Ep #106: The Power of Identity The #1 Secret to Achieving Your Goals

IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL LEARN:

• Why you’ve struggled to meet your own goals in the past
• Why your identity is the key to unlocking your potential
• Why our conscious mind is not strong enough to overrule what our subconscious believes
• Tools for changing your subconscious beliefs
• Why it’s so hard to break bad habits and how to set yourself up for success
• Why self-integrity matters

LINKS FROM TODAY’S EPISODE

• Commit to Three app
• It Works by RHJ
• JimFortin.com
• Jim on Instagram and Facebook
• Dollars Flow to me Easily by Richard Dotts

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TRANSCRIPT

Geoff:  I gotta tell you, first of all, I feel grateful. I feel blessed and honored to have Jim Fortin on the podcast. I’ve actually known Jim for quite a number of years, followed him from a distance, and good fortune brought us together. Bottom line, who is Jim? What’s he all about?

I don’t know how to deliver an intro to this gentleman who has done so much and made such a big impact in people’s lives. But for over 20 years, he’s helped thousands of people in the area of unconscious sales influence, human effectiveness, and neuro persuasion. What does that mean?

Well, if I could give you the poor man’s version of that… Look, all of us are working hard. We tend to struggle and strive. We’ve got to double down and hustle and all those types of things. And I’m here to tell you that when you listen to this podcast, what you’re going to discover about yourself, about things that you want to achieve in your life, who you want to become, that it’s not necessarily about your hard work. It’s not necessarily about the hours you put in. It’s more about your identity. It’s more about what are the character traits and habits that you need to evolve into, take on. Who is it you need to become to achieve that result.

So Jim and I unpack this whole conversation around how you go about setting goals, how you go about your business plan for the New Year. Most people have this have-do-be mentality or philosophy, that in order to have something, I need to do something, which means I need to be something or someone.

And then Jim totally flips that around and says it’s more about be-do-have. Who do you need to be to become? And what are the things you need to do that have the things that you want? So it’s totally reversed. And so it’s not about necessarily first “I need to get the skills. I need to get the training, and then I can do this and that, and then I can have the car and the Mercedes.” This is the flip side of this.

So we’re going to talk about your mindset, your personal mindset, your beliefs, and what really drives results, what really drives consistency and performance for you in your business and in your personal life as well. If you just want to lose weight, you want to get in shape this year, this is the podcast for you.

If you want to grow your business — and we’re in a tougher market — if you want to not just survive but thrive and do that in a state of flow, this podcast is for you.

There’s a lot of nuggets and ahas in here, and there’s a lot of links in the show notes to Jim’s website, to a couple of books we mention, to a free app that we talk about, all to help you become the person, become the best version of yourself. How’s that?

A couple of quotes here we talked about. “Money doesn’t come from effort. It comes from identity.” I’m going to say that again. “Money doesn’t come from effort. It comes from identity.”

So we’re going to take you through an exercise, a mini coaching session, if you will, to help you get clear on your identity and then help you work on those three areas that will help you become the person that you need to be, if you will, depending on the goals and the vision you have for yourself.

If you like this episode, hey, let us know, and check the show notes for the additional resources. And without further ado, let’s get into this week’s show with my very special guest, Jim Fortin.

Hey Jim, welcome to the show.

Jim:  Hey, glad to be here.

Geoff:  Thank you for making time. When my listeners are probably listening to this episode, it’s a brand new year. It’s 2019, and as you know, my audience is sales related. They’re sales professionals, mortgage loan brokers, loan officers, et cetera. So I wanted to enter this conversation. I’ve been doing a lot of research and studying, you know, your website and some of um, what’s, what, what I think you bring to the market, uh, when it comes to how do we achieve our goals? How do we get better, if you will? How do we become that person we want to be?

So with that kind of set up in that context, knowing that people just finished 2018, maybe they achieved their goals, maybe they didn’t, but as often as the case with sales, you often get one of two things maybe, hey, that was great. I hit my goals or…I didn’t hit my goals. So you’ve worked with people in that same scenario in the past before any just, you know… Where do you want to enter the conversation from there?

Jim:  First things first, I want to enter the conversation of Wifi. I did not hardwire. So what I want to tell people listening right now is I coach and have coached the top one percent of real estate agents and LOs in the world. I’m going to actually flip a lot of what you believe in, what you think, and what you’ve been trained upside down. So even though I didn’t hardwire, I take responsibility for that, we might get a little distortion here and there. Make sure you listen to all the way through, because I’m going to start here first.

You had talked about achieving goals. That’s the biggest bunch of nonsense in the world perpetuated by [inaudible] why people don’t achieve their goals. And I have coached, I don’t know how many thousands of people over the years. I mean I’ve been doing this 25 years, and I don’t care if I’m at a large real estate event, a multi-level marketing event, any event, any industry, most people in their audiences don’t even get close to their goals. And the reason why is because many people set their goals from the left hand, analytical side of the brain. “I want a million dollars. I want to be a top one percent performing LO. I want to be a top one percent agent. I want a new Maserati. I want the house. I want the inner circle.”

