From Broke to 8 Figures: Ian Prukner's Journey to Win and Mindset Mastery - Episode 2

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Are you ready to hear an incredible success story of someone who went from broke to achieving a multiple 8 figure exit from his insurance business? Join me as I sit down with Ian Prukner, a highly successful entrepreneur and founder of an insurance agency that grew to become one of the largest in the country. Ian shares his inspiring journey of how he overcame adversity and achieved massive success, all while staying true to his values and maintaining a strong work-life balance. Get ready to be inspired and learn the actionable steps you can take to build your own successful business. Tune in now on Spotify, Apple, and YouTube!

Ian Prukner is the author of "Byproduct: Autonomous Success in a Bold New World" and owner of the War Room mastermind. He's trained thousands and thousands of high level entrepreneurs on how to elevate their mind, vision and leadership helping mentor them to success.

If you're looking to accelerate your growth and break out of old habits into a new more advanced level of your game then this podcast is for you!

Ian shares his definition of winning, which involves achieving balance in five areas of life: faith, family, fitness, finance, and future self. He emphasizes the need to constantly improve and strive for greatness, and introduces the concept of the "theory of tens" for achieving success. Ian also discusses his personal journey to success in the insurance and financial services industries, and shares his advice for building trust with oneself, changing beliefs, and overcoming negativity from others.

To connect with Ian and learn more about his work, follow him on Instagram at @ianprukner and text the word "byproduct" to 484848 for free material and a lesson on changing your thinking and belief systems.

Don't procrastinate on your journey to success. Tune in to this episode and take action towards achieving your goals.

As Ian says, "Success leaves clues." Let's learn from those who have achieved success and strive to become a "10" in all areas of our lives.

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To See The Full Video go to "Journey To Win" on Youtube

Transcript

 Brandon (00:00:00) - What's up, everybody here on the Journey to Win? I'm here with Ian Prukner. I'm so excited today, man, you guys don't even know, like this individual. He's gonna bring so much value to you guys today. Um, I was blessed to, to, to meet Ian, you know, at Rob's Sperry's Mastermind in the summer. And ever since, man, I've been following this guy, just watching him win in every area of his life. And as you guys know, that's what the journey to Win is about. It's about helping people win, and not just one pillar, but every area of their life. And so, Ian, welcome to the call, man. I'm super excited to

 Ian (00:00:29) - Have you on here. What's up, Brandon? How are you, my friend? It's an honor to be here hanging out with you and your community. It, it really is an honor to spend some time. I'm excited for our conversation.

Brandon (00:00:38) - Awesome, man. You too. Listen, you know, you, you said that you're, you're the author of Byproduct Autonomous Success in a Bold New World. You have a mastermind, is it called the War Room? Or the War Syndicate?

Ian (00:00:48) - The War Room, yep. The War room.

Brandon (00:00:50) - The war room guys. And he's helping mentor everybody from entrepreneurs to, to everybody really just help elevate and accelerate their lives to a whole new level. And you can talk more about that if you want here in a minute. But your husband, you're a father, you're a leader, you own a digital real estate company. You sold your insurance company for millions and millions of dollars. So, you know, you're just, you're somebody that I look up to. You're somebody that you're too kind. You know, if I could, if, if there was a race and we're racing, you would be the guy that I'm trying to catch. And that's, that's ultimately my goal is I wanna catch you one day.

Ian (00:01:19) - Well, you're, you're far too kind and you guys are having a lot of success in your own right. And building a great family, and I think doing things right and, and that's so important today. You know, I think that the social media world, uh, reiterates to us that not all that glitters is gold. Right? And, uh, there's a, there's a lot of Easter bunnies on there, right? They're look good on the outside, but they're hollow on the inside. You bite into it, and there's not a lot there. And, and, you know, winning is, um, it is a journey. I love, I love what you're talking about there. It's a journey. It's a process. I don't think you're ever done. I think winning really is about who you become. I think there's somebody that God has dreamed for you to, to be and to become, and a path that he's given us to walk.

 Ian (00:02:02) - And I think our job on this planet is to walk that path and to become that person. It's a job that's never done. There are no days off from it. I was just telling one of my mentoring groups, you don't get days off. You get days off of work. Sure. But you don't get days off of becoming the person you were born to be. That's an everyday thing. It's not like today. You just get to say, Hey, you know what? I'm gonna, I'm gonna take five step backwards. I'm gonna crush my habits that I've been working on and make poor decisions and ruin my family. You don't get days off on that stuff. You gotta show up every day, and you gotta bring your a game into things that really matter most.

Brandon (00:02:36) - I love that. So if I was to ask you, because you kind, you touched a little bit on there, uh, about it on there. What is winning to Ian Pruckner? Yeah.

Ian (00:02:43) - Um, I'm gonna give you two things, right? Um, I look at winning as sort of like a, a hole, right? And there's a lot of people that are really, really great at pieces of that hole. It might be finance, it might be fitness, it might be their relationship. But, but I sort of look at, at five F's, faith, family, fitness, finance, future self. Who are you becoming? And we've gotta be winning in all of those areas, or we're not winning at all. It's not a win to be successful in one area, but to lose in other areas. That's not a, that's not a real win, that's a loss, right? What does it profit a man to, to gain the world, but lose his soul or lose his family, or lose your health? What does it profit you to have a great family life, but be broke and miserable and unhealthy?

Ian (00:03:30) - And, and so they all work together. And, and without those five things, I don't think we really can be whole. We're always gonna be empty in some area, and that one area that we're empty is actually gonna impact negatively all the other areas that they, they have to work together in synergy. So winning to me is putting Ws on the board and all five of those areas at the same time. And that's easier said than done. It requires you to, to know what you want, why you want it, make tough choices, honor your commitments, be consistent over long periods of time. You can't win in those areas overnight. Some of those things, they're not given, they're earned the only way there is through the path, through the journey.

