The Mindset of the 1 Percent
Host: Isaac Mashman · November 9, 2020 · Episode 42 · 24 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.
[Welcome] back to Chase the Vision with Isaac. What is up, everybody? Isaac Mashman here, and welcome back to another episode of the podcast. [Its] goal is to help you become a more capable individual and chase after your vision in life, whatever that might be. Today's episode is going to be discussing the state of America and the state of the election. But hey, before you click off (I know some of you are probably at this point like, oh my God, I'm so sick of hearing all this stuff), it is not going to be anything too political, it is not going to be anything too controversial, but rather a little bit broader based and a little bit more self-development based, centered on yourself and not on the nation. So guys, don't worry about me expressing any viewpoints.
I know that I've expressed certain viewpoints in the past here and there. That is not going to be today's episode. Aside from that, I'm also going to be covering a second topic, and that topic is going to be about how to catch yourself before it is too late. So let's go ahead and hop into this. November 3rd was election day here in the United States. I know that I have some of you who tune in from all around the world, whether that be France. I have some people from Nigeria, Australia, New Zealand, and I appreciate every single one of you who is listening. This is also applicable to those of you who are in a government where you elect your officials and where you vote your officials in.
So as of the time of recording this podcast, this is November 6th, it's three days after the election, and there really aren't any certain results as to whether President Trump is going to be reelected or if Vice President Biden is going to start his first term in January as the President of the United States.
It's at a standstill. They're counting votes. I know a lot of the people who I'm following, a lot of the people who I'm connected with, a lot of the people who I'm friends with are super, super stressed out because they're either on one side of the coin or they're on the other side. They're like, man, I really want President Trump to be reelected. Then I have a lot of people who I know who are also [pro-Biden] and they want Biden to be reelected. It's been the topic of conversation over the past week. Obviously, for good reason, it is something that is a very big event in American culture and American history.
It also has a ripple effect into your personal lives, in a wide range of different things, based off of tax plans, based off of tax rates, based off of certain viewpoints when it comes to Medicare and Medicaid. It's just like the economic effects also.
For example, I know a lot of people are speculating that if Biden gets elected, the stock market's going to crash. I'm not saying that it will. I'm not saying that it won't. I'm trying to approach this in a very unbiased way. But regardless, there is going to be a personal impact on every single one of our lives, whether big or whether small. That impact, we are going to be able to control based off of controlling our actions on a small and on a personal level. I don't say small in the sense that your personal actions are not meaningful. But I'm saying this in a way of your personal actions compared to the actions of a country or of a nation or as a group of people collectively are rather tiny.
The more you grow and the more influence you have, the more your actions are going to have an effect on other people or on your business or on your local community. [Think] about your local representatives who are in your city. Those representatives have a little bit more influence than you do. The mayor of your city has more influence than the city representatives or the council members. Then on top of that, the governor has more influence on a larger group of people. You could argue that celebrities, you could argue that public figures such as Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates, they have a lot of leverage and power and influence to where their decisions, even if they make them on a small level, will have a huge effect.
I remember when Jeff Bezos was getting divorced from his wife, [MacKenzie], and that was the number one topic in the news. But [MacKenzie] became the most wealthy woman in the entire world because of a decision that was made on a personal level. Because of their status, that small decision became huge.
You're probably wondering, how does this all tie into one topic? That simply is that you cannot control everything that is going on around you. You cannot control the world, you cannot control the outcome of the election, you can do things to influence it in a legal way, I would hope. You can do certain things to maybe express your viewpoints and convert other people to your same ideologies or beliefs or morals. But at the same time, you have to be in control of your own life. You cannot give other people leverage or control over you. What I see a lot of people doing right now, and I'm sure you've noticed this if you've been paying attention to the media or any people in your life, is that most people are letting other people control their emotions and letting other people control how they feel, how they act, or what they are doing in their day-to-day lives.
I know a lot of people spent the election day staring at the polls all freaking day, and I found myself doing that here and there, but what is that doing for my life? How is that contributing to my success, my vision, and where I'm trying to go in life? It doesn't. Right, staring at a map and refreshing the page is the equivalent of going to Twitter and refreshing your feed and going back and forth, back and forth, seeing if your favorite role model or celebrity tweeted something new. Or going to Instagram and getting lost in your [Explore page]. It is quite literally the equivalent of that.
