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Stay Paid Podcast
The Confidence Method: A Self-Discovery Journey to Break Limiting Beliefs
00:41:53
This week, we present a compelling conversation about self-discovery and authenticity. Executive coach and keynote speaker Rocky Garza shares his transformative “confidence method”—a framework for personal and professional growth that has helped...
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- [00:01]
Luke Acree
Welcome to the Stay Paid podcast where we help agents and entrepreneurs master the latest business trends to unlock growth and create a life of freedom. Brought to you by Reminder Media.
- [00:11]
Joshua Steich
Welcome to Stay Paid. My name is Joshua Steich.
- [00:13]
Luke Acree
And I'm Luke Acree.
- [00:14]
Joshua Steich
And today we have joining us Stephen Acree and Cody Smith from the Acree Brothers Realty team, the number one team in Lynchburg, Virginia, soon to be the worst.
- [00:23]
Cody Smith
All right, welcome, gentlemen.
- [00:24]
Joshua Steich
Special guest today is Rocky Garza. Rocky is a transformative keynote speaker, executive coach and advisor to eight figure CEOs with over a decade of experience. He is renowned for his ability to foster authenticity in high stakes environments, creating spaces where individuals feel empowered to step into their true selves. His work with major companies like Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Zillow and Microsoft has helped thousands of individuals and leaders break through their limiting beliefs, align their strengths with their values, and lead with vulnerability and confidence. Rocky, welcome to Stay Paid.
- [00:55]
Rocky Garza
I appreciate it. Gentlemen. I'd go through and say one by one, but there's a lot more of you. There are me. So gentlemen, thank you for having me.
- [01:01]
Luke Acree
It's great to have you. Rocky, I got to hear you speak at 8% there and you're an incredible public speaker, can capture an audience, can really create an intimate moment, I would say, which is very hard to do in public speaking. I would love to hear from you. Like, how did you get into like the, you know, self discovery, motivational speaking, working coaching? It's just such a, an industry that feels like everybody and their mom today is an influencer. How have you cut through the noise? How did you get into it and gotten to a place where you can do it for a living?
- [01:34]
Rocky Garza
Yeah. Yeah. So I, let's go in reverse order of your questions. Number one, yes. Everyone and their mom most. I love looking at a 23 year old life coach because they have done so much that they have so much to tell us. That's, that's, that's fine. I'm 41. I feel like when I turned 40, I finally hit a moment where I was like, you know what? I'm going to stop apologizing for what it is I have to say. And I think at this point 40 years is a little bit of gusto. I have some things I don't have to get on stage and sort of give you this long show of why you should or should not believe me. But I think really what switched for me and I promise this will tie together was there was a moment where I realized, and I sometimes I say this out Loud as soon as I get on stage. More as a reminder for myself than anybody. But if we get done with whether it's, we're leading the team, we're doing a keynote, we're at a conference, if you know more about me by the time we're done, then you know about you, then I failed you, because I'm not going home with you. And so I think oftentimes, both as a speaker, as a coach, as an advisor, we can. I say we. And I'm going to include me in this. That's why I say it, because I say it for myself. We can get so wrapped up in the fact that we want people to think that we are valuable and important and experts that we forget the people who are in the chairs who are longing to change their life. And so if we walk away going, everybody love me. My guy, like, they love me. It was pretty good. And we did it again. And your life doesn't change. You should have just got on YouTube and everybody saved their money. So what can you do to provide something for somebody they cannot get on YouTube? Not knocking it. Think it's a great resource. However, there is something there that is irreplaceable that led into the question. You said, how did we arrive here? I have, without being that person that says you're a singer, how long you've been singing your whole life. It's like you haven't been singing in your whole life. That's a dumb answer. However, the majority of my life, I have been on a pursuit to discover who I am and where I belong. Long. My parents got divorced when I was young. Never lived with my dad growing up. My mom's been married and divorced five times. So I went to 13 schools where I graduated high school. And so I say all that not, not like, sad woe is me, like 41, been to a lot of therapy, feeling pretty good. Okay. So I say that more as a. As a. As a space to go. From the moment I can remember, I've been looking to see where I fit. Like, it wasn't until I was 27, married to my wife and we had our first Christmas at our house that I was like, in the same home for Christmas more than two years in a row. It wasn't until I was 30 years old, had our son, it was his first Christmas, and I invited my mom and her husband, my dad and his wife and my grandparents who raised me all to come to my house for Christmas. And I. That was the first time in my entire life, my whole family had ever been together on Christmas in a place that I was. And so when that for me is sort of the foundational thing that I have been. I graduated college, I was in full time ministry for about eight years. Vocationally realized that really wasn't the route I should have been in. I needed to be in for the rest of my life because I was an asshole. I'm pretty sure we can cuss on this podcast. And so I was more concerned with you loving me than I was learning about God. And that's a really crappy reason to be a pastor. And thankfully there was somebody who was gracious enough to me to let me see that and know that. And so when I got offered a teaching pastor job at a church of 5,000 at 26 with one tattoo, I said, hey, I don't think this is for me. And so my wife said, then let's start a photography business, because that makes sense. And my wife had been an architect. She quit her job. It was our hobby. No kids, no debt. 2010, Instagram and Pinterest weren't invented yet. Let's go. Why not? So we actually started a wedding photography business. We did that full time for about five years. Really for us. We both spent five years in therapy. We spent five years building a business. We sort