How Thoughts Become Things with Douglas Vermeeren: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. podcast network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like No Straight Path. Today, we're pulling a timeless EO Fire episode from the archives, so the giveaway may not be active, and we'll be breaking down how thoughts become things. To drop these value bombs, I brought Douglas Vermeeren into EO Fire Studios. Douglas has personally interviewed business leaders and companies like Nike, Reebok, Fruit of the Loom, FedEx, American Airlines, and others to share their success secrets with you.

0:35ABC and Fox refer to him as the modern-day Napoleon Hill, and he is also the producer of the new hit film, How Thoughts Become Things. And today, Front Nation, we'll talk about how it is your thoughts that allow whatever you want to be in your life to be there, how top achievers never run away from problems. They embrace them and learn how to solve them, and so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Douglas and our sponsors. One of my favorite conferences to attend each year is HubSpot's annual Inbound Conference and is coming up fast. Join us in Boston from September 5th to the 8th, 2023 for an event like no other.

1:13Inbound brings together leaders across the business space, including sales, marketing, customer success, and operations teams. The goal at Inbound, to help you discover all the latest trends and tactics you can implement in your business right now. Learn, be inspired, and walk away with practical tips to help you tackle your next challenge, supercharge your sales and marketing, and ignite your customer service. Inbound is featuring many must-see speakers this year, including Reese Witherspoon, Guy Raz, and Neil Patel, just to name a few. Whether you choose a general admission ticket or go the VIP route, you're sure to leave Boston feeling on fire.

1:52Visit inbound.com to get your tickets today. I remember that state of constant overwhelm with my ever-growing to-do list too. My solution, hire a VA and start delegating. Learn how to optimize your time with Belay CEO's latest book, Rise Up and Lead Well, where she shares the exact framework she has used with her own assistant to maximize productivity. Text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, to 55123 to get your free copy. Doug, say what's up to FIRE Nation and share something interesting about yourself that most people don't know. Hey, Fire Nation. Glad to be here. So here's something that a lot of people don't know is I actually do competitive mixed martial arts and specifically train in Brazilian jiu-jitsu.

2:38So that's me. Wow. Did not know that. I actually have a couple of friends in Palmas Del Mar, the community I live here in Puerto Rico that do that and they rave about it. They actually try to keep getting me into the ring with them, but I'm a little nervous. I'm going to hold on a little bit. You got to do it. You got to do it. Actually, it's hilarious. One of the speaking events that I did one time, I showed up with the black guy. And it was totally a good talking point. So yeah, do it. It's fun. All right. Here comes my black eye. I love it. And Fire Nation, as I was sharing during the introduction, we're talking about how thoughts become things.

3:11And there's nobody better in the world to have this conversation with than Doug, because he is literally creating the movie around this. So do our thoughts really become things, Doug? Expound upon that. It's kind of interesting. And maybe we're going to be a bit controversial here. I don't believe actually even though i'm making the movie that your thoughts actually do become things Everything that you already want actually exists in some form or another like if you want a ferrari It already exists. It's not your thoughts that are going to make it happen In terms of the creation, but it is going to be your thoughts that allow you to manifest that In other words, bring it into your life.

3:46So we we need to get clear about that part. Sure So the important thing here is okay I want a ferrari obviously just by me like thinking about a Ferrari isn't going to make one appear in my driveway. But me thinking about a Ferrari, there's one that actually exists and it's three miles away. It's in a dealership. But what I need is the money to be able to go down, hand it to that individual to then drive the Ferrari to my driveway. Is that kind of more of the concept? Here's the deal is we know that everything starts with our thoughts, but when our thoughts arrive, there's always a positive and a negative, right?

4:20Like, so for example, if you want to start a business, hey, let's get real. We're talking to entrepreneurs here, right? So if you want to start a business, you're going to have a thought in your mind that says, wow, I can do this. This is really cool. I can be successful with this. But right behind it, you're going to have a thought that's going to say, you're not worthy. You can't do it. You've never done this. Don't even try. And so we really need to kind of understand that the process really begins with, first of all, having clarity about what we really want, setting up supportive networks that are going to empower and give us the programming we need to recognize the positive thinking.

