
Loading summary
A
The HubSpot Podcast Network is a Success Story partner. Now. If you like Success Story, you're going to love other podcasts in the HubSpot Podcast Network. One of my personal favorites is I Digress, hosted by my boy Troy Sandich. With shows under 30 minutes, I digress helps eliminate complexity, complications and confusion in your business with frameworks and strategies to achieve true, scalable and sustainable success. Success. If you are an entrepreneur building anything you need to listen to I Digress. This is one of the most useful business podcasts you're ever going to subscribe to. Listen to I Digress Wherever you get your podcasts. Lingoda is a partner of Success Story. Look, I'll be real with you. My French used to be solid. I learned it in school. I even had decent pronunciation. But when I booked trip to France last year, it was a total blank. I could barely order a croissant without sounding like a tourist. So I jumped into the Lingoda Sprint challenge and man, it changed everything. I'd take live classes late at night after podcasting. Only five students max. Real teachers, real conversations. And in just two months, I went from bonjour to holding full conversations at a Paris cafe. Confidence unlocked. Now, here's the play. 30 or 60 classes in 60 days, and if you finish them all, you get 50% cash back. That's basically €4 or $5 per class. That's insane value. Go to try.lingoda.com successsprint and then use my code scottsprint for an extra €20 off on top of their current deal. Registration closes May 5th. Classes start May 12th. Let's get fluent in this lessons episode, discover how to separate real fear from imagined fear and take control of your mindset. Learn why most fears, like rejection or failure, don't exist outside your mind. Learn how to use fear as a tool instead of a barrier. And learn how understanding your fear can help you make better life and career decisions. I think that's, it's incredible and it's. It's very impressive that you discovered that on your own, because that. That inflection point where you took a look at your boss's job and you're like, my God, I don't want to be my boss. I really just don't want to be my boss, so I better figure my shit out. I think a lot of people have that feeling, but very few take action on that feeling. Now, I would say that the this audience. I don't want to. I don't want to get it twisted. This audience is very entrepreneurial So a lot of people in this audience have taken action, but sometimes they've taken action and they go back to their job or they take action, they're not sure if it's the right action or they take action towards one business and they start five more because they're almost like over indexing on taking action. So it's still a very messy road. It doesn't matter how you do it or they just don't take action at all. So what is the mental framework or the mental model? When you're at this inflection point in your life, you see your future, you're not happy with it, obviously you're scared. You speak about fear a lot. There's a lot of fear inside and that can either stop you from taking action or it can prompt you to take incorrect action. How do you manage fear and sort of use it as a tool to move in the direction that you should be moving?
B
Yeah, good question. So I love fear and thinking about it, I don't love the feeling of it, but I love the way it manifests in humans lives. Fear at its simplest form is just a defense mechanism. That's all that it is. It's trying to protect you. And so if it's like, hey, you should, if I have this feeling, if I should leave my job and that is me thinking that and that's like my gut feeling, but my brain pops in is like, hey, but how are you going to pay the bills? That is just at, at its, at its core, if you look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, security is the number one thing that is what we're looking for. And so it's like, okay, if I lose my job or if I leave job and I start growing my own business, what if I can't pay my bills? What if I can't feed my family? Like that is like at the root of what we are as humans. Like we need that security before we can do anything else. As far as self actualization goes on the other side of that. And I'll answer it how it works in the human brain. And this is, I wrote, I have an entire chapter on fear in my book that was really eye opening me for when I came across and started realizing this stuff. And then I'll tell you how it actually happened in my life with the leaving of it, leaving the job, doing what I do now, all of that. So I had a friend that his name was Chad and his name is Chad. He's still alive. So it's not Wes. Chad, Chad is still alive. So Chad and I were having a conversation years ago and he, he's a very alternative lifestyle post type type person. So he went down and he lived with a native Brazilian tribe in the middle of nowhere. And when I say native Brazilian, I mean that he flew down to Brazil, he got on a boat and it took two days of sleeping overnight to finally get to this tribe. There's no roads, there's no. That's the only way you can get to this tribe. You gotta take, take a, you know, go down to Amazon, all that to get there. So he lives with them.
