My best friend and business partner Bill is backpacking in the Tetons this week – in the middle of a fall snowstorm – so I subbed in my friend Phil Bonelli to teach about the entrepreneur mindset for this week’s episode.

Phil’s been a guest on the podcast before, in what’s proven to be one of our most popular episodes. Also, as someone who worked as a commercial lender to businesses during the height of the Great Recession, he has some great advice for people who chase after the entrepreneur mindset.

Especially the successful entrepreneur’s mindset.

In this episode, Phil and I discuss three key ways of thinking he saw in the most successful businessmen during the worst of economic times. The entrepreneur mindset they harnessed helped these men build their businesses – even as others had to cut back.

Click play on the player below to find out those three keys to the entrepreneur mindset, and to learn how to apply them to your own business.

Listen to this episode to hear Phil and I talk about the entrepreneur mindset and more:

• Why a banking career at the height of the Great Recession stroked the entrepreneur mindset in Phil.
• The tough thing you have to embrace as an entrepreneur.
• Why you should be transparent, even if your workplace culture tries to teach you differently.
• Visualization and its effect on the entrepreneur mindset.
• Why static entrepreneurs will not have static success.
• What lions and entrepreneurs have in common (Hint: It’s not sharp teeth.)

Do this next to build your entrepreneurial mindset:

The entrepreneur mindset is a state of being, and as Phil and I discuss in this episode, it requires some outside influence to maintain. 

Our free Web training is just the kind of influence.

You owe it to your family, your friends, and yourself to click here now for this training that aims to help you live a significant life and kick-start your entrepreneurial mindset.

You can’t listen to too much of the news these days. Between stories of war, racial tension, divisive politics, crooked business, and just about everything else, a positive perspective is hard to keep.

Thing is, those with the proper positive perspective are usually the exception rather than the rule.

And there’s a word for those who lost that kind of perspective: panicked.

In today’s episode, you’ll meet John Bergquist, a social media expert who grounds himself and his family with a positive perspective. He’s owner of Flurry Interactive, which helps businesses, non-profits and industries connect to their customers.

People that dwell on the news of the world, John says, digest a constantly negative perspective. To counteract those kinds of negative forces, you need to develop a consistently positive perspective.

“With consistent, correct perspective, we can get through just about anything.” @johnflurry via @RustyLionAcad

His own positive perspective had its genesis with the high school teacher who ignored John’s 1.98 GPA and helped him get into college on other merits. That opened up his world, and functioned as his first lesson in the value of staying positive.

Now, he tries to create that grounding in others as often as possible. Including himself.

John wakes up early each morning to mentally and spiritually ground himself with a positive perspective, and in this episode he shares simple things you can do (and not do) to improve your own perspective.

Click play in the player below to help find a positive perspective for yourself, and more.

Tune into this episode to hear John Bergquist talk with me about positive perspective and more:

• Why you should sometimes just stare at a blank wall.
• Why panicking never works out well.
• Getting off the wrong bus at the right stop.
• Using discernment and intuition to help others.
• The time John had to fire himself.
• A term I’m stealing the heck out of to use in my coaching.
• Why a biologist by training is a social media expert in business.

Use these resources to help you keep a positive perspective:

The Dale Tribe video blog.

YNAB app (You Need A Budget) for either Android or iPhone.

How to contact John Bergquist:

You can reach out to John on Twitter via his vlog and website or by emailing him directly.

Do this next to enhance your positive perspective:

We are in the midst of enhancing our free Web training. The next version will challenge you to find a positive perspective on the things that will help you live your life with more freedom.

Please click here to join us for the free live Web training that can help you excel both professionally and personally in under 60 minutes. 

When bad things happen, you can choose your response

My business partner and best friend Bill usually knows how to act when bad things happen.

But he had a lapse this past week.

During what was supposed to be a romantic date night with his wife, watching a favorite movie on his deck with an iPad, technology let him down.

Bill spent a frustrating half-hour trying to get his movie to stream while his plans for a perfect, romantic date night fell to pieces.

All because of imperfect technology, as he saw it.

