In this episode, Nick speaks with Bryan Whittington, who was always one who loved to learn, but was never a fan of the classroom setting. He became a foreign exchange student in South America not knowing any Spanish or anything of their culture.

Being immersed right into it, he learned that the best way to learn is just by doing it. He took those lessons on throughout the rest of his life. Working in sales, making those cold calls really do scare many people away, but Bryan knows you just have to do it and you’ll get better.

About Bryan Whittington

Bryan is the Founder of ebsGrowth & host of The Talent, Sales & Scale Podcast, has a mission to help communities thrive through entrepreneurship. Bryan knows that the intentionality of mindset is foundational to achieving one’s desired outcomes.

Emotional intelligence (EQ), moving out of one’s comfort zone, embracing setbacks as valuable lessons learned & having a continuous self-development loop is the differentiator between those who try verse those who succeed.

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Your Friends at “The Mindset & Self-Mastery Show”

00:08
Hello and welcome to the Mindset and Self-Mastery show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan, and on this show, my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us and the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery. So, let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin.

00:32
Hey, Brian, welcome to the show. How you doing, man? I’m living the dream. Thanks for having me, Nick. I really appreciate it. Yeah, man. My pleasure. I’m glad to have you on. So we’ve known of each other for a couple of months now through salescast.co. Shameless little plug for those guys. uh And it’s been great. It’s been great being part of Salescast, but it was great being able to connect with you and some other people. I’ve had some other people from uh that group that’s been part of the show as well. And I was on your show recently. We had a great conversation.

01:01
And I’m excited for us to get into things here. Brian, why don’t you give us a little bit of context. Tell us what you do for a living and maybe one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s kind of odd or bizarre. Well, so yeah, I appreciate you having me on again, Nick, and a little bit about me. So I’m a founder of a company called EBS Growth and founded that back in 2019, really got started. Perfect year, right? 2020 for the pandemic. And all we really do is focus in on sales effectiveness. So that’s…

01:30
That’s my day job. Insane. have six kids that I’m driving, trying to provide for. So one weird thing about me, or maybe that most don’t know is spend a year down in South America as an exchange student. And that was probably one of the most pivotal, pivotal times in my life to really open up my eyes for what was out there and really set me on a path to where I am today, I believe. And that’s awesome. So what was that like and how did you get to?

02:00
South America. Yeah, so it’s funny story. I was never a good student. I love to learn, but I was never a good student. That stereotypical academic career path is not for me, right? I don’t sit down on my ADD. I have a standing desk. don’t remember the last time I sat down during work hours. And that doesn’t really equate in, it’s not effective in school. So whenever I went into my Spanish class,

02:29
there was a little postcard and it said, fill it out if you’d like to go and be an exchange student through Rotary Club. It’s not like that, this would never happen. So I filled the darn thing out and lo and behold, they chose me through a couple of different interviews. They were insane enough to choose me. So I went down to South America and ended up staying with a family that had, uh you know, five or six different companies that they were running.

02:53
And I never knew that right where I grew up. My dad was a truck driver, right? He I told him I was going to go to school and he’s like, why in the world would you do that? Just work for a living. And my mother was in retail sales all of her life. Learned a ton of work ethic from them, but that was just I didn’t know what else was out there. So that was probably the biggest eye opener for me. And what part of the country you originally from? So I’m from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Oh yeah, yeah.

03:22
Now I remember us starting off your podcast episode talking about eagles and Steelers and throwing colors basically at each other, black and gold and green and all of that. It’s gotta be interesting going from Pittsburgh to South America and having a whole different vibe down there. What was that like when you were a kid? Yeah, so I was 18. I had no idea what I was doing, right? whenever I went- Most 18 year olds don’t.

03:52
Yeah, right. And so whenever I went down there was kind of funny. All of these other students that were going down, they had planned this. were, you know, this was what they really wanted to do. For me, it was a whim. I had a foreign exchange student that lived across the street from me. And I thought, oh, that’d be kind of cool. I realized on the airplane down whenever they were all practicing Spanish, I didn’t even know how to ask where the bathroom was. So.

04:14
Whenever I got down there, I had to learn how to be self-sufficient very quickly because I couldn’t understand a thing. I couldn’t speak anything. But that really allowed me a pathway to learning to really understand that it doesn’t matter the situation. You just work through it. You can dwell on it, your thumb about it, or you can just work on it. it took me three months to really understand virtually everything, six months to where I was really speaking well.

