Episode 8: G→ D and 3S's, with Colin Sprake - a podcast by Colin Sprake

Hi, this is Colin Sprake and welcome to MYM Your Business: The Brutal Truth with myself. Today, I am getting right inside your head. I'm going to talk about something that's really important to me and as we get into this today, I want you to be thinking, taking notes and really getting the most from this podcast. Today's episode is really going to make you think differently so that you're right in line with what I did a few weeks back about getting your head into the game and talking about the conscious and subconscious mind.

Today, I'm going to dig right into my mind, really make you think differently around what is happening in your life and why it's happening in your life. Get ready, and get excited because this is going to rock your world.

Welcome to today. I am so excited to get you up and running and get you thinking differently and getting more results than you ever thought achievable in your business, in your life, whatever it is for you because this podcast is not just for business owners. It's for people that support the business owners. In fact, my wife just wrote a book called "What The...I Did Not Sign Up for This: The Ups and Downs of Supporting an Entrepreneur" and it's a really cool book about supporting entrepreneurs.

If you want people to really understand who you are as an entrepreneur business owner, have them listen to this podcast every single week and we'll get them on track by having them thinking just the way you think and understanding you the way that you do things as well. Let's get going. Let's get fun today. Make sure you have a pen and paper handy so you can take notes or if you take notes on some kind of electronic device, that's awesome as well but let's get rocking and rolling and get you thinking differently, doing differently, achieving differently and getting you to have what you've never had by doing things that you maybe have never done. Let's get rocking.

I want you to write this down. I want you to write the letter G and D with an arrow pointing towards the letter D. G with an arrow to the letter D.

I want you to think about this. You want growth in your life, you want growth in your business. You want to get ahead. Well, growth is very important. The G stands for growth. In order to have growth, you need the D. You're probably thinking, what is the D? Do I need to have desire? Do I have to have a destination? Absolutely. You need those things. What D is, is discomfort.

In order to have growth you need to have discomfort happening in your life because if you don't have discomfort, you won't be getting the growth that you want.

You're probably sitting there chuckling right now saying, "Colin, I should be growing exponentially because I have so much discomfort happening right now that I should be a billionaire." Here's the challenge, success is not determined by the events that happen in your life. Success is determined by how you perceive those events in your life. I want you to get that very clear. How are you perceiving the events that are happening in your life? Remember, you've heard the statement before and it's a cliched statement in some ways. You have to go through the pain to get the gain. Let me share this with you, I went through this in December of 2016.

In 2016, I woke up and said, I want to release weight. I woke up on the 3rd of December, 2016 and I decided to make a conscious change to do what I had not done in a long time, to get results that I had not had in a long time. I wanted to release 40 pounds. Guess what? I got up on December the 3rd, I made this conscious decision to do things differently. I wanted to grow in terms of my own health. I knew it was going to be uncomfortable. I knew that discomfort was going to be extreme. I gave up sugar. I gave up alcohol. I gave up coffee. I gave up gluten. I gave up bread. I gave up just about everything. All I ate was protein and I ate raw. Raw vegetables, what have you. Protein, most of the time, was cooked but the vegetables and everything were raw.

I can tell you, that first two to three weeks before Christmas of 2016, the headaches for me were intense. It felt like someone put their cigar through my head. There was such intense pain in making those choices but you know what? The discomfort was so huge but the growth from it was fantastic. By the time I got to the middle of January, I was already 25 pounds released or 25 pounds down but I had to make the change in order to get the results that I wanted. I couldn't keep on going. That's a challenging part I find for most people. There's always this “when” word in their life. When I finish Christmas, I will start to go on a weight release campaign. Then I'll focus on my business or what have you. There's never a good time to start anything.

The best time to start anything is right now as you listen to this episode. Make a change in your life. Make a change in your business. Make a change in your health but you need to have discomfort in order to get the growth. When you start to get that growth, man, does your life change. I released that weight. I am just happy with where my weight is. I continue to release weight, continue to work on it but that first three to four weeks, the pain was so intense to get the gain that I wanted, you need to go through that in some way or form in your business, in your life. It might be around financial, spiritual, health, fitness, relationship wise, whatever it is for you, you have to go through the making a big decision to do things maybe that you haven't done before or that you haven't done in a long time to get the results that you haven't had in a long time or to get the results you've never had before.

Really think about this today: what conscious decisions are you going to make and do differently in life? Remember, how you perceive the events that happen, you can look at them as negative. Those events that have happened are super positive. They are there to get you ahead, get you rocking and rolling and get you to that next level. Please, look at what you're doing in your life right now. Are you just comfortable? Remember, there's three areas in life; you're either going into a challenge, you're in a challenge, or you're coming out of a challenge. There is no comfortable. If you're sitting back going, "Colin, this episode's really awesome. I'm super comfortable. I've got all my financial well-being and what have you." You're just about to go into a challenge.

