Cole Ruud-Johnson (00:00):
Today's episode is a special one. As you guys know, I don't bring on a ton of guests on this show. A lot of these are solo shows with tactical tips, but as you guys grow as an entrepreneur, your business development, your business growth is never gonna outpace your personal development and your personal growth on the today's show Will Ferris, my personal kind of mindset skills coach for a long time now, who's helped me through a lot of mental roadblocks that come with, you know, scaling a company and imposter syndrome and burnout and boundaries and everything you have to master to grow business and manage people and become a person people wanna work for. And I can't speak to how important that is an application in real life for you guys and your company. So without further ado, let's get right into it and jump right into Mr Will Ferris. People don't fail at real estate because they suck, they fail because there's too many ways to succeed. That's why I suggest you focus on the most important skill in all of real estate, which is finding deals. I'm Cole Ruud-Johnson and in this podcast I share the exact steps I've used as source 400 deals by age 24. This will allow you to do three things, control your deal flow, make unlimited income, and build your empire as an off-market operator.

Will Ferris (01:09):
Having been blessed to know Cole Ruud-Johnson for a long time, he's always seen a gift in me for empowering others to help them work with their mindset. And once I took the reins of my own mindset and went to school for health and human performance, I realized that there's quite a misconception in our culture and society towards what building mental health or mental skills is. There's a lot of people that love to, or a lot of people that are willing to share that they have struggles or difficulties in their mindset or their emotions, and yet there's a lot less that are willing to look at themselves, honestly look at the story that they have in their head and make the changes that they need to make in order to gain mental empowerment. And over the last two years have worked with different high level performers, athletes, real estate agents, people within this wholesaling industry and have seen my practice grow and change tremendously from, you know, the broad awareness that hey, maybe your mindset's a little bit off to trying to find tools to help people feel more and more empowered.

(02:17):
And that starts with coming down to your story. And when one is able to recognize the story or the narrative that's in their head, they can jot that down, write that down, they can begin to examine where exactly are they victimized in their life. That's a term that I feel like a lot of people shy away from. They don't like doing the awareness work or the storytelling work because of how it makes them feel. When you see something as victimizing you or you are perpetuating a story or a narrative that doesn't give you your power, it's a very, very humbling feeling. And on a personal note, having been a high level college athlete, it was very hard for me to leave that scene and realize that there was many, many things that I was being victimized by in my life. Whether that's comparison towards others, whether that's worrying about what other people think about me, whether that's anxiety, depression, these are labels that we create and we do not own.

(03:14):
These are labels that people typically love to hide behind. They engage with, okay, you have this disorder or you have this problem in your life, oh that sucks. And they perpetuate the story by their awareness. They don't grow from it or become empowered from it. And to take that from a less abstract, I'll give you a personal example. So when I was playing in college, anxiety was a very difficult emotion for me to handle pressure or the stress to perform at a high level was something that constantly felt overwhelming or it felt like a threat towards my performance. I remember saying to myself like, if I could just get rid of this anxiety, I'll play at a much higher level. And that awareness or that thought process was the thing that was blocking me the most. I didn't take ownership of that anxiety, it became the thing that was blocking me from performance.

(04:04):
And so as I stepped away, I recognized my expectations and my story around anxiety and took responsibility of that story. And that's the key word. And mental empowerment is responsibility. What you are not responsible for, you cannot change and we cannot heal from the same state of consciousness that made us sick. So if you are perpetuating a narrative that got you to a certain point that makes you feel stuck, makes you feel weak, and you are unwilling to do the work, to change that narrative, nothing's gonna happen. And that comes with responsibility. So again, if you do something like mindfulness or you speak to a therapist or you even speak to somebody like a coach like myself, what you're originally doing is you are illuminating the story. But that's just the first step. That's the hardest part for most people is to be honest with what they're struggling with and what victimizes them.