04:43
And by the time I was leaving, people didn’t even realize I was from the States. They thought I was from Europe, that my accent was good enough, that they thought, oh wow, this guy’s not even American. Wow. Well, that’s a testament to immersion. Because if you were dumped in a spot and you have to figure that stuff out, that’s vastly different than just being dumped in a classroom and being like, here are these stupid words. This is what this stupid word means, out of context or this silly little sentence. But the fact that you went through and you were immersed in it.

05:13
I’ve talked to different people that have done that and I’ve done some traveling where I’ve gone to like Russia a couple times for different trips for the churches I was at and all and some people told me the same thing. They’re like, you want to freshen up on the words but yeah, at the same time you’re going to get over there and be like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Explain it to me and then you’ll get it because you feel like an idiot. You’re like, I don’t understand. But that’s it. That’s a ton of immersion. So you’ve got kids now that are some of them older like in high school.

05:43
Yeah, we have a huge range. uh So before I go off that just one one point of topic to come back to that immersion piece relates to everything that you’re doing. So no matter what you do, whether I was flying airplanes, uh you are immersed in doing that or entrepreneurship. You can only study so much that immersion piece that actual execution, at least the way I learn. Yeah, you can look in the book, but until you’re actually doing it, it doesn’t count. But yeah, to answer your question,

06:10
Um, we have six kids that range from, uh, seven all the way up to, 18. Um, we’re insane. do homeschooling, right? So our oldest daughter, not only is she, um, 18, senior in high school, just graduated, but now she’s going into a university as a junior because she was a, a dual enrollment. So, um, yeah, we’re, we’re always going. I bet, man. I know there’ve been a couple of conversations we’ve had just through like, LinkedIn or whatever.

06:40
And I could just tell him like, you good? You’re like, I’m running from place to place to place, place, place. And I hope I get to sleep tonight sort of deal. uh I do want go back to the immersion because I do think that’s something we can really tackle a bit. Cause look, both of us are in and we’ve been in sales for a long time. And when you’re on the call with a prospect, you can’t really just hang up the phone and run away. I mean, you can, but that’s not going to get you anywhere. So being immersed in that.

07:08
Like I think back to early days of sales where they were like, here’s a script, go talk to these people and do these things. I think there’s a way to go about it. So when you talk to people in salespeople or people that are just getting into a career now and they’re in regards to immersing themselves, what sort of advice would you give them to do that? Yeah. So don’t dwell on what you don’t know because even if it’s your first day,

07:36
you’re gonna know more than a lot of people out there. So just get into it and learn as you go. And people are usually pretty helpful. let’s be sales specific. If somebody’s day one uh in a sales career and they’re calling up and they’re nervous, you can actually say, hey, listen, this is my first day. I’m a little bit nervous. uh Here’s why I’m calling. And you’re gonna find that people are pretty uh receptive to that.

08:02
Funny story is I did 10 years of sales training, coaching and consulting and I, there’s probably five or six times that this happened. We would do live code calls where I would call on behalf of the client to show somebody how to do it. And I’ve never called on them. I don’t sell what they did. Right. But whenever I had the person who was years in the, in the role and supposedly knew what was doing.

08:28
because they were in front of their peers, one, and two, trying to do it a little bit differently, at least five or six times whenever this happened, they called up, they call up Nick and they say, click and just hang up. They didn’t say a word. They didn’t do anything. As soon as that other person on the other line said, hello, they hung up. So all of that to say, don’t be tied to the process, not the outcome. If you’re worried about messing up, guess what? You will. So don’t hang on so tightly.

08:59
Another example of that is whenever I was flying airplanes, know, I’d hang on so tightly and the flight instructor would say, hey, put a pencil between the yoke and your hand. That way if you start to squeeze too tightly, it will hurt. Same thing in everything that we do. If you hang on too tightly, you’re not going to be as agile.

09:19
to be able to adapt to that situation. And you’re gonna be thinking about everything that you should be doing or shouldn’t be doing or what you should say or how to overcome what they’re suggesting. And you’re gonna miss all the cues. Just really be human in the whole entire time. And a lot of people, especially salespeople, forget that they are who they are and they jump on a call. And I think you and I have joked about this before where they’re like.