There are only three areas in life; going into a challenge, in a challenge or coming out of a challenge. I want you to think about this as you rock your business, as you rock your life and you get yourself to the next level because remember, when you become comfortable, that's when things start to become challenging. Remember, those challenges are only there to give you the growth that you need because that discomfort takes you always, to that next level. I believe that we can always be growing. I think we grow until we put the final nail in the box. I want you to think about that because so many people, you focus on, "I've learnt everything. I know stuff." You should be learning every single day.

I have four personal mentors that mentor me, help me grow, get me to the next level and you know what? I love learning from other people. Just one small nugget. As you listen to these episodes, one small nugget can make a big impact on your life. I go to seminars, workshops, retreats, master minds, what have you. I have my own ones. Even at all of them that I attend, there's just one nugget I want to walk away with. I don't need 40, 50, 100 nuggets to walk away with. Why? Because when you have so many things to do, guess what happens? Your brain goes, "Um, too much to do. Confusion. Do nothing." Guess what happens? You do nothing.

My goal for you is to take one or two nuggets from each of these episodes, write them down, implement them in your life and your business and watch what happens to you. Make sure that the discomfort that you're having, are you looking at that as growth or are you looking at that as negative, holding you back and not getting you ahead? As we go into this, I want you to also write this down now. Make sure that the discomfort that you're having is perceived in a different way as part of everything that happens for you in life. I want you to look at this as well, when you talk about what I call the three S's. The three S's. On the left hand side of your page or whatever, write three S's, one below each other on the left hand side.

I'm going to talk about this because you're going to be finding this really interesting. Write the three S's down. The top S, the one at the top of your page, I want you to write down that S stands for strategies.

You come on these podcasts, you want to get lots of information. You're like, "Colin, I want to learn strategies. Give me more strategies." I can give you more strategies. The challenging part is, if you do not change who you are and the way you do things, the strategies will be implemented or you'll look at the strategies the same way you do a lot of other strategies. I'm going to ask you this question, How many seminars, workshops have you been to where you go, you get amazing information, lots of great stuff and then you go home and you put this stuff on the shelf and that's where it stays. It becomes shelf help and not self help.

I want to teach you how to think about strategies really differently today. The top S is strategies. I want you to go to the bottom S now, of the three S's. The bottom S is changing your state. The bottom S is state.

As you change your state, your state of openness, your state of acceptance, your state of well-being, your state of stubbornness, what have you, when you change your state, then you can be open to the second S, the one in the middle. The second S being your stories or the non-supportive stories. What happens is, you change your state, you become aware of your non-supportive stories, which is the second S, and then the top S, right at the top, then you'll look at strategies completely differently. It goes from the bottom up.

How open are you? Are you open hearted? Are you open minded to learning new things and doing things differently? These three S's, I'm going to get right into the depth of these three S's in different areas in your life because, when you see how powerful these three S's are, you will start to do things very differently, but it all starts, number one, with the first S, which is the one at the bottom around changing your state. Once you change your state, you can be aware of your non-supportive stories and then we get into some of those non-supportive stories. Things like, I'm too old. I'm too young. I'm not good enough. I don't have enough knowledge. It's not done this way in our industry. It takes three to five years to be successful in business. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

All those non-supportive stories, I say to you, if you are hanging around with people in your industry that are not the top people in your industry, you will start to hear non-supportive stories from all those people. Let's say you're a mortgage broker or you do mortgages, bonds, whatever you want to call it, whatever country you're in. Let's just say you're a mortgage broker, if you're hanging out with other mortgage brokers that are broke and not achieving results, guess what stories you start to hear? The economy's down. Things don't work. It takes two to three, maybe even four years to even make a decent income as a mortgage broker. You hear all these non-supportive stories. Guess what happens when you hear those non-supportive stories, the only thing you learn is strategies of how to implement those non-supportive stories which really, at the end of the day, means you'll end up just like them. You will stay broke, you'll believe what they say, and you'll keep on getting the same results.

If you want to change your results, be aware of who you're hanging out with to change your state. Then, you'll start to hang out with the rock stars in your industry because guess what? While other people are busy complaining in your industry that things are slow, things are not working, the economy's down or what have you, there's other people in your industry, exactly the same as you, signing million dollar or multi-million dollar contracts. What's the difference? Guess what, they have a different mindset. They're hanging out with winners that don't hang out with people who whine and complain all the time. When you change your state, you become aware of who's in your life, in what area of your life.

I'm talking about this in all areas of your life. You need to understand this because, if you're not looking at where you're hanging out, you'll start to get confused and you'll start to go off track. I want you to look at who's in your life, in all areas of your life. Let me give you another really powerful example. Let's just say you want to have a beautiful, soulful, loving, amazing relationship. Well then, you need to change your state around. Who's in your life right now around relationships? Do the people you hang out with talk favorably around relationships or are you hanging around with a whole bunch of people that have recently split from their partners and they're talking negatively about relationships?