He finally threw the imperfect technology into the woods.

Yep.

Bill lost it.

Normally calm, stoic Bill threw a fit. (He’s a recovering Type A personality.)

And, by the way, “date night” ended after that, in case you didn’t guess.

When bad things happen that ruin your plans with loved ones, throw a kink in your life, or otherwise set you back, you have a choice.

That’s what this episode’s all about, Lions: shaping that choice when bad things happen to you.

The key is for you to learn to get reasonably upset instead of getting overly upset. Via @RustyLionAcad (Tweet this!)

We walk through some scenarios and show just how to shape superior thoughts, even when the negative is a lot easier to feel.

Click play in the player below to listen to this episode now.

Listen to this episode to hear Bill and I talk about choosing your response and more:

• What happens to your iPad when you throw it into the woods. (Hint: it still doesn’t break.)
• What happens to your knee when it bends 90 degrees in the wrong direction just before a backpacking trip.
• Why Bill is handling the knee dislocation much better than he did the iPad issue.
• A simple equation to help you choose the right response every time.
• Why your response can alleviate problems – or compound them.

Do this next when bad things happen to you:

We may not be perfect, but at least we know the right formulas to live an inspiring life – and live by them. (Mostly.)

Our free Web training crams as much of our gray-haired experience as possible into 60 minutes so you can skip the really rough bits we went through.

You owe it to your family, your friends, and yourself to click here now for this training that aims to help you live a significant life. (One that doesn’t involve throwing iPads in the woods.)

What would you do if you literally watched your career go up in smoke? If what were once opportunities became metaphorical closed doors?

That’s a question Steve Rohr (pronounced just like a Lion would say it) knows the answer to.

Steve is now an author, college professor, and the publicist for the Oscars. But his life was moving in a different direction a couple of years ago when disaster struck.

Steve had been building a new, fancy office for his booming business in West Hollywood. Then an arsonist targeted his building, and when it went up in flames it led to some closed doors and a major financial hit.

Steve’s office manager hadn’t gotten insurance yet, planning to wait until the office was finished to take care of the paperwork.

“The impact was like a punch in the gut,” Steve tells me in this episode, indicating he basically lost his business. That’s one big set of closed doors. “But it certainly has changed my life in huge ways.”

Despite being in a funk over the loss, he co-wrote Scared Speechless and got invited to publicize the Oscars – an intimidating job, since nearly 1 billion people worldwide watch the show.

In other words, closed doors can be pretty awesome. Even if you might not think so at the time.

“If a door is shut to you, you should be happy about that. Every time you get a rejection, celebrate.”@RealSteveRohr via @RustyLionAcad

To hear our conversation about closed doors and more, click play in the player below.

Tune into this episode to hear Steve Rohr talk with me about closed doors and more:

• Overcoming the nation’s biggest fear (HINT: Scared Speechless addresses this.)
• The intimidation factor of publicizing an event that reaches almost 1 billion people.
• Getting out of a funk after losing it all.
• Why you should focus on going through open doors and forget about closed doors.
• Recognizing that TV chefs started as soufflé chefs who chased open doors.
• Tips for looking good on TV.
• Being the (tor)mentor of a national speech champion.
• The bad thing about being selfless.
• Why giving a perfect speech is a bad idea.
• Why taking risks isn’t actually risky at all.

Read these books to help you get past closed doors: “The Big Leap: Conquer Your Hidden Fear and Take Life to the Next Level,” By Gaye Hendricks

“Scared Speechless: 9 Ways to Overcome Your Fears and Captivate Your Audience,” by Steve Rohr and Shirley Impellizzeri

How to contact Steve Rohr:

You can reach out to Steve on Twitter or via his website.

Do this to find your open doors and forget about closed doors:

We are in the midst of closing the door on the first iteration of our free Web training. The next version will challenge you to find the doors you need to open in your life to have the time freedom and financial freedom you dream of having.

Please click here to join us for the free live Web training that can help you make professional and personal strides in under 60 minutes.

Goals can move you toward a desired future. That’s why we use them.