(04:50):
But there's another step from that that we all have to take and that's the hardest part. It's admitting where, damn, I get victimized by that. Dang, I worry what people think about me. And in my practice, I've found tools that I feel very confident in can allow people to move from that story of victim consciousness to empowerment. And those tools can often be just like weight training supported by a trainer like myself. Or you can take the reins once you learn the tools and and go on and do it yourself. And so like I said, the key word is responsibility. It's something that I've spoken about at Cole's Masterminds. I would speak about responsibility and I've always understood that responsibility is probably the most important thing to overall mindset. And so again, I started this and I'll end with this. Our misconception about mindset is that once you become aware of it, it might take you away from your greatest gifts or your greatest skills.

(05:46):
That is not what it's about. It is truly some of the most difficult work because you uncover patterns about your past that where you were subjectively, helpless maybe as a kid or where you learn these patterns and you must learn to rewire them. And a lot of those habits, even if we know that they're good for us to change, are very difficult, are very difficult to change. And it's again in those I've learned to celebrate when I see them arise, not get scared of them. Because once we can celebrate where we're victimized and we can take responsibility and empower ourselves through them, we are just gonna continue to level up, level up, level up. And so Cole has told me that a lot of people in this industry worry about what other people think have difficulty with focus or stress. And again, I would encourage you guys, even if you don't contact me or reach out to me, I'd encourage you to maybe do a T chart.

(06:39):
And on the left side, what are certain thought patterns or what are certain things that you feel like victimize you in your life? That word victimize might be a little strong, but things that you feel like are outside of you that steal your control or steal your power, your energy, you're focus. If you're always blaming focus, if you're always blaming emotion, if you're always blaming someone else or your phone, that's a very easy one to realize, damn, that's victimizing me. And there's something that I can do to empower myself. And so I would start there, start by jotting down the narrative of your own story. Take a look at it. If it's not the story that you wanna live, then I would recommend looking for somebody to help you alter it. If it is, keep going. Keep killing it and keep tapping into Cole Ruud-Johnson's podcast.

(07:21):
And I know if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a high performer. You're probably somebody that says, oh my mindset's good, it's gotten me this certain point. But I'd encourage you to look at what is your overall wellbeing and sense of fulfillment in your life. Do you have a sense of peace? Do you have a sense of renewed energy at the end of the day or are you constantly feeling burned out or feeling like your boundaries are weak? For myself, having started my own business and and worked through being kind of my own trainer, my own coach, growing up for sports, it was difficult because you have to realize that when you play all those roles, then you equally have to give yourself the same amount of love back. And what I've seen, and I'll give you kind of more of a realistic example, is oftentimes uh, I train a lot of kids in the weight room and they'll come to the first workout, it'll be really hard and they'll come in the second workout and it'll be really hard.

(08:10):
And what starts to happen is that anticipation creeps up. They start anticipating how hard that workout's gonna be and slowly and slowly they stop coming. And when you recognize that that anticipation starts to happen in an entrepreneurial life, you realize that man, that stress, that schedule, that I have to run that boundary process, that's all on me. There's nobody else running that for me. And so your awareness or your perception of that process needs to be more in enjoyment and fulfillment and celebration rather than judgment of self, rather than judging your stress that you feel judging everything in your life. And so it, a simple scale that I offer to a lot of high level athletes is, hey, at the end of your workout or the end of your workday rate how much joy or celebration you have of yourself on a scale of one to 10 versus the level of judgment that you have.

(09:00):
And from my awareness, if that level of judgment is higher than the celebration or joy that you're expressing, you're gonna burn out and you're going to stop taking on challenges because those challenges your mind will anticipate. Think about going into a, a cold shower or cold ice bath. Your mind's gonna anticipate the cold and it's gonna make it 30 times harder than just going into the ice bath and taking some deep breaths. And so if you are not consciously aware of the feedback loop you have within at the end of your days or during your days, then it's probably going to perpetuate a state of consciousness that's gonna lead to burnout, lead to victim consciousness and is not gonna lead you to your best self Identity is something that I see as very crucial. It's something that I recently had to process for myself as an athlete.

