Everybody. Hey, welcome in. Really excited today to have my first interview here for the podcast. This is TJ Hoisington. TJ and I actually go back a long, long way. We can talk a little bit about that. We, actually, grew up in the same small town in Washington State. TJ is an amazing individual and has some done some incredible things, especially around personal development and becoming your best self. His original book If You Think You Can! It’s been a best seller. He does some fantastic stuff. He just wrote his first fiction book, or maybe it’s the latest fiction book, which is Return to Robinson Island, which is a Swiss Family Robinson sequel. He told me it was the first one in a hundred years. So, anyway, welcome TJ.
TJ: Hey, it’s great to be with you. This is awesome. Your first podcast and I get to be part of it. That’s pretty cool.
JR: I got to go back to the people who brought me here, I guess. Right.
TJ: I don’t know how much I played in that role, but we did grow up together, that’s for sure.
JR: We’ve been on a number of scout hikes together. I’m just a few years younger than you. You were one of the old kids; I was one of the new little kids, but I remember chasing you and Sloan and Conan around, and your brother Steve, as well. It’s, anyway, a lot of fun.
TJ: Those were the days. Yeah, a lot has happened since then for sure.
JR: Well, TJ, you’ve done a bunch with talking about all of the personal development work that you’ve done. I was listening to one of your podcasts actually this morning talking about how you came to that at age 15. I’d love for you to share that story a little bit.
TJ: I was 15 years old, and I came from a big family of eight kids. I was an Army Brat, so my dad was in the military. Money was often tight. I remember we always struggled a little bit with money, but I came from a good home. I knew I was loved, so that was awesome thing. Many people don’t get that, and I understand that, but I happen to. I remember it always being financially a struggle. One day, I walked in my dad’s bedroom and noticed on his dresser a tape, and it was a copied tape and on one side it said, the day that turned my life around and on the other side has said how to live financially independent.
I took that tape, and instead of taking the money that was on his dresser. That was probably my goal in going there in the first place. I took the tape, put it in my pocket, went upstairs to the bedroom and I listened to this man talk on the cassette tape. That first night and I must have listened to that tape at least 20 times that first month. It was a guy by the name of Jim Rohn, and maybe some of your listeners will recognize that name. I consider him my first teacher and the personal development sort of industry. He really taught me how to think differently, and how to look at the world differently, and how to add value. You don’t demand your income. You provide the value. You become valuable enough that you are attracted to it. People that don’t read get rickets of the mind. Then he talked about you can choose your destiny, you can live with class. And I remember I just listened to that tape over and over and over. And then those late nights, I made the decision in my mind. So when we were teenagers, I made the decision that I wanted to spend my life doing something similar to what Jim Rohn was doing. And that was being a trainer, a speaker, helping people unleash their greatness within. And that whole idea was born off. That one event right there. That tape, literally, took my mindset to a whole new level.
JR: That’s awesome. I love Jim Rohn and what he’s got. Getting rickets of the mind. The old saying is leaders are readers. I love to read. I read voraciously. I listened to a lot on Audible, as well. Actually, one of my goals for 2018 was to read 52 books. I wanted to read a book a week, which has been a struggle. It’s been a hard one because I picked out some books that were like two and three inches thick. What on earth was I thinking? This takes a little while, but, as I sit right now, I’m working on book number 50 for the year.
TJ: Good for you.
JR: I’m really close. The one I just finished was This is Marketing, and that was Seth Godin. Anyway, his brand new book. It’s fantastic. I’ve been all around them. Next year, I don’t think I’ll read 52 books, I’ll probably focus more in on 10 or 12. But I want to really understand and consume and internalize a lot of what’s there. And I think a lot of times there’s so many there, there’s underpinnings, with all of these books that make them ring true, to me anyway. It feels like there’s some specific pillars around the around this personal development. Now, you’ve done a bunch, obviously, you do a lot of coaching, both for businesses as well as obviously with individuals. What are some of those pillars that you really focus on?