A
So like Chad, Chad's done for sure, like ayahuasca. And Chad's done all.
B
That's how he got there. Right. That's what I mean by alternative lifestyle. He's awesome. It's like in. Yeah, I have no doubt one of, one of the most amazing humans alive too. Like just a calming, peaceful presence when you're in this diet. He's also like 40 pounds of muscle, more than I am in the same size as me, right. So. But amazing human. And he went down there and he lived with them and to the point where he like lived in teepees. He had to walk around with a machete. They hunted anacondas. And he said, he said, he said if a jaguar sees you, it's already too late because it's now allowing it to. It's now allowing you to see it because it's going to attack you. Like that's there. It's. It's fear of safety all the time. And he said, he said, what's really interesting is none of these people were depressed because they don't have time to think about depression. It's kind of like there's a phrase that says like one of the greatest faults that we have as human is having enough time to sit around and ask myself, like, am I happy? Like, there's a lot of people in the world don't even. They can't even think am I happy? Because they're just worried about survival. And so then we started talking about the, the primal fears that exist when you live in the Amazon. Like, primal is like. And then there's. And then, so we started talking about, well, what, okay, we don't really have primal fears. So what do we have? And we're like, we have basically intellectual fears. So like then in my book I split up of two different types of fears. So a primal fear, the way I describe it and the way that we still think about it in our head, unless we consciously Bring it to the surface and actually think about it. Is a primal fear means that there's physical pain or there's death that's potentially attached to it, right? That's why people have the fear of heights. That's why they have the fear of spiders. That's why people. If you're walking through and you hear a loud noise in the jungle, there's a primal fear. On the other side of that are intellectual fears. And an intellectual fear could be because of the fact that we don't live in the middle of the jungle anymore. Our brain creates all of these other fears. The amygdala still exists inside of our brain, so it's still always creating these fears. So an intellectual fear would be like a fear of other people's opinions. The fear of rejection, the fear of failure, the fear of success. And the way that you can distinguish the two of them is if you ask yourself, this fear, is it going to kill me? And does it exist in reality? Like, if you look at the fear of. Of rejection, does it exist in reality? Is it tangible? Can you hold it physically? You can't. Where does it exist? It exists in your mind, which means that you are making it up. You're literally making it up. And I remember I was, as I was writing the book, I was listening to a lot of. I was listening to everything I possibly could as I was writing it. And I think it was Sadhguru that I was listening to. And he was talking about fear and how we make up all of these fears. And he said, and this is what I write about in the book is, okay, now that I've identified my fear of success, my fear of failure, my fear of rejection, my fear of other people's opinions, how do I overcome it? And the answer is, you can't overcome something that doesn't exist because it doesn't actually exist. And so we're basically waking up in the morning, we're creating the boogeyman, which is these intellectual fears that don't exist in reality. And instead of taking action on the life that we want, what are we doing? We're fighting the boogeyman and wasting our energy fighting the boogeyman all day long versus just taking action towards the thing that we want. Now, how did it manifest in my life? I'll tell you, like, I almost went back to working for somebody else. So I left my job. It was like right before. So it would have been October of 2015. So, yeah, nine years ago at this point, it's October of 2015. And I was like, I left. And I was full of fear because, like, we were talking about before we started podcasting, there was no money in podcasting. Nine and a half years ago, there was none, right? There was no sponsors. People don't even know how to listen to podcasts. And so. So there was no money. And so I was. I was kind of, like, jumping off. But in my heart, like, it felt like this is the thing I'm supposed to do. But as soon as the paycheck stopped coming in, I just had. I bought a new house like, four or five months before in July, and I had to still pay for myself and pay for my food and pay for my car payments and all of this. And I went through my first month of just not having money coming in and paying bills from my savings and it coming out, I started getting, like, really, really full of fear. And I believe that. That the universe, God, life, whatever you believe in, is always speaking to us. We just have to be quiet enough to listen to it. And I had this feeling of like, maybe I should go back and work for someone else. Maybe I should. Like, maybe I should just go back. I'm terrified. I'm full of so much fear. I went back home to Florida. I live in Texas now. Went back home to Florida. And my sister just comes up to me and she's like, hey, have you ever seen this box of dad's stuff? And my father had died in 2001. He was an alcoholic. You know, he passed away when I was 15. And so what are we talking? That's 14 years before he had passed away. She's like, have you ever seen this box of dad's stuff? And I was like, no. And it was like old T shirt of his. It was his glasses, it was his watch. And then there were letters. My father was in jail for a little while, and he used to write us letters. And I was reading these letters, and the very last sentence of one of them was, it was a letter from my. To my sister on her 19th birthday. The very last sentence was, I hope you live your