4:50And then here's the deal. It's not take action. I know all these guys right now on the internet, they're talking about hustle, grind, wake up, be part of the 5am club, stay up late, blah, blah, blah. It's not action, massive action. It's deliberate action. So we need to then understand and recognize with our thoughts what actions are going to give us the most productive results. And that's where things start. Clarity, your networks, Fire Nation, things that you need to be focusing on. Now let's talk about our programming, Because a lot of us have both conscious and subconscious programming. And obviously, there's ways that we can work on that.

5:25We can potentially even change our programming when we go about it in the right manner. What does that look like? Can we change our programming? 100 % we can. In fact, it's interesting. Most of the time when people have this discussion around programming, they say, oh, man, I was programmed as a kid. I'm turning out just like my mom or my dad. My life doesn't support me because of where I came from. I love this idea that you started to talk about there about networks because the truth is, I love that quote. It's so true. It says you're like the five people you spend the most time with. Spend means like current, right?

5:57It means like right now what's going on, not who you spend. And it's true. We come from places, but that doesn't define who we are now. And this idea of programming, most people forget that it's actually ongoing. So if you choose to level up and to spend your time with a higher group of people now or a higher set of influences, you're being programmed to that level. And so I think it's really important that we raise our standards of what we choose to surround ourselves with and bring ourselves, you know, bring into our lives. I love that quote that you brought up. And for me, it's actually one, Doug, that I end every Entrepreneurs on Fire episode with.

6:32I say, Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people that you are currently spending the most time with. And right now in this moment, you're hanging out with Doug and JLD. So keep up that heat because your average is pretty awesome right now. Two of your five people you're spending the most time with today are two pretty cool people. So keep up that heat. And it's so important, Fire Nation, you continue to drive forward with that knowledge. And I mean, Doug, you've gone through and interviewed some of the greatest business leaders, you know, of companies like Nike, Reebok, Fruit of the Loom, FedEx, American Airlines, fill in the blank.

7:04I mean, the best of the best. Talk to us about some of the things that you learned having conversations with individuals and leaders of those great companies. Obviously, a lot of it is connected to your thoughts. Like, here's the deal is quite frankly, I didn't come from an entrepreneurial background. my dad like worked construction and my mom babysat kids in the home we were kind of broke stuck in the poverty pattern like no kidding I was wearing like hand-me-downs in high school and it totally sucked so for me to make that shift into really becoming a believer in myself first of all right like before we become this like business titan this business entrepreneur leader we've got to believe in ourselves and we've got to be our biggest cheerleader well I didn't have that kind of idea or that mindset.

7:48And so that was the number one shift. But here's a really cool story of something that I think will be useful for your entrepreneurs as well. So when I started doing these interviews with the top achievers and business leaders, I had this friend who was worth about 300 million self made total entrepreneur. And I wanted to get some help with the business that I was going to start. And so I came to him and I started asking questions like, how should I do this? How can I find that? How can I get the customers? What should I do for marketing? And I was kind of asking all these questions and he stopped me and says, I can tell you're going to start a very small company.

8:23I was like, what are you talking about, man? That's like kind of mean to say. And so I said, what's going on here? And he goes, yeah, you're going to start a very small company. And so why is that? And he goes, well, it's because you're asking taking selfish questions. I was like, well, what do you mean by that? And he goes, well, you're asking about how can I, how should I, all this I stuff. He goes, the question you need to be asking is who can help me with this? Who can answer these questions? Who can open the door? Who can give me these products? Who can et cetera, et cetera. And then he explained this really cool principle.