End of the year, they look back. They haven’t achieved any of that. As a matter of fact, many people look back over the years at their goals for several years, they haven’t achieved them. Why? Because that is all left brain analytical, and we perform from the right hand side of the brain, the unconscious mind.

So you could say, for example, I’m going to set a goal to make $250,000 this year, and you never hit it over and over and over. Why? Because in your unconscious operating system and your identity, you grew up poor and you’re broke. So no matter what you try to do to make that money, you will never make it until you change your unconscious paradigms, because we worked from the inside out.

In this culture, we’ve all the big personalities that will say things like, “You got to work till your eyeballs, and you gotta take massive action.”

I’m going to tell you guys, stay with me here. That is all nonsense that keeps people trapped.

The reason why is there’s a big speaker and he helps a lot of people, but he’s a big tall guy and it says, “You’ve got to take massive action.” Well, the reality is that is an external behavior. That is doing behavior. But in your unconscious identity, if you’re not a person that can sustain and you can’t stay committed, which is a characteristic and way of being, if you can’t stay committed to taking — which is a behavior — massive action, therefore people go to these seminars, and they were all pumped up and they’re all hyped and ready to go, and three days later they’re back to their old behavior because every one of us — you, me, all of us — we work by our unconscious paradigms. And until you change who you are at the core level — your self-image or self-identity and your unconscious paradigms — you will repeat your old patterns over and over and over again.

I know that was a long opening, but I want to get people to start thinking. We work from the inside out and whatever subconscious paradigm you have is how you operate.

To give you the best example for everyone listening… I think you’re in Seattle, right? Pacific standard time?

Geoff:  Yeah, Pacific Standard Time.

Jim:  So you’re around lunchtime there. So if I brought up a plate of liver and onions and said, “Here you go. Here’s your lunch, liver and onions,” would you eat it? No. Okay. Now notice what happens here. You didn’t make that decision right now in this time saying, “well, would I or would I not? I don’t know. Do I know?” Boom. It’s already been made at some point in the past and held as is an unconscious belief in paradigm. So you are, in your behavior, by not eating it, you’re responding to the unconscious paradigm that you have.

So all these people, all these speakers, and all the stages — and I’ve worked many industries — will get up there and say, “Go do all this stuff.”

And everyone’s like, “yeah, I can do that.” Three months later, three days later, they’re back to their old patterns, because what they’re doing is not consistent with their self-identity. That is where the change has to happen.

Geoff:  Okay. Thank you for sharing that. So for those that are listening, you know, when we set our goals and stuff like that for the new year, income wise, whatever, um, some people have already done this by the time they’ve heard this, they want to grow their income, do X more units, etc. Working hard is not it. So let’s unpack then. So if I’ve already set my goals in place, how do I know I’m going to achieve those goals? I mean, is that a legit question? How do I know for certain I’m going to hit that mark?

Jim:  Most never do. And the reason why is notice what you just said here — and this is when everyone teaches — set your goals for 2019. And everyone would pull out that pencil and paper and they’ll say, you know, I’m going to close so many units, so many sides, if I’m an agent, or so many loans per month or so much volume.

The subtle distinction here is every bit of that, every bit of what we just talked about are all external things. What we need to be setting and working on is what characteristics would I need to be to create what I want, and those characteristics are places that most people — and I’m saying most because I’ve coached heavily in real estate and mortgage; I have coached a two Keller Williams number one team leaders in the nation; I’ve coached a lady here in Dallas who NAR calls one of the top 20 thought leaders and national real estate, owns one of the largest private real estate companies in Texas.

So I’ve coached the high end, and what we have to look at is not the external behavior but what characteristics do I need to be able to do the external behavior. Most people fall really short in these areas, because we’ve learned the fall short, is what is your level of self-discipline? What is your level of commitment? What is your level of self-Integrity? What is your level of personal responsibility? These are four characteristics where people, most people, fall short.

That’s why to give you an example here — and I know I’m talking a lot, but I can give these people a lot of value by listening — how many Los or agents will say, “you know what? I need the fill my pipeline and I need to prospect, but you know what? On Monday I’m going to do it. Boom, I tackle it. Tuesday I’m all excited. Wednesday I’m like, I’m not so much enjoying this anymore.” We go through that cycle for a long time.

Then they go get an accountability partner, because you’re looking for something outside of themselves. The reason they’re not following through is because of their level of self-discipline, their level of commitment, personal responsibility and self-integrity. So they’re trying to actually do a behavior to get the outcome they want, but the behavior, the doing, is only as effective as the being doing the doing. That’s why people fall off track very quickly.

Geoff:  So what is it then about the self-identity that’s missing? How can we work on that? How do we become the person that we want to be?

Jim:  Okay. So I have coached in the real estate industry. When I did one to one, which I coach very little in the real estate and mortgage industry anymore. My last two, one to one mortgage clients, one of them, his company wrote over a half a billion dollars a year in loans, started his own team and works for one of the big companies. Another one as a young guy about 34, makes over a million a year also.