All the stories you hear around you are negative around relationships. Guess what happens? Do you learn great strategies around relationships, from those people? Probably not. You're probably hearing really sad strategies around relationships and guess what happens, it's only a matter of time then all of a sudden, your relationship starts to be challenged. Why? Because the only strategies you're hearing from the stories around you, are strategies around how relationships end up falling apart, how people don't like each other and people don't ever want to be around each other, don't ever want to be in a relationship again, blah, blah, blah. All those non-supportive stories lead to you learning strategies.

Of course, like I said, one of the previous episodes on the conscious and subconscious mind, this stuff goes onto your subconscious mind and just runs and that's what ends up happening. You end up getting results in your life that you really, really don't want. If you want great, soulful, beautiful, amazing, loving relationship in your life, think of who you're hanging out with. What is your state? Are you open to being aware of who's really in your life around relationships? You want to hang out with people who have beautiful, soulful, amazing relationships and then all of a sudden, you'll start to see, your relationship will start to flourish. Why? Because you'll hear supportive stories around relationships and then you'll learn strategies about how to have beautiful, soulful relationships. Why? Because people will be telling you what they do. The date nights that go on. How they spoil each other. How they surprise each other and do little fun things for each other. That they buy each other flowers.

Whatever it is that they do, you'll learn really cool strategies on how to have beautiful, amazing relationships. I hope you understand this, you see this from the bottom up. You need to change your state in different areas of your life. Let me talk about that. You need to change your state, then you'll be aware of the stories, some of them even non-supportive that are around you. Especially, you become very aware of the non-supportive stories that are around you and then the third thing is, you'll start to learn very different strategies. I want you to really get this today. I want you to start to think about what strategies are you learning and who are they coming from?

Are they supportive strategies or are they non-supportive strategies and the supportive strategies come from supportive stories. The non-supportive strategies come from non-supportive stories. Then of course, you need to be aware of all the people in your life that you are with. Are they talking favorable about what you want to achieve? Think about this in terms of health, fitness, money, relationships, business, everything. If you're hanging out with other business owners that are not very successful and they keep on saying, business is hard, business is tough. I hate business. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It takes money to make money. All these different non-supportive stories that they say. Be open and change your state of being aware of, are you hanging out with winners or are you hanging out with whiners in your business?

When you hang out with winners, you're going to learn amazing strategies and just by being on this podcast, you'll start to learn amazing strategies from myself. I consider myself a true winner in business and that's not from a place of arrogance, it's from a place of being massively successful in so many areas of my life and why? Because I live what I am teaching you here. These are not rocket science concepts. They are simple concepts but it's the brutal truth from me. You've got to make some decisions of being aware of what's around you and sometimes, you have to look at who's in your life. Who are these people that are speaking into your life on a daily basis? I'm going to talk about this on a later episode when I get to what I call, the life formula, which will come two or maybe four weeks time.

Listen to what I'm talking about here. These strategies are designed to help you get ahead and when you start to get ahead and start to be aware of what's happening around you, life starts to change. Look at around money. Let's say you're hanging around people. Jim Rohn said this the best and bless his heart, he's no longer with us but Jim Rohn said it the best he said, "You are a product of the five people you hang out the most with." Listen to that again, "You are a product of the five people you hang out the most with in all areas of your life." If you want to be physically fit and healthy, then you need to hang out with physically fit and healthy people. If you are hanging out with people who sit on the couch, eat potato chips and are not fit and healthy then guess what? You're going to hear stories around, you don't have to be fit. You can lie on the couch. Why do you have to go do that? Why do you want to run? Why do you want to go to the gym? People who go to the gym aren't as healthy as other people. They think they are.

All those kind of stories that are non-supportive will teach you strategies that are not supportive to where you want to be. Think about all these areas of your life. I want you to even just write them down. Write down, in terms of money, who are you hanging out with? Like Jim Rohn said, "You are the product of the five people you hang out with the most." In your financial area of your life, are you hanging out with winners in money or you're hanging out with people who are so financially challenged, all they ever talk about are financial challenges, how they're not getting ahead, they cannot save money, they don't have any money, they can't go on vacation, they cannot buy what they want, they cannot afford a house, they cannot buy a new car. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

All these non-supportive stories lead to you hearing strategies that will never serve you because you will be just as broke as them if not worse off, by listening to their non-supportive stories. You want to hang out with people that are super, super successful financially if you want to be ahead financially. You might be thinking, "How do I do that Colin? Do I just get rid of all my friends?" Well, sometimes, I'm going to be very up front with you. You have to be so aware and change your state and be open to maybe actually making some changes in your life around the people you hang out with.