life with courage, love and laughter. And then it said. And then it had, like, courage. And then it had a little asterisk next to the word courage. And then down below it had, courage is not the absence of fear. It is deciding that you are going to move forward in spite of it. And I read it, and it was this weird, like, the universe, like, warped. And I was like, oh, my God. I think my dad wrote this for me. The universe was speaking through my dad. To my sister for me to find this in this moment right now. And I was like, this is the universe telling me that I have to do this. Like, I have to go forward with it. Like I have to burn the ships. Like there has to be. You know, as a great philosopher, Marshall Mathers says, success is my only motherfucking option. Failure is not. That's what I have to think about with this thing. Like, I have to do this and the universe will support me and I just have to trust. I was like, what do I need to do? And I was like, I need to get this tattooed on me. Like, I need to just burn the ships. And so literally, it's my dad's handwriting is on the inside. It says, live your life with courage, love and laughter. On the arm. This is his handwriting blown up in my arm. Very first tattoo that I ever got. And I only have two. The only other one that I have is the roman numeral for 10,000 for the 10,000 hour rule. And so for, for me, I always recommend that people make a decision and they just go, will you fear the fear? Absolutely. Every single day. But it's not about not feeling. Feeling any fear. It's about feeling the fear, taking it. Understanding is trying to protect you but deciding to move forward anyways. And so I think that's the biggest piece of it. Now if somebody's like, I want to quit my job and start a company, I don't think you just leave like I did. I actually recommend you make a transition plan. Like make a year long transition plan, make a two year transition plan where you're going to be out, you're going to save up and you're going to start building money the side business on the side on the weekends. So that therefore the fear starts to go away. Because the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy needs is taken care of, which is my safety. I can pay my bills. So now I can leave my job.
A
I have to take a second and thank Northwest Registered Agent for supporting today's episode. Now listen, I know a lot of entrepreneurs listen to this show. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're building a business, you have to listen if you want to get more. When you're launching your next big idea, Northwest Registered Agent lets you establish your entire business identity in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. For nearly 30 years, they've been the secret weapon for entrepreneurs who want to move fast while getting expert guidance. For just $39 plus state fees, they'll handle your formation, create a custom website, you can and establish your local presence wherever your business takes you. As an entrepreneur myself, what I value most is their one stop business solution. You get everything from formation paperwork to custom domains to trademark registration all in one easy to use account. No more juggling all these multiple services or wasting time figuring out the legal stuff. So don't wait. Protect your privacy, build your brand and set up your business in just 10 clicks and 10 minutes. Visit northwestregisteredagent.com/success and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest registered agent@northwestregisteredagent.com Success NetSuite is a success Story Partner now what does the future hold for business? If you ask nine experts, you're going to get 10 answers. Bull market. Bear market. Rates will rise. Rates will fall. Honestly, I just wish somebody could invent a crystal ball. But until then, over 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. And when you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. If I had needed this product, this is what I'd use. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com ScottClary the guide is free to you at netsuite.com Scottclary netsuite.com Scottclay indeed as a success Story Partner now say you just realized your business needed to hire someone fast. How can you find amazing candidates fast? It's easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. Stop struggling to get your job post seen on other job sites. Indeed sponsored Jobs help you stand out and hire fast. And with Sponsored Jobs, your post jumps to the top of the page for your relevant candidates so you can reach the people you want faster and it makes a huge difference. According to Indeed data, Sponsored Jobs posted directly on Indeed have 45% more applications than non sponsored jobs. Plus with Indeed sponsored Jobs, there's no monthly subscription, no long term contracts. You only pay for results. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility@ Indeed.com Clary, just go to Indeed.com Clary right now and support our show by saying you heard about indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Clary terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need. And I think that when you look at fear that way and act in spite of it, fear no longer fogs your judgment. Because like, you mentioned, like, yes, there's sort of like two components to what you're talking about right now. There is acting in spite of fear, but then there's also de risking the opportunity so that you move forward regardless. When you look at. When you look at sort of like the two components that I just discussed, like de risking versus acting in spite of fear, how much do you think you should de risk an opportunity versus jumping in and figuring it out and burning the boats? Because you can de risk an opportunity. Is de risking an opportunity ever just almost like an excuse to take massive action? I guess the question is, like, how do you understand? When's that? What's that point where you do have to dive in?
