have them indoors. You're going to have them this way. You are going to do that. It's a lot. I mean, it sucks because you think that a lot of these places these cats are just going to end up getting euthanized that sucks.

Dean Soto 4:20

You know, why not let the ones that are totally feral — that are not going to go well with a family — let them be workers right here and have a good life. They have some good Meow Mix and some water and some gophers to snack on and they'd be very happy kitties.

Dean Soto 4:45

Well, all these places it was just very hard to find any — It was hard to find anywhere where you could get a cat without having all these stipulations and so on.

Dean Soto 5:01

Hmm. I think I might be getting a little sick.

Dean Soto 5:07

So I go and finally we look at Craigslist. And every now and then I check on it, but we had this lady who had five cats available. Five feral cats were available. And we're like, "Wow, cool."

Dean Soto 5:22

So we contact them and these cats are awesome. They could only catch two of them on one day. So we had to come the next day and get the other two. But we have four cats in our cat house. And these are super nice cats I should say.

Dean Soto 5:42

I should say this. They are good cats. There is one that is very nice. The other ones aren't used to humans. But one of the things we had to do is we had to literally lock them up in the cat house for about a week and a day — about a week. And why did we have to do that? Why did we have to lock them into the cat house?

Dean Soto 6:12

Well, the way that — so cats are very territorial. And the way they get used to a place, you know. If we were to bring them into the cat house and just say, "Hey, here's your new home, they would have bolted and tried to get back to their owners."

Dean Soto 6:33

So by putting them in that situation where they literally could not leave that cat house. They were locked up in there you can see their little beady eyes staring out of the little windows and stuff like that. that I put on the thing.

Dean Soto 6:47

But there were no exits other than a side door that I built so that we can change our kitty litter. We could do a bunch of other things. So they're stuck in there. I just feel so bad for them. Oh my gosh, those little kitties but the thing was that after about a week I was like, "Okay let's try and let them out."

Dean Soto 7:23

So I go into the cat house and I mean they are freaked out because I'm at the cat house and I have my saws off. I'm starting to make holes into these little like six and a quarter-inch holes into the cathouse. So that one on each side, one higher one kind of up high, the other one down low. And, and I made these holes so that they can come and go and actually nothing will be able to — that a predator can go in and get into the cat house.

Dean Soto 8:02

I mean the holes are just way too small. So if a coyote or a fox or something like that tries to come in and get it ain't happening. Ain't happening. And so, I'm doing that and the cats are in the corner, they're like, "What is going on? This thing is so loud."

Dean Soto 8:25

And I pop one hole, and then I go and do another one on the other side. And all of a sudden, I see that there are only three cats. And I'm like, "Huh, that's interesting."

Dean Soto 8:37

And then two cats, and then one cat. And that one cat stayed for a long, long time like it's just sitting there going, "What do I do? What is going on?" And eventually, it left and I never saw a single one again.

Dean Soto 8:57

Or so it seemed. So later that night I could not find any of them at all.

Dean Soto 9:03

Later that night, I went and put on my headlamp and started going across the property. We have tons of trees, tons of places to hide. So I put my headlamp on. The cool thing about cats is if you shine lights, you can see their eyes. So I'm shining my lights and guess what I see? What I thought was maybe they started running back home. What did I see? I saw four little beady eyes staring at me from different locations. Very, very cool. Which means that they are used to that area. Okay. They were very uncomfortable when they first got there, but they were forced to be in that area for a week.

Dean Soto 9:53

And that's something that we — if we want to get used to something — if you want to get used to an idea or get used to a habit we have to do to ourselves... We have to force ourselves to be in a very different spot, a very uncomfortable spot.

Dean Soto 10:12

So like when it comes to systems, a lot of the time we have to force ourselves to create those systems and let somebody else do them. Even if it's uncomfortable, even if it seems like "Oh, I could do this way better than this person, I don't trust this person."

Dean Soto 10:30

We have to allow it. We have to have the ability to. We have to be okay with letting that environment grow around us. Okay. And so, putting things in places like, "I'm going to create a system a day, and I'm going to delegate all of those processes to somebody and I'm going to let them do it no matter what. And we're going to see what the result is. That is where we have a massive habit change. And we want to have massive habit changes.

Dean Soto 11:10

The more that we are able to put ourselves in situations like that and stay in situations like that. The more we're going to grow. The more we're going to see that by doing that, we change our entire environment around us and we get used to it. We get used to those customers on our end, that despite us even forcing them to agree that they will and they don't. They end up having no results or bad results. Or they end up just burning out. Their Virtual Systems Architect or two or three. And we have to cut them off as a customer.

Dean Soto 12:09

It's those people who will refuse to put themselves in a brand new environment and stick with that brand new environment that have a hard time getting different results and they've always been getting right.

Dean Soto 12:32

So my challenge to you this week is if you want to change a habit, get into a different environment. If you want to get fit, go join a Jiu-Jitsu gym. You know Gracie. Or if you're in Central California, Ultimate Martial Arts. Or whatever CheckMat because now you have accountability with other people. Right? Putting yourself in a different environment or CrossFit gym, something where there's accountability. If it's business, join some kind of accountability group. If it's marriage, start seeing a counselor and agree to a specific amount of time. If it's your spirituality, just sign up for a retreat or something like that.

Dean Soto 13:24

I just spilled coffee all over my phone. Please Oh, over my hand. This is Dean Soto Freedom In Five Minutes. I will catch you on the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

How much time do you spend watching the news every day? If you spend several hours a day watching the news on TV, then you have probably noticed how much scare-mongering there is in the media.

Of course, not all news stories are fake or sensationalized out of proportion. But the fact is, the news is sprinkled with drama so that it is better consumed by more viewers. That's just the reality of television.

In today's episode, we will look at the effects of being exposed to daily fear-mongering of the media. Learn the negative effects of fear if you let it rule over your life and how to change your mindset to be free from being constantly fearful.

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com and we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Dean Soto 0:13

Today's topic is this: Stop Hypnotizing Yourself into Being Fearful. That and more, coming up.

Dean Soto 0:29

Good morning! Good morning! Luna meister is out there. She's out there somewhere. What are you doing Luna? Are you hunting a fox? I don't know.

Dean Soto 0:39

Once again we are out on the land and enjoying the day. It's a good morning, I got my coffee — my sugar-less coffee. Man, I am not going to have sugar until — I mean, I have sugar on Sundays but the rest of the time is a sugar-free week until late April. April 20-something, I think. 26 or something like that. I have another Jiu-jitsu tournament. I want to be in tip-top shape! Tip top shape! You know that is. You know how it is.

Dean Soto 1:19

And yeah, so if you have not subscribed to the podcast, go to Google. Type in Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast and your favorite Apple — your ever favorite Apple — your favorite app! Maybe Apple Podcasts, it might be Spotify. It might be whatever. Stitcher. I don't know, but go there. Subscribe. You're gonna love it. It's gonna be great. It's amazing. So go check that out.

Dean Soto 1:53

I have this friend. We'll just call this person a friend who's near and dear to me. This friend has a lot of talent. A lot of talent. Lots of hidden talents in general. And for a long time, he has been able to use those talents in various ways to make money for himself and his family.

Dean Soto 2:31

One of the things that is very unique about him is that whenever I see him, he is watching the news of some sort. That's his thing. He watches the news, many hours a day.

Dean Soto 2:49

And on the news, usually, usually it's something about President Trump — whether you like him or you hate him. Usually it's something about how evil and horrible he is. And if it's not about President Trump, it's about whatever is going wrong in the world. It might be Coronavirus, it might be SARS, SRS, it might be H1N1.

Dean Soto 3:19

How many different things did we have in the last decade? Bird flu, SARS, swine flu, mad cow disease, whatever it might be. It might be one of those things. The ozone layer is leaving. The ozone layer is coming back. The ice caps are melting. The ice caps are coming back. The world's gonna end. And he watches this for hours, and hours, and hours and hours.