But if you hang your success and happiness on achieving long-term goals, being happy and successful right now just isn’t possible. That’s sequential living, and it’s dangerous.

Today’s episode is about the opposite of sequential living – doing what it takes to live in the here and now so the future can’t consume your fulfillment.

We call that concurrent living.

If you can’t be happy where you’re at, you won’t be happy where you’re going either. Via @RustyLionAcad

 

Sequential living vs. concurrent living

In a sequential life, you always have a “when-then” mentality.

• “When” my business clears $5 million in sales, “then” I’ll be able to spend more time with my family.
• “When” I move into my dream home, “then” I can be happy.
• “When” I’m finished competing in the Olympics, “then” I can pursue marriage. (Had to throw that one in there for my business partner, Bill.)

For the kind of man who lives sequentially, success and happiness are always hiding behind the next achievement. He’s never present in his current life; instead he’s always looking to the future.

But living a concurrent life is more about having it all in the present.

Success and happiness in career, family, and more can co-exist. Concurrent personalities understand that.

The concurrent man hates selfishness, because he knows that his treasured relationships are the true foundation of his success and happiness.

Which kind of man do you want to be?

You can decide, and we can help, if you click play on the player below.

Listen to this episode to hear Bill and I talk about success and happiness and more:

• A woman who was paralyzed – and happiness helped her recover
• Why it’s stupid to reverse engineer success and happiness
• How “determination” drove Bill away from his second wife – who should have been his first
• The two words every man with a full plate needs to hear
• The three words that should be synonyms for success and happiness
• The definition of success and happiness – and why it’s not what you think it is
• The best gift you can give to those who care for you (Hint: It’s you)

Do this next:

One of our big drives at Rusty Lion Academy is to equip men with the tools and knowledge to live a life they can be proud of – and that their families can appreciate.

Our free Web training crams as much of our gray-haired experience as possible into 60 minutes so you can skip the rough bits we went through.

If you want to live a more significant life, you owe it to your family, your friends, and yourself to click here now for this training.  

According to Strickland Bonner, attitude makes or breaks you. He’s someone that could have been broken by a bad attitude, but it was a good one that carried him through some tough moments.

Strickland works a conventional 40-hour-a-week job, but also plays in a band, co-hosts the The Nice Guys on Business Podcast, and is raising 16-year-old triplets.

Translation: He likes to stay busy.

And through it all he keeps a good attitude.

That’s come in handy throughout his career. Especially when, as president of the company he worked in for 17 years, he quit and spent six months jobless—turning away from work that would have drained his optimism.

“I’m kind of anti-paranoid; forces in the universe work for me, not against me.” @NiceGuyonBiz via @RustyLionAcad (Tweet this!)

He says that the right attitude has always helped him seek out occupations that challenge his passion and harness his optimism.

That’s probably why he’s able to be such a “nice guy” in everything he does.

Click play in the player below to hear Strickland’s thoughts on having a good attitude in business and plenty more.

Tune into this episode to hear Strickland Bonner talk with me about good attitude in business and more:

• Why failures are like a continuing education course.
• The inverse relationship between bureaucracy and passion.
• When to read the writing on the wall in your career.
• When to take a man’s advice—and when to punch him in the face.
• One thing every hire should have.
• The one sentence that made him president of a company.

Read these books to help you have a good attitude in business:

• “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...And Others Don't” by Jim Collins
• “Nice Guys Finish First” by Doug Sandler
• “The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich” by Tim Ferriss

How to contact Strickland Bonner:

You can reach out to Strickland on Twitter or via email.

Do this next to have a good attitude in business:

Sometimes keeping a good attitude in business requires you to keep a certain professional distance from what you’re doing. If you’re mired in your business and your personal life is suffering, we have the time management tools and more to help you out.

Click here to join us for a free live Web training that can help you excel both professionally and personally.  

Avoiding the pitfalls of digital communications is no simple task—especially when so many people live in what I call “the pit.”

What’s the pit? It’s that place where you find yourself communicating only by text.

I strongly feel that email and texting – the two methods the vast majority of people use to communicate today – should be almost irrelevant to you.