What I look at with my clients is what characteristics and ways do they be? One of my clients went through one on one coaching with me. He said, “you know what? I recognized that when I am 100 percent responsible for my outcomes,” he goes, “that gives me power.”

Now we’ve heard speakers talked about this over the years. People like Brian Tracy back in the eighties and nineties in the two thousands is that most of us do not have what I what I would say a 100 percent responsibility for the outcomes that we get.

So let me back up here. According to Merriam Webster, the definition of responsibility is causing something to happen. Now, if something doesn’t happen in your business, it’s because you have caused it not to happen, which means you haven’t been responsible for making it happen, and then we go back even further. I pulled the corn shuck back even more is, okay, what characteristics and ways of being would I need to have to be responsible to make this happen in my business?

But let me solidify this even more. What everyone does is they go out and they try to do something, which is what I call the do-be-have model. If I do x, y, z, then I can be successful, and if I can be successful, then I can have the new Mercedes. Almost everyone works from that model, from do-be-have. That is a broken model. Why? Because If you don’t actually do it, then you won’t be at and you can’t have it, but you never do it in the first place.

Where we have to work from is be-do-have. Who do I have to be to do what I need to do to have what I want? That is the reverse model of how most people work, but that’s a true peak performance model. Does that make sense?

Geoff:  Yeah, it does. I’ve often used that or try to use that on myself in the past. Like if I set a goal, it’s like, okay, you know, I’ve heard it before. Well, who do you need to be to achieve that x and kind of vision, cast that out, if you will.

Jim:  What characteristics, what ways of being.

Geoff:  What habits, what attributes, how would this person enter a room, how would they perhaps even dress and all that kind of jazz. Right?

Jim:  Well, let’s go there. Another thing that I worked with people on is unconscious habits. When I use the word unconscious, I also mean subconscious. People use the word interchangeably.

Here’s the thing is people set all these goals for what they want. You will not get what you want. You will get your subconscious habits, because research has demonstrated that you, me, all of us, we show up on a daily basis and 95 percent of our behavior is completely unconscious habit, which is reptilian brain based.

So if you look at your morning, this morning and every single morning, unless you’ve got small kids, which would make your kids were a little older, but if you look at your morning, for the most part, you start your morning with this same sequence of behavior, whether it’s coffee first or a latte or a cereal or the shower or whatever you do, you have the same sequence. You button your shirt from the top to the bottom or from the bottom to top or top to the bottom. Same sequence. We go into unconscious habits.

For all of you listening, let me show you actually how ingrained your habits are. Tomorrow morning, try to brush your teeth with the opposite hand to the one that you normally use and see how hard that is.

So let’s take this into the business. Let’s take this in the real estate and mortgage. Whatever your unconscious habits of thinking and doing are you carry into your business, but you don’t even know that you’re carrying it into your business because nobody drives to work and says, you know what… And even driving to work, you drive the same way every single day. No one ever drives and says, well, you know, what habits am I going to get into today? They don’t do that. we don’t do that. Boom, It happens unconsciously.

So whatever self-sabotage habits you have happen, the second you walk in that door and they play out and then you’re wondering why you don’t get the end result that you want.

Habits are vital. Remember, you don’t get what you want. You get what your unconscious habits are, and it’s vital that you build and you start small. You build habits, and even habits of thinking, that gets you the outcomes that you want. It’s vital that we start from the inside out.

Geoff:  I attended a training last week. It was a DISK certification. I’m sure you’re familiar with that, and in the study that they did, what they found was one of the traits of the genius level achievers with self-awareness,

Jim:  Which most people…it’s so funny. It applies to all of us and to a large degree. I’ll tell people, “You do this.”

“No, I don’t.”

Geoff:  Yeah,

Jim:  Now I want you to go back and just watch our coaching because it’s live. It’s a zoom like this. Go back. I watch for patterns, and I’ll pull out a pattern. And they’re like, “No, I don’t do that, Jim.”

“Watch.”

And they’re like, “Oh my god, I didn’t even know that I did that.”

Geoff:  “Yes, you do scratch your nose there.”

Jim:  That self-awareness is vital.

Geoff:  So then how do we become more…. How do we interrupt our patterns? How do we become more self-aware so we can begin to make that change?

Geoff:  A lot of that is just mindfulness, is paying attention to what we’re doing. We have to become masters of our attention. But secondly is watching ourselves. Have you ever actually even just record yourself talking to people and listening for your patterns? We don’t see. We don’t hear it. We don’t see it.

My sister, uh, my mentor is my brother in law who is a shaman, and this is my sister’s husband. I have apprenticed with a shaman. Which for those of you, most of you don’t know, shaman would be the medicine men in Native American tribes, or the seers or the healers. Basically, he’s taught me to use higher functioning of the mind over the years.

I was on vacation with him and my sister just a couple of months ago, and he just kids. He calls his wife “hey babe, hey baby.” You know, “what are you doing baby?”

And we’re talking, and she’d been married to him for 35 years, and literally just a couple of months ago, I said, “well, he often says, hey baby, what are you doing? Hey babe.”