TJ: Yeah, so in my book, If You Think You Can! that I wrote in the backseat of my car when my world was falling apart back in 2004. I discovered, through my years of research, having to work with Tony Robbins and studied a lot of the great books that were out there at the time and so forth. I discovered there was actual laws–you call them pillars, I call them laws–laws of achievement, and If You Think You Can! was based on some specific laws. I think that’s awesome. I’ve got a couple ideas in terms of laws for your listeners to think about, which will make the difference in their life. I’ll just share a couple of them within you, and if you have any questions, just shoot them over to me.
But number one, you’ve got to take time to work on yourself. You have to develop yourself. You can’t give something that you don’t have. And so taking time out without becoming selfish, right. I’m not talking about making the world revolve around you. I’m just saying taking time out of your day to pour into your heart and into your mind, knowledge and ideas because knowledge is power if it’s applied. But if you don’t know it, you’re not aware of it, you’re not going to apply it. I’ll give you a couple of examples. Fundamentals are key when it comes to working on yourself. For example, Michael Jordan was so focused on being the best basketball player that even when he was filming the movie Space Jam many years ago, the cartoon characters and he was in the movie he actually had a basketball court built outside of the Warner Bros. Studios so that he can maintain his shooting regimen his-
JR: Oh wow.
TJ: Everything like that while he was filming. That is someone who really expects to be great. They constantly work on themselves. If you’re in sales, you’re going to constantly read books that help you be a better communicator, better listener, better negotiator. It’s that constant, pour, pour, pour. Maybe there’s people that are listening to your podcast that you know are having to get out of their comfort zone to do a new business venture or something like that. The goal is then develop yourself to become equal to that what you want to achieve; for example, it was James Allen in his book As a Man Thinketh said this simple thought. He said, “You don’t get in life what you want. You get in life who you are.” And so, my message in Law #1 is in terms of working on yourself. You’ve got to take time to develop your skills and your craft and develop your attitude and your perspectives. Always working on the mind, feed the mind. That would be law number one.
Law #2 would be operate from your imagination. Too often we have analysis paralysis. Here’s the reality of life. If you will spend time dreaming about it and thinking about it and visualizing it in your mind’s eye. It is the law of nature that you will move toward and attract that which harmonizes with that thought. That’s a law: operating from your imagination. They’ve actually done a lot of research where people that operate from their imagination but don’t actually do the physical practice, outperform those that only do physical performance and many blind studies and so forth. You can see patterns out there that the mind cannot–Well, let me really make this clear to your audience here–The subconscious mind cannot tell the difference between something that is vividly imagined with emotion and that which really happened. So you, almost, can trick your mind into believing. Now, those that are really powerful, they run those movies in their head, but then they physically go out and practice it and harmonize both those together. Action is also one of those laws.
I’ll squeeze another one in here, and I know you probably have a couple of questions is you’ve got to master your thinking, especially if you’re getting out of your comfort zone and building a business and you’ve never done that before. There are going to be voices inside your head and say, “You can’t do that.” Maybe you have a goal to write a book. Maybe you have a goal to go back to school. I don’t know what your goal may be, but there’s going to be that voice inside that will sometimes come in and say: You can’t do that. You don’t have the education. You don’t have the money. You don’t have the talent. And what I have learned is that if you stand up to that voice and say, “Shut up,” and then focus on where you want to go, not what you know but where you want to go, you will achieve higher levels of success. And part of that means keeping your thoughts under control. And one way that you can keep your thoughts under control is to fill your mind constantly with good and uplifting information.
JR: Awesome. No, love that. Thanks. It’s interesting you bring up As a Man Thinketh. Let’s see. If I look at my list here, that was I think number six for this year on the books. An excellent, excellent read. This year, filling my mind with those sorts of things has been paramount, I’d say frankly, for as long we’ve been growing our business and as we’ve been working. I focused heavily on having building a business, using 21st-century technology. But really some of the learning, some of the best learning that I’ve gotten came from early-20th-century learning. It came from the Think and Grow Riches and the Napoleon Hills of the world or The Science of Getting Rich. Wallace Wattles.