8:55He said, you need to start thinking beyond yourself because you'll never scale if you're the only guy in charge of everything. And then he says, if you're a cog in the wheel, you're a clog in the wheel. So get yourself out of there and start asking who questions instead of the selfish questions. That was a game changer for me. Wow, Fire Nation, I hope you're taking notes. I hope you're pressing pause. I hope you're pressing rewind 30 seconds to listen to these value bombs as Doug is dropping them. And Doug, we're talking a lot about thoughts. What are some of the greatest influences on our thinking?

9:26Well, I think the first one that we're all talking about right now is again your network those that allow uh really you to think higher here's the deal that most people forget we think that we need to be always proactive in our thoughts in order for them to be successful right like we think that's how they arrive but the truth is is we are actually very reactionary we respond to the things in our environment everything is a stimulus like for example if i even right now let's let's do do an experiment here if i said the word dog Right away, everybody's thinking about a dog, the color, the size, et cetera.

9:57But until I brought that word up, nobody was thinking dog. There's nobody in the audience that had that on their mind, unless you had a dog in your room, right? But here's the deal is if we think in advance of what we want for certain outcomes, when those things show up, then we have control. As it stood right now with that example, I have control because I'm the one that mentioned the dog, right? So what I think we need to do is we need to understand that there are going to be certain things in our environment that are going to stimulate our thinking. And if we make decisions ahead of time, and then we up level our environment, and we put ourselves in the right places, our thinking will actually be sort of probed and built to respond in a higher level way, rather than the low, slow and the no level thinking.

10:38So it comes with the decisions ahead of time. That's the number one thing. Purple elephants. I got you, Fire Nation. I got you. I mean, I love how you broke that down, Doug, reactionary. I mean, we respond to our environment. I mean, that's just how we are as human beings. And if you think Doug and myself are even close to done dropping value bombs, Fire Nation, you have another thing coming. We're talking about negative thinking, how learning from 400 top achievers has changed Doug's thinking, and so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. The Product Boss, hosted by Jacqueline Snyder and Mina Kunlo-Sitep, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals.

11:22Take your physical product sales and strategy to the next level to create your dream life with hosts Jacqueline and Mina as they deliver a workshop-style, hour-long episode filled with social media and marketing strategies so you can up-level as the boss of your business. A recent episode covered the ins and outs of whether you can have a successful product business as a side hustle. Listen to The Product Boss wherever you get your podcasts. What's one thing we all wish we had more of? Time. I remember that state of constant overwhelm with my ever-growing to-do list too. So what did I do? I hired a VA and started to delegate.

11:56Lucky for you, our friends at Belay know the demands on business owners all too well and they're here to help. Belay has highly vetted talent to help you with the numerous tasks you have on your plate and because they've been helping business leaders like you for over a decade, they really know their stuff. Belay intentionally pairs clients with US-based fractional virtual assistants. I'm talking talent that can handle all of your administrative tasks. So you have the time and energy to grow your business and to help you get started. Belay is offering Fire Nation, their ebook, Rise Up and Lead Well for free.

12:28In this ebook, Belay's CEO provides the framework she's used with her own assistant to maximize productivity and strike the work-life balance we all deserve. Learn how to optimize your time with an assistant today. Just text fire. That's F I R E to five, five, one, two, three to get your free copy. So Doug, we're back. And man, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And I just cannot stand hanging around negative people because of this truth. I mean, people that are just negative, they literally just ooze it from their pores and it gets absorbed by the energy of the people that are around them.

13:02And I just refuse to do it. They can't be part of my life. So talk about how negative thinking really can destroy our success. You know, it's interesting too, and maybe we should pause because you talked about being surrounded by negative people. And here's maybe something like when I went out, I did these interviews with the 400 of the world's top achievers. I found that there's some stuff that's often taught by a lot of the so-called gurus today that's actually incorrect. And one of those things that I think maybe we should just pause for a minute and talk about is this idea of avoiding toxic people.