of rode the wave of personal branding and online and sharing images and total out of being ignorant, naive. This is not rocky. As a media expert. This was, we should do something fun and people should pay for us to travel. Weddings are not terrible. So like that. That was about the extent of our, of our. What we said we were going to do. We did that for about five years and loved it. It found out we were pregnant with our son back in 2015, so about 10 years ago and realized, I don't want to shoot weddings the rest of my life. And so my wife said, if you could do anything, what would you want to do? I did not say it this eloquently, although today I like to believe I did. I said if I could be an expert at anything, by the end of my life, I'd want to be a people expert. How could I help people find and discover the clarity around who they are? Because my whole life had been built on what I could produce. And the capacity to produce was directly synonymous with the value I carried on a daily basis. And I want to be clear, I'm not telling you not to produce. Get after it, chase it, get a B hag, do the whatever Jesse Itzler says you're supposed to do. Once A year, some Japanese thing where it's like this big. Whatever they are, we all got something we're supposed to go and do. I'm all for it. Get your 90 day plan out, let's crush it. And if we're going to spend the duration of our life and that being a single metric for our value weight and a capacity to influence, we are going to be severely disappointed. And after a long time of being disappointed for hoping people would see me for what I was doing and realizing there was to no effect, I said there has to be something different. And so the last decade has been as much of a self exploration as it has been the ability to engage with individuals. Somehow I found myself in the business space, oftentimes in the corporate space. I joke. I'm the only corporate keynote speaker that's never had a resume. And that's because I don't really have a desire to get up and talk about my expertise in your business. I have a desire to get up and talk about my expertise in you. And if I can help you see you in a clear way, I believe every aspect of your life will get better. It is not predicated on my capacity to actually do something for you, but rather your ability to sit with yourself long enough that you might be able to discover the single thing that you're missing that everybody else can see.
- [07:28]
Luke Acree
So let's go deeper on that because you know, as you're thinking about, like how do you help people self discover, you know, what are some of the things that you try to walk people through to help them see that?
- [07:42]
Rocky Garza
Yeah, so the two main processes we use, number one is called identity mapping. And so this is something we created about 10 years ago and it's a self discovery, so we would say it's a self assessment. So you're not going to answer a bunch of questions and it's going to give you a result and tell you who you are. You're going to spend four to eight hours uninterrupted assessing who you are and walk away with a clear picture because you have the words. In my experience over the Last decade, with 20 year olds, with 60 year olds, pick a demographic, sociographic, whatever you want, it's all the same. I believe every human being knows exactly who you are. What we just lack is the words. So what the reality is we have this intrinsic feeling. Well, I know I'm good at this and I'm good at this and I value this and I have this and we go, tell me about that. And we go, real estate like, what the hell? What just happened? And you're like, I'm good. I love this. I believe this and I fight for this. I'm conviction about this marketing with media. Okay. I feel like we dropped the ball somewhere. Well, I think if I can make it its simplest form, we're just illiterate. We're just illiterate to the words that we have with an intrinsic feeling. And so my job sort of as an advisor and a translator is to use a process called identity mapping to extract out of you the language you already have. You just don't have the right word. We so often say, I love my family. I'm doing it for my family. I'm doing it for my. Stop saying, no, you're not. No, you're not doing it for your family, you're doing it for you. If you would just say I'm doing it for you because I really value it, your family would be better for it. Because then when you leave and you travel for 14 days out of 30, you don't say I'm doing it for my family. Because I'm telling you right now, your 8 year old doesn't want you to leave. It's not for them. They want you to be at home 24 hours a day doing nothing but throwing the baseball and playing Nintendo Switch. I already know what they want you to do because my kid wants the same thing. So I'm not doing it for him, I'm doing it for me. But when I say I get to. When I. Like when I say I get to do it for me, and I can attach that to what I value, which is in alignment with what my strengths are, which gives me a language. When my son asks I can describe why dad was gone, he understands that, yes, although he is wildly important to me and I love him deeply, he has a function as a, as a part of the purpose that his dad has, not the singular one. Because I don't want him to grow up and have a singular purpose to be every other person in his life. I want him to have one. And I think oftentimes we get service and sacrifice mixed up specifically for us. And I'm going to be really generalistic for a second, but I think if I, if I could speak specifically about us men for a moment. We so often get service and sacrifice mixed up where service is the overflow of who I am. Meaning that's why it's necessary to know who you are. Service is the overflow of who I am because I love you. Sacrifice is what many of us do, which is actually the loss of ourself in hopes that you'll love me. And so like our ability to sit in that. Lacking language about self, Lacking language about who I am. Guess what? I'm going to choose 99 out of 100 times sacrifice, because at least I say I did something. Ah. But the freedom that comes on the other end of that when it comes with clarity about knowing who you are as woo woo and feelings and oh, vulnerability and shut up and just get a KPI and go make revenue. Okay, I get it, I get it. But now we're talking. I think there's something missing, you know, like. But. But I think it's we. We've created this. I think oftentimes we create this space where we go. It's got to be one or the other. And I think that's where we're. That's where many of us at times drop the ball because we're willing to hold them both.
