The Competitive Edge
Host: Isaac Mashman · June 8, 2020 · Episode 27 · 26 minutes
Transcribed from the episode audio and edited to read cleanly: names and terms corrected, grammar fixed, filler words and false starts removed, punctuation added. Words in [brackets] could not be made out with certainty. Wording can differ slightly from what was said; the episode itself is the record.
Thank you for stopping by this show. You are now listening to episode 27 of Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman, the podcast. I'm your host, Isaac Mashman. I have a phenomenal episode in store for you today, but before I jump into that, I want to go ahead and ask a favor from you guys. Now, the point of this podcast is to help as many people as possible really recognize the potential that they have within. I have a saying that I go by, that is, live without limitations. The reason why I have that saying is because we are limitless beings, honestly. I'm not saying that in some super spiritual, ultra spiritual guru type of way, but we are genuinely limitless beings that have so much potential locked up inside of us.
Once we master ourselves and once we really control our actions, our ways of thinking, and we continue growing on a day to day basis, we can have the world in the palm of our hands.
So this podcast is really to spread that message and to get as many people as possible to recognize, respect, and act on their own potential and their own dreams. So this show isn't for me. This show is for you guys. I want to give you guys as much value as I possibly can. In doing so, I would love to see these numbers go up. I would love to see more people tuning in to Chase the Vision with Isaac Mashman. But the only way that that is possible is with your help. So the favor that I'm going to ask you today is that if you get any ounce of value from this podcast and from this episode specifically, you share it with a friend. You share it with a brother, your mother, your sister, your cousin, your aunt, your best friend, your business partner, whoever it might be.
I ask that you do that for every single episode that you receive value from. Doing it that way will allow my podcast to grow organically. The larger my podcast grows, not only will it mean that more people are hearing the message and actually changing their lives with the information, but they will also be helping me out to where I will be able to grow my own brand, grow my own business. That's part of the reason why I'm doing this show. It's not only to give you guys value, but at the same time it is also to help me out as a starting entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur with a huge vision for what I want to accomplish in life. Also as an entrepreneur who recognizes that I have a message and I have a story that more people need to hear.
We live in a time where there's so much depressing news. You turn on CNN or Fox News, you see all the negative things that are going on. You go and check out the headlines and it's just another person was shot, another negative thing happened. You go on Twitter and you see all of the negative trends that happen, and it's sad. It is honestly sad. You see, I don't want you to think that I'm not a caring person about what goes on in today's society. It's not that at all. It's just, I do protect my energy and I feel like more than ever we need leaders who are stepping up.
We need leaders who will rise and take the reins of society and direct it in a better way, a way that our parents and our grandparents weren't able to do.
I would like to be one of those leaders, not a politician.
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I am Isaac Mashman. I want to step up as that figure and guide as many people as possible with my message. So guys, today I am going to be talking about the competitive edge. Now I was super torn between making this episode Friday Fire number three or a regular episode. I decided to go with the latter. I decided to go ahead and make this a full length podcast. But Friday Fire number three will be coming out this Friday, if you're listening the day that this drops, or if you're listening back. That is basically just a five to 10 minute podcast episode that is very, very fast paced.
That is very, I don't want to say motivating because I'm not a motivational speaker. I don't want you guys to call me that ever, but it is an episode that will light a fire underneath your butt to go out and crush the weekend. People who really achieve massive results in life oftentimes work on the weekend, and that actually plays into today's topic of competitive edge. Now, I know that many of you are probably interested in sports or video games, or you might have a competitive spirit. Oftentimes competition is looked to in sports and games. You think of athletes, you think of the high school jock, they're extremely competitive.
They want to go out and win every single game that they can win. Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, LeBron James of the NBA, they have a highly competitive spirit. They really want to go into the basketball game and rip out the soul of their opponent.
They want to dominate the game. You look at video game players, even Call of Duty, you look at esports. Those players do not want to just get in the match and play a normal game. They take video games highly seriously and they want to absolutely crush the competition. I know for many of you, you might be artists, you might be musicians, you might be an entrepreneur, a business owner, you might be a speaker, you could be just a person going and working a nine to five job. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think if anything, society's made it seem like a nine to five is a negative thing, but in reality, a job is a blessing because that's the way that you can put food on your table. But even in your workplace, are you competitive with other people?
