The Drive to Success

Isaac Mashman1:24

This is kind of a combined podcast. You're going to be asking me some questions, and I'm going to be asking you some questions. So the listening audience, both of our audiences really, are going to get a lot of value from the things that we're going to be talking about today.

Isaac Mashman3:11

Right, right. I do, and I always said [Gary Vee] got me into it. I was thinking about it the other day, about what actually got me started. There was this other entrepreneur at the time. I remember back in high school, I was like 17, I wasn't even 18 yet, and I was watching this one entrepreneur. I can't remember his exact name, but he was like 17, 18 years old and he was running a clothing line. He was doing drop shipping and a couple other things, and I was watching his moves, and from there I got inspired. But Gary Vee was the main figure through whom I really saw the potential of what could be done.

It's crazy how much can change in a matter of a year, in a matter of two years. It hasn't even been two years for me on this journey, and it's already been an unbelievable roller coaster: good, bad and indifferent.

Isaac Mashman7:29

Basically, it was called The Isaac Mashman Show, and I really didn't put too much thought into the actual name. Looking back, I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't know how to speak, I didn't know any of those things. So I decided to basically pull the plug on the show in June, after a series of different events. And I was like, you know what, I have a gift, and that gift is being able to speak, being able to articulate my thoughts into helping other people. So I was like, I'm going to go and get started with this podcast, and I had a close friend of mine who was encouraging me to really get going on it.

And I was like, all right, I'm going to just [jump ship] and I'm going to make it happen. So I started the Hustler's Choice podcast back in the beginning of June. The goal is to help people take their hustle and take their life to unprecedented levels that they've never been to before. And the way that I'm working on doing that is by [relaying] the information and the experiences that I've lived and been able to go through, because age is just a number. I've had a lot of experiences just in the past two years. I believe in learning from another person, because if you really want to become successful, rather than taking 20 years to learn something, I would much rather learn it in a six month time frame from another person's mistakes.

So the goal of the podcast is to really provide value and to bring on entrepreneurs such as you. I did an interview with a producer the other day. I am going to be doing rappers and media influencers, all of these people, to really work together and talk about what they went through, the different experiences that got them to where they are today.

Isaac Mashman9:34

Absolutely. A lot of people [don't want to be the quiet one], but that's the wrong mentality, because I would much rather be the silent person in the corner, observing and analyzing, than the person who has all the attention on him and doesn't know anything.

Isaac Mashman11:42

Amen. I'm grateful for that as well, because a lot of [people are in their] 40s or late 30s and they're just now getting started, and we're over here fresh, young, fresh out of college, fresh out of high school, and we're working to make a difference. We're working to be genuine people.

Isaac Mashman12:28

The way that I view it is, whenever I hit a certain level of income, don't get me wrong, I'm going to celebrate. I might buy a Rolex, I might go ahead and buy a [Louis] belt or something like that, but I'm not going to be buying that every single week and making it seem like that's my job. I would much rather take that same amount of money that they would be spending and reinvest it: invest it into real estate, into stocks, into forex, into a whole variety of different things, to generate an income, to be able to retire my mom. Because it's the cool thing, right?

Every single entrepreneur says that. That's something we can all agree on. Andy Frisella, Gary Vee, we all talk about how fake the space is. It's easy to say that you're an entrepreneur, easy to start a business, but I don't think people quite understand it. I'm still learning myself what is actually involved with it, because right now, in my present state, I am by no means where I want to be. [I'm putting] my wins into perspective, and really putting what I've been able to accomplish in perspective.

Isaac Mashman13:52

I was thinking about this yesterday. I have to be careful the way that I influence these people, because I have people watching, I have people observing me. I remember I was in Vegas, and this is just a really quick story. I was out there for a company convention, and we had 12 guys packed in one hotel room. That's a story that a lot of people aren't willing to go through, but that's the stuff that we have to go through in order to get from point A to point B, and those experiences add up. So your experience as a race car driver last year, and jumping from that job, from that nine to five mentality, to working for yourself, that was a huge transition, and I really applaud you for making it. Yeah, man.