And she’s like “he never calls me that.”

And I’m like “are you kidding me? He calls you that baby, hey baby baby, where’s my keys?” And says that all the time. And in 35 years, she wasn’t even aware of it.

We’re just so internally focused as beings, we don’t see a lot of what goes on in our behavior or outside of us.

Geoff:  Alright. So, um, you said something on a previous podcast I wrote down. Money doesn’t come from effort or what you do. It comes from identity.

Jim:  Yeah. So that’s, it’s huge. I do a lot of identity work with people. So I’ve got a coaching call with my students later today, but there’s something in here. It’s just a book that I had. A lady here in Dallas, her name is Virginia Cook. Virginia is considered one of the top 20 thought leaders by NAR, in US real estate. She has her own private company. When she was 29, she was appointed president of Henry S. Miller. 29 years old back in like 1969. They already had 5,000 male agents.

She left when she was 60, started her own company, and in 10 years it became the second largest private real estate company in north Texas. I’m telling you all this for a reason. This woman is friends with people like Ross Perot. She was Roger Staubach’s mentor back in the seventies when he was getting into real estate.

I was her coach, but she became my mentor and one of the biggest business mentors I’ve ever had.

We were talking one day, and she said, “you know, Jim, the first million is the hardest to make.” And she said something that everyone listening right now is heard. They understand it, but they don’t know it. She goes, “For somebody to be very successful, they first have to be successful in their mind.”

Now let’s go back a little further. Look what everyone does for the most part, and I say everyone because almost everyone, they try to go do things, but they’re not successful in their mind. Now let’s go to identity. I’ll give you the best example. Somebody that I was coaching in LA at an upscale office, he grew up in a poorer part of LA, and he was working in a predominantly — and I’m only telling you this because this is what it was. He’s working in an upscale, predominantly Caucasian office and he was Hispanic. Very well spoken guy, very smart. I mean just very polished agent, and he told me one day on a coaching call, these are his words. He says, “the problem that I’m having is I’m still the Mexican boy from across the tracks.” Those are his exact words to me.

Now what I mean by that is even though he’s working in an upscale real estate office, a seven figure homes and all this, inside at the identity level, he was still the poor kid from across town. It’s a very real story, and I tell that because whatever you are in your identity, because your identity governs wealth, because if you grew up poor, which like even right now, eighty six percent of the American population lives paycheck to paycheck, probably 80 percent of people watching this or listening grew up middle class or working class.

So if you grew up and all you ever heard was “money doesn’t grow on trees.” “money’s hard to come by.” “We’re not like other people.” “Money’s hard to make.” And here’s a big one – “You got to work hard and you’ve got to struggle for money.” And you take that unconsciously, which is what we do, you live by that paradigm your entire life.

I grew up very much working class. So what I always heard those things, and a big one that I heard from my mother is that if you want a lot in life, you’ve got to work really, really hard.

Well, I lived by those paradigms for a lot of years. I do not live by them anymore, and I’m a seven figure earner. I mean, I make quite a bit of money, and I might work three or four hours a week because I switched the paradigms. Does that make sense? I changed my paradigms.

Geoff:  It does make sense. I think that’s one that’s so ingrained, it’s a hard one to let go of. I mean, I think about the conversations that we have with our kids, and my kids, they’re 16 and 14. Do you run the risk of…like in the example of the kids, being like, “well then I could just be on easy street. I don’t have to work so hard.”

Jim:  Well, that’s where I go to not work, but responsible. What are you responsible for creating?

Geoff:  Oh, so a whole different paradigm right there.

Jim:  I grew up with not responsible. I grew up with the hard work. I grew up on a small Texas farm, and I was up every morning feeding the cattle. I mean, I worked hard. I would feed cattle at five, get on the bus, go to school, get back from school 3:00, off the bus, back feeding and working with the cattle again, doing things. So I was taught that because my parents wanted me to be a success. But I was taught the way to do it is you put your nose to the grindstone and you struggle and you work hard.

Geoff:  And it’s supposed to be hard.

Jim:  Exactly. And you work long hours. And you look at everyone right now listening or watching this, I guarantee you 70 percent will say, you know what? Yeah, I work hard. Why can’t I crack 70 grand a year or 80 or 250 or whatever it is. You’re not working from identity.

And I have to give you an example of this so they will go, oh, I get it.

Many years ago I used to speak at the same event as Donald Trump. I never listened to him speak. I mean I didn’t listen to other speakers. I just go speak and leave. One day I was waiting for a friend of mine, so I listened to Donald speak for a few minutes, and he said that — and I used to live in New York City and speak at large events. He said in 1992 that he was walking in the streets in New York and he saw a homeless guy, and he thought “that guy is better off than I am because I, Donald Trump, was $2.9 billion in debt and that guy was homeless broke. So Donald Trump said, I am $2.9 billion on the other side of red of that guy. That guy’s better off than me.” Now, today, according to various reputable sources, he’s worth about $3,000,000,000. How does he go from $2.9 billion down in the red to 3 billion in the black? How does that happen? What do you think? Let’s talk through this.