Brandon (00:04:14) - So what would you say, because, you know, and we're gonna talk about your journey to win here in just a second, but what would you say the person's just getting started, let's just say in a network marketing business or an insurance company, and they, they feel like they're maybe not having the success that they want to have in the business. You know, they're putting all this time in their, their marriage might be suffering a little bit because of it, but ultimately, like, if you're gonna win, it's gonna be a little bit of, you know, I guess teeter-totter over time, right? You have to give a little bit Sure. In order to get,

Ian (00:04:43) - Yeah. So the first thing I tell you is be better, okay? Because we're struggling because we're not very good yet, we're not very good with our skills. We're not very good with our time management. We're not very good with our network and our relationships, and we can get better at all of those things, which is amazing, right? That's why anybody can be really, really successful. People ask me that all the time. Like, do you really believe that? Or is that just something you say because you want people to join your courses or get involved with you in your business? I really believe that. I believe that anybody can win. Not everybody will win, but anybody can win because winning is a process. It's about getting better at the things that we're not great at yet, right? And so what I would tell you is get better, number one.

Ian (00:05:25) - Okay? And then number two is to understand, uh, I, I, I always taught this. I, I called it the theory of tens brand. And, and basically if you wanna be really successful, and I'm gonna tell you one, one other thing on balance, okay? But the theory of tens says if you wanna be really, really successful at anything in life, whether that's music or sports or business, or your family, or as a pastor or whatever else, you might be, you need to be a 10 on a scale of one to 10, you gotta be a 10. You gotta be at the top of your game, okay? Because listen, greatness pays, mediocrity does not, okay? And so you've gotta be great. But the truth is, most of us, um, you know, we don't just, you know, come out of the womb like a superstar at something. We've gotta learn those things.

Ian (00:06:10) - And so we've gotta be a 10 on a scale of one to 10. And so some of those points from one to 10 are naturally occurring, and some of them are unable, okay? And so you gotta make sure that you are, you are doing your part to stack on top what is naturally occurring. And some people, you know, they come in there really successful very quickly at different things. Well, what's happening? They came in as an eight, their previous life experiences, what they went through, what they had to learn, where they were surrounded, okay? That gave them some of those points, didn't give it to 'em, they earned it before they got to, to this venture. And so they started as an eight. They only had to make up two. Versus somebody like me who came into, uh, in, into a business, uh, that I'd never been in business before 15, 16 years ago, didn't really have any marketable skills.

Ian (00:06:59) - I was like a two. And so I had a lot further to go. The good news is, is we can all get to that 10 if we're willing to put in, in the time on balance really quickly. You know, you said, Hey, their, their marriage might be suffering because of it. Again, that's just about getting better and, and putting your time where it needs to go on purpose, right? But one of the things that I try to, to teach people, Brandon, is there's really like three universes of balance. Most people think about balance when it comes to time, right? And they say, well, I'm out of balance. My, my work life balance is off. And what they're referring to is their time is really going heavily in, in one direction. And for periods of time, you're gonna have short term imbalance for long term balance, right?

Ian (00:07:39) - When it comes to time. But there are two other universes of balance, resources and emotion or engagement, okay? And so, let me give you a picture of this. You may not have a lot of time to be with your kids when you're in, in the startup phases of your business might require a lot of time, okay? But the time you do have, you can resource and you can engage. So what do I mean by that one hour with my kids listening to them involved in their life, doing the things they love? An active parent is worth eight hours sitting there watching TV together. So my time might be out of balance, but I can pull that balance, that holistic balance, all three of these universes working together. I can pull that balance in by being overbalanced on some of these other things, right? Okay. I can give them incredible experiences. I can do other things that, that by overdoing in these areas, I can pull that balance back to center. And it's the same thing in every area of our life. There's time, there's resource, and there's engagement. And so when we're short on one, we need to make sure that we're, we're cognizant about overdoing on the others so that we can bring balance holistically.

Brandon (00:08:59) - Man, I love that. We can stop the podcast

Ian(00:09:02) - <laugh>

Brandon (00:09:02) - <laugh>. So, okay, so, I mean, I've heard your story and I want them to hear your story. And you built a massive empire in the insurance industry. You know, I mean, you're living some of the stuff that you're talking about right now, because I know when you first got started, like your story and, and you didn't have a lot of money. You, you,

Ian (00:09:17) - Yeah, we

Brandon (00:09:18) - Were broke. You didn't have a lot of success yet. No. Yeah. So like, how did you get started? Why'd you choose insurance? Tell us that story.

Ian (00:09:23) - Yeah, so it was an accident. <laugh> a divine accident, really, you know? Um, I was super broke, right? Um, I got married at 21, uh, to my wife Jessica, of now going on 18 years together. Uh, married 20 years together, total. I got married at 21. And, uh, I was still in college. I, um, was playing music for a living. Like that's what I did. I had no business sense whatsoever. And, uh, so we actually both worked for a church. I was a music pastor for a, a, a pretty moderate sized church in Michigan. And I love what I did. It wasn't a job. It was sort of a calling to me. And for any of you who know musicians, if you can make enough money playing music to survive, like they're the happiest people on earth. And that was me. Um, but I was married and we were starting a life together.

Ian (00:10:11) - We just bought a new condo. She worked for the church. I worked for the church. And, uh, and things were really, really tight. We made about 60 grand a year between the two of us, which in the area we were living in was not very much money. And so I was working other jobs to just make ends meet. I was teaching music lessons and playing in bands, and I would sing out weddings and funerals for a hundred bucks. If your family member died and you had a hundred dollars, I'd be there, you know what I mean? Like tell to, to just do whatever I could. And, um, and so we were working for the church. We were about a year into our tenure there, and I was making 30 grand a year, and I was supposed to be making 40, but they were in the middle of a building projects.