09:44
Hey, so and so, hello, this is Jimmy Bob from so and so company. You’re like, who the are you kidding me, Jimmy? Like, that’s not you. That’s, that’s wrong. That’s weird. Um, and I do think that a lot of people will get to that point where they’re, they kind of hug themselves up in all situations, be it a sales call, be it to go into an interview or to have a conversation with somebody. Some people, I think it’s just a hard time of getting out of their house being like, Oh, I have to go be around people. And we create all this shit in our head. So it’s.

10:14
truly about managing your mindset at that point. So being able to just step into it. I had a conversation with somebody recently where they were going through this potentially scary thing with a client. It was a big deal. And I was like, look, just get in there and have the conversation. Coach them along a bit. And after the call, he was like, man, that was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. I was like, yeah, did they bite your head off? No. Were they a big, hairy, scary monster? No. Did they bite? Yeah. I’m like, look at that. He’s like, I don’t really know what I was afraid of.

10:42
was like, you dude, you were afraid of you, because you create all this shit in your head. But we all do that. Yeah, and there’s two tactics that you can go in there. One is necrostic called fear, right? False evidence appearing real. And we do that to ourselves all the time. We’re so fearful that we believe bad things are going to happen. And the other thing is, especially if you’re in sales, you don’t have it to begin with, so you can’t lose it. There is zero pressure. So just go in and have that conversation.

11:11
But it goes to that mindset, you know, oftentimes people are like, ah, you haven’t changed a bit. That’s the biggest insult to me because if you haven’t gotten out of your comfort zone, you’re not growing. And if you’re not scaring yourself every day, if you’re not messing up, you’re not going to grow whatsoever. So getting over that fear of failure or fear of not being perfect, because guess what? No one is.

11:39
That’s the biggest impediment to people’s success is they’re stuck in that fear. They’re stuck in that. need to be perfect. I need to live up to somebody else’s idea of what success is. And none of that matters. Success is what you define it as. So live that out is really my encouragement to people. I know it’s a bit difficult with social media because you open that up, whatever that app is, your I.G., Facebook.

12:08
good God, TikTok, any of it. You open it up and you’re just in a hole and these things are being forced into your face of these people are doing these things. These people do these things as great as they’re portraying them to be. But it’s really all kind of a lie and you’re not seeing all the work that’s behind it. So I find that stuff interesting where people get really upset with a situation and it’s really them getting upset about themselves. ah

12:35
So do you kind of coach some people through that sort of stuff? see you kind of smirking a little bit, especially as I said, social media. You’re like, oh yeah. Yeah. Well, the reason I’m sparking on it is, um, years ago, it was probably 2004, 2005. Have you ever read the book by, um, Tim Ferris called the four hour work week? Okay. Do you remember that suggestion that he gives about not listening to the news, not watching the news? Okay. Well,

13:04
I go in and out of that. And I’ve been, I was watching the news a lot, trying to stay up on what’s going on with the economy and, you know, going through a bunch of different battles and pivots and this and that. And when you talk to people, you’re on LinkedIn, I’m on LinkedIn all the time. I don’t do any other social media except for LinkedIn because I’m smiling because people put on this facade and they pretend to be happy. They pretend all of these things. And I think you were the one that pointed out whatever you say, you you see these people, um

13:32
posting or doing a selfie or something like that. You’re like, are you okay? Right? Because yeah, why else are you going to do that other than draw attention to yourself? So my real encouragement to you is don’t follow that. There’s been countless entrepreneurs that, you know, literally say, oh, we’re doing amazing. Everything’s great. And then two weeks later, they’re shutting down their offices. Everything is going, you know, they’re in bankruptcy because they put on this facade.

14:00
Now, I’m not saying go out and complain, right? That is the last thing that you want to do. However, you do want to uh be realistic. If things are rough, that’s where you go. Hey, listen, things are rough. But then have that optimism, that positive expectation of winning. If you’re going through hell, the last thing that you want to do is stop, right? Keep going through it. But be realistic. Identify what your challenges are.

14:29
Identify the real things that you’re going to do to address those challenges, no matter how scary they are, no matter how bad things seem, just systematically start to attack them. And then slowly but surely you’ll be able to pull yourself out of it. I mean, there’s been a couple of times, one time, Nick, I had a guy I partnered with, I lost $250,000 to this guy.