Do you work in the corporate space and you see other people in your office and you're like, they're fighting for the same exact promotion that you're fighting for? Chances are yes. Who wouldn't want to rank up? Who wouldn't want to make more money? Who wouldn't want to have more of a say over their office space? You see, no matter what area of life we look at, there is a way for us to be competitive. But the difference between highly successful individuals like Mark Zuckerberg, like Steve Jobs, or Jeff Bezos is they are not focused on the competition around them. They are not focused on beating anybody.
They are focused on absolutely beating themselves, on being the best versions of themselves, or in their cases building up companies and improving those companies every single day. They're constantly in competition with themselves, with their own organizations, with their own sales teams, to increase the standards.
You think about Amazon, you might view Amazon as a competitive beast, but no, they are not competitive at all. They are absolutely dominating every single industry that they go and step into. There's a reason for that. They look at what they can do to take over and they take over. The way that they found that they could do that is by moving into as many spaces as possible and wiping out the competition. But in order for them to have ever gotten to that point, they had to build up the beast known as Amazon. Many times we look at other people. I know this is something that I have to admit I've done in the past and I look to other people and I'm like, man, they are so much farther ahead than I am right now.
Like, even though they might be 30 years old and I might only be 19 or 20, or I was doing this back at 17, even though they were 30 or 40, I was looking at where they were at in life and instead of viewing it with a spirit of optimism, sometimes I viewed it out of an attitude of, man, they are so far ahead and I am so far behind. Since I've progressed and I've gotten older and I've had more experience, I've done more personal development and more self-development, I've since tried to change my paradigm and change my perspective, and instead of viewing them with an attitude of I'm behind, I'm viewing it as an attitude of this is possible, this is achievable.
I can actually look at those mentors and say, wow, they were able to do it. I'm starting way ahead of them. So if anything, I could be ahead of them by the time I'm their age. Now, that's just my perspective. I don't believe that in order to get the biggest building in town, you should tear down every other building, but rather just build the biggest building.
But in order to build the biggest building, you have to decide how tall you want your building to be. You have to decide if you want it to stand out, if you want it to have structural designs and concepts that are first of a kind. You are in complete control. You are the architect. You are the engineer of this building and that building is yourself. The competitive edge that these high achievers and these high performers have is they are constantly in competition with themselves. There's a reason for that. There is a huge, huge reason for that. I think that, in this day and age of social media and Instagram and luxury brands and designer and rappers and all these different people flexing their money and celebrities flexing mansions and all those things, don't view that with an attitude of pessimism, but rather with an attitude of, wow, I respect that person for what they achieved.
But I am going to be the absolute best version of myself and lock in on the tactics and the techniques and the strategies that I could use to absolutely become a beast of an individual, a beast of a rapper, a beast of a musician, of an entrepreneur, of a business owner.
I can guarantee that if you actually take massive action, you will get so much farther ahead than you would ever get if you were looking on the sidelines. A person running a race, such as Usain Bolt. If you go and watch his races, is he looking to the left and to the right? Is he looking at how far behind the opponent is or how far ahead the opponent to the right is? No. The chances are the opponent to the right is not farther ahead because Usain Bolt was looking forward. He was looking forward. I believe that life has a series of analogies that we can make that are applicable.
There are a lot of parallels that make a lot of damn sense. There is a meme, and I imagine that for many of you entrepreneurs who go on Instagram, you've seen this picture before. You've seen a picture of a swimmer, and you have, like, two guys in a swimming pool. You have one person who is farther ahead and he's focused forward, and then you have the guy to his right who is looking at the swimmer to the left, and he is farther behind by about half a foot.
You've got to be laser focused with where you are going and not give a damn about where your competition is, where your opponent is. The only competition that exists is the competition that you create. That is literally a fact. There is no competition unless you make competition. The power of the mind and the power of perspective is so unbelievably powerful. From a young age, I've always been competitive with myself. I've always looked at, even if I was playing a video game, I'm like, I want to get to the highest level so I can be at the highest level. I want to see how big I can build.
I want to see how high I can get the numbers to be. Some would argue that that's kind of a negative thing, an attitude of never settling, an attitude of never compromising, an attitude of never really finding that complacent spot.
It's perfectly okay for the average man, for the average person, but when you're trying to achieve massive results in your life, you do not ever want to settle or be complacent. You are always going to be looking forward and looking higher. There's always been something that, no matter how low I get, how far down I get, I'm always competitive with myself because I'm like, I do not want to stay where I'm at. So I'm going to fight my way to try to change my situation. I've been at plenty of those points even in the past couple of years, but I'm always fighting myself and competing with myself and competing with the person of today and the person of yesterday to be a better person for tomorrow.