I'm here to tell you that no matter the outcome of the election, no matter what side you are on, Biden or Trump or even a third party or maybe you're just indifferent, that does not matter as much as your decisions in your personal life matter. Guys, I know a lot of times people put a weight on the president.
They put a weight on the person to give them free stuff, or they put a weight on the president to pass legislation that they agree with and that they believe in. But at the same time, those people are at such a huge level and they're out of reach for the average American. You can do things to express your voice and express your opinion, but unless you're getting into politics as a politician, or you're trying to be an activist [by] nature, your voice does not matter in the sense that you're going to be able to spark change. It's possible, but if it does not line up with your goals, with who you're trying to be in your career or in your future, with what your life is looking like, your voice is not going to really have a large impact.
It's just going to be taking away from your own life, and from your own actions, and from your own energy to devote towards your actual goals, and towards the things that matter.
I'm not saying that your voice doesn't matter in the literal sense of, you're just a nobody, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that. I don't want you to misinterpret what I'm saying. But unless politics, pursuing that aspect of life and government, is what you are doing in life, you should be spending more time on your own hustle or on your own. I don't want to use the word hustle. I hate that word. It's programmed in my mind, [so I'm] getting rid of it. But you need to take that energy and devote it towards those actions in your life that will get you the results that you want, whether that's physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, or financially.
If you're building a business, how do you have the energy to build a business that is going to be scaled to six, seven, and eight figures if you're spending 90% of your day scrolling through Instagram, paying attention to political opinions, or refreshing Google and seeing the election results to see if the final votes in Georgia have been counted?
I'll check it here and there, but I am not letting it take up and consume the real estate in my mind. I know that there's been a meme going around that some topics, or some people, stay in your mind rent free. It's the number one thing that you think about, whether that's a significant other, whether that's a celebrity crush, whether that's your business. What is taking up the most real estate and the most time and energy in your mind right now? Is it politics? I want you to ask yourself that question right now. If it is politics, you need to relieve and alleviate yourself of that stress and of that weight and refocus and realign yourself with what is truly important in your life.
Where is your health at right now? Is your health where you want it to be? Are your finances where you want them to be? Could you be making more money? Do you want to be making more money? That's a better question. Do you want to be in better shape? Do you want to have better relationships? Do you want to have more influence online? Are you trying to build up a personal brand for yourself? Are you trying to become more educated? What is important to you? You rank those things out. I talk about this in what seems like every single episode, just really emphasizing the understanding of what you want.
A close person who's in my life is going through a major life change and they're quitting their job. We were having a conversation the other day and that person was like, I really want to write a book, but it seems like I've put that on the back burner for so long.
I haven't really focused in on what I wanted to do in my life because I was working jobs and because I was doing other things and starting up some different side businesses. But I never really did the one thing that I really wanted to do. I was talking to them and I said, well, if the book is what you really want to do, if that's the one thing you put on the back burner, why don't you bring it to the forefront of your mind and actually start pursuing the vision for what you want in life. That is what I am all about. That is what this podcast is all about, reminding yourself or really encouraging you to go after the things that you once wanted but put behind you because the influences of the world got in your head.
Because your mom told you that you couldn't pursue that dream or because your significant other was like, you need to focus on getting a real job or stuff like that. That is what I'm all about. But you cannot go and actually chase after your vision and effectively become successful. You could chase after your vision, but are you going to become successful at it? Chances are you will not because you are not devoting the amount of effort, time, or energy that you should be devoting to it simply because you're devoting it to other sources. That's really, if I could sum up this podcast up to now, it would be, pay attention to where your energy is going. This goes outside of politics, with everything else that is going on in the world. Are you paying attention to the coronavirus right now?
Are you paying attention to wars? Are you paying attention? I remember back in the beginning of 2020, everybody's like, World War 3, oh my God. Everybody was paying attention and devoting their energy to that and devoting their energy to COVID and devoting their energy to the election and to everything else that is going on. Few people were actually devoting that energy to the things in their life that were important on a personal level. I'm not saying that any of these subjects that I just mentioned are not important, because they are. But that does not mean that just because something is super important, you should spend all of your time dwelling on it or thinking about it or reminiscing about it.