Let me tell you something interesting: I’ve never met some of my team members in person. But I’ve talked with them face-to-face with technology more times than I can tell you.

And I’ve probably gotten to know them better than you know many of the people who work for you.

Yes, you need to stay current with technology. But that doesn’t mean you have to replace facial expressions with emoticons, or spoken conversations with long text stings. (And that’s as true for a family as it is in a business.)

You should up your virtual communications in your business and down them in your family. Via @RustyLionAcad (Tweet this!)

This episode is about how you can stay current with technology without falling victim to the pitfalls and misunderstandings that can stem from communicating without typical social interaction.

You’ll gain a lot from listening to it, whether you’re a father trying to reach his teenaged boys or a boss struggling to get his team to communicate in the right ways. Click play on the player below to learn how you can start avoiding the pitfalls of digital communications.

Listen to this episode to hear us discuss avoiding the pitfalls of digital communications and more:

• The effortless thing we do that can save you years of frustration in your business
• How much information the actual words you use carry (Hint: It’s not a lot)
• Life with a teletype – for real!
• Why email should be the last way you communicate with your team
• The digital communications tools that are worth your time and investment
• The two characteristics missing from most digital conversations

Do this next:

Digital communications are far from the only pitfall you face as a businessman.

One of the biggest problems you probably have is time freedom. You know the drill…”Honey, I’m going to be 15 minutes late” turns into “I’ll be home before you go to bed.”

If that sounds familiar, our free weekly Web training will help you find the freedom you crave—while increasing your personal significance and helping you leave a better legacy for those you care about.

Register now to reserve your spot!

No matter how much control you think you might over changing others’ lives, you only have control over relaunching yourself. When it comes down to it, your own life is the only one you can change.

That’s what Joel Boggess realized about the time the 25-year radio veteran launched ReLaunch, a podcast focused on inspiring stories about starting over with confidence.

Joel has relaunched himself several times in his life. The first came after he fell from a train trestle at age 5 and spent three weeks in a coma.

He battled hard, and that fight later helped him distance himself from the demons of drugs and infidelity his parents struggled with.

“I made the decision that wasn’t going to be me,” he says in this episode.

The first episode of his podcast, ReLaunch, was also something of a relaunch for Joel.

Ever since, he’s been hearing stories from other people of their own life-changing moments. As someone who’s been a guest on his show, I can tell you it’s just as inspirational to tell him your own story as it is to listen to his.

In Joel’s opinion, only relaunching yourself will help change the world.

“We can change the world within 90 days if we all commit to becoming better versions of ourselves.” @JoelBoggess via @RustyLionAcad

And that’s what relaunching yourself is all about. Click play in the player below to learn how to do it, and to hear more of this amazing man’s story.

Tune into this episode to hear Joel Boggess talk with me about relaunching yourself and more:

• How a shiny boom box on Christmas morning shaped Joel’s life
• The most transformational relaunches of some influential guests on ReLaunch
• The one thing you can do to become an expert in any field
• The business practice that’s replacing old-school networking
• The choice that leads to an extraordinary life
• The two mentalities that will carry people far in life

 

Books to read that will teach you about relaunching yourself and more:

• “Edgy Conversations: How Ordinary People Can Achieve Outrageous Success,” by Dan Waldschmidt
• “Finding Your Voice: Sort Through the Clutter, Discover Clarity, Confidence, and Direction,” By Joel Boggess
• “Becoming a Category of One: How Extraordinary Companies Transcend Commodity and Defy Comparison,” By Joe Callaway

How to contact Joel Boggess:

You can reach out Joel on his website, where you can also find his podcast. You can also follow him on Twitter.  

Do this next to get help with relaunching yourself:

Everybody hits plateaus in their life—places where they either lack the energy, drive, or know-how to make it to the next level. We’ve been there, and know from experience how much it stinks.

At Rusty Lion Academy, we consistently equip people with the tools to get unstuck in their personal and business development. That’s why we host a free live Web training that can help you in relaunching yourself—becoming the man you know you have the potential to become.

Sign up now for 60 minutes that will help you live an extraordinary life – RIGHT NOW!