Isaac Mashman18:35

Absolutely. Yeah, it's wild, because within a year you're able to go from working a nine to five, working at Domino's, or more like a nine to nine, because you're working every day all week. And it's wild because you go from that lifestyle to living the lifestyle of your dreams, going to LA, going to Vegas, going to Atlanta, going to Florida, going to all these different places and racing and making good money.

Isaac Mashman19:45

You're talking about how you just refuse to get back into that nine to five. It's either going to work or it's not going to work. That's basically the mentality you have, and I have to say that I have the same mentality. In my own personal life, I'm grateful right now to have some very close family members who are very supportive and who have given me that air cover to make my dreams happen and to move forward. But it's really sad. It's sad because you're literally making the dreams of another person happen, and people get into such a cycle. I talked about this in another interview that I had, I believe it was with Dre. I was working at a grocery store. I was working at Publix for a couple months, and I had a [conversation that day], man.

Isaac Mashman20:32

[He said,] you're getting trapped in that cycle of working that nine to five, and I was like, crap, he's right. So I quit. I quit, and it's been like six months since then, and I've been able to make a lot of improvements. I would have to say a lot of the improvements and a lot of the development I've been able to accomplish have been on a personal level, a level that most people aren't able to see, because people really underestimate what personal development can do for a person just because the physical results haven't manifested themselves yet. You can know that changes are being made on a personal level, on a spiritual level, on an emotional level, on a mental level.

Because if you're not ready to make a million dollars, whenever you make that million dollars, what are you going to do with it? You're going to be stupid, you're going to blow it, you're not going to be able to handle it.

Isaac Mashman23:30

Oh man, when you become someone extraordinary, when you want to be above average, you're going to have a lot of people looking and staring at you like, what the hell is this dude doing? He goes from being that kid in class, the one who's destined to go to college, and next thing you know, he's not going to college. It comes with a lot of pressure. I would have to say overcoming myself, overcoming my mind. I'm actually in the process of working on a short book that's going to be titled Overcoming the Mind. I haven't decided on the title yet, but it's going to be talking about some of the different things that you can do to overcome yourself.

Because as soon as your mentality slips, as soon as you start thinking from a perspective of I cannot make this happen, this isn't possible, this is too big, my dreams are too big, you're not going to get anywhere. You're going to be in this depressed state, in this depressed mood. It's really about being able to stand alone against all odds. When the going gets tough, are you going to keep going, are you going to push through, or are you going to fall down? I'm a firm believer that it's not how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up. And I can say that just in the past year and a half of being on this journey, I've been knocked down countless times, and every single time I get up, and I'm like, I don't know how I get up.

I don't know how I've gotten through it. I just keep pushing, I just keep moving forward, I just keep going. I tell myself, the times are rough right now. It looks like it's rainy, it's a thunderstorm, nothing's going right. And I remind myself, what am I doing this for? I'm doing this for the freedom, I'm doing this for the lifestyle, I'm doing this for how many lives I'm going to be able to impact. I remind myself of those things, and I remind myself that I don't want to go back to that nine to five. I don't want to go work a job for another person.

I don't want to be sitting around at Thanksgiving or Christmas talking about how much I hate my life. Man, I was listening to some people the other day, and they were just gossiping about how much they hate other people, and I'm just sitting here like, what? It makes no sense to me.

Isaac Mashman25:55

That's not enjoying life, that's not living life. When you come to these realizations, you have a standard that you want to hold yourself to. So for me, I've just been working on steadily holding myself to that standard, reminding myself of the things that I don't want to live, and instead focusing on the things I do want in life.