14:56
During 2008, 2009, the economic meltdown, and I was in real estate, I had lost my flying career doing the health reasons two years prior to that. I mean, I was getting my ass kicked time and time again. And so I could have given up on everything. I mean, I was staring bankruptcy down. I was literally minutes away from filing bankruptcy. uh But I finally listened to my wife and she says,

15:24
Why don’t we look at one other alternative? And thankfully we were able to avoid that and build ourselves out of it and tear ourselves out of that. But those struggles, the more pressure you have, that’s the strength that you get. Those are things that no one else can take away from you. And if you bear yourself under that strength, see a good mentor of mine said this, Nick, he said, listen, the only thing that success leads to is failure.

15:54
However, if you pursue excellence, you can be excellent on the ride up and you can be excellent on the ride down. So always pursue excellence. And when you fail and you will, that degree of excellence, the amount of excellence that you’re living out is how quickly you can rebound from that failure. And that’s the mindset that I always have is, OK, I’m not going to be scared. I’m going to go out and do this. And if and when I fail, I’m going to, you know, lessons learned. got the scars from it.

16:23
But those lessons learned are what allow us to move faster and better and achieve more as we go on, if we don’t give up. Yeah, absolutely. And you bring up a lot of great points. I want to touch on the social media side of it too, because I think that’s a platform that a lot of people will use to just talk about what they think is a good thing. But there are also the types of people where if you just allowed them to, they would just naturally complain constantly.

16:50
because that’s just how the people are. mean, if you think of the Pareto Principle, you got the 80-20 rule, 20 % of people aren’t going to do that. And they’ll probably be like how we are, where, I’m going through a tough spot right now, but this is what I’m doing, what I’m working through, et cetera. It’s interesting when you think of balance and how people can or cannot balance themselves of, I’m in pain right now, but is this a me problem? Is this uh something that happened to me that…

17:17
is something I need to work through in my head. How do I get this stuff out? How do I get help? Where it can just be so easy, especially with, not just social media, but people sitting behind a computer. It can be easy for them to just spout out shit and just move along and not actually do anything with it. So what you’re talking about with being able to actually systematically go through that, I like to play devil’s advocate on the show because I know there’s some asshole that’s listening to the show that’s like, fuck you guys. I’ve tried that shit before. It’s not really gonna work. Well,

17:46
You know, appreciate you listening to the show, but fuck you as well, because realistically, you’ve got to systematically go through this stuff, but I think the breakdown is that people look at it and think that it all has to get done right now. Instead of taking it day by day by day by day, and a lot of people want that instant gratification. Shit, we jumped back to Instagram or TikTok. I talked to somebody yesterday who was like, I’m not on TikTok, but I had to start it up for the business.

18:11
45 minutes later, I was like, what am I doing? Get off this thing. And you’re just reeling through all of it. But if you can actually go through and you can, if you can take the stuff that you’ve had happened to you and figure out how you can work through it bit by bit, what sort of advice would you give somebody to be able to break that down and think of that guy or that gal that’s listening to this right now and go, look, we get it, but take it incrementally. Yeah. So a couple of things. um

18:42
Me 20 years ago, I’d have never believed this stuff. So bear with me. If you think this is a bunch of, you know, happy touchy feely black magic stuff, I get it. That was me. But let me give you a couple of key things. One is your mindset. Your mindset is so much. the way that you see, we lie to ourselves, right? Whenever you talk to yourself. So there, there was a book, I can’t give the author credit, but he says, um,

19:10
He wrote a book, The Things That We Say to Ourselves. And the joke is always, hey, do you talk to yourself? Raise your hand in the crowd, right? And those people that aren’t raising their hand are like, am I talking to myself? We all do it. And unfortunately, whenever you’re talking to yourself, you’re talking to yourself 10 times faster than what you talk in person. So in person, it’s about 100 words a minute. But when you talk to yourself, it’s 800 to 1,000 words a minute. And 80 % of that is negative. So.

19:37
If you’re going to lie to yourself with all this negativity, you might as well lie to yourself about who you’re looking to become. So in order to overcome that, identify one, and this is where most people screw up. They don’t identify who they’re looking to become. They very easily identify all their faults. They very easily identify all the things that they don’t have. But it’s not, you’re not a human doing, you’re a human being. You’re not a human having, you’re a human being. So

20:07
Who are you looking to be? Who are you looking to become? Identify that. Then, without polyanic glasses and without beating yourself up, identify those shortfalls, those areas where you need to improve, and that’s where you’re going to want to systematically put in there. What are you going to do to improve in those areas? And then through a couple of different ways, so whether you journal, um identify a couple of things. One, 10 things that you’re grateful every single day. What are you grateful for?