- [11:10]
Luke Acree
So if I'm doing this identity mapping, right, Because I love what you're saying and I, I resonate, it resonates a lot with me. I was actually having a conversation the other day with my wife on, you know, just explaining to your kids that you're going to work. You know, they want you to stay. So when you're saying, I'm going to work, work will get a negative connotation. But I don't want my kids to view work as a negative because dad loves his work and he wants to go to work. But at the same time, I don't want my kids to feel that I want to be at work and not with them. So, you know, there is that natural tension that happens. How do you do the process of identity mapping? Like, and to get the words. Is it writing on your values?
- [11:47]
Rocky Garza
Yeah.
- [11:48]
Luke Acree
Is it?
- [11:50]
Rocky Garza
So let's do. Let's do a quick, fun exercise. There's three main components of identity mapping. Well, technically there's four. The first one was we covered very briefly at 8% where we met. We call that the upside down. That's just teaching us how our brain works, how we think most naturally, which as a human being is reactively. How do we invert that to begin to think proactively? Oftentimes, what do you think about most? Shortest term? All the things I got to get done today. What do you really want in life? It is this much longer term leave, A leave, build, grow, and a legacy that is. Okay, great. How often do you think about the latter? Once a quarter when I do my goals how often do you think about your to do list? 17 times a day. So which one do you think is a priority in your life? Like, it's not. It's easy. It's the math. Maths, okay. We just got to get the math in the right order. That's part one. Then we go through three exercises. The core values exercise, which we define as why you do what you do. A strengths exercise, which we define as how you do what you do. I think it's the number one misconception in our professional spaces that we often turn strengths into the what. And they were never designed to be the what. They were always designed to be the how. Right. If I say, josh, which one of your strengths? He says, my arms. I say, great, you have strong arms. He says, yes. And I say, what do you. You don't have to laugh at him. He really might. What do you do with strong arms? He doesn't say arm lean. That doesn't make any sense. But that's how silly we sound when we use our strengths and we make them. The what? What are your strengths? Strategics. What do you do? I strategize all day. That's all you do. You're just a strategy walking. No, that's not what you do. That's how you human. It's how you do everything. The last component is we call identifiers. They're words that we choose to describ, describe ourself that end in er or. Or. They're all actionable words. Right? So as an example, let's go back for a second. Luke, you brought about your kids, talking to your wife. What do we say? Give me a word to describes what you do as a human that ends in E, R, O, R. And everybody think to it. Everybody can give one here in a second. What's this? If you had to pick one word that describe. We're think, think. Strategizer, analyzer, Challenger, leader. True, there's a million words. But if you could pick one word to describe what you do as a human. What is that word?
- [13:44]
Luke Acree
Hmm. I'll give you the. I guess the. I would say I empower people, okay. Like I empower real estate agents to connect with their database. I empower, you know, entrepreneurs to live a life of freedom. Like, I'm thinking about our vision and our mission of our company. I empower people. How do you empower people? Through our tech platform, through our, you know, marketing, through all those different things. But I'm giving you the power that you don't have to, you know, that type of idea.
- [14:18]
Rocky Garza
Listen. Okay. And if you don't mind, for sake of confidentiality, because I don't know who hears this or what you're into, we're going to say that one of your kids names is John. Okay? We're just going to refer to John as your kid. So John comes up and says, dad, you got to go to work again. Yeah, Dad's got to go to work. Why do you even go to work? I go to work to make money. Dad's got to go to work. We got people, we got staff and we got. But I want you to stay with me. I know, but Dad's got to work. Like everybody has to work. If someday. You understand, son. Like everybody's got to work. Okay, Pause. Same conversation. Let's just give ourselves new words. Dad, where are you going? Oh, Dad's headed into work. Work again. You're always at work. Hey, John, can I tell you something about work? Sure, dad, whatever. Hey, Dad's not just going to work. When I go to work. I'm doing everything I can on a daily basis to give people the power that they don't know that they need in order for them to build a life they really love. We do that in a lot of ways. And as you get older, I tell you more about that. But I want you to know, when dad leaves here, dad is not leaving you to go with somebody else. Dad is going to do a thing that he feels deeply about in just the same way that I love being with you and helping you see who you are and how great you are. And we talk about every day when we do our affirmations on the way to school. That's what dad does when he's at work too. And so someday there'll be a thing that you'll find that you'll love and you'll have a way to describe it. But I want you to know Dad's not going to work to get away from you. Dad's going to work to live into who he was made to be. And that's to help give people power to do something they don't think they can do without him. And it means as much to me to go to work to do that as it does to be able to do that with you and mom and kids too.