B
I think it depends on the person, right? Like some people are. I am the type of person where I will take risks, but there are very calculated risks. My best friend, he will take very uncalculated risks. He has no problem with it. Like, I don't. I don't even like gambling. He loves gambling. So I think it depends on the person. People that are very risk adverse and some people that don't care about risk. And so I think it depends on the person. For me, I'm in between where, you know, I want to make sure that what I'm stepping into is the correct thing for me. I'm very logical in the way that I think. And then at the same time, I want to de risk it as much as possible so that therefore I'm good to take action on this thing if it's something for, like, where we're talking about a very serious life event that someone's moving into where they're wanting to start a business. I am a really big believer in going with your gut feeling with stuff. And then people ask, like, well, how do you find your gut feeling? What is all of that? I think your gut feeling is a blend of intuition and also experience. And so, you know, like, I have a friend that gave me a great example is like, you should definitely go with your gut feeling. If you're a pilot that has 40,000 hours in a plane and you hear a noise that you've never heard before, it's like, okay, there's something wrong. I'm going to go with my gut feeling. If it's your first flight and you're just soloing for the first time ever, there might be a noise you've never heard before because you've only got 40 hours under your belt. There's a big difference between the two. And so I think it's an intuition is a gut feeling, but it's also a little bit of a blend of experience as well. So for me, like it was a little bit easier to jump off and grow a business because I'd grown businesses before in the past that failed and that's why there's a lot of fear behind them. And then I went into corporate as well. And so I think more than anything else I think it depends on the person and how, how risk adverse they are. But I do think that it is somebody's Runway of how long they have to mess up will be longer the more that they can de risk the situation, which could be I have, you know, $40,000 saved up, I'm good for the next year of bills, I can put everything into it. So I think it depends on the person. But I also think that you could, you should try to de risk it as much as you possibly can or create the longest Runway that you possibly can when you're making a big life adjustment.
A
Thanks for tuning in. If you found this valuable, don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. And if you want to dive deeper into this conversation, check out the links in the description to watch the full episode. See you in the next one. This podcast is brought to you in part by Stash. Are you still putting off saving and investing because you'll get to it someday? Stash turns someday into today. Stash isn't just an investing app. It's a registered investment advisory that combines automated investing with dependable financial strategies to help you reach your goals faster. It'll provide you with personalized advice on what to invest in based on your goals. Or if you just want to sit back and watch your money go to work, you can opt into their award winning expert managed portfolio that picks stocks for you. Stash has helped millions of Americans reach their financial goals and starts at just $3 per month. Don't let your savings sit around, make it work harder for you. Go to get.stash.comsuccess story and see how you can receive $25 towards your first stock purchase and to view important disclosures, that's get.stash.comsuccess Story paid non client endorsement not representative of all clients and not a guarantee. Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investment llc, an SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risks and investments may lose value. Offers subject to T's and C's. HubSpot is a success story. Partner now. If you're an entrepreneur, listen up because HubSpot makes impossible growth impossibly easy for their customers. If you are building a business, you need to get HubSpot. Why? Here's the perfect example. Morehouse College needed to reach new students with fresh, engaging content, a problem that every single business in the world has. But with a 900 page website, even the tiniest update took 30 minutes to publish. Now Breeze, which is HubSpot's collection of AI tools, help them write and optimize their content in a fraction of the time. And the results? 30% more page views and visitors now spend 27% more time on their site. If you are ready for impossible growth like this, visit HubSpot.com.