Ian (00:10:52) - They said, well, you know, come in at 30 and within the next year we'll get you to 40. So I kept the other side gigs up, and, uh, you know, right around a year in six months to a year in, I got called into my boss's office one day, and I thought for sure he'd seen all the extra work I was putting in. So I was the music guy, right? But I was helping with the kids and helping with youth. I spent my first anniversary Brandon, as a pirate in a vacation bible school play. My wife was a princess. I was a pirate. We didn't go out to eat. We didn't celebrate. That's what we did, right? We, we just were all in sort of people. And so I thought for sure we would be getting this raise early, right? So I'm telling her like, Hey, this is gonna be great.

Ian (00:11:30) - We're gonna go to Applebee's tonight. It's gonna be amazing. And I sat down in his office, and I don't know if any of you've ever taken part in a meeting that was not gonna go well, okay? But I knew the moment I walked into that guy's office, I could feel it in the atmosphere. It was just thick. Like something isn't gonna be right. And he said, Ian, I'm so sorry to tell you this, but we're actually behind now in the church bond payment effective immediately, we're cutting everybody's pay 10%. And, uh, we're not sure if and when we're gonna be able to reinstate it. I'm really, really sorry. I'll try to give you some extra time off. And here I am working four jobs, right? I'm like, I don't need more time to do something else. I need this to work out for me, right?

Ian (00:12:09) - And, and we were broke. We had no money. We did our, our, um, budget that night, and we were gonna be about $250 a month behind it. So my radar went up for ways I can make $250. So my best thinking was I was gonna be a night manager at Rite Aid, which like a convenience store, right? And I was gonna work three midnights a week for $14 and 55 cents an hour, and after taxes that would make up that $250. And so I applied and I was going through that process. I was just about to start. And my boss at the church came to me again. He said, Ian, hey, are you still looking to make extra money? And I said, Stephen, you are my boss. With all due respect, that is the dumbest thing that you've ever asked me. You see what you pay me here, right?

Ian (00:12:54) - Like, of course I'm looking to make extra money. And he says, there's a guy that goes to the church that does this thing. That's what he says, right? Does this thing. And you could do it part-time and you'd probably be good at it. You should talk to him. Said, well, I couldn't make any less than you're paying me, so, so give me his number. So I called this guy up and I didn't know him. He would know me, right? Because I'm always on stage, but I didn't know who he was and said, Hey, my boss said you might have an opportunity for me. He said, yeah. He said, well, I'd like to talk to you about it. He said, how about you come by in an hour, said in an hour? Okay, I'll be by. It was a Wednesday afternoon in August of 2006. I pull up to this guy's house.

Ian (00:13:31) - No joke, Brandon, he's got this castle looking house on the lake. Now, I grew up in a 900 square foot house. My parents still live there today. We didn't know anybody who was wealthy. We were broke. Okay? I pulled up to this guy's house, no joke. I'm like, if this guy's not selling drugs to kids, I'm in, I don't care what he's doing. I wasn't real picky, right? Like I understood by looking at where this guy lived, he knew something about making money that I didn't right? And I was smart enough to not hate on people who were doing better than me, right? Gosh, there are so many people who are offended at the people they should be being mentored by and learning from. And so I'm like, I don't care what it is, I'm gonna do it. Right? And so he showed me, um, he showed me an opportunity to work in the financial services business.

Ian (00:14:18) - I knew nothing about money. I knew nothing about finance. I never run a business. He said, you can do it part-time. I'll teach you. And so I said, well, sounds good. And so I started doing that part-time, and my goal was to make $250 a month, Brandon. That was why I started that business. And it just got a little carried away over the last 20 years, you know, just got a little outta hand, okay? And, um, my first few months in the business, I made a thousand bucks a month spare time, and I was rich. I'm like, this is amazing, right? Like, I was happy as could be. I had no desire to ever run a business full-time. I thought that I would always be, um, leading worship outta church. And through another series of events, um, at the church, I ended up, uh, getting my pay cut again and having some things that were promised to me not go through.

Ian (00:15:03) - And in that moment, I became psychologically unemployable, right? Like, here I am, 21 years old, did everything right, got grades, went to school, went to college, got a good job, and I'm doing the right things and the wrong things are happening. And I'm thinking like, if a church isn't gonna take care of me, I better take care of me, right? And so I made a decision that I was gonna, I was gonna work on going into business full-time. And so I called my mentor, I said, Hey, what do I need to do? He, he gave me a list and I set a goal six months out that I would be full-time and making 10 grand a month, which was huge money for me. I was making $1,850 a month, uh, take home at the time from my main job. And that was my goal. And I, I started telling that to everybody and sharing it everywhere I went.

Ian (00:15:50) - In six months later to the day I quit my job, I opened my first office my first month. I made more than $10,000 in a month, and never had made less than that since that point. And that business just kind of skyrocketed. We went from making 10 grand a month to 20 to 40 to 60 to 80 to a hundred to 120. And, and that built a, a recurring million dollar plus income for me that basically went on autopilot. And the things I learned in that business, you know, I, I, I wrote a book. I ended up starting some mentoring programs, uh, producing a lot of, um, you know, leadership and training and development material starting other businesses. And it just sort of snowballed from there. So last year, uh, we were actually fortunate. We, we, uh, did an exit from that business. It was a multiple eight figure exit and, um, just absolutely life-changing. Uh, we've got a handful of different businesses that we run, uh, run right now. And, uh, we're actually in talks with some private equity right now and a nine figure deal on one of them, which is really, uh, pretty amazing. And, uh, so things are just the, the, they're pretty incredible. It, it didn't happen overnight. It took us 15 years of doing the right thing every single day, but compounded efforts, like compounded interests make a big difference over time.