- [15:56]
Luke Acree
Dang, dude. Hey, will you say that one more time? I gotta.
- [15:59]
Rocky Garza
Yeah. So this is. This is being recorded. You'll just copy paste this, put that into AI. Just play it back for the famous. But. And I think. I think I appreciate you. I Appreciate you being a good sport. I think that's so often when especially like in business, right, we can get, we get caught in this, like, I don't know the right words and it's, it's going to be soft and it's going to be silly and it's going to be like, God, kids are such an incredible reflection to the way in which we would see ourselves if we would let us. But we often don't let us because we're going so fast. But if we would just answer their question, like if we would honestly answer the question they're asking. They're asking, why are you choosing to leave me? So answer that question. And if we don't answer it, work becomes the reason I leave you. But if I answer it, I'm not leaving you. I'm actually going to get full. So when dad comes home and you've got the baseball gloves in the front porch, let's go. I can't wait because I'm ready to exchange and empower in the same place here. And so I think, but it's, but it takes reflection. I'm going to be very clear. It is not easy. It's simple, but it's not easy. But the capacity to self reflect. So identity mapping sort of is part one. And again, it's an exercise. I take people through it one on one. All of our one on one clients. I take you through it personally, me and you, when we lead coaches or teams. I'm going with a group, actually, a group that we met at 8% in January. There's like 85 people on their team. And so we have eight. I'm doing an eight hour workshop with them. We're doing identity mapping for all 85 for a full day. And people are like eight hours, are you kidding me, bro? I go by soap now. You're tired at the end, but it goes by so fast because you're just looking inward. And if I were to say, just take the five of us here. When's the last time you spent. Let's cut that in half. When's the last time you spent four hours uninterrupted, doing nothing but assessing who you were, what that meant, why that mattered, and how to build a language to create the life that you really loved?
- [18:01]
Joshua Steich
Never. Yeah, never, unfortunately.
- [18:04]
Rocky Garza
And so look at everything the four of you as an individual and collectively have accomplished by grinning and bearing and trying your very best. Imagine if you had an open dictionary to reveal the words to communicate everything that you had been feeling, not just everything you had Found the capacity to measure.
- [18:28]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it's interesting. I just met, I did a mastermind this morning with a group that I'm a part of and the comment came up that someone said, asked, have any of you ever gone away for two days just to think? And somebody else mentioned Bill Gates goes away once a week or once a year for a week. And he reads like 20 books when he's there. But the whole idea is like just to think, just to self reflect, strategize. Now we were speaking about it in the connotation of business, but it's the same premise. It's basically you got to step back, get away from the noise, get away from the inputs and self reflect to going, what is it? Who am I? Where am I, where am I going? And what do I want? And that is such a powerful exercise, but none of us really do it. It's kind of like therapy because I'm just thinking about this group that I'm a part of. The thing that shocked me, these are the most successful people in the world and all of them have therapists. And I don't think like a lot of times therapy is seen as like a stigma in a way, but it's like every single one of them has therapists. And I think the reason why is because you need to be able to talk out the things that you are thinking. And a lot of times a great therapist, they never, they never really talk back, they just ask you more questions.
- [19:53]
Rocky Garza
Yeah.
- [19:54]
Luke Acree
Which is very interesting. So you're a professional therapist now.
- [19:57]
Rocky Garza
Yeah, I mean pastor is by the.
- [19:59]
Luke Acree
Way, because our dad is a pastor, Stephen and I's dad. But it's kind of what a pastor is too, is. Or some of them are a therapist.