Title: Lessons - Transform Your Fear Into Your Greatest Advantage | Rob Dial - Mindset Coach & Podcast Host
Host: Scott D. Clary
Guest: Rob Dial
Release Date: May 23, 2025
In this compelling episode of the Success Story Podcast, host Scott D. Clary engages in a deep conversation with renowned mindset coach and podcast host, Rob Dial. The discussion revolves around understanding fear, distinguishing its types, and leveraging it to drive personal and professional growth.
Rob Dial begins by dissecting the nature of fear, categorizing it into two distinct types: primal fears and intellectual fears.
Primal Fears: These are innate and stem from basic survival instincts. Examples include fear of heights, spiders, or sudden loud noises—fears that have direct, tangible threats associated with them. As Rob explains, "Fear at its simplest form is just a defense mechanism. It's trying to protect you" (04:15).
Intellectual Fears: Unlike primal fears, these are constructed by our minds and lack a direct physical threat. They include fears such as rejection, failure, and the fear of others' opinions. Rob emphasizes, "An intellectual fear could be because of the fact that we don't live in the middle of the jungle anymore. Our brain creates all of these other fears" (07:50).
Through an anecdote about his friend Chad, who adopts an alternative lifestyle by living with a native Brazilian tribe, Rob illustrates how eliminating intellectual fears can lead to a more fulfilled and less anxious life. Chad's experiences highlight that without the constant barrage of intellectual fears, individuals can focus more on survival and present moments rather than existential worries.
Rob shares a pivotal moment in his life that underscores the transformative power of redefining fear. He recounts the period when he decided to leave his job to pursue podcasting, a venture that initially lacked financial stability.
Faced with mounting bills and the fear of financial instability, Rob contemplated returning to his previous employment. In a moment of serendipity, he discovered a box of his late father's belongings, including a letter that profoundly influenced his decision:
“Courage is not the absence of fear. It is deciding that you are going to move forward in spite of it.” (09:45)
Inspired by these words, Rob chose to permanently embrace his entrepreneurial path, symbolizing his commitment by tattooing the quote on his arm. This act served as a constant reminder to persevere despite fear, embodying the essence of courage as defined in the letter.
Scott delves deeper by posing a critical question to Rob:
“How do you manage fear and use it as a tool to move in the direction that you should be moving?” (11:00)
Rob responds by advocating for a structured approach to overcoming fear:
Decision-Making: Acknowledge that fear exists but choose to act despite it. Rob states, "It's about feeling the fear, taking it, understanding it's trying to protect you, but deciding to move forward anyways" (10:30).
Transition Plans: Instead of making abrupt changes, Rob recommends creating a comprehensive transition plan. This involves setting aside savings and gradually building up side businesses to mitigate financial uncertainty. "Make a transition plan... So that therefore the fear starts to go away because the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy needs is taken care of" (11:15).
In the latter part of the episode, Scott raises an important consideration regarding risk management:
“When you look at fear that way and act in spite of it, fear no longer fogs your judgment... How do you understand when to de-risk an opportunity versus jumping in and figuring it out?” (16:00)
Rob elaborates on this by emphasizing that the approach to risk varies based on individual temperament:
Calculated Risks: For those who are risk-averse, Rob suggests minimizing uncertainties by securing financial stability before making significant life changes. "I do think that you should try to de-risk it as much as you possibly can or create the longest runway that you possibly can when you're making a big life adjustment" (17:10).
Intuition and Experience: He also highlights the importance of trusting one's gut, especially when supported by experience. "Your gut feeling is a blend of intuition and also experience" (17:45).
Rob concludes that while some individuals thrive on taking bold, uncalculated risks, others benefit more from a strategic, well-planned approach to managing fear and pursuing their goals.
This episode masterfully intertwines personal anecdotes with actionable strategies, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of fear and its role in personal development. Rob Dial's insights provide a roadmap for harnessing fear as a catalyst for success, encouraging individuals to confront their fears head-on and transform them into powerful motivators.
Notable Quotes:
For more insights and inspiring conversations, visit www.successstorypodcast.com.