With that and with those principles, I know that I will get to a place of success, and success obviously is defined by something entirely different for me compared to what you define success as. We could have some parallels, we could have some similarities, but you are in control of what you define success as.
You are also in control of your perspective. Remember how I said that competition only exists if we create it? So you're in control of that. So you're also in control of your competition. Every single day that goes by, we should be looking to grow. We should not have to take two steps forward and then two steps back every day. That just means that we're a hamster on the hamster wheel spinning wheels. That's what a lot of people do in the workforce. They go work a job and instead of looking to increase their ranks, they don't even think about complacency. They're just unconsciously incompetent and they stay in that place for the rest of their lives and they are unhappy.
If you're like, what exactly does it mean to be unconsciously incompetent? Go back and listen to the episode of the four stages of learning. It just pains me to see so many people focus on everybody else but not focus on themselves. I recognize that there has to be a line between selfishness and selflessness, but far too many people go over to the side of spending their time focusing on another person rather than focusing on themselves. Yet the reason they're trying to build up is not for themselves but for other people, but at the same time they're focusing so much on other people, they're never going to be able to help other people.
God, it's such a paradox. It makes no sense. But it makes all the sense in the world because we as humans are emotional beings and we also are naturally wanting to be, I think humans innately want to be the best. If you go back through history, the reason why tribes never got along with one another is because that tribe wanted to be at the top. Wanted to have more women in their [tribe], I'm talking like ancient age, like I'm talking like age before Egypt, like biblical times. They wanted to have more women. They wanted to have more wealth. They wanted to have more riches and food and wine.
It wasn't just a basis off of survival. It was a basis off of envy, off of making themselves feel better. Man is ego. Ego driven creatures. That's what we are. A lot of people want a sports car, not because they genuinely enjoy the sports car, but because they want to flex the sports car. That's a big reason why I got out of the entrepreneurial space, because I got so sick and tired of dealing with people who were flexing designer and flexing cars. I love nice things. Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love nice things, but to have somebody say that they want to retire their mom and turn around and flex Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and a sports car that they rented when their mom is not retired is just very hypocritical to me.
I'll flex those things after my mom is taken care of and my family is taken care of. But I'm not going to let my personal ego hold me back from doing what I need to do and from preventing me from going where I want to go. You don't see Warren Buffett or Mark Zuckerberg walking around wearing a whole bunch of expensive clothing and stuff like that and trying to show that they have money. But they have more money than virtually every, no, actually not virtually, than every other rapper who's ever existed. Literally. The reason I use rappers is because of the music industry. It seems like people flex more than ever.
Then it's the same with entrepreneurs. We have these Instagram entrepreneurs and we're going through a particularly difficult time right now, amid coronavirus and the protests and a lot of different things.
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I think that this is a very difficult time to be an entrepreneur. This is also an amazing time to be an entrepreneur, but a difficult one. You've had so many people take a video course and think that they can conquer the world. That's just not the case. You need experience. You need to actually be that business owner before you can say that you are. I'm so grateful that I was ignorant for a lot of my first two years of being an entrepreneur. I felt like I needed to put it in my bio.
I felt like I needed to label myself. I started to recognize, why am I labeling what I've always been? Why are you labeling what you are? Why not be yourself and build up a name for yourself and be in competition with you? If you don't focus on labels, then you won't have anybody to compete with because you won't be looking at other people. The only reason you use labels in the first place is because you're looking at another person and you're like, I want what they have, so I will put the tag in my bio. Why do you think Instagram has a category for entrepreneurs?
They fabricated and pumped the marketplace and encouraged that. They encourage the flashy cars and the designer and all that stuff, so people would look. But if you're spending your time looking at all the things that you do not have, you will not be spending enough time getting to the point to where you could buy those things.
What are you investing your time doing? A surefire strategy is just to sit down tonight and write out what you want your life to be like. Who you want to be a couple years from now. A phenomenal mentor of mine that I look up to, he was the vice president of the company I used to be a part of. His name is Alex Morin. He's 31 years old now, but when I got involved with the company, that was like the first, one of my first big introductions in business and entrepreneurship.
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I actually had the opportunity to go sit down with him and eat a meal with him. He invited me out after an event. That was one of the most eye-opening experiences that I've ever had, seeing where he was and seeing the type of man and his character and the way that he looked, the way that he dressed. It wasn't by chance.