- [20:05]
Rocky Garza
Yeah. And I think oftentimes that that's for me that I get, I get asked often like, are you a therapist? Do you or did you, are you, did you go to school or do you ever. And my response like, I, I couldn't agree with what you said more. And the reason I'm not a therapist is because I want the second part of what you said. I want to be able to ask you the questions to get you to think and then I want to absolutely be able to tell you what I think. And oftentimes, and again, it's not a knock on therapy. I'm a huge fan of therapy, but that's not the goal of therapy. It's not to necessarily advise, rather to extract. And I love, I love extraction and I love also advisement to go, I'm So glad we can see this together. Now, what are you going to do with it? Not sure. See you next week. Tuesday, 3:00, same time, same place. And I think oftentimes to go. Imagine having an hour every week where your only job was to show up. That's it. Just, just, just an hour a week. Just show up. I get asked all the time. Well, so what, what's, what are the. We're going to work through the six months and so what are the 24 steps we're going to go through? I don't know what we're going to go through when we work together one on one. I don't have any idea who you are yet, nor where you are or what your issue is. I think you're very clear about what your issue is. That's why you called and said, hey, I think I need some help. We will discover and uncover that and work through that together. But it's a very individualized place. I think I mentioned earlier you asked an origin story. And I remember thinking back to the day my wife said, if you could do anything, what would you want to do? And I said in very choppy words, I want to be a people expert. Fast forward a decade if you were to ask me the same question, Rocky, what do you want to do for the next decade is. I want to help individuals. And specifically that tends to be executives and business owners like yourself. I want to help individuals, business owners, executives, discover the intersection of a deeply meaningful life and a wildly successful career. But if Cody thinks that intersection is the same coordinate as Stephen and the same coordinate as Luke and the same coordinate as Josh, we are all going to have a very, very terrible life. But if we are willing to say that the intersection, the coordinates on that plotted chart are wildly different for each of us, but we're willing to explore what that location is collectively. Bro, we would be unstoppable. But to assume one coordinate and not the other, well, unfortunately you only have one coordinate, not the other. You can often find yourself lost.
- [22:22]
Luke Acree
Yeah. Constantly chasing definition of success of other people comparison know is the thief of joy as people say. It kind of. It's the older I get. I don't know if you guys find the same Stephen and Cody.
- [22:36]
Joshua Steich
I find myself getting older.
- [22:38]
Rocky Garza
Yeah.
- [22:38]
Luke Acree
Yeah, you're getting older. I can't slow the time down. It's crazy. No, it's like, you know, the greatest. The people you respect the most, the people you feel are happiest. Or at least this has been my experience. I'm curious to Hear you guys are people who are living a value based life, meaning giving a little explanation on that. They're not chasing an accolade, they're not chasing money. They're not trying to perform. They are who they are based upon their core values that they have defined for their life. They know what they want from a value standpoint and they can authentically be themselves and just living their life. It's like they, they can say no to things. They say yes to things based upon just who they are versus those who are chasing something are constantly like, how do I obtain? How do I obtain versus like, no, no, this is what I want. This is a, call it life by design. Values based. These are my values. I'm going to live this. I could care less what you think. It doesn't mean that I don't care about you. I care less what you think because it's a values based life.
- [23:40]
Cody Smith
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. The hardest part is like exactly what you said. It's like, I know what I want, but I cannot articulate it. And that's the hardest thing with like your spouse, with your partner in business, all that good Stu. It's like, why is it so hard, you know what I mean, to be able to say this is exactly what I want? Because you can't put it in words that, that shed a good light. It always will come across as you want more money. Right. Or you want to spend time away from me. You know, that kind of thing. You love your business more than me. I would love to do coaching with you. Because like that is, I mean that to me, that is my hardest thing is I cannot clarify exactly what I'm trying to get.
- [24:20]
Rocky Garza
Yeah. And I think oftentimes the reason for. Part of the reason for that is because take this phrase, what gets measured gets accomplished. So the metrics that. Let's go with the example you just gave in conversation with your wife. The reason she says, well, you always want bigger business, you want more money, you want greater revenue, you want more. Well, because what are we measuring? When I work with folks 101, we have a thing, we call it our beyond Success system. So it's a double sided document. We've got an EPS matrix we use to assess where you are today. And we do that every 90 days. Your identity map, your confidence method. We've got all this on there for you. And one of the metrics on your annual goals is annual goal, timeframe, total revenue and total hours worked. And people always asking what kind of what do you Mean total hours worked. I go, I want you to tell me if you could, how many hours a week do you want to work times how many weeks you want to work this year? How many hours is that? And then we're going to measure that every week. Well, why do you care how many hours I work? Because what gets measured gets accomplished. And so, like, I know that. I love taking my kids to school. They ride the bus, it's down the street. The bus comes at 7:05, so I'm up, ready, dressed, they're ready, we get in the car. I drop them off of the bus at 7 because I'm very lucky. My office is two minutes from the bus stop. So 7:07, I'm in the office, no one's here. It's amazing. Now I Also, at 3:00, 3:30, your boy's gone. Like, unless I have to heavy at something, I'm out of here. I don't know what you need from me, but whatever it is, it's not more important than being home when my kids get home. Yeah, but you can make more money. No, I actually can't make a lot of money at 4pm because I'm at my house at 4pm that's because I'm measuring how much I'm working and I'm measuring what's valuable. Now, am I measuring revenue as well? You bet. Absolutely. I'm also measuring that Wednesday night's date night with my wife and we do it every Wednesday and so we're measuring that. So I think into your part. Oftentimes our words are just going to follow suit with our measurement and our words are going to follow suit with our KPI. And so guess what language people are going to give back to us? The very language we give them.