Geoff:  Well, I think first of all, it’s mindset. It’s, if I’m looking at my notes here, he was committed to change that. He took self-responsibility for where he was at his own actions. And I mean the next word is self-integrity, I guess the self-integrity to follow through.

Jim:  Okay, you’re on the right track, but let’s go even deeper. And this is where so many people sabotage themselves. Even though in his external environment — meaning the bank account, which is outside of himself, it’s external — he was 2.9 billion in the red, in his self-image and his identity, he was still rich. We will always do what our self-identity is. And people have to get that. That’s why we said identity governs wealth

Geoff:  Question: Was he in massive pain?

Jim:  Don’t no.

Geoff:  I mean I’ve heard it said before… I remember that example. So if your identity is I’m rich, but right now, I’m a negative 2 billion or whatever, then there’s a huge dichotomy between your identity and where you’re at, and so that’s got to drive everything for you to change that.

Jim:  Let’s go somewhere with this even deeper. Great question. So what most people do — I’m using the word most a lot because I have coached a lot of people over the years, and this is prevalent. So what most people do is — I had somebody yesterday in one of my coaching programs, she goes to look at our bank account, and she didn’t have as much money as she thought. Then she went in, which she’d been coaching with me for 10 weeks, so she knows better. We pulled her right… She goes, “yep, you’re right. I went down the wrong rabbit hole.” She knows better.

So what happened was she looked at the bank account, something external. Now she felt bad. When she felt bad, that determined their behavior. So if I had to guess, Donald Trump, watching him over the years, probably said, “you know what? Okay, I’m 2.9 billion in the red. What do I have to do to get out of that?”

It wasn’t like “oh, poor me, I feel bad. You know what? I’m going to drink a bottle of tequila night. You know, the world’s coming to an end.”

It’s like, “okay, what do I have to do to?” because it’s automatic. That’s how he’s wired because that’s his identity. That’s how he grew up.

We learned this as small children by the age of eight. We’re hardwired by the age of eight, or soft wired, which is unconscious paradigms, by the age of eight. So however we grow up… That’s why, for example, I used to live in New York. That’s why you see the, um, orthodox little Jewish kids growing up to be orthodox Jewish. You see the Catholics growing up to be Catholics. You see the Republicans growing up to be Republicans because we are indoctrinated as small children as to what the world is and is not. That’s the reality of it.

Geoff:  So we’ve got these… Let me ask you this question. What comes first in the, in the pyramid if you will, right? Is it identity then beliefs, then actions?

Jim:  Okay. So everyone actually, you as well, draw a triangle on a piece of paper in front of you. Draw a triangle, like a big old triangle, like most on an eight and a half by 11. And everyone actually doing this, unless you’re driving, do this, because this will be a big aha for people when they get this. You have the triangle?

Geoff:  Yeah.

Jim:  Top of the triangle. I want you to write environment. Now, like a ladder, rungs all the way down below that. Uh, we’re going to go, I think a five levels below that. You want to write behavior. Below that you want to write capabilities. Below that you want to write beliefs, beliefs. Below that you want to write identity.

Now here’s what happens. We’re in December. This is coming on January. Everybody’s ramping up their business, setting their goals, New Year’s resolutions, right? Well, research shows with New Year’s resolutions, by the third week of January, 92 percent of people have already fallen off track. Here’s why.

The environment is what you want to create in 2019. Let’s use a parallel metaphor for working out. The environment is your body looking in the mirror. This is what I want. So when people want to change their environment, what they do is they say, “well, why do I have to do? What behaviors are going to get me to the outcome that I want?”

So in January they say, “you know what? Okay, I don’t like this extra 20 pounds that I’ve put on, I’m going to do something. I’m going to go to the gym.” That’s where most people start and most people stop. What no one ever asked is this, “well, okay, what capabilities do I need? What skills do I need to go to the gym five days a week?”

He never asked that question. Then they never say, “well, what do I believe about going to the gym five days a week?” Because most people that don’t go to the gym at all are habituated not going to the gym, and their actual unconscious belief is, “I don’t like it. It’s too much work. I don’t have time, I’m too old. It’s too hard to lose weight,” et cetera.

Then we have to look at, okay, well what identity? Let’s say that my, my environment is I want to be trim and fit. I Want to be a lean. I want to be a 32-inch waist trim, fit and lean. Where we have to really go is what identity would someone have who has that body. But if you notice here visually for all of you that have drawn this, where everyone starts is at the behavioral level, not asking “what capabilities do I need? what beliefs do I need? and how do I identify with this?”

And so what happens is, because they start the behavior, let’s say at the identity level that you’re a person who can’t stay committed. No matter what, you always fall off track. When you try to go do something, which is going to the gym, you’re going to be sideswiped by the identity that says, “you know what? You never stay on track anyway.” And that’s why you’ll start to behavior. You’ll use willpower, which is a fixed resource, and then two or three days later you’re back to your old behavior again. Same thing applies to money and achievers. Same thing.