20:36
Attitude of gratitude drives out that negativity so much and whenever you’re feeling yourself get negative Remind yourself pull out that list. What are all of the things that I’m grateful for today? And then the second thing is who are you there was those? Identifiers so there was a guy by the name of uh Len Pentron Costa. He taught me this right? uh he always said I seek first to understand because

21:03
You get somebody that just attacks you. What’s going on in their life? If I seek first to understand, and then the second thing he taught me is I never take anything personally. If I seek to understand what they’re going through and I don’t allow what they’re saying or doing to affect me personally, that’s 90 % of the battle. And then if I can take that through an attitude of gratitude, that gets me over so much. then especially if I have that systematic plan,

21:31
to improve the areas of weaknesses, all of those things will allow you to get you to where you wanna be. It’s not overnight, but it’s a constant improvement. And look back to where you were and you’ll see how far you’ve come. But if you never look back to see how far you’ve come and only how far you still need to go, that’s where we can start to get negative and start to wanna give up. So those couple of areas, I think.

21:59
could really help people to get through all of their struggles and frustration. Yeah, that’s a great point about the negative self-talk. Because you’re constantly talking to yourself. I know I am. I’m constantly talking with me, Nick, and another Nick. There’s all these conversations that are going on. And sometimes those guys are assholes. I literally had a conversation earlier where my negative self-talk came up out of nowhere. I was like, you need to sit your ass down and step away from me.

22:28
and everything was all right. But being able to have that strength to be able to do that takes years to be able to get to that point. I’d like for you to be able to break down what you just said, but put it in a simple capsule for salespeople, because they’re not being scared. Allow them to just roll off their back and be like, hey, I wanna help. Oh, you don’t wanna help? All right, cool. Now I’m moving along. So what does that look like from you, if you think of that simple salesperson and how they can go about it? Yeah, so two. One is another saying. So it’s SW, SW, SW.

22:58
So it’s some will, some won’t, so what next? If you can keep that refrain as you’re going through, know, some will, some won’t, so what next? That’s one piece. The other piece is an acrostic that we call Bagels. So spell out the word Bagels, but with two Gs. And so you identify in the, you do this in the morning or the night before, you identify what are the behaviors that I’m going to do tomorrow or today. And you identify all the things that you’re going to accomplish.

23:27
Then you go to A, what are those affirmations that you’re going to do? And I didn’t identify 10 things of who you’re looking to become. First person, present tense. One mentor of mine, always said, I’m a heat seeking missile for paying budget and decision, right? For his sales piece. I never take anything personally. I’m better today than I was yesterday. So those different affirmations, whatever those are for you, but have those.

23:56
So that’s A, G is your goals. Always keep those goals. That’s your internal motivation. What are your, goals that you’re seeking and how are you doing against those goals? Then G, your areas of gratitude. And I’m going to suggest 10. Then E, this is this non-polyannic, non, you know, um, rose colored glasses. Evaluate, how are you doing today? Don’t beat yourself up, but evaluate how am I doing against my goals? How am I doing?

24:25
against my behaviors that I was supposed to do. So that’s evaluate and L. What are the lessons learned? From those lessons, you can improve. And then lastly, S, end it on a positive. What were my successes today? So some will, some won’t, so what next for that mindset and then bagels from that acrostic. Those two tools can help whether you’re in sales or anything to keep moving forward. Yeah, just in life in general.

24:54
I know that there are certain people that hear that sort of stuff and they go, that’s cool, I don’t want extra work. I don’t want to do extra things. But at the same time, look, if your leg was broken or your arm’s broken, you’re going to go do what you need to do to fix it. So it’s a matter of prioritizing that. But if we break it down for the people that what’s one thing that you would suggest out of all of that, that’s kind of the crux to it, or at least the place to start. Know who you’re looking to become. If you don’t know who you’re looking to become and why,

25:24
nothing else matters. And if you choose not to do it, that’s fine, but don’t complain about your current circumstances. If you don’t like what you have, listen, you’re not going to like this because this is not, this is not what most people want to hear. If you don’t like what you have, or if you don’t like who you are, you only have you in the mirror to, to blame. Because if you play victim, well, I can’t do anything about it. Whereas,