- [26:20]
Cody Smith
Yeah, but to go back to like, Luke's point of like, his purpose is to empower people. Right? And you look at that and you go, well, you know, my job does require me to be available to people. Right. When they're suffering and then when they need me the most, like we're in real estate, right? Someone's moving and they're tomorrow they're moving out of their house and they need you today, that night to solve the problem of making sure it closes the next day. How do you show your wife that she is more important? Right. Than this? But this is also important because my career that I'm in is to serve people and to empower those families to do what we're trying to do, which is to live a good life as A as a family.
- [27:08]
Rocky Garza
Yeah, yeah. We got to take them off the scale. You have two things on this measuring. You have two things on the same scale that are not meant to be measured against one another. You said, how do I tell my wife that she's more important? Well, I'm not. I don't. I don't want serving a customer at 8:30 because it's the day before closing to be on the same scale as making sure my wife knows that I love her and she's important. They're not. They're not at odds with each other. Now when we communicate that way, we just made them at odds with each other. So now as soon as we get that 8:30 text, the first language you have is. I won't say it. But now I gotta go tell. Pretend your wife's. Whatever your wife's name is, Kelly. Now I gotta go tell Kelly that I gotta go do something. I gotta get my laptop out. We were supposed to watch the next British Bake off, and we can't because we. Wait a second. They're not at odds. This problem will take me 19 minutes. Hey, babe. In the context of we got a client, you know, they're moving out tomorrow. They're closing. Hey, give me 19 minutes. I know we're going to watch this show. I got to send this to solve this as soon as I'm done. Laptops out, and I'll be back. Just so you know, I'm not choosing this over you. I'm choosing this on a totally different playing field than you. And because I am here with you, for me to do this gives me the opportunity to come back and do that. Give me 18 minutes. And again, I'm oversimplifying what is much more complex with marriage and work and family and time. I'm very clear about that. But again, it's a part of it is the language. And when we say it in a way that we know we're making it at odds, we think they're going to hear it differently.
- [28:42]
Luke Acree
No, it is such a good point because it's also a sales point of you personify what you believe, whether you think so or not. So if you think your product's expensive, then the client's going to think the product's expensive. If you think it's cost effective and the best deal ever, the client's going to see. And we see this every day with reminder media. When we sell a promotion, it's like also that promo comes and we're closing 150 accounts, but on a regular day we're only getting 80, right? And it's like they personify that belief that this is a deal that you have to buy today. So in essence, when that text comes in, that interrupts you and your wife's time. If you're personifying, oh, gosh, she's thinking, I'm choosing her over versus the. It's almost in your confidence of delivery, of going, hey, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go take care of this for 18 minutes. It's like a sales tactic in a way, but in a good way of like, hey, confidently. And then make it like it's a non thing. It's a non thing.
- [29:43]
Rocky Garza
Well, I think it goes to, you know, we referenced earlier, you know, how do we help people with the language? So one part is identity mapping. The second part is what we refer to as the confidence method. And the confidence method is a mechanism that's used to sort of eradicate the imposter within the idea that there's. That we're not who we say we are, whatever that is. So really quickly, 60 seconds or less framework. Because this works to your example, Steven. I think this works to how we look at this in relationship to ourselves and the way we believe about ourselves, how we personify our words and we can overlay on top of our business. So we try to create like a triple threat here. Here's a quick, quick and dirty idea. Number one, the stories told to you about you, okay, are a narrative that are at play in your life. These are over the course of your life. Childhood, marriage, relationships. What do people say about Cody? What are the things that have been said about Cody over the course of his life? You're so this, you're always this. You're never this. You' you're to this. T o o, you're right. That kind of language. And everybody, if I said, what's a story told to you about you? Every one of us have something that goes into our brain immediately. Right? Okay, now where the second narrative is, the stories you tell yourself about yourself, go back to Stephen. I choose my job over my wife. Now, if the story told to him about him and the story he tells himself about himself, and those two narratives collide, we use the word collision on purpose because wherever they collide, it creates an impact. And almost always the impact of that story left by itself is fear, doubt, obstacle or insecurity, or in other words, the imposter within. So when we can discover that again, we're going to get in deep we're going to do a little digging. We're going to figure out, what are the stories told to you about you? Number one, oftentimes, the stories told to you about you are almost always a greater representation of the storyteller than they are the main character of the story. But we take those, and we pair those with how we talk to ourself, and we make ourselves the center of the story. As an example, one of you give me a. Give me, give me, give me something someone said. What's a story that's been told to you about you?
- [31:44]
Cody Smith
I'm forgetful.