Dean Soto 3:46

And whenever I see him — I visit him and we talk — it inevitably... the conversation turns to one of those topics. A Doomsday topic. A topic whether it's political, economic, health — whatever it might be. it is the end of the world. The world is over.

Dean Soto 4:13

And this has been happening for the last two decades. Man, it's been happening for at least the last two decades. So this impending doom, these conversations, literally the same conversations just about every time we talk, they echo and they repeat over and over and over again. That soon, some terrible disaster — some catastrophe is going to come.

Dean Soto 4:46

And so we'll be talking about family, we'll be talking about whatever. And then all of a sudden, it's like, "Did you hear what Trump did? Did you hear what he did?"

Dean Soto 5:00

For me I would typically — for me, I'm like, "Yeah, not really."

Dean Soto 5:07

"Oh, well, he said that he contacted the Martians and the Martians contacted him back and we're all doomed they're going to invade anytime soon. Anytime soon they're ready. They're gonna invade."

Dean Soto 5:27

"Oh, well that sucks."

Dean Soto 5:32

"Oh you don't care about it, do you? You don't care about the martians. The Martians are coming!"

Dean Soto 5:38

No. Right now, I'm actually caring about my chickens. I want to start breeding some chickens and I just finished my cat house and I need to be getting some cats. So that we can start getting rid of some of these rodents.

Dean Soto 5:58

"Well, just pay attention. You gotta be informed. You have to..." and that's what he says whenever I say that.

Dean Soto 6:06

"You gotta know what's going on in the world around you."

Dean Soto 6:09

And I'm like, "Oh, yes, like the nuclear holocaust that was supposed to happen for the last 50 or 60 years or swine flu or H1N1 or whatever."

Dean Soto 6:24

"Well, that's only because we averted those disasters. If we didn't know what was going on, if we didn't know what the television was telling us ... that black box that I watch, if we didn't actually know that was a possibility it would have been a disaster."

Dean Soto 6:44

And it's over and over and over again, literally the same thing to the point where it affects family life, it affects life with his relatives.

Dean Soto 6:58

So what's happening every day? Rather than building, rather than growing, rather than being productive — and trust me, I used to fall for this a lot. I used to watch so much television. Oh my gosh. Literally just programmed every day. Programmed every day.

Dean Soto 7:28

You know, every day, this hour of nonsense. This hour of — and you might be thinking "Well Dean, come on. Coronavirus that's not nonsense." That's not nonsense. That's a real thing and Kobe getting struck by lightning 15 times. Like, I know he died in a helicopter crash supposedly. So-called the helicopter crash. But the likelihood of that happening, getting struck by lightning 15 times with millions of helicopters out there. All the helicopters grounded prior to that, and they shouldn't have been out there in the first place. I don't know. Call me a conspiracy theorist. I don't care.

Dean Soto 8:21

The likelihood is very, very slim. Now, if I were a famous person. If I were a famous person that couldn't walk down the street without being hassled every single day — every single minute of every single day, I would probably fake my death too.

Dean Soto 8:44

I know you're probably thinking, "Oh you're probably insane. Oh, Dean's crazy. He's crazy, I tell you!" But that's what I believe.

Dean Soto 8:52

And, you know, social pressure, all other stuff, don't care. The facts are more on my side anyway. The likelihood is extremely, extremely. Just go watch the interview of the husband — the very first interview he did as he was sitting down. He's wearing sunglasses and tell me... I want you to ask yourself. Why? Why does he laugh so much during that interview?

Dean Soto 9:25

If his wife — I know if my wife just died? If my wife just died, I would be distraught. I wouldn't even interview. Are you kidding me. I'd be like, leave me alone. You know, I'm grieving. I haven't even gone to the funeral yet. Are you kidding me? Don't talk to me. Talk to me in two weeks, three weeks, four weeks a month. There's no way like, Get away from me. But he's there. chuckling away. So, anyway, you take that for what it is. That's your job. Your daily dose of conspiracy.

Dean Soto 10:02

Alright, so um, but yeah so here's the deal is that every day you're getting fed — you know, he's getting fed this daily dose of fear. And that translates into a lot of his interaction with family.

Dean Soto 10:10

You know, "Don't travel to this place."

Dean Soto 10:25

Oh, by the way, like the best places to travel whenever the news is saying, "Don't go to this place." It's the best place and the best time to travel because it's the cheapest and you can get so many deals.

Dean Soto 10:39

And I won't say that the reports are totally fake. But a lot of the time they are. The news has to have something. There's been several times where I've traveled when it was supposed to be dangerous or supposed to be you know, dumb to do. But I got some amazing, smoking deals and it wasn't at all what they said.

Dean Soto 11:05

Anyway, okay. This is not this is not Conspiracy In Five Minutes. This is Freedom In Five Minutes. So anyway he goes and it just affects a lot of what he does. So it affects traveling, what to eat, what to buy, what to wear, who to talk to, how to talk, what to say, what not to say. All of these things are affected in his mind.

Dean Soto 11:30

And so, when I talk to them and I visit them, it becomes a point where you can tell that he's almost paralyzed, and I was the same way. I was paralyzed when I was younger. I used to think that man, we were going to get nuked by Russia. We were going to get nuked by whomever. Because now we have these intercontinental ballistic missiles and the earthquake in California is gonna take out half of California on the San Andreas Fault. The Bermuda Triangle we can get lost in there.

Dean Soto 12:11

Here's the thing about all these things, I used to get so afraid. And it would keep me from doing certain things. Even whether it's directly or indirectly. That's not a fun place to be.

Dean Soto 12:24

So why is this important? It's important because you have to — as business people, as husbands and wives, as people who are building legacies, we have to be very careful what type of fear we bring into our world and into our mind. Because there are a lot of people who live off of fear. And there's a lot of people who make a lot of money off of fear.

Dean Soto 12:54

I'm not gonna say anything, but it's a very good brand for Corona, now that this virus came out, right, it's very good. It's very good from a medical, pharmaceutical sales point of view to have masks being sold, right?

Dean Soto 13:18

I even have some friends who have jumped on board that bandwagon and have been making money. Right. Now, I'm not going to say that's a conspiracy, but there are people who profit off of fear. There are people who profit off of fear. There are organizations, governmental organizations, that profit off of fear. Just, you know, the whole "this day and age with terrorism" and so on and so forth. It keeps a lot of governmental organizations alive. That's just the way it is.

Dean Soto 13:50

I mean, do you really want somebody — if terrorism went away, like it did in the 1950s and 60s when it was not that big of a deal? 60s, 70s 80s 90s? I mean, it was somewhat there, but not enough to have the TSA, right. And have Homeland Security.

Dean Soto 14:14

Are you going to tell all of them, "Hey, your jobs are gone."

Dean Soto 14:19

That's uh, I doubt people would want to do that in the first place. It is very rough saying, you know, "Go find another job."

Dean Soto 14:27

But a lot of people profit off of fear. The more that you are afraid, the less you create — the less you build. You want to be building. I have fears every day. Every day. I have customers coming in. I have customers who cancel. I have customers who have issues. How I respond to all of that directly affects my business.

Dean Soto 14:54

And so, if I were constantly afraid — which I was for a long time with my business — everything was gonna come crashing down. I wouldn't keep building. I would find an excuse to go drink or go play games all day or to do whatever. But that is the point of fear. It is to paralyze you and make you worthless — to make you stop doing stuff.

Dean Soto 15:22

And if you look back on the things that you were afraid of, if you look back on SARS, swine flu and H1N1. When you look back on the Bermuda Triangle, nuclear war, and all of that, how much of that actually happened?

Dean Soto 15:38

Pretty much 0.00000001% of people were affected by any of those viruses. And zero on the nuclear side, there hasn't been a nuclear bomb detonated in war since World War Two right?

Dean Soto 16:01

So, all that being said, What are you afraid of? Right now? I want you to rather than saying, "I'm gonna stop being afraid. I'm gonna stop being afraid of this thing." I want you to do something. Build something, create something that is what will take you to the next level.