Geoff:  So once again we come back to identity drives everything.

Jim:  Identity drives everything. So for example, when I asked you earlier, I’m like, part of your identity is, is that you like music. It’s behind you on the wall and very evident to me. It’s some good music too. But see, that’s also… Someone else could say that’s crap music, but my identity is I like that kind of music.

So remember when I said liver and onions? You identify as someone who doesn’t like liver and onions. Let’s dig deeper.

How many cigarettes did you smoke today?

Geoff:  Zero.

Jim:  Zero. Okay. I didn’t either. But how come you didn’t smoke any?

Geoff:  Identity.

Jim:  You’re not a smoker, right? But if you’re a smoker, you smoke cigarettes. Now let’s go back to Virginia Cook. So she’s like, “Jim, my agents don’t get It. It’s that to be successful…”  And we’ve heard all this motivational stuff, but people don’t really understand it. To be successful in the world, I first have to be a success in my mind. One more step here.

Sun Tzu said — I’m going to mangle this, but he said that a victorious warrior wins in his mind and then goes to battle. A defeated warrior, goes to battle and then tries to win.

Let’s look at LOs and let’s look at real estate agents. If they’re are not successful in their mind first — and especially about money — and then they go to battle, to their listing presentations, and their consults and everything, but in their mind they’re broke, which sabotages them. If they’re rich in their mind and their capabilities, they will be rich in the external world, which is the experience.

Geoff:  I love that. So many thoughts are floating in my head right now. I’m conscious of the time as well and we want to wrap up in just a few minutes, but I wrote something down. This is I think along the same line of what we’re talking about. You said, if I’m correct, I could be paraphrasing, “Forget about your why.”

Jim:  Thank you for that. I tend to be somebody who breaks a lot of molds for people.

Geoff:  That’s a big one I’ve used, man. What’s your why? You know, the old sayIng What’s your why… If you have a big enough why, you’ll figure out the how. So break that down.

Jim:  Let me go here. Have you ever heard before the study that was done at Yale University in 1958 where they actually surveyed all the students. What are your goals? Do you write them down? Twenty years later, the three percent who wrote them down and made more than the other 97 percent combined? Okay. A lot of people have heard that. It never happened.

Geoff:  So it’s false.

Jim:  It’s false. Never happened. So people are just perpetuating all this information. Same thing with the why, because they don’t understand how the braIn and the unconscious mind works.

People work with external motivation, not how the brain works and therefore people don’t achieve their goals, and they go to all these events and pay all this money and they don’t get anywhere with it.

Here’s the thing. If you need a why, and I’m going to go to places with this. If you need a why to achieve your goal, your goal is not a goal, because you’re saying, you know what, I really want that over there, but I need to remind myself over here why want that over there. Which means what you want over there is not compelling enough. So for most people, a why is analytical. Let me just go through my analytical thinking. Now I think, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I got it. Now I know why I want that.

And I have seen people also, I want a circle here in Texas, the Texas aggies. There’s a joke. If you want to drive an aggie crazy, putting them in a round room and tell him to sit in the corner. So people go their entire lifetime. What is my why? What is my why? What is my why, what is my why, what is my why? And I tell people, stop looking for your why and start — because it’s analytical — and start asking yourself, what makes me matter? Because that’s emotional. That’s what drives us. So what makes me matter?

So for me, I changed lives at a very transitional level.

Geoff:  What makes me matter?

Jim:  What makes matter, m-a-t-t-e-r. What makes me matter? Because that’s power, that’s emotional. That’s not an analytical answer. The why is always an analytical answer. “So I can buy the house,” or “I can be number one,” or “I can put my kids through college.”

But yet I’ve seen people say, well, I’ll do what I do. My why is to put my kids through college, yet that will increase your income at all two, three, four, five years. They do a 10 percent yearly increase.

On top of that, most people, and I’ve worked heavily in the mortgage and real estate industry. Most people don’t develop their skills and especially their internal skills. They follow the economy. The economy goes up, they all go up. The economy comes down, they all tank, because they’re actually responding and living from something external, which is the environment.

Geoff:  And is that why then we see people who do well in any market because of the identity?

Jim:  Correct. Um, when I used to actually coach team leaders, sales leaders, one of the questions that say I want you to ask in an interview is this. If the economy’s good, I would say, what do you think about the economy going bad?

If the economy’s bad, I would say, what do you think about the economy? The reason why is I want to know if their answer is an external answer or an internal answer. Top producers will always say, I don’t care what happens in the economy. I’m still going to do well. People that aren’t top producers will say, you know what? I’ll try harder. I’ll adjust my marketing. I’ll do this. All things outside of themselves. People that are producers — and I’ve coached on wall street, I’ve coached movie stars, I’ve coached real estate, and I’ve coached a dozen industries. People that are really successful will be successful no matter what’s happening in the external world. And that is identity.