- [31:46]
Rocky Garza
I'm forgetful. Now, that may be. I may not be able to help that one. That sounds like maybe that's true. But you're forgetful. Okay. All right. Now you've been told you're too forgetful. You forget things. You're. That turns into, like, you're not responsible. That turns into, like, you forget everything. That turns into, I guess it's not important to you. I get. You only care about what you care about. Right. We can see how that narrative unravels itself. Right. Sure. So we take that now, oftentimes, here's. If I could be the translator, which I like to pretend I am sometimes. Anyone who's ever said, hey, Stephen, you're so forgetful, dude, you're just too forgetful. Here's what they're saying. I consistently feel as though you are attempting to make a commitment to me that you did not uphold, which communicates to me, maybe you don't actually care about me the way that you say you do. Now, that's not what they said. I understand that. They said, the hell you forgot again. Forget it. I'll do it. I know that's what they said, but that's not what they meant because the story they communicated was much more about them. The story they communicated was they feel as though they are not being loved in the way in which they expected. But I don't have any other words other than saying, God, why are you so forgetful? So that plays around in our head. And as soon as we forget something again, left unchecked, that story takes off running in your brain, and you start saying, how do I make it up? How do I try to fix it? How do I not let them know? How do I let them know that I already know that it did happen, but I already fixed it, it's not a big deal, and I'll take care of it. They don't have to worry about it. And then we. And waste 45 minutes on something we should have done because we forgot three days ago. And then now we realize we're. It's 11:15. We didn't do anything we said we wanted to do. Now, I don't know if that's really you or not. We're just making this just theory, but an idea. So the confidence. So the confidence method allows us to go, if we can unpack these stories and unpack these stories and begin to see where they are connected. Number one, we realized maybe some of the stories told to me about me were. Never mind to begin with. The second part of that is that how do I begin to change the language for myself? I know it sounds cheesy, but. But I refer to those as affirmations. How do I communicate what is both true? That's confirmation and good? That's affirmation, right? And oftentimes most of us don't even get to confirmation. We say, screw it. I'll just take care of it myself. That doesn't work for you. Some of us do a little bit of work and we get to confirmation. We go, I am forgetful. I am a visionary. I am big picture. We turn into something true, but we stop there. We don't ever go to good. But what if we could take that and turn it into both a confirmation and instead of putting a period at the end, we put a comma, and then we follow up every sentence with and I am good. Now, all of a sudden, we've taken a truth about us, made it something that is also good. And then now we have something on a daily basis to be reminded of. I've been told my whole life, rocky, you're too intense. Rocky, calm down. Right? Oftentimes I get down with the podcast and I'm a guest on someone's podcast, and we're done. We're done recording. They're like, yo, I need a nap. What would just happen, right? And then I get in my head and I'm like, oh, no, it was too much. I should have slowed down. I talked too fast. What are they really thinking? How do they. Wait a second. You know the only person in my life who's ever said, I'm too intense. Somebody who in their life at one point was intense and someone told them not to be, or they had an experience where their intensity was viewed as negative. And instead of saying, rocky, I had an experience like you once, and I don't want you to get hurt, they just tell me not to be who I am. And I think oftentimes that's Happening to us all the time. See the confidence method, you put it on top of your business. Take any business. You take your real estate business. What are the stories told to you about you? That's your brand. You can't control that. We like to think we can control our brand. We can't control our brand. Our brand is what people are saying about us. So go take an exercise to your company. What are all the stories being told to you about you? Check out your Google reviews. Okay, well, what are the stories we tell ourselves about ourself? Well, that's our marketing, because I get to control that narrative. And the overlap of those two things typically is a really clear brand message about what the public really sees about us. Now, how do I change a story told to me about me? I either have to change the experience a client has, or I have to change the way we're talking about ourselves. Go back to your point earlier, Luke. If I say I'm expensive, guess what. They say. I'm expensive. If they say that it's not worth it, guess what? It's not worth it. If they say, what a bargain. Charge more. Okay, Right. We see how all those things go together. So again, we use this as a. And we always start inward with self, because if I can apply it to me, I can apply it anywhere. Oftentimes we get those backwards. We like to start in business and go, it worked in my business. Let me try it on myself. No good. The other way around. Always much more effective.
- [36:25]
Luke Acree
Yeah, it's so good.
- [36:27]
Joshua Steich
How do you. I'm curious, like, from your experience. Because, you know, you talk about the. The mapping and everything. And then, like, a lot of times when you come out of those experiences, if you're not doing something on a professional level, like maybe it's counseling every week. Like, how do you keep yourself in that mindset? How do you recommend people continue to remind themselves of that, of what your purpose is or what you want to accomplish or some of this confidence stuff that you're talking about? Like, what are you doing every day to keep yourself in that.