Dean Soto 16:22

All right, this has been Dean Soto of Freedom In Five Minutes. I've got to go watch my daughter's presentation. Her speech for 4 H that she's giving. Two of my daughters. And I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Nobody and nothing is perfect. As a matter of fact, perfectionism is the lowest standard to set yourself because it does not exist. Perfectionism is unobtainable, so it does not exist.

Besides, you do not need to do something perfectly because 90% of the time, it's going to work anyway even if there are a few mistakes. The more that you can avoid paralysis by analysis, the more you can get things done and connect with your people.

In this episode, let us look at ways to do tasks better and faster so you can learn what works and what doesn't right away— rather than just sit there, wonder, hope, and be scared of submitting imperfect tasks.

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com. And we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this:

Dean Soto 0:21

Done is Always Better than Perfect. That and more, coming up.

Dean Soto 0:34

We're out again with the Luna Meister - hanging & chilling like villains. And today's a good day yet again. Another good day. Who would have imagined? It's another good day in Central California.

Dean Soto 0:48

We're running and walking around on the acreage. We have snakes now. Snakes are starting to show back up. Starting to show back up. Rattlesnakes, the good kind of snakes, and all of those buggers are starting to show up again.

Dean Soto 1:07

So yay... That's why we got some cats. We got more cats. We want more cats. Give me as many cats as possible to keep them snakes away. I want them gone.

Dean Soto 1:26

So a couple of things have been happening. So I've been lately doing a lot of LinkedIn marketing, and I have just been using it a lot more. I've been scheduling posts. I've been really trying to build my presence on LinkedIn and doing everything from automation to different types of automation tips, different types of scheduling, different types of things like that. All the way to reaching out to people and connecting or endorsing all this other stuff. And a lot of it is automated, as usual — per normal Freedom In Five Minutes and Pro Sulum fashion. Everything has a system, everything is automated, right?

Dean Soto 2:20

And so, one of the cool things about that is really just seeing that the more consistent you are, the more that you just put stuff out there. The more things happen. And this is something that a lot of people have had trouble in the past. So anyway, let me get to the story. I'm gonna get to the story. I'm not gonna just start to lecture.

Dean Soto 2:50

Alright, so there were a couple of different things. One, I got this content scheduling calendar, I've forgotten who the name was where I got it. It was called On Board or OnBoard Social Media or On-Board Social or something like that.

Dean Soto 3:09

I bet you if you were to Google that you'd be able to find it. But OnBoard Social is a cool little calendar that I got for 27 bucks. I found it off of an Instagram ad. And normally I don't.

Dean Soto 3:23

Normally I don't get stuff like that. I'm not a big social media type guy. All of my social media stuff in the past that has worked has been through one-on-one connections, where I knew somebody was gonna be somewhere. I reach out to them on social media. I go talk to them, meet them, and then now I can talk to him on social media from then on, right?

Dean Soto 3:45

Well, so I got this calendar, and it's pretty cool for basically the next three years. It gives you an idea of what to write and what to talk about during that day. And then I scatter in a couple of things. So what I do with social media is the first thing I do. So I use Hootsuite. Hootsuite is the major tool that I use just because I like that they have auto-scheduling,

Dean Soto 4:20

I am auto-scheduling it because you have Buffer...you can select what times you want things to be scheduled. They have a whole bunch of different – So, Buffer is a different app, I should say. You have Buffer, which is a different app.

Dean Soto 4:33

You have a whole bunch of different other apps that allow you to create a schedule. I don't want to create a schedule baby. I just want to press the button, let it schedule whatever for me and let me move on my way. That's what I want. I don't want any other funny business.

Dean Soto 4:34

Okay, just let me press the button. You figure out what the best time is and let's go So, I get that. So I have Hootsuite. I got that calendar.

Dean Soto 5:05

The cool thing about that calendar too is that it follows a system. It's called ACES that she created. So ACES. So A C E S it's an acronym. It stands for authority. So you have an authority post. The C means connection post. Something that connects people to you. An engagement post where you engage somebody else and you tag somebody else. And then a sizzle post. The sizzle post, I believe only comes after doing the first three a couple of times.

Dean Soto 5:42

So, I want to say it's like every six of the A, C, and E's. You then get the S which is sizzle. Which is talking about your sales — like different types of sales? Things like you know, discovery calls or something, getting somebody to come and opt-in for your email or sale that you have — things like that.

Dean Soto 6:03

And, and so you said that it comes only every once in a while. Okay. So the next thing that — so the cool thing about that is it really gives a really cool and systematic approach to at least having the idea of what I want this day to be around.

Dean Soto 6:34

And so on top of that, I'll have different posts from Mashable. I have different articles. I post different things from all of these different content sites. the Signal Versus Noise, blog, all these different places that I find very interesting posts from. I'll put that out there. Also, I do different quotes from people that are — but then I also do my own quotes. So I'll do my own quotes, which are things like, you know, that's one of the last things that I did was, if you think you're the only one that can do something, you're wrong. It's something in your business, you're wrong. And I believe that.

Dean Soto 7:13

I believe that I am not the only one that can even do these podcasts. That I can actually outsource these podcasts. And guess what I have in the past with the Online Empire Academy, I outsourced my entire podcast to a wonderful guy named Josh Woodward and he did a really fabulous job.

Dean Soto 7:29

Okay. So, I mean, the entire podcast and I'm not joking. The entire — everything from interviews to the podcast itself to the podcast processing. Everything. Okay. So, all of that can definitely be outsourced to somebody else.

Dean Soto 7:52

So, all that being said, one of the things that push when you have a system and you know, you're going to do consistently, the thing that what pushed me was to start putting a whole bunch of content out there. My own content, other people's content.

Dean Soto 8:10

And I actually had somebody who asked me, "Hey, do you actually have a training course on the stuff that you're talking about?"

Dean Soto 8:20

And so, I wrote back and I said, "Well, we usually get people hooked up with VSA's. But I do have a training course."

Dean Soto 8:28

And I gave them a link to the training course. And he started taking training courses. And this is somebody who, you know, he actually works for someone that's very popular — very, very well known. And a super nice guy, and it was awesome.

Dean Soto 8:42

And so he messaged. He actually started taking the course. And then he messaged me back on LinkedIn. Now, this is all just out of the blue. Just all from doing the content stuff. And doing the different types of automation and endorsing and reaching out to people and stuff. He emails me.

Dean Soto 9:00

So he messaged me back on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, your ClickFunnels affiliate badge is on by default."

Dean Soto 9:09

So what ClickFunnels does is, even though you've paid for ClickFunnels, they will put a little badge that pops up by default. It says, "Hey, this was made by ClickFunnels."

Dean Soto 9:23

And I mean, the good thing is that it gives you – and it's like a little affiliate badge so they'll give you credit if someone buys. I actually had someone purchase ClickFunnels and I get monthly revenue from that little badge. But I didn't realize. I actually did not realize that that badge was showing up on all of my course pages. And because it – just by default, you just don't think about it.

Dean Soto 9:47

You don't think of turning that thing off. You think of —, usually a software will be the opposite. It will be default off and you have to choose to have this affiliate badge on. But in this particular circumstance, it defaulted "On". Okay.

Dean Soto 10:06

And so I didn't think about it, I didn't even realize that it was on until he had messaged me. And the thing is that this training course has been up for months. And several people have gone through it.

Dean Soto 10:21

And so he would just say, you know, "It could be a little bit distracting and so on and so forth."

Dean Soto 10:27

And he's totally right. And so I had to go through six different pages and turn the whole thing off. And then I went through all the opt-ins that I had created, and they had the affiliate badge on, and so I turned all those off because it was a pain in the butt.

Dean Soto 10:47

Obviously, I don't want that showing up but it was a pain in the butt getting all that stuff done. But that's not the point. Okay, that's not the point. The point of this is that they were up. The pages were up, people were going through the course.