Geoff:  And that is because, with identity, it becomes those three things. They’re committed, they have responsibility and self-integrity,

Jim:  Yes and no. Let’s go a little deeper here. It’s that you can have, for example, part of your identity could be that you’re very committed with things, but another part of your identity could be is that you’re not self-integral. Well, let me back up. I just contradicted myself, because those are actually complimentary. Those are independent individual characteristics. It doesn’t mean you’re going to have all four in your identity. Okay? Because somebody, for example, I think what’s important is to be a visionary. Now you can be very committed but have no vision so you’re not achieving what you could achieve. Those are each one that I gave you as an independent characteristic of identity. You can have them all. You might not have them all.

Geoff:  You don’t need all three to be who you want to achieve?

Jim:  I would say the number one that you need is…I’m going to give you two that I think are indispensable. One hundred percent responsibility, hundred percent responsible, and 100 percent self-integral.

There was some research done at Harvard University by Dr. Michael Jenkins, I believe his name is many years ago, and he said this is one of the most overlooked principles in business is the concept of self-integrity. Self-integrity is that you do what you say you’re going to do when you say you’re going to do it.

What they’ve discovered at Harvard Business School studying a long-term study is that when you do what you say you’re going to do, your productivity will go up anywhere from one to 500 percent, which means you will at least double your income to five times your income with no additional input. However, I know the numbers because again, I’ve done this for a long time, and I’ve put all of my students through assessments. Most will come in at what I call 90/70.

When I give my word to other people, I keep it 90 percent of the time. When I give my word to myself, I only keep it 70 percent of the time.

Well, if you only keep your word to yourself, in school, that would be C. That would be an average score. If you only keep your word to yourself 70 percent of the time, then how can you expect to knock it out of the park when you don’t keep your word to yourself? And that could be, I’m going to prospect three days a week. I’m going to work out three days a week. I’m going to contact 10 new contacts a week. Whatever it is, people don’t keep their word. Why? Because they let the external world knocked them off track. They don’t keep their word and therefore they go right back to their old behaviors again.

Michael Phelps. You know who he is. We all know who he is. On 60 minutes — I don’t know if it’s true or not — but in seven years has coach that he missed practice how many times?

Geoff:  My first gut reaction was once, but then zero popped in my head.

Jim:  Zero.

Geoff:  So that’s all three, ins’t it?

Jim:  It can be, and you’re getting stuck on all three. What I look at is what are the personal characteristics that drive you? I’ve got an extra 10 minutes. Let’s go hear something.

A Navy Seal once said… I I don’t know if I read this or one of my clients told me. A Navy Seal said that he was going to run three miles a day. He was already through Seal training. “I’m going to run three miles a day.” What happened is a couple of weeks in, he got sick and he said to himself, am I going to stay in bed because I had the flu or am I going to run today? He got up and ran because he said that’s what he said he would do. He said he’d recover from the illness, but he wouldn’t recover from actually breaking his word to himself.

This is something where I can’t tell you. Everyone listening, I want you to look at your own life. I can’t tell you the amount of people that say things. “I’m going to prospect. I’m going to lead generate. I’m going to do my yearly plan. I’m going to do this.” They don’t do it.

Then this becomes unconscious behavior.

We need to keep going with this because this is vital. So what if you’re in business with somebody. You’ve got a business partner, and they say, “you know what, Geoff? I’m going to do it on Monday.” They don’t do it. “I’m going to do it on Wednesday.” They don’t do it. “I’m going to do it next Monday.” They don’t do it. This goes for two weeks. What do you start to believe about them?

Geoff:  They’re not a person of their word.

Jim:  They’re not going to do it. So every time you give yourself your word and you don’t keep it, you literally train yourself that it doesn’t matter if I give my word or not because I’m not gonna keep it anyway.

Now bring that in the business. “I’m gonna prospect on Monday. Oh crap. I mean I got behind. I didn’t do it. I’ll pick up Wednesday.” Nope, didn’t do it on Wednesday. I’ll do it on Fri—.” Don’t do it. This becomes a decades long cycle for people because they’ve trained themselves that they don’t need to listen to what they say. They don’t value their word.

Geoff:  Then can we briefly close out on how someone can have more self-integrity so they do become that person?

Jim:  Absolutely. Everything is habit. When I say that people, I know you’re nodding, but people don’t get it. Research demonstrates that up to 95 percent of what we do is brain based habit.

So if you’re not a committed person, it’s not because there’s a moral value about you being a bad person of any kind. It’s because you’ve learned not to be committed. It’s simple. My dad was an alcoholic, so I grew up in my early years watching my dad say, “I’m going to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” My dad never did any of it, so what he taught me is it’s okay to say that I’m going to do it and not be committed and not doing it right. That’s what I learned. It depends on what we learned early on.

So if we find that we’re not committed and — and that’s a valuable characteristic and way of being — you start small.

If I was coaching somebody, I’d say, download the app. It’s called Commit to Three. It’s free. You’d be three small things every single day and make them small. You actually, as simple as this — make your bed every single morning. I’m just picking one arbitrarily. You put the dishes away in the dishwasher before you leave. Something that’s actually easy enough that’s not work to do. And you start teaching yourself how to be committed.