Isaac Mashman28:29

Absolutely. It's literally going back to elementary school, man. That is how I view it. I view a nine to five as school. Because in school, if you cheat on a test, there are repercussions. If you were chewing gum in class back in elementary school, there were repercussions. If you hit someone, there are repercussions. There are rules and regulations and all that stuff, and you were at school in fear a lot of the time, because you're like, I don't want to get caught. And working a job is kind of the same way. You're like, I know that I'm one screw up away from getting fired. If you're constantly working in that state of fear, how do you expect to ever escape it?

It just blows my mind. I see these memes on the internet, the jokes where you and your friend are talking and not doing work, and the boss comes in, and they're both scared. God, man, that's a topic for another conversation. But I really want to talk about how you are finding clients, because I know that we have some sales people in the audience, and I know that we have some people who are marketers, [aspiring] entrepreneurs. So what are you doing to find new clientele?

Isaac Mashman33:33

Absolutely. You recognized you really weren't getting results. So you saw that, you made the change, you made the transition, and now you're seeing the results. A lot of people are the definition of insanity. What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same exact thing over and over again and expecting a different result. A lot of people do that. They would be doing the same exact thing that you were doing. They would sit down and do the pros and cons, write out the list and all those things, just for the business to tell them no. But your approach seems to be very, very effective. So I really want to applaud you for that, Zane.

Isaac Mashman34:45

One of the things I also want to touch on is, you were speaking about Tai Lopez. I'm not going into whether Tai Lopez is real or not, but a lot of people think that just because someone sells a course, they're fake. I don't think a lot of people quite understand how successful Tai is. You and I both had the opportunity to see him speak. He knows his shit, man. He was literally throwing out multimillion dollar business ideas on stage in front of 35,000 people. He was going through individual websites and critiquing them and all these other things. But I want to talk about how you bought into one of these courses.

You got into one of these courses, but what did you do that most people don't do? You actually went through it and you used the information. A lot of people buy a course and expect the course to make them millionaires. No. You buy the course, you go through the course, you apply the information, and then you get the results. It requires work and effort. If you want to go ahead and invest 200, 400, 600 dollars into a course but never do anything with it, that's your own waste of money. And that applies to courses and business and network marketing, everything. It's just laziness. It goes back to laziness, and that's something that I personally had to deal with. If you know what you need to be doing, it's up to you to actually get off your ass and make it happen.

Isaac Mashman37:19

Absolutely. And self-discipline also goes with willpower. A lot of people lack the willpower to say no, whether that's a friend asking them to go hang out [late at night]. A lot of people feel obligated to say yes. Or, for example, the overall power of peer pressure: being in a situation where someone says, hey, you want to pass the joint, pass this, pass that, and people aren't able to say no. They don't have the willpower to. A lot of people think that is just such a big mountain to overcome, and the way that I view it, it's really about small wins. I've been talking about small wins a lot because I've really come to understand the power of them.

Willpower is built over time. I was listening to an audio by Ed Mylett, and one of his guests was a neuroscientist, whatever you want to call it. One of the things that he was talking about is that every single time you consciously overcome your brain, and you say no, you're not going to do something, or yes, you're going to get up right that moment, it is establishing new neural pathways in your brain. It is establishing new habits, new formations. It's making you stronger. The brain is a muscle, and if you don't use a muscle, what does it do? It breaks down. If you use the muscle, it builds up.

So for anyone going through a difficult time right now, where you feel like you don't have the willpower or the self-discipline to get things done, or to say no, or to get your ass off the Xbox and actually make things happen on your social media or in your business: take it one step at a time. Set a goal, make the decision, and tell yourself that it is enough. This is enough. I am done doing this.

Isaac Mashman40:24

[It's about] coming to the acknowledgement that whenever you're productive and [winning], whenever you're actually moving towards your dreams and making your goals happen, you're happier. That's big. If you recognize that, and recognize that whenever you're making moves and making changes, doing podcasts, doing whatever you're doing, that's when you can really get into that grind state and realize and recognize your true power, your true potential, what actually makes you happy.

Isaac Mashman40:52

I love video games myself. I used to play video games all the time.