Dean Soto 11:06

Did he say, "Hey, the affiliate badge is on? I'm not going to go through this course. Because of that, I'm not going to listen to a word you say, you are done. You're a big dum dum. You had the affiliate badge thing up and you obviously are not perfect. So I'm not going to listen to you."

Dean Soto 11:29

Of course not. No. He's like – he basically was being super helpful and helped me to help.

Dean Soto 11:38

He just basically was like, "Hey, you know you have this on. You might want to turn this off because it can be a little distracting."

Dean Soto 11:47

And he just kept going on with the training course. That is awesome. But there are a lot of people, including myself at some point In time, that would have been like, "Well, you should have checked that out in the first place. Oh, you should never put anything out. Unless it's absolutely perfect. You don't have five quality control checks. I have 17 people look at the thing before it goes out."

Dean Soto 12:23

But here's the thing, whether it was perfect or not, the person is still listening to my training course. And still liking it. So I learned this from a mentor of mine named Jermaine Griggs, which I've mentioned several times in the podcast.

Dean Soto 12:42

He learned it from I believe his grandma, that done is better than perfect. Done is better than perfect. 90% of the time, when you complete something, it's gonna be fine. And if it's not, you know, like, just as in this example, what happened? Nothing, right? Nothing at all.

Dean Soto 13:10

There is nothing that came from this other than me, thanking Him and us continuing to connect even more. Right. And I'll give you one other example. This is an example from a client.

Dean Soto 13:27

So I always tell clients who have our Virtual Systems Architects, that when you're doing these videos, if something is going to be pretty important like it's going to go out to somebody, and you know you want to, you want to make it. You want to make it to where, you know it is going to be perfect most of the time, if not all the time. You know, because you're doing videos and the videos are the ones that you know, you're getting everything documented based on those videos.

Dean Soto 13:58

At the end of the video, you know, you spent five minutes creating that video, just at the end of the video, just say, "Hey, here's the quality control check for this test that you're doing. Every time you're done with this task, I want you to check these three things or check these five things. I want you to check here and here and make sure that everything is correct."

Dean Soto 14:22

And so I had this client who sent a rather than doing a video and creating a process. He sent an email to his Virtual Systems Architect. His VSA at $9.50 per hour — at least as of recording this. Oh, they will automate and systemize everything in your business for you.

Dean Soto 14:50

So he goes and sends this email that kind of outlines what needs to be done for this particular task. Well Because there was no quality control check and because it wasn't as clear as it could be. Because email is like one of the least clear ways of creating a process or a task. Because it was not as clear as it could be. The VSA ended up messing up. And it was essentially a "Thank you." to donors for this nonprofit. So pretty major companies who donated to the nonprofit — the event that they were having. And the email that went out there were these merge fields where it said "(Your Company), (First Name), and so on.

Dean Soto 15:54

So she did the first name. She did all of that, but she accidentally forgot (Your Company). The merge field for (Your Company) Right? So she accidentally forgot that merge field.

Dean Soto 16:10

And so the email went out and said, "Hey, you know, Tim, or whoever it was. Hey, Tim, thank you so much for supporting this nonprofit event. Bah, bah, bah, bah, we couldn't have done it without you, and the support of (Your Company). And it was obvious — it was in red. So it was an obvious merge field thing. Actually, I don't think it was red. I think the feedback back was in red from the person.

Dean Soto 16:45

But uh, so the guy writes back and says — No, so the client writes back to the VSA, copies me, copies the Account Manager and says "Hey, how can I communicate more clearly? What needs to be done here?"

Dean Soto 17:12

Good job my love. Oh, nice. Um, I think — sorry it's chores time. I think feeding Luna should be it. I'll handle the chickens. Yeah, that's it.

Dean Soto 17:36

Um so anyway, he said you know "How can I be more clear? But when he forwarded the email response from his donor... his donor said — because it also requested something from the donor, you know, "Hey, could you do bah bah, bah."

Dean Soto 18:14

The donor just simply said, "Hey, so and so yes. When would you like... when would you need this by?'

Dean Soto 18:22

That's it. The thing wasn't perfect, right? wasn't perfect. It had a merge field thing and still got the job done.

Dean Soto 18:34

The person was just like, "Okay, yeah, no problem. When do you need this?"

Dean Soto 18:38

Almost as if they didn't even notice it. Right. And that's the thing. Yeah, no. Things don't go well. Would it have been better had it been totally perfect? Yeah, of course. But a lot of times when we do stuff, the job still gets done. Right. Everything still gets done.

Dean Soto 18:59

I'm not saying to try and be accurate and perfect or anything like that. But a lot of times we get paralysis by analysis, right? And we don't want to not do something simply because we have 15 people checking it before it goes out.

Dean Soto 19:22

So by the time, it does go out, it's not even fun and valuable anymore. It's not even relevant anymore. And so the more that we are able to take that analysis by paralysis — that paralysis by analysis away we can get more content out there. More things out there. Connect more and reach out to more people. We can do it faster, we can do it better and actually learn what works and what doesn't, rather than just sit there and wonder and hope and be scared and have fear.

Dean Soto 20:05

So done is better than perfect, always. Done is always better than perfect. All right, this is Dean Soto. Freedom In Five Minutes. FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Have you ever met people who give you the wrong idea — or worse, tell you that you are wrong even though you are right? Life is riddled with these types of people and they can be your closest family and friends!

Now, this does not mean that these people are lying to you. Most of them actually mean well. They simply had no idea that they were being untrue. This is simply group thinking. In this episode, Dean talks about how thinking outside the box can lead to better ways of doing things for your business and personal life.

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Automated Transcription Below

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com and we are here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode. Today's topic is this: They Lied to You but They had No Idea that They were Dishonest. That and more coming up.

Dean Soto 0:38

Good morning. Good to be back. Good to be here with you. I'm eating some miner's lettuce. Miner's lettuce is some plant that grows out in the wild where we are at. Right here. So, I'm on my walk with the Luna Meister. We get to enjoy some of this succulent, succulent miner's lettuce.

Dean Soto 1:02

Huh? So delicious.

Dean Soto 1:05

Um, good morning. Luna has not been on a walk in like two days. And she's going cray-cray! She is crazy running around and going nuts! That's what we do. We enjoy that. We allow her to do that. We allow her to be free! Luna be free! Go! Go find them coyotes, doggy! Go get them.

Dean Soto 1:33

So I was a very bad student. I was a very very very bad student as far as I can remember. It was funny I am — as far back as I remember, I just did not fit in well at school. I did not like it. And I don't think it was because I was a dummy — at least I hope I wasn't.

Dean Soto 2:00

When I was younger they were testing me to put me into GATE which is for smart people I guess. And it was funny. I remember I was in the Assistant Principal's office at Clegg Elementary School in Huntington Beach. One of the tests that they gave me, I had apparently passed all their tests. But they gave me this test of putting a puzzle of a girl together — like a little girl. She had a little pink dress or whatever it was. And so funny. And so, they gave me this test. But it wasn't like, you put this puzzle where you have the slots or anything like that. He gave me all the pieces, and I had to do it free form on a table.

Dean Soto 3:10

And so I'm putting the puzzle pieces together. And at the very end, I put the girl's legs so that her legs and her feet were both, you know, attached. And so when I saw her, I put her legs with her feet facing inward. You know, have you ever seen though, you know, in most comics and things like that when the girls are trying to be like very girly and very pretty. They kind of draw them– with their feet kind of inward, right?

Dean Soto 3:47

Oh. Well, that was wrong! At least according to him. So he said, No, no, no. The feet go outward. You cannot be in GATE. You cannot be with smart people.

Dean Soto 4:04

And so I started my journey of absolutely hating and loathing school. At least public school. So from that point forward, it was the beginning of the end. Pretty much every year after year after year after year after year, I was nothing but trouble. I was extremely bored. I just could not handle it, except for the eighth grade.