25:54
If you take responsibility, now you have control. Now you can do something about it. So I’d really encourage you never play victim because then you can’t change and you’re you have that victim mindset instead. No matter what, even if you get mugged at walking down the street, identify what role you had in it. You know what? I should have known better than to walk through that neighborhood at 2 a.m. by myself, right? Identify what

26:22
areas of control you had so you don’t do it again. So that would be my biggest encouragement for you. Hmm. That’s a good one, man. And I look, I know that for the most part, what we say on this show and what’s recorded goes out to the rest of the world. But as you’re saying that something popped into my mind, I saw something earlier today on social media about some pastor that was wearing a million dollars worth of jewelry and was robbed mid service.

26:53
for his million dollars worth of jewelry on him. My initial question was, what the fuck? Why would you have that much jewelry on you? No matter where you are, what is your deal? So thinking about that sort of stuff, like, kind of, I don’t want to say he asked for it, but he set himself up to be in that spot where somebody’s gonna potentially rob you. So even being mindful of your own space of like, what do you bring to the space that you’re in? What sort of energy you bring in?

27:22
What is it that you have that you’re bringing into something? And I think that’s a big thing. Like some people will kind of go into a situation. They almost allow their ego to just move them through it. And that ego then sometimes bites you on the ass and million dollars worth of jewelry is stolen right off your body. Well, I’d be curious. A pastor like that is probably a name and claim it kind of guy. So I’d be curious as to how he’s going to work around that one. Maybe. I don’t know. We all got to talk to somebody at the end of the…

27:52
End of life, the pearly gates. And I’d like to be a wallflower for that conversation. See, what am talking about? Is Peter gonna let him in? Different story. uh Well, amen. I appreciate what we’ve gotten into so far. Let’s actually take a little bit of a step back. Are there any major moments throughout the course of time in your life, because you’ve hinted at a couple of them that were kind of pivotal moments for you? Yeah. So I’d say one is whenever I was just out of high school as an exchange student,

28:20
learning to be self-sufficient and figure things out on my own. Then whenever I went to pilot training, I was told by a guy, Mr. Shoemaker, who was my sixth grade math teacher, and he always said, hey, why can’t you be more like your sister? And I believed that. And what I was able to do in going through military flight training, because it’s a pretty exclusive club to be in as a military pilot,

28:49
that really gave me confidence that, wait a second, maybe I’m smart enough that Mr. Shoemaker was wrong. So that was another key pivotal moment. And then whenever I lost my career, my flying career, because I had so much of my ego, and you talked about it earlier, couched in what I did rather than who I was as a pilot. it’s kind of funny.

29:14
How do you know that a person is a doctor? How do know a person is a pilot or, you know, somebody who rides a road bike? They always tell you, right? Their ego and their personality is so wrapped up in it, and that’s not who you are. So what you do is not who you are. That was another key piece. And then whenever that person took me to the tune of $250,000, that was another key piece, right? That was a quarter million dollars. And that, you know, we’re still getting out from under that.

29:43
But if you think about it, that could have eliminated most people. A lot of people, you know, they would go to drugs or alcohol or even commit suicide over that. But we battled our way through that. And then having downturns in the economy with businesses, you’re starting off and all the pivots through that. So all of those key pieces, Nick, were all, I think, pivotal moments where when faced with challenge, when faced with possible defeat,

30:12
Do you continue on or do you give up? And I think those key pivotal moments were all times where I decided to move on with one exception where I had to take a strategic retreat and a pause, but then I got back into it as soon as I could. So know when to pause if it’s a strategic pause, but never give up.

30:37
Yeah, the strategic pause was, you know, I had a wife and three kids at that point and I had to provide, right? That was my responsibility. And so I wasn’t able to provide in the downturn in 2009 in real estate to take too long. So I had to take a W-2 job, but that W-2 job, I realized this was not at all what I wanted to do. I could not handle that corporate life. just was…

31:04
energy life sucking. as soon as I was able to, I got back into it. So I left a secure W-2 job and I went to a commission only independent contractor whenever I had that immense uh mountain of debt looming over me where there wasn’t any security blanket and I just went forward and made it happen. that’s really where I think if you want something badly enough,

31:35
You’ll just make it happen if you know why you want it.