One of the biggest challenges many entrepreneurial men face is building a virtual team that is cohesive, cares for one another, and strives to accomplish the company mission.

Building a virtual team is just like building any team – it requires a secret sauce that mixes just the right amounts of respect, caring, autonomy, and more. Also the right team members.

In this episode Bill and I (Robert) discuss our special recipe that has built one of the best teams we’ve ever been a part of – and almost everyone on the team is a freelancer.

Our recipe has worked so well that our first team member, Maria, says, “You’re not just a client, and the team’s not just other freelancers. There’s no rivalry or pettiness or snobbishness. We’re vulnerable with one another. We all want to change the world together. Unlike most freelance work, working here never leaves me feeling undervalued or exploited. Quite the opposite: I feel loved.”

We’re building a virtual team culture like that partly by getting out of the way of ninja-level contributors like Maria.

“Be extremely specific about what you want; then let your team do their thing.” Via @RustyLionAcad

And if you’re working with the kind of people who impress you, that should be fun and easy to do. Listen to this episode by clicking play in the player below, and you’ll hear the recipe for our secret sauce on building a virtual team.

Listen to this episode to hear us discuss building a virtual team and more:

• Why you need to hire human beings, not human doings
• A masterpiece that attracts “A” players
• The three things you need to do to inspire world-class performance
• The one metric you should always aim for when hiring
• One thing that all motivated employees love
• How having the right employees gives you time freedom
• A secret sauce full of ninjas

Do this next for building a virtual team that gives you freedom:

As we mentioned above, having the right employees can unshackle you from your business.

To help you achieve that, we’ve put together a free weekly Web training that will help you have the freedom you crave while increasing your significance to your family and helping you leave a better legacy.

Register now to reserve your spot!

Success tracking is about small wins in every part of your life. In this episode, Stephen Christopher tells me that with the right mindset, even paying your taxes can be awesome.

Stephen is the founder of Seequs Digital Marketing – a full-service agency that “makes websites work.” He landed in digital marketing after the mortgage industry booted him with the 2008 financial crash and other avenues didn’t pan out.

Now, he lives every day in the moment, making an experience out of even mundane tasks like taxes. And that is success tracking.

He says too many people suffer from the delusion that when they accomplish such-and-such a task, they’ll be happy.

Thing is, one goal inevitably replaces another in an endless self-improvement loop.

‘When’ never actually happens. Right now is the most fun and happy time you have.” @StephenMChris via @RustyLionAcad.

So Stephen tracks his tasks a little differently than most.

Instead of fighting to accomplish half of the to-dos on his daily lists, he tracks all the positive things he does accomplish – giving him a large list of positive actions he took in a given day.

Click play in the player below to hear his amazing story and the ups and downs of entrepreneurship as he’s experienced them.

Tune into this episode to hear Stephen Christopher talk with me about success tracking and more:

• The reason Stephen gets jazzed about paying taxes
• The one clinical diagnosis Stephen wouldn’t trade away for his entrepreneurship
• What it feels like to lose a thriving business and gain loads of debt—all within 72 hours
• The habit that helps Stephen snatch victories from the jaws of defeat
• The mindset people should have when they’re going through challenges
• The words you should always substitute for “have to”—and why
• Why Stephen fell back on a $20,000 per year job, and how he escaped it
• What Zazen meditation is, exactly, and why you should use it

How to contact Stephen Christopher:

You can reach out Stephen on Twitter, get his success tracking tool by texting “success tracker” to 44222, visit his website, or email him directly at [email protected]

Do this next to improve your success tracking:

At Rusty Lion Academy, we’re big believers in living life concurrently, rather than sequentially. Success is more a mindset than a destination—and it involves doing a bunch of things at once instead of waiting for A, B, C and D to happen before you tackle E.

Sometimes all you need to achieve that concurrent mindset is the right tools and a push from people who care.

We care. That’s why we host a free live Web training that can help you hone in on the balance you crave in all the most important areas of your life and business.

Sign up now for 60 minutes that will help you live an extraordinary life – RIGHT NOW!