It wasn't by chance. As I began to study his character more and study who he was, I began to realize that whenever they say, write out who you want to become and who you want to be, they're writing out what type of man, their characteristics, their traits. How do they want to dress? What hairstyle do they want? What type of watch do they want? What do they want to speak like? Is there a particular body feature that they want to have stand out? But they shape and they create and they write out who they want to be, and then they work to shape it into reality.
They work to become the person who they wrote they wanted to be. So [that's a] surefire method for you to actually be the very best version of yourself and to no longer look to other people as competition, or look to other businesses or other partners or anything as competition, but rather be in competition with yourself and have that competitive edge, have that competitive benefit over everybody else innately.
You don't have to think about having that competitive edge. You just do. That's the great thing. You don't even have to consciously recognize you have an edge over other people. You just do. Not saying that you should always be better than everybody else, but we live in a society that's run by currency. I think that's mind blowing. Every single day I wake up and think about how our society and our, how poverty is dictated by money and how power is influenced by money. So we live in a competitive society in and of itself, in order to get yours and get the best. You have to be the best and you have to get the best.
You have to work for it. Not saying that you should ever stomp on the morals or ethics or the well-being of another individual. If you're doing that, you're doing things wrong. But at the same time, there's no shame in working harder to get better results, to get higher results and to be at a better place. No shame in that at all. Society is competitive. You've got to play the competitive game. So write out today who you want to be. What does the best version of Alex look like? What does the best version of Jack or Gracie look like? You're in control.
You shape your reality. You shape your reality. I'm going to be doing another episode coming out next Monday that we'll be talking about taking action rather than just speaking everything. But for those of you who are actually serious about getting results, you won't just write it. You'll start acting and working to become it. God, is that powerful. Every single day that goes by, I have to remind myself just how much of an amazing blessing it is to be alive and to be a human. Regardless of any difficult troubles or traumas that you could have ever been through, you're alive right now, you're breathing, and you're living in the greatest time to be alive.
I know that that's very subjective. I get that. But technology, the ways that we are able to communicate, the opportunities that exist for us to make money or to get our music out there, to get heard or to rise and be at the top of a company, is so remarkably amazing.
I remind myself each day that, man, we need to make the most out of this life, and the only way that you can really make the most out of life is to be the very best version of yourself and recognize that it's a never-ending journey to become better. You can always learn something. You could be the person who knows, quote-unquote, everything about science or everything about physics, but those professors are always open to new ideas, to new research, to new studies. The smartest people alive are open to criticism and they're open to new ideas and new discoveries. Come on now. Come on now. Guys, once you understand just how powerful this competitive edge is, then you stop competing with everybody else and you start competing with yourself and you win over you. Everything else in life is going to be easy.
I recognize that over the past couple of years, I have never had a difficult time in business and sales and closing clients and writing books and starting podcasts and any of that stuff. My difficulty has been with myself. So if your most difficult thing is you, imagine the possibilities if you overcome yourself. If everything else is easy and you overcome the difficult thing, everything else is going to be a piece of cake. Self-control and discipline are blessings and it takes time to build up those things. Oh God, I could continue going on and go into character traits and talk about discipline, talk about self-awareness, talk about a variety of other things that I believe are highly important for long-term success and self-control and really achieving massive results. But I've got to save some information for future episodes, you know.
Guys, go out. Crush this week. Crush this week. Try to not focus so much on the media. Don't be unaware of it, but don't let it drain you of your energy. We only have so much energy to give. Go get yours. You are your best friend or your absolute arch nemesis. God, that sounded so nerdy. That sounded super, super nerdy, man. Anyways, with that, I'll shut up and close, but I will say, before you click off, bear with me for another 30 seconds, please. If you haven't followed me already on social media, go follow me at Isaac Mashman on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook, go like my Facebook page at The Isaac Mashman, and then go to IsaacMashman.com.
Now, for artists and musicians, I know that I've mentioned rappers, artists, musicians, a couple of times in this podcast and other episodes, but I am working on something phenomenal right now for artists.
I'm working to help as many artists as possible succeed without ever signing to a record label. So if that is you, and if that sparks any ounce of curiosity, there's a reason you have that gut feeling. Go send me a message, drop me a follow. Let's talk and see if we're a fit to work together. Yeah, guys, we've got six, seven months left in 2020. I am not stopping, by no means. The Mashman Airways jetliner is 35,000 feet in the air. It is steady going. So much love, guys, and always remember to live without limitations.