Dean Soto 4:39

Eighth grade, I've resolved you know — I'm going to actually do the work. I actually learned. I actually did what they wanted me to do because my poor grandma at the time was like, I cannot handle this. So I ended up getting an honor roll in eighth grade. I did really, really well. And I ended up getting into freshman year of college and it was Mr. Wilford of Marina High School, he's probably still there.

Dean Soto 5:08

He taught electronics. I was excited. I was actually pretty excited. I, you know, I'm like, Okay, well, you know, I'll just keep going and keep getting honor rolls. This stuff is gonna be great.

Dean Soto 5:20

And so I took this electronics class. I thought, oh, electronics sounds really interesting. And we got this test. And the test was one of those where you pick the letter, and there's literally no way you can pick the answer. It could be two of the same letters. So say you had, you know, 15 letters, you had 15 or 26 questions and 26 answers, right. And each answer corresponded with a letter in the alphabet.

Dean Soto 5:57

Well, huh, Logically, there would be no way to do a double letter right there in that case, since each one — each answer corresponds to a single letter. It's kind of like a mixed-up / jumble thing.

Dean Soto 6:14

So I went and I finished my test. I almost got a perfect score. And the reason why I did not get a perfect score on this test was that my T — the letter T had a little bit of a hook on it. And so Mr. Wilford said it was wrong. That's an F that you're trying to do right there.

Dean Soto 6:48

I said, No, it's not an F that I'm trying to do. I did an F over here. It could not possibly be an F because you can only have one letter for every answer. I said, sometimes that's just the way my T's come out. It has a tiny little hook.

Dean Soto 7:06

He said, No, that's an F there, that's an F.

Dean Soto 7:09

And I'm like, No, seriously, there, that's not an F. Logically, it cannot be any other thing, but a T.

Dean Soto 7:17

He said, Nope. It's an F. And so you're not going to get that perfect score.

Dean Soto 7:25

And I was livid. I was like, all right, done. You know what? I'm done with this crap. You know, the injustice, the injustice of it all. I'm done. I am not going to. I'm done. I'm done with that. If that's how it's going to be. And that's how it's going to be.

Dean Soto 7:50

And so from then on, once again, back on track to being a horrible, naughty student. Well, all throughout that time, I hear, you're going to fail out of high school, you're not going to be able to get into college. You're not going to get a good job. You're not going to get this. You're not going to... Dean. You're doing it wrong. You're being very bad.

Dean Soto 8:17

And yeah, I mean, yeah, I was disobeying my Grandma at the time. And so, I totally get that. And I understand that. However, the thing was that in my junior year of college, close to my senior years, like the second half of junior, close a senior year in college.

Dean Soto 8:43

They said, Dean, you know what, you're dumb, dumb. You are a dummy, so you're gonna go to adult school.

Dean Soto 8:51

And I'm like, Okay, great. Now, you know, I'm a dum dum.

Dean Soto 8:56

I've already been beaten down already. Might as well beat me down some more, right? Well, I get to an adult school. And it's right next to Merde Park, right where I love to play basketball. I picked up games of basketball. And I get into the adult school and I see it's literally one building, like one small building with an open room, like large desks everywhere.

Dean Soto 9:17

And I'm like, What is this interesting place? So I went in and they gave me an orientation. And they say that, yeah, all you do is you go and get a packet from whatever class you want to get credit for. You get the packet and you start doing the packet. You can spend as much time as you need, just go ahead and start to open it up. And there are teachers on the outside — on the outer rim of the class and just above their thing. It'll say English it will say history, it'll say whatever. They'll be able to help you If you have any questions. They'll also be the ones that grade your tests.

Dean Soto 10:04

And I'm like, So you're telling me that I can just go grab one of these little packets? And if it takes me a week to do it, I get the semester credit?

Dean Soto 10:17

Yeah, yeah. No, yeah. As long as it takes you to actually do it. You get it.

Dean Soto 10:22

I'm like, What the heck? Why did I not do this three years ago? Why did nobody tell me this? They all said you had to go to high school. And I can actually get my college — like I can actually get my high school diploma doing this?

Dean Soto 10:39

Yeah, yeah. Not GED. No, yeah, you can get your high school diploma.

Dean Soto 10:46

What the heck! That's crazy! And so I blew through those packets. And I wish I knew about that earlier.

Dean Soto 10:57

Well, I came to find out that same thing. That same type of thing can happen in college with CLEP testing — college level examination program testing. I did the same thing in college. I'm like, all I have to do is go take this test that's like two hours long, and I'll get credit for my lower-division classes. Yeah. That's awesome. Blew through those — it was like 100 bucks each. I didn't have to pay to have to go to semester's worth of college and anything that I didn't pass, that's when online stuff started coming out. So I went to Coastline Community College for that. I got those out of the way. Oh, it was awesome.

Dean Soto 11:46

But over and over and over again, to this day, even in business. I see that same thing happening. You have to do it this way. This is the way it must be done. Everybody has to do it this way. If you don't do it. You're a bad bad, bad, bad.

Dean Soto 12:03

And 99% of the time, it's wrong. Right? This is all through life.

Dean Soto 12:11

Oh, yeah. You know, one you have to go to college. You're gonna have to pay for all your kids' college. No. Why? Why?

Dean Soto 12:23

Oh, you have to, you know your kids. You have to go to a private school or public school. No. Why?

Dean Soto 12:36

You have to have employees in order to have a big functioning business. Mm-hmm. No. Why?

Dean Soto 12:49

If you need a copywriter or if you need someone who's good at copywriting and sales. You need somebody who has lots of experience in copywriting sales. No Why?

Dean Soto 13:01

Over and over and over again. It's been shown, at least anecdotally, through my experience, that most of the "What we're taught is BS."

Dean Soto 13:20

And so I don't trust Luna out there. She is staring at me.

Dean Soto 13:29

So now, were all those people lying? No. Some might have been, but a lot of these people literally didn't know any better.

Dean Soto 13:41

And there are a lot of things that I do that I didn't know any better. Right? So the idea that ... Here's the main point behind this. We are trusting and when you're listening to what is essentially the status quo, you're gonna find that if you do a little bit of research, just a little bit of research. That's right, honey, that it's wrong. It doesn't mean that they're lying to you. It's just groupthink.

Dean Soto 14:28

And so you want to have as little groupthink as possible, get away from the groupthink. By doing that, you can start building businesses that automate themselves, you can start building businesses that are way different than anything else that's out there.

Dean Soto 14:45

Like, I'm part of a — Yeah, I'll leave this actually for another time.

Dean Soto 14:52

But just start doing things differently. The more different you can be in what you do, the more you're going to see that there are powerful, easy ways, much easier ways to get something done than traditional people think are

Unknown Speaker 15:15

Luna No, no.

Dean Soto 15:21

She's trying to get to our feral cats right now. We're gonna put you in your crate. Go crate. Go crate. If you're gonna do that, you need to go crate. No.

Dean Soto 15:39

But I just challenge you this week. I challenge you this week. You know, if there's something like with your kids or with your business, where you're like, oh, it has to be this way. That you kind of just examine, just examine for a little bit, whether or not it's true that it has to be that way.

Dean Soto 15:59

More often than not, you're going to find that it's absolutely not true. And there's a much faster, easier way of doing stuff. This is why we have the VSAs at ProSulum.com and Freedom In Five Minutes.com, right?

Dean Soto 16:13

A much faster, much better, much cheaper way of building your business than your typical employee. And yeah, I just challenge you this week. Look at the things you're doing and ask yourself, Is there a better way? Is this the only way to do it?

Dean Soto 16:30

You're gonna find just through a little bit of research, that there are much faster, much easier ways often to do things that you thought there was only one way. Alright, this is Dean Soto of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. I will go check you out. Well, you go check that out.

Dean Soto 16:48

But I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Most entrepreneurs do everything themselves and they end up becoming their own bottlenecks in business.

These entrepreneurs have worked long and hard to remove themselves from being the bottleneck but what happens if another staff member becomes the bottleneck instead? How do you remove bottlenecks when the business is booming because of great staff members?