Brandon (00:17:11) - Man, that's incredible. You're your story. I mean, first off, you're one of the few to be able to get started at 21 years old and not just have short-term success, but have long-term success. So I'm very curious, by the way, congratulations on all of that. Oh, thank you. And, and I know all of it was earned, you know, and, and I'm a big fan of, of everybody who's winning like that because it's not just Handed to you. Like you, you had to fight for that for 15 years. And so I'm very interested to hear at 21 years old, you didn't have maybe the network or probably the skills at that point. I mean, I'm sure you had some good speaking capabilities cuz you were a teacher or something, something because you don't come into the industry. My opinion, maybe you can correct me if, if I'm wrong, but from what I've seen is, like you said in the beginning, you might have the influence when you first get started, but you still gotta develop other things in order to have long-term success.

Brandon (00:17:57) - You can have short-term success, but you won't be able to keep it. Or on the opposite, you might not be able to come in the industry right away and have quick success because you gotta grow the influencer, you gotta grow the skills. Yeah. But what was it for you to where you could come in 21 years old and start crushing it within, you know, your first month making a thousand dollars a month, and then, you know, six months in making 10 grand a month. Like, that's incredible. What would you say to 21 year old, 21 year olds right now getting started in the industry?

Ian (00:18:23) - Yeah, so, so it, you're exactly right. Like, you can come in on influence, but then you gotta learn leadership or you come in without that and you've gotta learn leadership and influence along the way. You know, for me, um, you know, I had some level of influence because I try to treat people right and be good to them and, and be honest with them and, and just treat people how I wanted to be treated. And so when I started, people thought, well, if Ian's involved in this, it's, it's gotta be good, right? And so, so I had that going for me, like that I had been making some solid choices through my teenage years and into my early twenties, right? And so, so the people around me did, um, did trust me, uh, that I was, you know, I was gonna do the right thing by them.

Ian (00:19:09) - So that was helpful. But I needed to learn leadership and training and duplication. It was so interesting, Brandon, because for the first six, nine months a year, I was making basically all of that money myself. You know, I used to give a talk and, um, showing like, virtually all of that was coming from personally selling and personally producing. And I could, I could build a, a, a team temporarily and I could get results myself, but I really had a struggle, a major struggle in transferring that skillset to other people. So that's what I had to learn. I had to learn the teaching part of it. I had to learn the training part of it. I had to learn the systems part of it. And that took time, right? That took time. But every day I just showed up and I did all that I could do.

Ian (00:19:50) - One of my manners used to tell me, all that you can do is all that you can do, but all that you can do is enough. And what was he saying? He was saying, when you give everything that you have, when you leave it all on the line, when it's all out there on the field, that's enough, that's enough. If you show up every day and you give that level of effort and energy to your clients and to your cause and to, and to you growing as a human being, your gift's gonna make room for you. You're gonna develop. And people, people don't necessarily care where you are. They care where you're going. It's not your position, it's your direction that moves people. And people ask, they look at you and they say, is this person what they're saying and what they're doing, do they match? Are they congruent? Is this person talking a big game? But they're not living it out? And I always wanted to be that person that I would convince you with my work ethic, right? That, that I was gonna do something big in my life that you would never find somebody that would work harder or smarter than I would.

Brandon (00:20:43) - So, okay, so that makes perfect sense. I mean, obviously you had a lot of trust because you were a man of your word. Like you built the credibility, the influence. So what would you say to like, I don't know, somebody who has been in the industry and maybe, maybe they haven't had that level of influence or that level, level of credibility yet. Yeah. How, how can they have their level of success that you've had and still be able to not just live in their current results, but to live in their potential?

 Ian (00:21:07) - Sure. Yeah. Influence and trust starts with you. If other people don't trust you, it's a byproduct of you not trusting you. Right? Okay. And so many times, listen, I was guilty of this a lot along the way, is, you know, you'd say, Hey, I'm gonna do this, or you'd set this goal, or you'd have this great idea, this great intention, and then you don't follow through on it every single time. What happens there is you wrote a little bit of trust. I want you to imagine Brandon being a little kid, five or six years old, okay? And you come home from school one day and your dad says, Brandon, I'm gonna take you to get ice cream. And you're like, yes, ice cream. Ice cream is life. It's gonna be amazing, right? And then an hour goes by and you're like, dad, when are we gonna get ice cream?

Ian (00:21:45) - And you're like, oh, Brandon, listen, I'm so sorry, man, I had to hop on a call. Okay, I've really gotta take this tomorrow. We're gonna get some ice cream tomorrow, okay? I promise. You're like, okay, dad, that's fine. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. And you go through all day tomorrow and you thinking ice cream's gonna be here. It's gonna be amazing. You're fantasizing about what you're gonna get, and you get home and dad's got something else he's gotta work on. Brandon, listen, I'm so sorry, Mali, I promise you tomorrow we're gonna get him, I promise you. And the next day comes in, you're so fired up about ice cream, and then he's held over, laid out work. There's a big project he calls you. He says, Brandon, listen man, I know. I said, but I just need you to understand I got this going on and we're gonna get it.