Isaac Mashman41:01

Don't get me wrong, sitting down playing the Xbox for a couple hours can be dope, playing Call of Duty or getting on and playing Counter Strike. But at the same exact time, that's [not the best use] of my time. We're literally living our life in a virtual simulation if we're just on a video game console. That's not contributing to our success. Now, if you want to be into esports or any of those things, by all means. If that's what you're doing and you want to make a career out of it, do it.

Isaac Mashman43:35

[We] talked about what [my] challenge [is], but what is yours?

Isaac Mashman46:50

You touched on how the things that work for [other people] won't always work for you. For example, journaling. I've never gotten big into journaling. So many people tell me, Isaac, you have to try journaling, or you have to try doing X, Y and Z, and I'm just like, that's not the way I operate. I don't operate like that. And one thing that I do, and you can probably agree with me on this: no one's perfect. Gary Vee's not perfect. Grant Cardone is not perfect. So what I do is I look for the positives in every single person. My mentors, the virtual mentors that I have, I look at them and I look at what their strengths are, what I can go ahead and take and use in my own personal life, and then I disregard the negative.

I kind of look into every single person and I'm like, okay, what can I learn from you? What can I go ahead and use? Whether that's a sales strategy, or overall, their persona, the way that they act, the way that they present themselves. And then I disregard the negative. From there, you're able to formulate your own strategy that works, your own way to be better, to improve. Only take the positive. Because a lot of people look at these people, for example, [Kim Kardashian]. How many people follow her? Literally, if she was to say jump off a bridge, they would jump off a bridge. You know what I'm saying?

Isaac Mashman48:22

And they're learning too. I'm going to tell you what I would do if I was in your situation, and I want to tell you what has worked for me. It might not always work for you. And that comes with the awareness and the understanding that you have to be able to pick and choose what works and what doesn't work in your own life.

Isaac Mashman50:07

It's not always a scam. Don't get me wrong, college is good for doctors, lawyers, engineers, stuff like that. We need college; college is fundamental for that. But whenever you go to college, it is an investment. If you were to spend a couple million dollars on a company that doesn't take off, that was an investment, and that investment went bad. So if you go into college and you invest your time and money into that and it doesn't pay off, that's a risk, and you know that risk. A college degree does not guarantee a job. There are people who went to college five, ten years ago, who have the degree, and who are still working at the same exact job that they had when they first went into college.

Isaac Mashman53:22

I know that every single struggle that I've ever been through in life has led me up to this point. If I did not go through one struggle, I might not have met some of the people. I would not have been to 10X Growth Con, and we would not have been having this conversation right here, right now. And a lot of people take the opinions of other people so seriously, the criticism from other people so seriously. I don't care about criticism. I'll take your opinion, I'll look at it, and I'll be like, okay, I can actually improve, if the opinion is genuine. But a lot of these haters, a lot of these people who have very loud voices, it's easy to text, it's easy to sit behind a computer screen and type out that hate message. And these people take that opinion way too seriously and don't have the awareness to understand what is making them happier and what's not.

Isaac Mashman55:19

And that's not being stuck up either. A lot of people would think it is, but it's out of self-respect, out of respect for yourself and for what you have going on, because you have to do what makes you happy, right? Do shit you love. You have to run your channel how you want to run your channel, because if someone else was to step in and [run it for you], it's not genuine, it's not actually you. And yeah, man, the basis of this entire podcast has really been talking about self-awareness.

Isaac Mashman56:24

It's by John D. Rockefeller, actually. It was my senior quote: [Don't] be afraid to give up the good to go for the great.

Isaac Mashman57:19

Yeah, man, absolutely. You can find me on isaacmashman.com, my website. I have all my social media up there, and at the same time you can find me on Twitter, Instagram and really any other social media platform at Isaac Mashman. So yeah, man. And then for my man Zane: we connected, what, about two months ago now? I know that you were following my journey on Twitter after the 10X Growth Conference, and we've really established a great friendship that I can't thank you enough for. But the same goes for you, man. Where can people find you?