There's a point where you have to recognize what has happened, you have to acknowledge what has happened, and you have to move forward at a rapid pace, at a quick pace, and focus on what you need to focus on.
Realign yourself with that vision and go in that direction. Acknowledge it, view it, accept it, and then leave and move on. Make a transition, and really, you have to acknowledge it. So what? If you cannot control it, then why are you spending so much time thinking about it? Same thing about dwelling on your past. Are you thinking about the same thing that happened back in 2015 or what you should have said in that argument or what you should have done differently, or are you focusing on what you're doing today and where you're going? That's been a big part of my life that I've had to focus on because I had this very bad thing where I was OCD about rethinking and reminiscing over my past. I would beat myself up, but I was devoting all of my energy towards that and I was not moving forward in life.
I had the self awareness to acknowledge that that's what I was doing, and then I went ahead and focused on where I was going. That's why I'm able to tell you right now that it makes a lot more sense focusing on the things that are important on a personal level than what is important on a global scale or on a scale where everybody else is working. See, the people who are actually succeeding right now are the people who are acknowledging what is going on, or maybe not even paying attention to what is going on, and selfishly pursuing their own goals. There's nothing wrong with being selfish as long as you're not [trampling] on the lives and well-being of other people.
You have to be selfish about your goals. I did an episode on that earlier where I was brutally honest, saying, be selfish about what you want in life.
Guys, I'm not looking for anybody else to dictate my life but myself. So again, where is your energy going? Now, the next thing that I want to talk about is something that I was thinking about earlier today when I hit the gym. That is, are you falling behind on where you're trying to be in life? To give you a little bit of a backstory, I've slacked off on my physical health lately. It's been months since I've actually had a really solid workout where I broke into a sweat. I've done maybe two or three workouts in the past month and I feel horrible. I've gained weight.
I've gotten a little bit more flab on me than I would like. Really, since back in 2018, I haven't put as much emphasis on my health as I should have.
I was falling behind and it would get worse, and then my diet would decrease, and [so would my] health and well-being. I would eat worse, I would eat crappier food, I would go to fast food restaurants or I would overindulge in things. I was just feeling kind of gluttonous, I'm not going to lie. I recognized it, and I was like, you know what, I'm glad that I recognize and acknowledge this right now, and that I'm kind of transitioning into this attitude of, hey, I was falling behind, that's okay, what can I do to get on track? Because what most people do in life is they'll acknowledge what they're doing and that what they're doing is wrong, and then they'll procrastinate and put it off. That's why people get beer bellies. That's why people get a couple hundred pounds overweight.
That's why people let their marriages fail. That's why they let their businesses go bankrupt, because they see and acknowledge problems. But instead of actually taking action on the things that they notice, they just let it slide and they procrastinate and put it off and put it off and put it off, until eventually it becomes a major, major issue. It's like if you see a hole in the wall, or let's say the foundation of the house is starting to fail. Maybe the house is a little bit older and the foundation is eroding, and you see that and you notice it. You could either go and get that foundation fixed or you could put it off for a couple more years or for a couple more months.
The next thing you know, you have a major hurricane or storm blow through and the foundation of the house sinks in. Now you have $25,000 in damage, whereas you could have paid a couple thousand dollars and gotten it fixed, but you let it fail.
Or maybe the entire house falls down. I used the example the other [day], a couple podcasts ago, about the dam. You see a little crack in the dam, and then eventually it grows and expands into a major, major issue, and the pressure goes against this one crack in the dam. Then next thing you know, the entire dam breaks, and the entire thing falls. That's what most people do in their lives. They acknowledge things, and they do not act on the things that they should act on. I'm here to tell you that if you have something in your life and the results are not where you want them to be, don't put off what you need to do. You can't be lazy about this. You can't be lazy about your pursuit of goals and your vision and of success.
You have to be very, very, I would call it, ambitious and aggressive. Be militant about your goals. Be militant about your vision. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the only way that you actually have success. It's having that 1% mindset, not just in the sense of 1% financially, but what would the top 1% of people in physical shape be doing right now? Acknowledge what you want. I keep using the word acknowledge because that speaks to self-awareness. Acknowledgement is self-awareness. If you are self-aware, you are able to acknowledge the things that the majority of people would not be self-aware enough to acknowledge in the first place.