Ian (00:22:23) - Now, I want you to imagine that that happens to you every single day. Every day. Dad promises take you to ice cream tomorrow. And every single day there's a new reason. Something comes up, something happens, doesn't feel good. Too much time. Six months in of watching that every day, you're gonna stop believing that you're ever gonna get that ice cream from dad, right? You're gonna stop believing. Not only aren't you gonna believe anymore, but you're probably not gonna believe a lot else of what your dad says. And thirdly, you're probably gonna start resenting him. Like, like, why would you just not tell me no? Why wouldn't you just say, Hey, I'm too busy. Why would you get my hopes up over and over and over again if he knew you weren't gonna follow through? And yet, that's how most of us live our lives. We promise ourselves the proverbial ice cream every single day.

Ian (00:23:13) - Hey, I'm gonna lose the weight. I'm gonna be a better husband. I'm gonna stop getting angry. I'm gonna stop drinking. I'm gonna start going to the gym. I'm gonna really dig into that business. And we promise this to ourself. And every day we come up with a reason why we can't. Well, pretty soon we stopped trusting us. We stopped trusting our intention, and we even resent ourselves. And if we don't trust us, nobody else is gonna trust us. See, I trusted me. I knew like, no matter what happens, I'm gonna stick with this. I'm gonna follow through. I'm gonna find a way or I'm gonna make one. And so influence and trust with other people starts with you. So what do you need to do to have that success? Start keeping your promises. What can you do today? Right now, today, not tomorrow, not next week. What's one thing, one area where you've made a commitment to yourself that you can live up to that commitment today? Or at least move in the right direction. Start today, right now, right here where you are with what you have, and start building that trust back up with you. Because when you trust you, other people will trust you. That's what I would do,

Brandon (00:24:19) - Man, that's so, so good. When I first got started, I didn't have, I had some influence cause I was a Navy SEAL, but I didn't have, I I, I was a terrible speaker. I was terribly like, afraid to get in front of people and speak, but I had to force myself because like you said, I, if you want to create proper duplication, then you can't be the only ones. You know, you have, you can't tell your team to get up there if you're not willing to do it yourself. Yeah. So I had to get up there and do it myself. And so I got good just by doing it repetitively over and over and over and over. Repetition is the mother of learning. And and it's so funny how over time you can build the confidence as long as you keep doing it. And so, I mean, that's, you know, and, and I didn't even have an upline in my area when I first got started. Like I, I, I was broke living paycheck to paycheck. I grabbed a sideline and took him out to dinner, paid for all of his dinner. He had some network marketing experience. We were just getting started in the company. I said, tell me everything, you know, <laugh>, I put record on my phone and I I ask questions like, kinda like we're doing right now, went home, play, rewind, play rewind, play, rewind, and just learn

Ian (00:25:13) - Your version. Great. Yeah. You gotta seek out, you gotta seek out your weaknesses, which is the exact opposite of what virtually everybody does. Everybody tries to shelter themselves from their weakness and puff up the things that are good at. And all that happens there is you just stay good at what you're already good at, right? And what you did is you went and said, Hey, I need to figure out what I'm not good at that's holding me back and I need to eliminate those things. Or at least shore them up so that they're not, they're not hindrances to me anymore. And that's business maturity, right? Hey, what am I doing wrong? You know, one of the things I always tell people, the, the, the number one question I would ask that nobody asks is, what do you see in me that's holding me back from being as successful as I could be? Because no, we don't want that answer. We wanna be applauded. We want to be patted on the back. We wanna be told we're doing a great job. I wanna be told where I'm not doing a great job so that I can stop that from hindering me in the future.

Brandon (00:26:09) - Yeah, man, it is funny in the culture and the SEAL teams is after every mission, we'd come back and we'd do like a, a little, you know, huddle and we would talk about it. We'd say, Hey, these are things we need to improve on. Everything didn't, didn't matter, ranked didn't matter anything. Like we're talent, we're talking, you know, high level stuff that we could been, we could have done better on that mission. And even if it hurts people's feelings, it doesn't matter. Like, there's no feelings in that, in that conversation.

Ian (00:26:31) - Yeah. Feelings are liars, right? And there's no money in them. There's no money in your feelings. You gotta get out of those feelings, right? And you gotta get into the truth. And the truth is, you're probably not very good yet, or at least you're not as good as you could be. Right? And so what are we gonna do about that? Right? What are we gonna do about that? That's where our emotions should go. Not in feeling upset or offended, but in getting better. That's what we should be focused on.

Brandon (00:26:55) - Yeah. So, you know, you, for somebody who won and continue to win month after month, year after year, what are some of the things to where you can help people win not just short term, but continue to win long term, even if they are a six or seven figure earner already? Because, you know, we've seen it. You know, I like that guy I was talking about when I first got started the sideline. He came in and had big success for two years and then it crumbled because of ego, because of a lot of different things. But people didn't wanna work with him. They didn't wanna be around him. And so I started seeing, okay, I'm looking at the leaders that I like and I'm gonna grab some of the cool things, awesome things that they're doing and how they treat their people and how they build their business and the culture that they've created. I'm gonna implement this and I'm gonna look at some of the stuff that he's doing, and I'm gonna make sure we don't do that. And I'm gonna k I'm gonna kill that out like a cancer. Sure. The organization will cut it out.

Ian (00:27:41) - Yeah. Success leaves clues, right? And so, so you can almost always find somebody ahead of you that you can emulate, right? Okay. And copycat and figure out what they're doing. And if, if you're in some sort of, um, a venture where there are people that are ahead of you that have blazed a trail, you need to learn from those people what to do and what not to do. You know? And, and one of our companies right now, we literally invented a product. And so we're the only people in the world that have this. And, and so that's great. It's blue ocean, there's nobody out there. But it's also tough because there's nobody to model. You are the model. You gotta figure it out. There's no right or wrong. You can't go find the guru out here who's done it. You know, you've gotta figure it out along the way through experience, which is, you know, a less than optimal way to learn if you can avoid it. So I love what you're talking about there. Seek people out, figure out what's good, what's not good, and create your own leadership and management philosophy from, from that. Here's the things I saw, I didn't like, let's stay away from that. Here's the things I saw that I did. Like let's build around that. And that's how you build that philosophy.