The solution to this problem and more, in today's Freedom In Five Minutes.

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto — founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. We're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this: "You May not be the Bottleneck. But are You Creating More Bottlenecks in Your Business?" That and more coming up.

Dean Soto 0:30

Well good morning! We are here once again with the Luna Meister. Luna is having a blast sniffing some — not other dogs. We only have Luna for now. We will get some other dogs soon. But for now, she's just enjoying her doggie day running around the acreage.

Dean Soto 0:53

So, today I woke up to very Interesting happenings. So we have one customer who was absolutely amazing in what they do. They create a ton of videos. So there iss a ton of processes and it's a design company.

Dean Soto 1:11

It's a design company that does design work for a lot of other big-named companies. And the emails that were flying around were basically that their VSA was bedridden in the hospital. And so, the Virtual Systems Architect — if you don't know go to FreedomInFiveMinutes.com or ProSulum.com P R O S U L U M .com — but he was bedridden in the hospital.

Dean Soto 1:12

At first, when I saw the emails, I'm like, "Oh, man. Okay, well, he's just out." Well, the guy. The VSA. The Virtual Systems Architect did not want to stop working. So he just kept on working, working, working, working.

Dean Soto 2:05

And it was actually one of my general managers who were like, "Dude, you need to stop or else you're not going to get better."

Dean Soto 2:13

And so, we reached out to the client saying, "Hey, you know, I got him to stop, and he'll be back either tomorrow or the next day. But he needs to rest."

Dean Soto 2:27

The client was like, "Well, we don't know who's going to do his work."

Dean Soto 2:37

And then we asked — my guy actually suggested, "Hey, well, we can put somebody else in there temporarily, and just work off the process documents."

Dean Soto 2:48

And the customer responded, "Well, it's not as easy as that. There's a lot of things that he's become familiar with that requires some thinking."

Dean Soto 3:04

And so, as far as for today and for tomorrow, it sounds like the client is going to actually end up having to do the work.

Dean Soto 3:41

All right. So what happened is, originally, this client was the bottleneck. And now, he has made a bottleneck out of somebody else.

Dean Soto 3:52

This is a habit that a lot of people have. It's normal, right? It's normal to not want to do the hard-easy things before they become the easy-hard things. Meaning the hard-easy things means creating very, very detailed process documents that anybody, anybody can follow. Anybody can follow. Right? Because you can even have a process document that says, if somebody is out, the first thing you're gonna do if you're taking their place, is you're going to introduce yourself to the customer and say, "Hey, just letting you know, I'm going to be handling some things while so and so is out. And bear with me..." It could be something as simple as that. Right? But we tend not to do that. We tend to allow our business to get stuck in other people's heads. Right. So now they become the bottleneck.

Dean Soto 4:53

We can't live without Kevin. We can't live without Jana. We can't live without James. We can't live without any of these people because they know how to work with this guy, and they know how to work with that guy, right?

Dean Soto 5:08

We recently had another customer who didn't have a process of bringing a new person totally on board. Like, getting all their accounts set up and everything like that. So, they got a new person and guess who was doing all the work? It was the owner of the business, right?

Dean Soto 5:31

That should not happen. Jeff Bezos does not say "Oh, we got a new client. We have a new customer in the Amazon FBA warehouse. Okay, well, I'll stop everything. And I'll go train that guy up."

Dean Soto 5:43

In Plus he, you know, people they know, they know what needs to be this.

Dean Soto 5:49

"There are some people who know what needs to be done. So I'll need their help." No.

Dean Soto 5:54

They have managers and the managers handle the whole entire process.

Dean Soto 6:02

That is something very hard to do for a lot of people at the very beginning of the business. However, once you get out of that habit of feeling like you have to do everything— that you just have to do everything but then you bring somebody in who they're the only ones who know how to do anything. That's where the problem becomes very apparent. It becomes very apparent.

Dean Soto 6:44

So, all that being said, I want to stress that the more that you can create processes in documentation and systems that are so detailed that anyone can do them. And yes, they could do it, even if it means talking with clients, you can make things so detailed that you very rarely get put in that situation where it's, "Oh, well, this person knows this thing or that thing. Right?"

Dean Soto 7:28

"This person knows this or that, and I can't live without them." That is putting yourself in a very vulnerable situation.

Dean Soto 7:36

You know, this guy, the owner had plans for today, right? He had plans and all those plans went to crap because the process documents were not as detailed as they possibly could be. Right? And so because he could not quickly put someone else in that situation as a temporary, he had to change all of his plans. And that's what we want to avoid.

Dean Soto 8:08

When we are in business, we want to avoid that type of stuff. We want it to be where it is a no brainer, no brainer. No brainer. That when somebody can pop in and take over, at least on a certain percentage of things, right.

Dean Soto 8:37

So, all that being said, Why is this important? We tend to do that. I even do that with my kids sometimes. Well, Allison knows how to do this. So I'm just gonna have her be the person who does it. Or any of my other kids know how to do it. Oh, and they could be the kind of lead person. Well, there should be a process. Even in my house. I have process documents for all of our time. Areas. All of our zones. And everybody knows what to do because we all have our zones, right?

Dean Soto 9:08

So my challenge to you this week is to figure out where you are the bottleneck or where you've put somebody else as a bottleneck, and switch it up. Switch it up and make it make something that allows nobody to be the bottleneck. Anybody can go in there, anybody can do it. Anyone can make all of this, make whatever it is happen, despite knowing in their head and being familiar with it. Right.

Dean Soto 9:45

Familiarity breeds contempt, right? We don't want familiarity, we want processes. So all that being said, this is Dean Soto with Freedom In Five Minutes. Well, today was a rough one. I'm kind of feeling a little run down Actually, I might go to the hospital and tell Gel to force me not to work. But anyway, I'll catch you later in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

Most of the time, people tend to shrug off advice from their inner circle of friends — even if it is a really good tip or idea. These are your closest people; people who love you the most. If you refuse to listen to them, you also refuse the possibility to grow phenomenally. You'll be surprised how knowledgeable and capable your inner circle of people is.

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Automated Transcription Below:

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto — Founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. And we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode. Today's topic is this: You Don't Know More than Those Who are in Your Inner Circle. That and more coming up.

Dean Soto 0:31

Oh, good morning! So the audio in this is going to be a little bit gravelled a little bit garbled.

Dean Soto 0:37

Thank you so much!

Dean Soto 0:40

So, I live in a community where people are super awesome. They flatten out the roads. We have these dirt roads that have asphalt on them. They're like asphalt grindings and literally, people will just do it. And that is pretty dang amazing. Sometimes they'll get potholes and they'll get little little washboards and things like that. People will just come with their tractor and grader and do it. I always try to spot them like 100 bucks or whatever. And they'll flatten out the road. They'll make it nice, amazing, and easy to drive on out of the kindness of their hearts. Basically, it's a pretty cool little community we have here.

Dean Soto 1:26

So all that being said, I was on a call with some of my really close business friends — guy friends — that I have. And it's so it's funny because there are times where I think that I kind of have it all together. I mean, just being honest. I'm gonna be totally honest. But I think I have it all worked out and everything like that. I have the best way of doing stuff and it was cool because this morning — I really just listened this morning more than anything.

Dean Soto 2:08

But as they were talking, they were talking about some of the different diets. They've been going on how they vacation. How they have fun, how they work, who they're hiring, who they need to hire, and what's been their troubles. And as I'm listening, I went from the feeling of "I know so much."

Dean Soto 2:33

I know all this stuff in business, and I'm living the four-hour work month and all this other stuff. And all the way to — "...they do things way better than I do."

Dean Soto 2:44

They're really good at what they do. I really don't even know what the heck I'm doing sometimes.

Dean Soto 2:52

Dean Soto 2:56

Maybe I should just sit and listen. It was cool because some people— especially when we are new to certain things. We tend to almost be a little bit intimidated by people who know more than we do — even when they're close, I get it. This actually happens more when you're close to somebody.