This is giving you an advantage over everybody else. This is literally your golden ticket. Willy Wonka's golden ticket towards success, towards achievement, towards wealth, towards wellbeing. I know a lot of people too, especially when it comes to financials, they don't really emphasize health.
What a lot of people do is they let their health get so bad because they're pursuing their wealth that they try to buy back their health when they achieve that wealth. It doesn't work like that. Part of becoming this person who you're trying to become is pursuing your potential in all areas of life, not just in one aspect, but in all areas. What could you do to be better? What could you do to improve your well-being and your status? That is the question that you have to ask yourself. The president isn't going to do this. Biden isn't going to tell you to get up in the morning to go work out.
He's not going to tell you to send those messages to prospects. He's not going to tell you to close clients. President Trump is not going to be over here in your ear telling you to create content for social media or to go out and network or to go hit the gym. He's not going to do that.
Your third party candidate, Kanye West, isn't going to be over here motivating you and inspiring you. You have to do it yourself, and it doesn't matter if you don't feel like it, you just got to do it. You got to do it regardless. That's where the magic will happen. If you are able to train yourself to do the things that you do not want to do and you do it anyway, that's the 1% mindset. That's the attitude that you have to have in order to go out and actually become this individual that is living up to their potential. That's what I'm striving for. I'm running on the treadmill today and I'm just focused in, I'm listening to some music, I'm blasting some metal in my ears.
I'm not even going to lie, and I'm thinking to myself, I am doing this because I know that my health is not where it is, not at the level that I know it could be at. I'm reminding myself and I'm putting this mental image in my brain of, this is what I am working towards.
This is the shape that I'm going to look at. When you find it difficult to look in the mirror or when you find it difficult to wake up in the morning and get going in the day because you're so far behind in certain aspects of your life, that's a clear red flag. Yo, Isaac, yo, Jimmy, yo, Billy Bob Joel, this is [not] okay. It's time to get your shit together. Stop babying yourself. You know, with that being said, guys, no matter the outcome of the election, no matter the outcome of the representatives in your state, the House of Representatives, or no matter what craziness happens in the next couple of months of 2020 or 2021, none of it will matter as much as your personal decisions matter in your life.
That's for you to decide. Where do you want to come out in 2020? How do you want to start 2021? How do you want to go ahead and end off another birth year? Do you want to be in the same shape that you were in last year? Do you want to be in the same financial bracket as you were for the past 20 years, or are you actually trying to scale? Are you actually really serious about your potential? I know it's easy. Everybody's probably saying, yeah, I want to be better, I don't want to be in the same [place]. Prove it. If you say it, you have to do it. Just saying words and not following through with action gives you a bad rep, makes you look like the boy who cried wolf.
I did that for the longest time. Eventually I got away from it and I was just thinking to myself, Isaac, if I'm actually going to be about this, I have to do it, I have to show it to myself. That's when I started to take myself seriously and I stopped being a little wuss. How bad do you really want this? How bad do you want your goals? This is just some real talk. I've talked to a lot of people over the past couple of years and over the past couple of months, and they're like, I want to do this. I want to be big. Their actions are not matching their words. It's not that their actions are not matching their visions. The 1% don't let everything else going on around.
Them, hold them down, hold them back, or let it be a detriment to what they want in life. Have the attitude of the 1%, not financially, but in all areas. What would the top performer in this aspect of life be doing? How would they be thinking? You have to think and visualize and imagine yourself in the place that you want to be and follow that up with action. Follow that vision up with enough militance and enough aggressiveness to where success is inevitable. That's what I'm doing and that's what I want you to do. Thank you so much for tuning into another episode, and be on the lookout for Friday Fire this upcoming Friday, obviously. I got some really cool things lining up in the future. The podcast is going in the direction that I want it to be.
Got my website up and going. Finally, isaacmashman.com, go check it out. Still got a lot of things that I'm working on with that. But hey, if you're interested in personal branding or getting your brand looking right online, I've been working with a lot of different clients lately: some actresses, some actors, some models, some entrepreneurs, some audio engineers, some rappers, some producers. I've been working with a lot of different people. If you're trying to be taken seriously on and offline and build something that is going to have a long-term level of success, hit me up. Let's go in and talk. I'm more than willing to work with anybody and everybody. Let's go ahead and crush the next couple of months leading into the new year. As always, always chase after your vision.
Much love.