Brandon (00:28:41) - I love it. Yeah. And so, so tell me like, so the saying be, do, have, right? You have to, like Jim Ron says, success isn't something you can go chase and something you track by the person you become in the process. You have to become the level of success that you're looking to have in order to actually have it. But in between there is due. And I think a lot of people miss the doing part of like going over and over and over and just doing it and doing it and failing and getting better and better. And, and so, you know, without the do nothing really happens in my opinion. Sure. That's where you're actually gonna get out there and get better and better and better. And then eventually you can have it. But how do you, you know, let's just say somebody's right now starting their business, or they've been in their business for a little bit and they, they, they, they, they believe the law of attraction, right?

 Brandon (00:29:26) - They believe that they can get out there and make it happen. But like you said, they're working on their credibility and their influence, but right now they're trying to figure out how to get out of stuck, out of spinning their wheels. And maybe they're, they're letting distractions come in or maybe, you know, just many different areas, right? Like what's the DMO that they could focus on putting their head down and like, like Dean Karnases ran 360 miles by focusing on running telephone pole to telephone pole to telephone pole. Yeah. How can they get better and better and better?

Ian (00:29:55) - Yeah, that's a good question. So in my book, I wrote about a concept called TBAR. And TBAR stands for thoughts, beliefs, actions, results. And this is a process that all of life operates by, whether we're aware of it or not. It is operating this way. We think things and what we think long enough and often enough and vividly enough eventually becomes a belief. And then we act on our beliefs. Our beliefs always create action or inaction, and then our results are byproduct of the actions that we took, right? Okay. And so, so this is important in, in answering a question in a couple of ways, right? Because ultimately our current results are the byproduct of our very best thinking and our very best belief systems and our very best actions. And the only way that we're gonna change our results long term and sustainably, is not to change our action.

Ian (00:30:42) - That's where everybody wants to go. They say, well, I wanna lose weight. And so what do they do? They start eating different and go into the gym. That's an action. They want a different result. They say, well, the action is what causes that. And that's only sort of true, right? Because that action is not an island. You weren't eating that way and treating your body that way just randomly before, right? That action was a byproduct of what came before, which is your belief about health, about your worthiness, about what you deserve in life, about, about, you know, what level of priority you're going to give to health. There were beliefs there that created that action. And so what you see is you see these people, they wanna lose weights, they go to the gym, they start eating different for a week or two weeks or a month, and then eventually they give that up and they go back to the person they were before, why they tried to change their action without changing the thinking and the beliefs that created that action.

Ian (00:31:35) - So what do you need to do? You need to become a, a student of your thinking. Most people are not thinking about what they're thinking about and their head is full of crap. They didn't put there and programming, they didn't download somebody else, downloaded it into them. And it's, it's manifesting the law of attraction. It's manifesting into our results. If we want to change our results, if we wanna breakthrough, we first gotta breakthrough in our thinking and our belief systems. And that's the heavy lifting, right? That's the heavy lifting. And, but that's how you ensure long range success, right? Like, you know, we've just come out of a a, you know, for those of you who are watching in 2023, okay? We've just sort of come into this period economically where it's really uncertain. There's a lot of crazy things going on. But for 10 years previously it was like, you know, if you could fog a mirror, you were a superstar and you could be a six and you could get in the mortgage business and you could not return people's phone calls and you could be half bud and you could charge 'em a big yield spread and you could do this, but there was so much demand and interest rate for solo, you are superstar.

Ian (00:32:34) - You make 2, 3, 400 grand as a six. The problem is it's temporary because eventually the world always weeds out the sixes and those people disappear. And all that's left there are the tens, the tens are still crushing it, but everybody else has been washed out. And we've gotta get better at our thinking and our belief systems, which then automate our actions, right? Listen, it was never worked to me. I worked a lot, okay? And I worked very hard and very consistently for a long time. It just never felt like work because it was the natural byproduct of the belief that if I do the right things long enough, eventually I'm gonna have the things I want in my life. The pathway was the process. Oh, you're muted. I think. I don't hear you anymore.

Brandon (00:33:23) - Oh, sorry. Yeah, I muted myself out. Just That's alright. So

Ian (00:33:27) - Edit out, edit out <laugh>.

Brandon (00:33:29) - Yeah, yeah, exactly. T so T bar. Um, okay, I love that by the way. That's, that's awesome. And it's so true. But we like over where I, where I train my team, we talk about the bear cycle belief, excitement, action, results, right? So how, if somebody though, cuz we're talking about beliefs instead of actions, which I agree and I understand, but how can they, like, let's just take network marketing or direct sales or insurance, or even somebody who's launched from their own product or their health, whatever it is, how can they flood out some of the negativity of, of the programming that they've had that maybe they think that they're industry, they're having some doubts in the industry and that's why maybe they're not, their belief isn't as high as it needs to be, so their action isn't high as it needs to be and their results definitely aren't gonna be very

Ian (00:34:13) - High. Yeah. So, so how do you change your belief? That's the question, right? Okay. And that's, that's the billion dollar question and the biggest gap in the world, Brandon, is the gap between knowing what to do and doing what to do. And in between the thinking, knowing what to do, and the action of doing what to do is this pesky thing called belief. And it sort of acts as an attenuator of sorts, right? It, you either create alignment, flowing from thinking to action, or you create a misalignment where that thinking stops and hits roadblock and we don't act. So, so how do we change our belief? Number one is we need to do a belief audit. Are our beliefs serving us? Are they true? Are they right? Are they accurate? Well, how would we know? Well, everything in life grows, okay? That's what living things do.

