56: Steve, What Gives...

Hey, what's up guys? Hey, I am having a great day. You know what's funny? I love Mondays. I love them so much. Monday is my favorite day of the week, and Monday morning specifically. I go popping out of bed and I'm like "Yeah, we get to do this again! What?" I get pumped about it. I'm excited about it. Well, hey, I kind of have to hurry here a little bit. We, in about an hour here, we're actually going to find out the gender of our new little kid and I'm excited. It's going to be a lot of fun. Few things have taught me as much as being a father, so this'll be a good experience. Hey, I wanted to drop in a question here. I love hearing you guys' questions. I do get them and I kind of vet through them to see which ones are most applicable for everybody. I got a question here from John Bender and great question. If you guys don't know what I'm talking about it you go to secretmlmhacksradio.com and you have to opt in, but on the next page what it does is it, there's a green button down on the bottom right and if you click that button what it'll do is you actually can record a question to me. Typically, they're about 30 second questions, and just start with "Hey, Steve" and if it's a question that's applicable for everybody, you can go ahead and drop it in there. I put them inside the actual episodes themselves and I think you guys have heard me do that before. I have another one here and I thought I'd play it right now. Speaker 2: Hey, Steve, this is John Bender checking in here, getting ready to head into the gym, but had a question for you. You know I've been doing networking for 23 years and been pretty successful. We've done about $350 million in sales with our different systems. I've studied all these gurus for years, focusing in the digital space. Why is it that you seem to be like one of the few good guys on there? You don't curse, you're not off color. You don't do sexist jokes. You're just a good guy. You're funny, you're bright, you're intelligent. You're extremely informative. I know you're incredibly giving. What gives, man? I don't get it. Why do all these other people, from some of my greatest icons out there to the modern marketers of the day, they're so crude and rude and yet you're such an incredibly great mentor, not just for what you know but who you are and apparently whose you are. So, I want to thank you for that and doing this for so many years it's great to see the great work you're doing. Keep it up. Hope to be a part of your team. Steve Larson: Hey, how's it going, John? Hey, first off, thank you so much for that question and extremely nice complements. I was not expecting that. Hey, I actually, the reason why I actually wanted to put this in the episode for everybody though, is there's a specific reason why I do what I do and how I do it. I've had the opportunity, the chance, in my career to work with some very big names. Okay. John Bender, yourself, you're the man. Obviously, for everyone else who's listening, I do know who John is. I actually was shocked and surprised when I saw him drop this question in. Just very, very nice of you, but certainly consider him to be one of my mentors as well. We have, I've had the chance of working with some very big names, very big people. When I was working at ClickFunnels, I'm saying. I'm solo now, as you guys all know, I've been solo for, I'm staring my fourth week solo and it's been awesome, and it's because of MLM that I'm able to do that, which is a lot of fun and great. But we did a ton of projects with some huge names, guys. I mean I built for Marcus Lemonis on the TV show The Prophet, on CNBC, did five funnels for him. We did some awesome projects with Tony Robbins for his book funnel, Money Mass Of The Game. We did some projects for Robert Kiyosaki. The Tony Robbins one that was right before I got there, but that was the kind of stuff that we would do all the time. It was fun, guys. I mean it was super fun. What was interesting was to watch the mentality of these massive giants. What was interesting is, there seems to be this disconnect. You're thinking, "Steve, what does that have to do with MLM?" It has everything to do with MLM. Okay. Just follow me on this a little bit. What I noticed is rubbing shoulders with some of these massive guys. I'm talking A, tier one people. Everyone knows them. Everyone knows who they are. They're sought after. They have massive distribution. You know what I mean? The power of what they say sways markets and people's opinions like crazy. They're huge people. And they know that. I learned that like 90% of the time these guys are like some of the most amazing authentic caring loving people. They're genuinely good people, just good people. Okay. What was fascinating though, and I'm going to be very careful as I say this, and this is for the lesson and it might not be nice to some people when they hear it, but there are some people that, they're not on that tier one level, and they know it. But they think that to be a professional they must go around toting around their successes in front of the faces of all these other people, and kind of be mean about it. As soon as they, there's a ... Guys there's a ... I'm very religious, okay so I'm just going to say that. There's a verse that says that the moment someone gets any amount of power or authority, they tend to abuse it. That's basically what the lesson is. Any amount of power, or any amount of authority, then tend to abuse it and basically drink their own Kool-Aid, okay. That's not what that says, but that's basically it. It was a huge topic that I had with Russell many times. Many times one-on-one with him, and he would say "Steven, if you want recognition don't seek it." Then he would also say things like "Don't drink your own Kool-Aid." It's not that I was, okay, it's just that we would watch these other people, and we would have conversations and stuff like that about, and we're like man ... and it's not to say like "ah I'm better than you, 'cause I'm not drinking my Kool-Aid." You know it's not a status thing, it's nothing like that, but I truly believe that, guys, everyone of us whose listening to this podcast right now we all have the ... It is innate and it is inside of us to be great. To be great. It's inside of every individual. It's not reserved for just a few people. Every person can be great. What does great mean? First of all, you compare yourself to you, no one else. Okay. One of the easiest ways to get down in your life is to start comparing yourself to other people or to an ideal. If you look around and you start saying to yourself, like "oh man, like for me," ... You guys know a lot of my story. When we had literally no money, like literally no money, and it was extremely stressful. It was terrible. It was an awful experience to go through that whole thing. But, when we had no money, if I compare myself to where I am, compared to where we were. Oh man! That's awesome. Like that's so cool. I have nothing to be ashamed about. There's nothing to be embarrassed about. Like look what I was able to get done. I'm comparing me to me. That is the easiest place for you to have success and fulfillment emotionally in this game of MLM. The easiest way for you to get down and have destructive energy all over you, is to compare yourself number one to a person or number two to an ideal. The problem with comparing yourself to an ideal, like pop culture. The problem is they change all the time. It's an ideal. It's undefinable. You don't know when you reached it. There's no actual, you don't know when you hit the spot, because it moved the moment you started going towards it. That's the problem with ideals, so don't compare yourself or put your self-worth or value by comparing yourself to ideals. Again, pop culture does that all the time. I'm not throwing mud, I'm not throwing rocks, I'm not saying like ... I'm not downplay...