If you want to get ahead financially, hang out with people that are more financially abundant. I always say, my favorite thing I did when I arrived in Canada, around 20 years ago is, I heard the statement, go take a millionaire to lunch once a month. That's what I did. I’d go and take a millionaire to lunch once a month and you know what? I did that for many, many, many years. Now I have other great people in my life that I can call on, people that are billionaires, very successful, the sharks from Shark Tank, I'm very blessed to have them in my life.

I have people from Dragon's Den that I do work with. I have Sir Richard Branson that I was with him on his private island earlier on this year. The key thing is, I have these people around me now that are massively successful financially, massively successful in business. I have people who are massively successful in their fitness and their health, that I learned from. I became aware, I changed my state of being, my state of awareness and all of a sudden I realized, I need different people in my life. Think about this for yourself. Go take a millionaire to lunch. Now, for those of you thinking, I'll take a millionaire to lunch, when you phone to take a millionaire to lunch number one, you pay for the lunch. Just so you get that. Don't expect them to pay because they're the millionaire.

The second thing I also want you to do when you go for lunch him, introduce yourself, sit down, chat, what have you. The second thing I want you to do, when you sit down, say to them, "What is your critical need and how can you serve them?" Just say to them, "What is your critical need?" Here's why, because when you really serve them that way, they become enamored with you. Don’ sit down and say, "Start giving to me," rather than give to them first.

When I sat down when I first met Jack Canfield, the co-author of Chicken Soup for the Soul, when I first met Jack I sat down I said, "Jack, what is your critical need?" Jack said, "Colin, I'm relaunching Success Principles. Would you mind pushing it out to your database and to your social media?" I'm like, "Jack, I have a small following."

He said, "Colin, I don't care. Just by doing that small favor for me, I would be very, very happy and it would really touch me." I said, "Great Jack." That's what I did. I pushed it out, let him know that I pushed it out afterwards. Of course, followed through completely on what he asked me to do. Then, I asked him the key questions I wanted from him. Now, when you go out with a millionaire and you book a lunch with a millionaire, please don't say, "Tell me how you became successful?" Have very set strategies.

I know when I went with Richard Branson and I met Richard Branson for the first time, I asked him, what was his critical need, number one. The second thing I asked him after he did that, I said, "Richard, I would like to learn how you have created such amazing, successful teams in the seven billion dollar companies that you run." He does an amazing job with his staff. He does an incredible job. I wanted to learn more about that so I had a very specific question for him that stroked his ego, number one. You want to stroke the ego of the person you're sitting down with and it also shows that you've learned something about them.

He's exceptional. Sir Richard Branson is absolutely exceptional at building teams and having amazing teams. In fact, he has seven billion dollar companies all in seven different industries and guess what, he barely goes to a board meeting because he trusts his staff to do the work for him. I wanted to learn how he did that so I had a very set question for him. That's virtually the three things. Number one; take a millionaire to lunch, you buy them lunch. Number two; ask them what their critical need is and make sure you do the research and you figure out who that person you're taking for lunch, what has made them successful and ask them how they could teach you that little piece to help you in your business.

I trust that this has helped you today. I want you to be completely open. When you're finished listening to today, I want you to go think of in your life, who is in your life, what stories are you listening to? Are you listening to supportive stories in your life around money, health, fitness, what have you, your business or are you listening to non-supportive stories, which are leading to non-supportive strategies and guess what? You'll end up being the same as everyone else if you keep on listening to non-supportive stories and then listening to the strategies you learned from that.

Listen to massively supportive stories by changing your state. Sometimes you have to do a friend-adectomy. You have to get rid of a few people in your life. That's okay. Remember one thing, I want you to start being completely aware of the stories that you are hearing and making sure that they are all supportive stories so you can learn amazing strategies, go out, achieve incredible success in all areas of your life. I'm going to round off for today by saying remember, growth requires discomfort. If you are not prepared to be uncomfortable, you'll never get the growth that you are looking for and remember, it's how you perceive the events that will lead to the success that you are looking for, not just being uncomfortable, it's around the perception of those events, will lead you to amazing results because guess what?

It is all about perception in life. All events are there to make us stronger, we've just got to look at them differently. If you got lots of value from this and you are absolutely excited about what you're hearing on this podcast, please go on and leave a review for us or give us a rating, a really favorable rating and a favorable review. I thank you so much, I look forward to seeing you, being on an episode with you really soon. Keep rocking it and keep on living it, keep on implementing. When you get off this today, make sure you take what you've learn and implement. Go see what's happening in your life, in all areas of your life. Do not just listen to this and say, "That was really interesting." Go take action, go be brilliant and I will see you at the top and see you on an episode really soon. Thank you so much.

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