(09:46):
It's very cliche to say, you are not an athlete, you are not an entrepreneur, you are not this, you are yourself. And that identity piece becomes super difficult because we get praise for what we do. Oftentimes the most attention I ever got was in basketball. And so it's hard to not identify as that. It's hard not to say I'm a basketball player and in your case an entrepreneur or a real estate agent. And for a moment the example I like to give, I, I heard it from somebody but I forget what his name is, so shout out to him. But he goes up to people and he gives the example, like if someone came up to you on the street and said, you're a pickup truck and I wanna fill you up with gas cuz you're a pickup truck and that's the energy you need, it's pretty easy to say, no I'm not.

(10:28):
Get away from me. This dude's crazy. And the reason why I bring it up, most of the time people laugh at that because it's like so abstract and it's so stupid, it makes like zero sense. But then I take it back to like the scale of you're a real estate agent and if you don't have that same laugh at that or that's crazy mentality towards it, the highs and lows of your business or the emotions that you feel, it's harder to say no to. Just like that guy coming up to you on the street and says, I need to fill you up with gas cuz you're a pickup truck. It's easy to say no to that. It's easy to set the boundary, but if you're identified as a real estate agent and you're identified as an athlete, it's a lot harder to say no to the praise you get and no to the hate that you're getting, no to the failure that you're getting as a personal attack.

(11:16):
None of this is personal. And when you start to realize that it's not personal, it's easy to separate yourself from the business and make actually conscious decisions. But if you are attached to it emotionally as an identity, it's very hard to first of all work with others because you're gonna be so riding on the highs and lows. You can't have patient approaches, but you're also just gonna be so tied to the success that you have. And as we know, people that are super successful and commit suicide like that is not the route to happiness or peace. So definitely consider what identity do you have towards your business. The last thing I wanna say is when considering the story that we talked about earlier, it has to be rooted in truth. And I think this word truth is difficult to define. You know, whose opinion is true, which belief is true?

(12:04):
And something that really helped me reconceptualize that is what you're willing to take responsibility for in that moment is your truth. And so when considering that and you look at the story that you have created in your life and whatever you're willing to be responsible of in that moment is your truth. And if you do not understand that, it is your responsibility that guides you to truth. And it's easy to blame, shift, make excuses or be victimized by your experience. And so what I mean by all that is consider your story and your responsibility towards all this. Your identity, your process and your business. The things that you blame in the business, whether it's the market or anything else. Your coach, again, I'm speaking to all different demographics here, that's the humbling approach, but it'll get you to truth. And once you find truth, it gives you meaning and purpose and a drive that will not stop at challenges that come your way.

(12:59):
Your direct avenue towards purpose and meaning is through responsibility. So all of these things connect. Once you take responsibility of your identity, your emotions, your feelings, your thoughts, there's a certain amount of meaning that you have with your inner world. And when you have that meaning and you have that purpose, there's nobody on the outside that can take you off that path. It's your path, it's your choices. In my own experience, there's probably many things that I'm unconscious to that I'm not fully responsible of, but the things that I have taken responsibility of, it gives me a new sense of meaning and purpose and enjoyment in my life no matter what I decide to do. And I, I wish that for all of you, I wish that especially for my boy Cole Ruud-Johnson.

Cole Ruud-Johnson (13:45):
Well that was an incredible show you guys a little longer than normal. Uh, ran about 15 there with Will, will has just an unique understanding and perspective of humans and how we interact with work and sports and play and how it all comes together and what he calls kind of an empowered entrepreneurship or empowered athleticism, whatever the field you guys are in that are listening to this and I can't, you know, recommend working with someone like that, either him or someone else enough if you guys are looking for someone to help you along your journey and get through the hurdles and roadblocks to come with either starting a company, growing a company, hiring people, burnout, imposter syndrome, guilt, everything that comes with being an entrepreneur and pushing yourself every single day. Cuz you guys listen to this are high performers. Then end the show notes here is gonna be linked to Will's calendar and you guys can schedule a call with him and find out more about what he's done for me and other entrepreneurs. There are my friends that he helps crush day in and day out. So as always, you guys, I like a share of review means the world to me and also I'm very responsive in dms. If you guys have any recommendations for me or the show, please hit my dms and then as always on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you like to listen to cuz we are on all platforms, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and I will see you guys next time. Tell then you are one deal away.