- [36:55]
Rocky Garza
Yeah, yeah. So number one is, I encourage you, when we create this document and we're getting through in the process, so number one, print it out and put it someplace. Like, as cheesy as it is, you got to be able to. You got to be able to see it. You gotta be able to see it regularly. Number two, we have what we call the 365. The 365 formula. And so that's picking three things to do six days a week, within the first five minutes of waking up. One of those things is reading through your Northstar document. One of those things is being reminded, what do I value? What am I good at? What do I believe about myself? And it doesn't have to be as cheesy as like the mirror. You know, you're like, I love my dad, I love my mom. I mean you can do that if you want to. But I do believe there's something very, very real about reminding. I have a client of mine and he's a company called Labor Share. And so they do, they get staff, full time employees out of Juarez, Mexico. He has an office there. You hire those people full time staff, he writes all your SOPs, he manages them and then he goes and finds people for you. So it's a kind of unique hybrid model of staffing. It's really incredible. And so he was a client of ours maybe a year or so ago, he created, got all this stuff put in Northstar. He then recorded it, audio read his whole North Star document. It's about two and a half minutes long. And every morning he gets in the car and he lives in El Paso. So he drives from El Paso to Juarez, which about a 15 minute drive going through the border. And every morning he gets in his car and he opens, he has it saved on his phone and he plays it out loud and listens to himself tell himself what is true every day. And this is like, let me tell you, if you saw this guy, you'd be like, there's no freaking way that guy is, has affirmations like not a chance it's happening. But he's a human being like the rest of us and you're going to hear a story one way or another. Why not start your day with a story that you know is both true and good. And so as cheeky as it can be, put it someplace where you can see it, communicate it to yourself on a regular basis. And this is not a plug, this is me being serious. And then you need to have a coach or somebody in your life who is going to semi regularly remind you of what is true. And you need to be able to show up and go, hey, I don't think it's true right now and not feel like you have to defend it. That's the number one most. I find one of the most difficult parts about being a leader, a business owner or a CEO is that rarely do we allow ourselves to show up to a place where you don't have to be in charge. If I would say if there's anything that I could offer somebody in our programs outside of identity mapping. Confident. We have plenty of methodologies, a place for you to show up. And I don't give a shit about what you did or your revenue or what you think you can accomplish. Because unless you just plan on giving me equity because you like me, it doesn't really matter to me how much revenue you made because it actually doesn't affect my life at all. However, what does affect my life is your capacity to build the one that you desire. Therefore, I need you to show up and stop having answers and start listening. And oftentimes that requires an unbiased third party for us to be able to do that.
- [39:37]
Joshua Steich
Yeah, that's awesome. Rocky, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing your wealth of knowledge. Before we close out, how can people connect with you?
- [39:45]
Rocky Garza
Yeah, you can just go to rockygarza.com beyond success. There's where we have all of our links for you. We very regularly have free online events. We'd love for you to get to get in to join us. We'll walk you through the Beyond Success system, which is not about helping you accomplish more. It's about actually helping you accomplish, accomplish what it is that you really want and finding that intersection of a deeply meaningful life and a wildly successful career.
- [40:05]
Joshua Steich
Awesome. Again, rockygarza.com beyond success. We'll include links to that in the show notes as well. Cody and Stephen, thank you for joining us. How can people connect with you guys?
- [40:14]
Cody Smith
Yeah, you can go to our Instagram Acre Brothers or feel free to, you know, message us on email teambrothers.com Love it.
- [40:22]
Joshua Steich
Thank you all so much. Again, thank you all for listening. You can head on over to stay paid podcast.com for the show notes, the video for this episode as well as the links. And if you enjoy this episode and want to show your support, go to Apple Podcast or Spotify. Leaves a five star review along with a comment. We'll make sure to read it here on the show. And the best way to help out the show is simply share this episode with somebody that you know. If you want to get hold of me or Luke, you can email us atpodcast reminder media.com or you can follow us and message us on Instagram. We are at Stay Paid podcast for this episode of Stay Paid. I'm Joshua Steike.
- [40:51]
Luke Acree
And I'm Luke Akerie. Rocky man, thank you so much for coming on. Did not disappoint at all. You are beast, dude. Just a, just a massive force like, and I'm just getting to know you, too, in your content. It's just really, really great stuff. My action item for everybody listening to this, because it does, you know, good to just be a hearer. You got to be a doer. You need to take a couple hours and do the identity mapping exercise. Take a couple hours. Even if you don't get as far as identity mapping, take a couple hours and actually reflect where you're at, what you're doing, why you're doing it, and where you want to go. There's power in meditation and reflection, and so few people do it because it's scary, because you got to face reality. And the first step to change is actually understanding where you're at. Remember the difference between top producers and mediocre producers. In every business, top producers take action. Take action on that.
- [41:40]
Rocky Garza
Today.