Ian (00:34:58) - If you ever seen a motivational speaker out in front of an oak tree pumping the oak tree up, like, come on, you're gonna have the greatest leaves. You're gonna grow so big and so strong. You were meant to grow, you're gonna have the biggest acorns. It's gonna be amazing. Right? There are no motivational speakers motivating oak trees to grow. They just grow. That's what they do. It's in their programming, right? And so, so what we've gotta understand is that if we're not growing, we're outside of our program, that is a good telltale sign that we are believing something that is inconsistent with the truth. Because if we believe what is true, our next step is to act on what's true and to have results that grow. That's just how all life works. Okay? So let's do a belief audit. Are my beliefs serving me? And are they accurate?

Ian (00:35:44) - Okay, if not, if not, then what we need to do is we need to do a reconciliation. Let's find somebody that is winning and figure out in what ways do they think and believe differently than I do. And this is where the rubber meets the road, because that's called offense for most people. You think differently than I do, you see things different? You think this is happening because of X? And I don't. Okay. And so I know, I know, I know. Is the, is the chorus line of the average and ordinary and the, the refrain is I owe, I owe, I owe, right? Because it's the things we know that just aren't so that keep us broke. And so I want to do a reconciliation, which is why being around mentors is important. Why being involved in listening to development material like this, getting involved in a community like the war rumor or maybe some of the other things that you're involved with, where you can be around people who think differently than you, that are using that different thinking to get better results.

Ian (00:36:42) - So we're aware, right? So we audit, we reconcile, and then we replace. We replace. And, and what do I mean by that? So I learned this lesson the hard way. I used to be a hypochondriac. And now for people who don't know what a hypochondriac is, that somebody who thinks they're always sick. And so it was really hard for me, like growing up to like watch er or you know, the any medical shows cuz within 15 minutes, Brandon and I was experiencing the symptoms of whatever was on that show. Like, but as, as funny as that sounds like multiple times I ended up in the hospital, like pretty sure I'm dying, like manifesting these crazy symptoms. And it was just like all inside my head, right? And it was about that time that I'd given my life to the Lord. And I learned about this concept called renewing your mind, right?

Ian (00:37:29) - Taking your, your thoughts captive and taking them, uh, under control. And so, so replacing is about finding a better thought or a better belief, a more true and accurate belief as evidenced by results and replacing the existing thought. And as crazy as it sounds like, I would literally say to myself, that's not my thought. And then I would speak out this new thought. And literally Brandon, when I finally got so sick and tired of, of making myself sick and tired and ending up at the hospital, I started a purposeful pl path of re reprogramming. And literally 300 plus times a day I would catch myself with those negative thoughts or those negative that didn't feel right, something must be wrong. Ooh, I wonder what's going on here 300 times a day. I would literally say, that's not my thought. And then I would replace it with the truth, right?

Ian (00:38:21) - Ab about health or healing or wellbeing. And in about a month that basically ceased. And so we've gotta replace repetition you said earlier is the mother of learning, Napoleon Hill calls it auto suggestion. Anything that is repeated often enough eventually makes it past the filtering of the conscious mind and into the subconscious belief system. That's how pathological liars become pathological liars. They literally believe their lies because they've been repeated enough that for them they have accepted it as true. And that's a negative manifestation of this. But a positive one would be seeking out better beliefs in repeating it. So repetition. Okay. And number four is emotional anchoring. So I want everybody listening to this right now to think about one of your earliest childhood memories. In fact, Brandon, I'm gonna, and we haven't rehearsed this, right? Okay. No, I didn't tell. Okay. What, what's one of your earliest childhood memories? What, what pops to your mind?

Brandon (00:39:19) - Uh, I don't know, playing baseball when I was young.

Ian (00:39:21) - Okay, any specific game or just random baseball or, yeah,

Brandon (00:39:26) - I mean, it's funny. Yeah. What popped in my head immediately was just a championship game

Ian (00:39:30) - And when, okay,

Brandon (00:39:31) - Peewee league.

Ian (00:39:32) - Yeah. Okay. And how long ago was that? Don't date yourself too bad. <laugh> 30 years,

Brandon (00:39:38) - Probably 30 years.

Ian (00:39:39) - <laugh> 30 years ago. Okay. And so if you're like me, you can't remember what you had for dinner yesterday, okay? But, but you can probably recall in great detail that championship game, what you were wearing, who was on the team, the score, how it worked, right? What was the score of the Tigers game two weeks ago in spring training? You have no idea, right? Okay. But that, you know, okay, that's called emotional anchoring. There was a spike on the landscape of your life emotionally, and your mind encodes everything that's happening and immediately locks into your subconscious. So for a lot of people, it's like a traumatic experience. Maybe they're in a car accident or a fight their parents had when they mo mom finally left, or some sickness that a relative had some spike, some emotional intensity that's not normally there. And we can remember everything about that moment 50 years later in extreme and exact detail, even though we may not want to, that is called emotionally anchoring.

Ian (00:40:42) - There was an emotional occurrence that was very far outside of the norm and it imprinted whatever was around you at that point. But we can use that strategically. We can put ourselves in position where we are an an emotionally amplified situations that could be a big event. It could be spending some time with a mentor, it could be making a big wager on something, something that is emotionally heightening us. And in that moment we can feed ourselves the new thinking and the new beliefs that we want and we can in, we can bypass the repetition years and years of repetition sometimes, by the way. And we can in a moment make those transitions. It's like the smoker who knows they shouldn't smoke. They know smoking causes cancer. They know that they could have a challenge and everybody in their life rags on 'em and it costs them money.