So would you want to look at, everyone listening, I’m going to ask you a simple question. What would be the number one way of being or characteristic that you could master that would get you to follow through on what it is and the things that you want to do in your business? Now start small and start working like a muscle and building that characteristic and commitment and self-integrity, keeping your word when you say you’re going to do it.

Well, commitment, you can get Commit to Three.

Self-integrity would be you know what? Never speak a word out of your mouth unless you’re actually going to do what you speak because now you’re reconditioning the unconscious mind. Those are two of the — and it sounds very simple, and every one of you listening now, you might be thinking, “oh, I get it. I get it. I get it.” I’m telling you, I’ve worked with Olympic athletes. I’ve worked with billionaire CEOs. It’s brain based. It’s not external motivation. It’s brain based. We have to recondition the identity. We have to recondition behaviors.

One more thing here that I tell a lot of my students is what we, were going to use the word visualize or imagery. What you visualize over and over and over is what you program your unconscious mind with, so to keep this really simple, without going in depth, every one of you can go to Amazon, get a book. It’s really simple. It’s 100 years old. No one knows who wrote it. It’s called. It Works. The book will take you about 20 minutes to read. It’s a really short book. The author is, I think, R.H.J. or something like that. Title of the book is It Works.

What he has you do, which you probably read in Think and Grow Rich. In the morning, and this is as big as a brainwave function also. In the morning, you open your eyes. First thing you do is you imagine what it is you want to create. At lunch, close your eyes. Imagine what it is you want to create. At night before bed, right before you go to sleep, close your eyes, hear, see, and feel. The operative word is feeling because the unconscious mind works on feeling. What would you see? Who would you be? How would you feel if you already made $250,000 a year? You do that over and over and over with gentle repetition. Now you’re reprogramming your subconscious paradigm.

Geoff:  Got it. Okay, cool. I’m going to put links in the show notes to all that, to the book, the app, to the book, It Works. And speaking of links in the show notes, before we close out, if anybody wants to connect with you, where would you like to send them?

Jim:  My name. JimFortin.com.

Geoff:  Easy enough, right?

Jim:  Yep. Is enough. I’ve got a podcast coming live January the first, and we dig into all of this and go much deeper in the podcast.

Geoff:  Yeah, and I have to say, since you and I originally talked, I’ve been following your content. It’s good stuff, man. Your Instagram is just like… You’ve got lessons on your Instagram. You just sit there and you look at it. You’re like, oh my god. Wow. Really.

Jim:  That’s my intention, to get people to really, really think at a higher level outside of just what we’ve been… People will say to me, I used to be a hypnotist, which is medically endorsed, people will say, is it hard to get people into hypnosis? No, that’s easy. It’s hard to get people out of hypnosis from what they’ve been programmed by our culture and especially for all of us here about money, because we’ve been programmed. It’s hard and it’s not easy.

I walked into a Porsche dealership last week. I grew up poor. Shit, I mean we had old beat up cars. I walked into a Porsche dealership last week and just made an impulse buy on a Porsche. That’s who I am this day and age because I can do that. But I had this shift that identity from “we have to work hard for everything and we can’t have that.” And everyone listening is no different than me. It’s the programming that comes out in us, and we have to shift the programming.

Geoff:  No, I get it man. I’ve been doing some of that self-work too. It’s like it’ll be open to the possibility of things just flowing to you.

Jim:  That’s where I work from. I know we have to go a bit here, but I want to give you guys something else. I tell all of my students to read this book – all of my one to ones and my coaching students. There is a book. When an author writes a book and it’s not their real name, what do they call it, a pseudonym or whatever it is. There’s a book called…

Geoff:  Pen name.

Jim:  Dollars Flow to me Easily, and it’s a paradigm shift for most people. Where I used to work from, and you’ll learn in the book… I didn’t learn this from the book, but the book just solidifies it so well. I learned it from my brother in law a lot of years ago. Where most people work from is that money comes from work.

Money does not come from work. Money comes from the universe. It comes from consciousness and energy. And to prove that, have you ever had a time in your life, especially all of you LOs where you’re just sitting at your desk. Somebody calls you and goes, “hey, my name is Bob Smith. You don’t know me, but I talked to Joe Schmo. Joe said, I got to call you.” Boom. A $3,000 loan commission falls right in your lap, but you did no work to get Joe Schmoe calling you. The universe brings us money, and the universal responds to our consciousness. This is not woo woo. This is even quantum physics.

So if you vibrate, which means you feel poor, you will attract more of that. You feel wealthy, you will attract more of that back into your experience. We gave them plenty to think about today.

Geoff:  We certainly did, and plenty of resources to go buy, download, whatever, you know the books and all that stuff. So I’m going to put the links in the show notes. Thank you for helping us kick off 2019 to become more of who we want to be at our best.

Jim:  Absolutely. Thank you for the invite.

Geoff:  You bet. And listeners, as always, thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please let us know. Give us a little love on the podcast ratings, and we appreciate you. We see you on the next one. Bye for now.