Those sorts of things are timeless, that information is amazing. When we work on ourselves, we get to an even higher plane. I think a lot of times when we set out to… I’ve climbed some mountains in my day, that’s one of the things that my dad likes to do. I like to do that with him. A lot of times you set out and you point out the peak where you’re going, and you are not qualified to be on that peak yet, from where you stand, and you have to put in the work to get there. I talked in an earlier episode about climbing Mount Rainier. Well, we started out from home at roughly sea level before we summitted at 14,411 feet, and it was a lot of work in between. The work qualifies you for the results and you’re not supposed to have the results that you want because you haven’t put in the work yet. I think that’s probably one of those takeaways that I continue to get every single time I read through one of these, one of these personal development books.
TJ: Let me just share. Let’s go one step further with that thought. Yes, you’re right. You’ve got to be qualified, whatever that goal is. You have to work to be qualified, but you also can’t sustain success if you’re not qualified. You not only will achieve it, maybe you can achieve it in a spurt of a moment, but it won’t last. It won’t be sustained if you don’t become that person. Now, you go back to climbing, you would say, well, I really don’t want to go through the effort of having to hype 14,000 feet or 15,000 feet or whatever. I don’t want to hike it. I think what I’ll do is I’ll hire a helicopter to take me to the top and then I can say I’ve been at the summit of, let’s say, Mountain Rainier or something like that. Here’s the problem. Or let’s say Mount Everest. Now, what’s the problem with from sea level to the top of Mount Everest. The problem with that is you haven’t become acclimated to the results that you want and you will end up probably dying. So there is power in going through the struggle and going through the suffering so that you become the person who was qualified for the results you want and, therefore, you can sustain it.
Did you know that those people that win the lottery statistically either lose it, spend it, or go bankrupt within five years? Why is that? Because they haven’t become equal to the results. So what is the subconscious mind do? The purpose of the subconscious mind is to make you act like you and your subconscious mind goes, that’s not like you to be worth $50 million or something. What does the subconscious mind do? It finds creative ways to get rid of it.
JR: Yeah, that’s a sad statistic. I’d love to try and beat that one personally.
TJ: I know, I would to 95% is pretty high statistics.
JR: Yeah, that’s pretty ridiculous. Well, with what you’ve done, especially in some of the corporate training, as somebody who’s trying to make that ascent, where’s one of the stumbling blocks that you see most often that that people have to get over as they’re climbing or as they’re trying to make themselves into that person worthy of their goal?
TJ: On one side, I see education as important, or a skill or a trade is important. But many people are hired based on skills but are fired because of a poor attitude. So, here, would be my point is I go into organizations and it would be any team–it doesn’t matter; it could be a high school football team or a girl’s soccer team, it could be Corporate America–is you have to decide what your values are and not get sucked in the norm. Those that seem to rise not only have the qualifications, but they have the attitude, the perspective and the leadership ability to influence people. And the way you influence people is not staying equal to them. Meet them where they are, but then draw them and influence them to a better place. And that means you’ve got to constantly work on yourself.
It’s easy to get sucked into the average. I see that all the time with teams inside businesses and so forth. It’s awesome when you meet a quarterback, someone who wants to make a change and wants to be a force for good, inside the organization. I would say don’t ever give up on that ideal in the corporate arena, or any team that you’re on. Raise the standard that others can be measured by. Will you be made fun of? Yeah. You’ll be made fun of. My daughter plays basketball. She’s a good basketball player, and she’s pretty well accepted and popular and so forth. There’s a girl on her team that loves to get under her skin. And do we know why? We don’t know why other than she might feel sensitive that Kyla plays well and maybe she’s trying to keep up with her. I don’t know what it is, or there’s a threat there are not. My message to my daughter Kyla: don’t succumb to that person’s level. I often see that it’s just easy to do inside teams. So be careful.