Dean Soto 3:33

I'm going to roll the window up. So it might sound a little bit different.

Dean Soto 3:37

But this actually happens sometimes even when we're closer to people.

Dean Soto 3:43

Is that when we are given really good advice — I mean really good advice. Because of who they are, it kind of sometimes flies in the face of our view of, well, I should know better than this person or I'm the guy. And for me, I tend to feel like I'm the guy that knows how to work less. Who knows how to outsource and develop systems. Who knows how to do this and that. And so, when somebody gives me an idea. Like, one of my guys held me accountable to creating a webinar, creating the sales page for a webinar, and the entire copy for the webinar. I kept on saying, "Well, I'm going to do my book. I'm going to edit my book." And he's like, "Okay, that's great. What are you going to do this week? You did that? You said, you're going to do that last week? What are you going to do this week?" I said I'm gonna finish my book. He's like, "Well, that's what you said last week. What are you gonna do this week?" I'm like, "You son of a monkey." He totally, totally called me out. And in a good way, because I did not finish what I said I was gonna finish last week. And I will get to that. Now that becomes secondary. My primary is now making sure that I actually get this webinar up and running. I could bring in some cash and so on and so forth.

Dean Soto 5:28

So, my initial reaction is, "Well, it's gonna be more work, you know. I'm the four-hour work month kinda guy. I don't necessarily want to do that." It's so easy to just sit, edit, and use that as an excuse. I could say, you know, "Screw this guy."

Dean Soto 5:48

I could literally just say, you know, "Screw him. He works more than me or whatever." But he's right. You got more work and you got more valuable work. So you got more valuable work done than I did last week for sure. Right? And it's funny. A lot of people get hung up or get hit.

Dean Soto 6:13

Dean Soto 6:18

I don't know what the word is, but they get enamored with the idea of the four-hour work month. Working a lot less, right. When my wife and I went to our marriage counselor. One of the things that he told me that really stuck and resonated with me — and it should resonate with a lot of guys is that in order to keep our house clean, guys are looking good, guys, we tend to be minimalist. We tend to want to just get rid of everything and make it as easy as possible.

Dean Soto 7:01

Not all the guys, you know but a good amount of guys who want to just do that. And that gives us the ability to keep everything neat and clean all the time. Because there's no upkeep. You know, there's nothing to put away because there's really nothing, right? And that's not necessarily the best way to do things. So it's the easy way to do things, but it's not the most beautiful way to do things, I should say. And I know I'm kind of ranting in this particular podcast, but trust me it's going somewhere.

Dean Soto 7:47

So my marriage counselor said that in order to make a beautiful house, yes, you need to clean. But if you stop with just cleaning, it wouldn't be beautiful. It will just be an empty house. Right? And so, you actually have to put beautiful things and create beautiful things to put out there. And that's one of the things that yes, it's a selling point in my webinar. I mean, obviously I'm going to use it because a lot of people are workaholics. I was a workaholic as well. And in some ways I am. So am, I enjoy work. I don't have to — I enjoy working. I enjoy working my hands I enjoy just doing things that some people would find mundane, because they're in a cubicle, right? But work in and of itself.

Dean Soto 8:43

So sorry, working less in and out and of itself is not something that's fulfilling. You get bored really fast, really fast. When you don't have work to do. It's just the nature of things. It's very By nature, you will get bored fast. And so, part of me is like, "Well, yeah, I work less than some of my really close business friends. But they create beauty. They create new things. And while they might work more, I help them to work less. I help them to create systems. I help them to do things that give them the opportunity and the ability to be part of their family."

Yes, I help all of that. They helped me to keep on track with building, creating, and making energy and building it up. Yeah, developing things that are absolutely beautiful.

Dean Soto 9:54

Dean Soto 10:01

Why is this important? Because especially with family members, especially with spouses, they are able to teach you things about yourself and they're able to teach you about things that they know way more easily than you could. If you just listen, they could help you to grow extremely quickly.

Dean Soto 10:22

And so, what I challenge you to do this week is to listen. I had a hard time listening to my spouse. I had a hard time with my wife when she would give me her feelings on certain deals that I was doing and certain things that I was doing. Had I listened, I would not have wasted two years, maybe even four years. Because I would have grown at a much faster rate. I would have grown at just a phenomenal rate had I listened to her when the time was right and the time when she had those feelings. And so I've learned to listen. If my wife has a really strong feeling about something, I'd stop. And she says, "No." I stopped. If she says, "Yes." I go because I've learned that it is something that I'm not going to be able to learn. It'll take me two years to learn the hard way.

Dean Soto 11:33

Two years to learn the hard way, rather than just listening.

Dean Soto 11:38

And following what she went through some of her feelings of herself. All that being said, I challenge you to listen to the people who are telling you something, don't just say "Oh, yeah. Sounds great." And not do it.

Dean Soto 11:52

Actually listen. Actually do it. You're gonna see that you're gonna have some phenomenal results when you listen to the people who love you and are able to be outside of the whole situation that you might be all right. This has been Dean Soto go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com, go check out ProSulum.com

Dean Soto 12:20

Lots of amazing stuff there if you want to automate your business in as little as five minutes a day. But until then, I'm gonna be driving into the city right now. That's what I'm doing. Until then, I will see you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.

This gift-giving concept is in place for a very good reason. It is there as a means to show and give value to your people even if they are non-customers. This is actually a very effective — yet subtle strategy.

You are building great connections with people. What happens over time is you have put some kind of positive thing out there and that positivity is bound to come back to you eventually.

The biggest thing is to give. And be giving in a strategic manner.

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Automated Transcript Below

Dean Soto 0:00

Hey, this is Dean Soto founder of FreedomInFiveMinutes.com and ProSulum.com. And we're here again with another Freedom In Five Minutes Podcast episode.

Today's topic is this: Increasing Your Value to Customers Through Gifting. That and more coming up.

Good morning! Beautiful, beautiful, sunny, sunny morning over here. It's starting to become spring. Got a lot of green grass and everything going over here.

It's pretty amazing what we have in our California area.

So, before I get into the story guys. Go check out FreedomInFiveMinutes.com. Go to Google & type in Freedom In Five Minutes podcast, Apple Podcasts, or something like that.

You actually see Freedom In Five Minutes pop up for your Apple Podcasts app that you can subscribe to. You can do the same thing for Spotify and Stitcher and a whole bunch of other stuff as well.

Okay, so go do that. You'll get these episodes every time they come out, and you will love them. Alright, Luna is chasing a whole bunch of crows that are flying and I don't think she realizes that is really not going to work.

Anyway. So with my first daughter, this was almost 12 years ago, 13 years ago.

With my first daughter, really my first child. We were living in Buena Park, California. We were not looking to sell our house, at least at that time. We were not looking to sell our house. But there's one real estate agent who came by. A guy by the name of David Sidoni – really cool guy. I'm still connected with him on Instagram.

He came around and started talking with my wife and was saying, "Hey, you know, I'm in the area. Have you ever thought about selling and moving and whatever?"

And my wife was like, "No, no, not really." But I was chatting with her.

So he was chatting with her and with me. And things were cool. You know, he seemed like a really nice guy. And so he went on his way.

Well, it was about a week later. It was about a week later that he came back to the house and brought my wife some sunscreen. It was summer and my wife was pregnant with our first child.

It was summer and he brought her some sunscreen and he left a little note just saying, "Hey, it's hot out there. Especially if you have a new baby. Congratulations. That is so cool. Why don't you go spend some time at the beach and just enjoy yourself? You and your husband deserve it."

So I was like, Oh, that was really really cool. Well, about a month later he comes back. Now keep in mind we were not wanting or even looking to move at all. We weren't.

Well, a week later he comes back with this baby DVD.

It was called The Happiest Baby On the Block. It was this doctor that showed you how to shush your baby. How to help your baby to not cry all the time. And boy did we need that.