31:40
Yeah, that’s a great point. You had four whys, your wife and three kids that were behind you saying, well, we need you to go do this thing. Talk to us a bit about your mindset, specifically going through the pilot whole situation and growing into becoming that person, experiencing that, and then it being taken away. I almost think of it as like an athlete that breaks their legs and can’t get into the NFL or something. So how did you manage your mindset throughout that time?

32:09
Yeah, that was that was hard um because not only did I lose who I was, my identity as a pilot and what I had been working for, that was 10 years of really hard work um to, you know, I paid civilian wise to be able to go and become a pilot. Then I ended up in the military as a pilot. So that was a decade of my life of learning how to be a good pilot. Right. So that was I was grounded in that in that.

32:39
Um, in that identity and whenever that got washed away and I had the health issues on top of it, I mean, every single day with a migraine or vertigo, you cannot function at your highest and best. And there’s always a mental cloud that you had to go through. And so it was just a matter of, Hey, am I going to dwell on this? And woe is me.

33:05
Or am I just gonna deal with it and have the best life that I can possibly have? And that’s what I’ve chosen to do. uh And it’s a choice. You have to decide what do you want. And that’s really it. I love to say it was something other than that, but it’s really a choice. And it’s a daily choice. And sometimes, especially whenever you’re going through the thick of it, and you’re really in pain, or you’re really down, you’re like, ugh. Listen, how are you gonna choose to… uh

33:35
to interpret what’s going on around you, right? So case in point, if I had a great evening with my wife and the next morning I spilled my cup of uh coffee, I’m not gonna worry about it. I’m like, that stinks, let me clean it up, I’m good to go. Whereas if I’m miserable and frustrated and had a bad evening and that same thing happens, I’m like, bah! I might as well tuck and roll. I’m gonna tuck my covers back over and roll back over in bed. Same circumstance, but how I chose to react.

34:04
was that, a choice. And so it really comes down to the choice that you choose.

34:11
Yeah, good call. And there’s kind of choice stacking in a sense. As you continue to make those choices and you stack upon and stack upon and stack upon, that stuff gets easier. So think about it. Even the way you are right now, I think if you and your wife had a rough evening, hopefully tonight’s not a bad one for you guys, but tomorrow morning, if you spilled your coffee, you’d probably still be like, oh damn, I spilled my coffee. And you’d be upset just that you don’t have that coffee in front of you right now. And then you just go get another one and you’re moving along because of the decisions you’ve made over the course of time.

34:39
where I there are some people, and I’m not sure if they’re part of this audience, but people in the audience know people that are like this. Some of them are family members. Fuck, you might be married to this person. But some of those people just perpetuate that and continue to perpetuate that. And we as the people that want to get away from that need to be able to look at a different way and kind of take yourself out of that situation. But for yourself, Brian, when you go through your daily work, what does your daily work look like to make sure that you continue to make those wise choices?

35:09
Well, it’s exactly em so I’m not telling you anything that I’m not doing right. I’m not taking this from a, hey, I read this once. I’ve completely um and I just again, I’ve completely given up news. I was getting down into more negativity than I wanted. And so I gave up all news. I left social media probably back in around 2016. I left social media. That is just nothing but a time size.

35:38
I gave up, you know, we were joking around with sports teams before. I used to love football, avid football fan. I gave that up. I mean, the team would lose and I would take it personally. I don’t have anything invested. So anything that is not going to allow me to provide better for my family, provide better for my clients, become a better version of who I’m looking to become, I’ve given that a lot.

36:05
And so I’ve done all of those things. I’ve exited those and in place, I put in extra study. I do the bagels across it that I’ve told you about at the end of every single day, identify what I’m going to do the next day. And then I attack that through a systematic, I have my calendar completely time blocked. And then I identify how well did I do in my time block today? I was 90 % yesterday. I was 86%.

36:33
But in that 90 % today, I could probably say, wow, I was really 100 because those time blocks that I didn’t execute exactly what it is, what I was doing aligned to that. was just a little bit more thinking and planning than that tactical execution. So I track everything to make sure that I’m going along to achieve the goals that I want. That’s awesome, man. And I know it may sound like a lot of work.