JR: That’s awesome. In our business, as we’ve grown it, I definitely see that dynamic plays out. Misery loves company.
TJ: Oh, yeah.
JR: It is mentally network marketing especially as is mentally taxing. It’s hard to go out there, and most of us don’t have management degrees, maybe some do, but for the most part this is a learned business.
TJ: Correct.
JR: And doing that learning is paramount.
TJ: There are people that have management degrees that aren’t effective, and there are people that don’t have degrees that are killing it out there, so don’t let that be a stumbling block at all.
JR: One of my mentors talks about he has people on his team. One lady, who prior to coming into the business was a maid at the local hotel, and one gentleman, same team, was the CEO of a $350 million company. Talk about two opposite ends of the spectrum on both are or have been wildly successful, but it’s taken a lot of hard work. TJ, I appreciate you coming on with me. It’s been a lot of fun. I want to make sure that we plug your podcast and your books, so I can have some people check that out for you. I’m excited to actually get my copy, as well, and dive into that.
TJ: Absolutely. Got one coming in the mail for you. Just real quick, my website is greatnesswithin.com. Simple: greatnesswithin.com, and my podcast, which is one of the top podcasts out there on iTunes. It’s on Spotify, Google Play and so forth. It’s called Unleash Your Greatness Within, or you can just type my name TJ Hoisington.
JR: Awesome. Hey, I appreciate it. Any last words for us before I let you go?
TJ: Just for fun. Let me give those listeners of yours–and I wish them the very best–let me give them my 10. We’ll go through this really quick. If you’re listening to this write it down quick, or just rewind and write it down. I’m going to give you my blueprint for achieving your goals. I think this is really critical.
Ø Number 1: Identify what you want. You have to know what it is you want to achieve. You don’t want to be a leaf in the wind storm. You want to know exactly what it is you’re going after and then you want to know:
Ø Number 2: Why you want it.
Ø Number 3: Create a vivid picture in your mind of what you want. You have to be able to see it.
Ø Number 4: You’re not seeing a lot of people write about this today, but if you go back to the classic books, one thing they all say is that you write down your goals.
There is something powerful about writing them down. I don’t know if you’ve ever done this, I know I have. Where I’ve written down a list of goals, I put it into an envelope, closed it. I lost the envelope, and 10 or 15 years later. This happened on one occasion for me. I found that envelope. I opened it up and have that list; in fact, I have it right here. So, JR, you can see it.
JR: Wow.
TJ: I have this list of there’s 19 goals on it. I would say 80% of those were accomplished. And I didn’t find this old scratched up, bent up sheet until about–I don’t know–probably 8-10 years ago. And most of them I had accomplished. So there’s something to be said for writing the goal down.
Ø Number 5: Review and repeat with energy and conviction.
One thing I learned with Tony Robbins when I work with him is that if you will in your imagination, see the end result of what you want to achieve, and then repeat that and play that image over. Stand up with your chest high, your shoulders high, and say, even phrases out loud, that show you have conviction toward achieving this goal.
Ø Number 6: Develop a game plan.
Ø Number 7: Take action.
Ø Number 8: Review the results.
Ø Number 9: If the results aren’t what you want, then adjust.
Ø Number 10: Celebrate. Keep taking action and celebrate the progress.
JR: That’s awesome, TJ, I appreciate that. Celebrating is sometimes overlooked because, you got to have a reward there. He is TJ Hoisington and his podcast is Unleash Your Greatness Within. It’s actually on my regular rotation now. I’m diving through some of his old episodes to catch up, but he’s fantastic. We’ve got some great, great stories and also some great people coming up. Actually, listened to one earlier today about a couple of professional speaking coaches that was fantastic. Anyway, highly recommend it. Check out his book If You Think You Can! You guys have a great day. Bye.
Hey, thanks for listening and please remember to subscribe and leave feedback. If you have any questions that you’d like to have answered on the show, email me at JR@MLMRenegade.com.