Ian (00:41:32) - And they, they know, they know and they do nothing until they get that diagnosis. They say, you have cancer and the only shot you have at beating this, you need to stop right now and we need to work. And they don't even want a cigarette. What they couldn't tick for 40 years in a moment drops off. Why? Emotional anchoring and without, the dogs are excited, they're fired up. I didn't know if you can hear 'em. That's, that's the welcome crew. That's the welcome crew <laugh>. So somebody's here. Okay. And so, so that's how we change our thinking, right? Is we, we audit right? Number one. Number two is we reconcile. Number three is we replace number four as we emotionally anchor. And that's how we move into a new thinking and new belief system.

Brandon (00:42:22) - Man, that's powerful. Thanks again. And, and, and I know, you know, you have a hard stop at, at, uh, two o'clock your time, which is right now, but I wanna, can I ask just two more really quick and you can just Sure. Fast. Yep. I'm furious. So, so one, what would you say to anybody who's just getting started and maybe they're, they're they're getting some negativity, some from friends and family about the insurance industry being a scam, or network marketing being a scam or, or their business that they're launching not gonna work. Like what, what can you, what advice? Yeah,

Ian (00:42:49) - Yeah. Broken, skeptical, a bad combination, right? So just qualify the criticism. Number one. Okay. The world's full of people who want to project their limitations on you. And just because it's hard for them or would be difficult for them does not mean that it would be for you. And so qualify the criticism. When you buy other people's opinions, you also buy their lifestyles. So buyer or beware, just qualify that, that's what I would tell you there about dealing with negativity is, hey, you know what? Don't worry about when people don't support you. Most of them can't support themselves.

Brandon (00:43:21) - <laugh>. Oh, that's good. That's really good. So true too. Okay. Who are your mentors? If you were to go on YouTube today, who are your YouTube mentors that it's like, this is, this is my go-to guys or girls?

Ian (00:43:31) - That is a good question. You know what? I've been so privileged. I'm, I'm, I always tell people I'm sort of like a turtle on the fence post, right? I, I didn't get there by myself. Okay? I've had a lot of great mentors, most from afar. Most of the time I studied people that were greats at what I wanted to be great at. And I got all their audios and all their materials and whatever I could, their books, their seminars, whatever I could do to ingest that material. And I studied them until they became friends, right? Until they became peers, until they became people who respected the game that I had brought to the table because I had studied the game and their game for a long time. Um, you know, in terms of, of different mentors right now, gosh, I, I ca I I have a couple of people that I pay to mentor me, um, coaches.

Ian (00:44:19) - And then, um, you know, I think there's a couple guys out there right now that are really on the leading edge of stuff. I, I love Elon Musk. I think he's, um, he's obviously brilliant. Uh, but, but I, I think, um, I think he's solving some of the world's problems, right? You know, three levels of motivation, material respect, and recognition and legacy. And that dude is definitely playing on level three, right? Because he is the richest man in the world. We already all know he's a superstar. He doesn't need to do any of this stuff, but he's doing cause he wants to make the world a better place. I think he's, uh, definitely a guy that I, um, that I watch a lot. Another one is this fella here, Alex Hormoze. I don't know if y'all know, uh, him, but, uh, I think he's got his head on his shoulders, right? And I think that he's got a lot of good wisdom about what it actually takes to win and isn't full of flash and all sorts of other things. Not that there's anything bad behind that, but he's, he's really built a lot of great content that's very useful for people who are trying to grow a business.

Brandon (00:45:16) - Yeah, I love it. Yeah, he, he went from broke to success too, so That's awesome. So what about, how, how do people find you? So tell us how to find you.

Ian (00:45:23) - Yeah, thanks Brandon. So you can connect with me on Instagram at Ian Bruckner. Be careful. There's about 25 people impersonating me at any given moment. I will never send you dms about Bitcoin or anything else. So make sure you find the right one. One with the most followers is me. Okay? So at Ian Bruckner, um, you can also, uh, text, you can also text the word byproduct, B y p R O D u C t byproduct, like the name of my book to the number 48. 48 48. And we'll actually, uh, send you out some free material and a free lesson, uh, from one of my masterclass on how to change your thinking, right? How, how to specifically how to develop thinking and belief systems that serve you. So you can text byproduct of 48 4 8 48, and that'll also get you, uh, into my universe here where we can connect on a deeper level.

Brandon (00:46:18) - Yeah, if you guys don't do that, you're crazy. First off, you ha definitely text that right now. Call to action. Do not wait. Procrastination is the thief of all opportunity. Now is your time to get mentored by one of the best in the game. And you guys can go to Amazon as well. He's got his, his booked byproduct there. Um, what else I know is, is there any, so, so you said to most followers, he has at the, at the time of this conversation, there's over right around 300,000 followers. So don't go to like the 10,000 or the 50,000 followers.

Ian (00:46:44) - Yeah, it just, it's just sits in hovers there. It's, uh, the, the algorithms are, uh, are the bane of my existence right now. I gained 500, I lose 500. I gain 300, I lose 300. So may maybe you'll put me over 300. We'll see. You could be the one, you could be the one <laugh>.

Brandon (00:47:00) - Hope. Hopefully one day I'll put you over a million. That's

Ian (00:47:02) - The goal. Okay. God bless. It's coming. It's just a matter of time. Doing the right things every day, baby. That's it. Exactly. Time, time becomes your friend.

Brandon (00:47:09) - A hundred percent. Thank you so much for your time, man. I know. It's so valuable. I appreciate your friendship, man. I really do. And, and you, you willing to connect and just pour value into everybody and so looking forward to, to getting to hang out with you again here sometime soon.

Ian (00:47:22) - Yeah. Brandon, thank you so much. God bless you guys. Thanks for your time today.

Brandon (00:47:25) - All right brother.