37:01
people that are listening that don’t actively do it. But once you actually start moving on it, like I think of journaling. uh A lot of people really don’t want to journal. I fought against journaling for years and years and years. I did as well. But if you do it in the right way, you do it right for yourself. Like I used to think, oh my god, I need to write this giant thesis of every single thing that happened and that’s not it. I mean part of what I do is gratitudes.

37:29
the 10 gratitudes every day in the morning and at night. And then things that were my lessons, overall mindset, what could have been better, some favorite moments and accomplishments. But you get into that rhythm and it just becomes force of habit. Now, do you have anything that helps you like with the time blocking, like an app that you follow, or is it just you follow the Bible of outlook? I follow the Bible of outlook. I’ve tried different apps. The last thing I need is another thing to do. So I just throw it on. uh

37:57
throw it on my outlook and then um every Saturday I plan two weeks out that way it’s not everything is very intentional. So for example um and I can I can send this I have a YouTube um YouTube video that I did on how I do time blocking but really create the perfect week and if you identify the perfect week so um let’s take sales if I know that I’m supposed to have five

38:26
First-time meetings or ten first-time meetings in a week I’ll put those ten first-time meetings on the calendar as an open block and That way I can schedule into it those first-time meetings But if I don’t have a first-time meeting guess what that is forced prospecting time I have study time on their exercise time on their strategic planning time I have I’ve just recently started putting lunches because I’ve skipped lunches

38:53
I have my family time that way. I end right in with my family for dinner. That’s, you know, every single night we look to have dinner together as a family to maintain those bonds. That’s awesome. And time blocking is almost like a superpower because you get to play jazz within those walls of whatever time you’re in. You get to actually focus and do that stuff instead of just going, oh my God, this project took me forever. I’m sorry, honey.

39:19
It’s gonna take me another couple hours to be able to get home. Now you work from home, so I’m sure she’d be pretty pissed if you said that from your office. She’d be like, that’s fine, get your ass out of here, we need to eat. I think it was horrendous, you can’t believe all the kids I had to get around. Exactly, well you get these kids out here. Oh man, Brian, well I appreciate you being on the show. I think it’s been super helpful and a wealth of knowledge, man. So to the audience, please follow Brian.

39:48
Check out that YouTube video. I he’s got a lot of stuff. He and I connect on LinkedIn. I know he’s all over LinkedIn. He’s already talked about that. So if you are too, you should go follow him. But Brian, why don’t you tell us where people can connect with you and where can they follow you? Yeah, I appreciate that. So check us out on, check me out on LinkedIn. It’s Brian. I spell it incorrectly. So B-R-Y-A-N. Brian Whittington. You can check me out there. We have the podcast that you were on, the Talent, Sales, and Scale Show. So it’s all about how do we hire top sales talent? How do you grow?

40:17
uh your company and how do you scale it? So that’s the Talent Sales and Scale Show. And then anything about sales. I love sales. I love entrepreneurship. Our mission is to help communities thrive through entrepreneurship. So any way that I can help you to help the mission of communities thriving from entrepreneurship, reach out. Love to do that. And I uh appreciate you having me on here, Nick, more than you think. Absolutely, man. Hey, we got

40:45
One last question for you that I ask to everybody when they’re on the show. What’s that one piece of advice you’d give somebody on their path towards self mastery? Give yourself some grace. Realize that you’re better than you were yesterday. That no matter what, you’re going to have frustrations. And if you don’t give up, tomorrow you’ll be an even better version of yourself. So um cut yourself some grace. Know it’s a marathon. That’s good stuff, man. Appreciate the wisdom. Appreciate you being on.

41:15
Let’s stay in touch and we’ll talk soon, Brian. Thank you. Thanks, Nick. Appreciate it. Another great conversation on today’s episode of the Mindset and Self-Mastery Show. So what did you think of show today? Love to hear your thoughts. Check out the Instagram or Facebook page to join the conversation. If you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to iTunes and subscribe, rate, and leave a five-star review. It helps us be found and helps others be healed.

41:43
this episode opened your eyes, made you think or smile at all, then I’m sure it’ll do the same for your friends. Check out the show notes for more info from today’s episode and check out other episodes on TheMindsetandSelfMasteryShow.com as well as our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and look up The Mindset and Self Mastery Show. Thanks again to our incredible guests for being real, honest, and vulnerable with us today. I’d like to thank our sponsor.

42:10
And most importantly, I’d like to thank you. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Your support means the world to us. And with that, remember, your mindset matters. And so do you.