Afterward, it actually worked out really, really well. Especially with my first who was such a huge crier. It was really rough.

Anyway. So he came back with his Happiest Baby On the Block DVD. Keep in mind, we were still not in any way looking to move out. I was just blown away.

I'm like, "This guy. We're not giving him any business. Like in the sense of from us. This guy is doing this. Wow. Like what would he do if we were actually looking for business?"

So what do you think we did? Well, I knew that we weren't going to be moving anytime soon. But I had some friends. We had some friends that we knew were removing and we called them when we're like, "You have to use this guy."

This guy is awesome. Like we're not even moving and he's already doing this, this, and this. Can you imagine what it would be like if you actually worked with him? And we literally became evangelists for David Sidoni. We became evangelists for David Sidoni. Without ever doing really truly any business with him.

And what happened was, our friends – our really good friends ended up using him as their realtor. And he ended up finding a house. They ended up finding a house with David Sidoni. Their dream home, which I believe that they're still into this day, so 12 years ago. They're still in that same house. And it was all through sunscreen, which probably cost them at the time like four bucks. And sunscreen and then a Happiest Baby On the Block DVD, which I think Probably was more – that was probably more around the $9.95 or $14.95 cents. So let's say $20 of investment into a gift to people that he liked.

And he was able to close – at least at the time – I want to say it was about a $650,000 house in elite Aliso Viejo, California. It was around there – it might have even been in the 700 thousand.

So if that guy is getting 3% – you know, his 20 bucks turned into several thousand. So, just to think that you know, his $20 plus, you know, the time that he spent talking and enjoying turned into a high – you know, a good percentage that's not counting any other fees or anything like that. That he was able to get a sale. Simply from that $20 and taking the time to grow his business in that way right?

Taking the time to actually find out about us people – who literally were not interested in moving which is crazy to think about right?

Oh my gosh. So it actually opened up my eyes. I never I'd so I didn't use I didn't really I saw it when–

It opened up my eyes to what is possible when you give and you give.

I mean, it's like what Jesus says, right? "It's better to give than to receive."

Well, when you give and give and give, without asking & without taking. To me, it's without going in and saying "Hey, buy this thing from me."

It really showed me the value of doing that. So it was interesting because, you know, at the time I was not an entrepreneur, it wasn't even thinking about it until I got back from being deployed. That's when all of that started.

I started listening to Gary Vaynerchuk. The typical entrepreneur path where you listen to Gary Vaynerchuk. You get all hyped up and on the hustle and then move on to other things so that you can kind of start systemizing things and, and so on and so forth.

But uh, but I started seeing that it was all that. So I started seeing how to apply what David Sidoni had essentially taught me.

I mean, it was a really cool coaching lesson before I was even a business person. And one of the things that – when I first started my business, I was like going to Craigslist. I was putting up advertising. I was doing all this. Doing all this stuff that really was not working.

And it was not until I started, I started using social media. And I was doing the typical social media thing where it's like, post all this content on Twitter. And then ask people to go to your website and try and make a sale and blah, blah, blah.

It didn't work. None of that ever worked. What did work though, as I started attending these tweetups. It was really big in Orange County – these tweets... what they called tweetups.

And it was just a bunch of people meeting up who were on social media and Twitter and so on and so forth. And I'd go to these meetups and I would do nothing but give. I would give. I would give advice. I would talk with people just to hear about their day.

I would give shout outs to them on Twitter, you know, saying thank you. It was never like a salesy type thing. And it was when that happened. When I literally started giving with Twitter that I started seeing growth in my business. A lot of growth and a lot of traction.

Had that not happened I probably would have quit I probably would have not even gone the entrepreneurial route I would have stuck.

I would have stayed in the full-time employee route, which was not bad.

It just wasn't something that I wanted and I felt called to. That translated later on, as my business and business grew it translated into... How can I make my customers feel special?

I want my customers to feel special. I want people to feel like they are taken care of whenever I'm working with them. When they're one of my customers. I want them to feel like "Wow."

I want them to see that they're not just spending money on service but they have a friend who has someone who's thinking about them & caring about them – giving to them. Because nobody does that anymore. Right?

Think of the last thing that you've bought for the last service that you've had. How many times a year do you get something from them? Whether it's a handwritten thank you card, usually you get emails on Christmas, your birthday.

You'll get emails and Christmas birthday, New Year's and a lot of the times it's like, "Hey, happy birthday. We really care about you. Come here's a $20 gift discount to buy something from us."

It's this half-hearted fake thing. Right? It's not really truly just giving. Right? And so, when's the last time that's happened? Never.

And so it's great. Because when you give. In your business, when you give, in your business, you're able...

Luna hears a truck. Go get them, Luna. Get them.

When you give in your business, you are swimming in a pool of a ton of fish. And you're able to just take whatever fish you want. Because nobody does it.

It's such a really huge surprise when people see –

You know, I just actually had an idea. I had an idea of gift-giving that I think I'm going to do relatively soon.

But you're playing in a pool that nobody else is playing. Whether it's a consultant and a lot of people will do like consultants and things like that, who have really high margins.

They'll be like, "Hey, I'm gonna send you a, I'm gonna send you flowers." or something like "...right after you pay me."

Like, that's great. But for the most part, like, imagine, you know, you're like, two months, three months down the road, and all of a sudden you get a gift. That's way different, right? That's huge. And so, you really want to see that this gifting concept is there for a reason. It is there as a means to show and give the value like literally to just give.

And what happens is, over time, whether it's that person coming in and buying more from you, or whether they refer you, or whether you know. You've put some kind of positive thing out there, eventually, it comes back, generally.

You shouldn't do it just because you want something in return, but generally, that's what seems to happen. And so, the more that you can give, in the beginning, the more that you can give, the more that you're going to see that there is a tremendous value, tremendous value in giving value before taking anything, okay.

To the point where I'm like, I just had an idea of cuz like, think about. A little business talk. Let's talk business real quick.

Think about it. Would you?

Like if you're in the consulting side of things. You're on the consulting side of things. Would you spend $100 to make $5,000? Well, if you send four gifts throughout the year to somebody, more than likely is going to cost you about $100.

Now, they might not be buying now. They might not be buying later. You might not be buying within three months, six months, but at that 12th month... I actually had someone that I talked to yesterday that I've been talking to for 12 months and now they're finally ready to move forward.

And so, this idea that you can't spend $100... because if you look at Facebook advertising or any type of Advertising. The cost, not just per lead, on average for a customer. But the cost per lead, generally, is going to be, you know, around $50, depending on what you're in. But it could be anywhere between $50 to $100. That's not a customer, that's per lead.

So then, for them to become a customer, especially in the consulting field, you're looking at $250 - $500, sometimes even $1000, depending on how high your ticket is, right?

Well, imagine spending $100. Just $100 and you're making that happen. That's huge.

So you don't want to simply just want to see that. Really, I mean, to get something in the mail. There's like a 100% open rate, never asking for an ID for anything.

And you're getting this, you're getting the potential of making thousands of dollars, it's pretty huge.

Sorry, I'm all over the place. I literally am like thinking, Oh, I need to do this, I need to do that.

And I'm totally thinking of new things, a new strategy right now. So, which I'm actually gonna go implement as soon as I get to my computer.

So why is this important? It is important because the more that you give, the more you will receive, whether you like it or not.

The biggest thing is to give, give, give, give, give, but give strategically, as well.

Like, don't break the bank. Don't go into debt, in order to give. But give to give, so that you can receive and then give more and then receive and give more and more. So, you give more.

There are so many automated ways to do it now. You just gotta figure it out.

So alright. So this is Dean Soto. FreedomInFiveMinutes.calm

Go check that out. FreedomInFiveMinutes.com

If you want a Virtual Systems Architect, go and get a Virtual Systems Architect where they'll take everything off your plate in as little as five minutes a day. Over at ProSulm.com

P R O S U L U M .com and I will catch you in the next Freedom In Five Minutes podcast episode.