13:31Now it's true. I agree. You got to avoid the abusers, right? Nobody deserves that. But I think sometimes we mislabel toxic people. And this idea of, you know, if I look at the top achievers, they never really ran from problems, they embrace problems, and they learn how to solve them. And if you want to be a high level entrepreneur, you've got to expand who you are before you can expand what you have, which means that we learn how to solve and have solutions for challenges. So the one thing that I noticed, by the way, about toxic people is they really only come in two categories. You've got the complainer which is somebody who really never has anything to add to the discussion they've got negative things to say they've got you know no solution no you know purpose really behind their complaint they just want somebody to validate it right so this is why it's so important that we get clarity on who we are and what we want beforehand so that we don't automatically fall into default to like and subscribe and to endorse negativity or criticism when it comes along like in that complaining sense but the other kind of person I think is important to listen to.

14:33And that's a critic. That's another kind of toxic person. The truth is, is critics oftentimes come with value. They often have a suggestion. They often tell you facts or things that you need to learn that are different. It's just that sometimes they say it in a way that it kind of damages or hurts our ego. And so we're not teachable. And so we dismiss them. And so I think it's really important that we just recognize that sometimes a critic has value. They're just not a great communicator. So it's really important for us to look at. Toxic people, Fire Nation, are you dealing with a complainer? Somebody who's just whining, moaning, complaining nonstop about everything?

15:08Or are you dealing with a critic? Like somebody who could actually be providing value because they're giving you honest, real, constructive criticism feedback into what it is that maybe you're doing in your life. And I love how you really just dove into that on how top achievers, Doug, they embrace their problems, they don't run away from them, and that's what you need to be looking at, Fire Nation. What are the problems that are in front of me? how can I embrace those? How can I not run away from them? Well, maybe even, John, I like the idea of that, but maybe even using a different word, let's not call it a problem anymore.

15:39Let's call it a puzzle. And the cool thing about puzzles is there are solutions. And the even cooler thing is, is you don't have to come up with all the answers back to that idea of the five people, right? Like they're your safety net. Your network is not just your net worth, it's your safety net. So we got to use that, right? I love that mindset shift in Fire Nation. When you kind of use mindset shifts like that and approach problems with a different attitude and a different light, then all of a sudden, everything changes. And you are the producer of this new film, How Thoughts Become Things.

16:10I want to talk a little bit about this. Why did you decide to create this film? Why did you decide to use that title? What can Fire Nation expect from the content within? Yeah, I appreciate you asking that. I guess, first of all, to kind of start with why the concept behind How Thoughts become things. You know, like I said at the beginning of this, when I was younger, a young kid, my family was in the poverty pattern. We were kind of, I was destined to do the rat race, right? Like I was training in a school system that wasn't going to support me with the job that I wanted and I was just like in despair.

16:44But as soon as I started kind of interviewing the top achievers and spending more time with people at a high level, I noticed that my thoughts began the shift. Now at that time I couldn't put a finger on it, but everything changed, you know, not just my relationships, even my financial circumstances, my first business. Like when I was 19, I launched my first business and I was fortunate enough to have a lot of success. I did $1.6 million in six months as a 19 year old. Yeah. And, but what did it? It was, it was my thinking. It was these people I surrounded myself with that helped me to see opportunities and possibilities first within myself and then in the world around me that I never recognized.

17:20so I knew that I you know my thoughts I was on to something so this is really my fourth movie so I I've done three more before this but I decided that this is something that let's maybe call it a missing piece it hadn't been talked about yet in a way that really empowered other people you know we all know thoughts become things but nobody knows about the how right nobody had answered that yet and I guess if I can maybe even sort of let a little bit of a secret out here sure buddy think about our things are all around us we see that all the time in fact one of my mentors said he said if you want money just keep in mind they're printing it every day at the mint you get to decide how much you get right so things are there for us they're in our world and our thoughts are there too right so we have those too but the challenge for most people is that word become how do we make the changes in ourselves like how do we level up ourselves so that we can actually have our thoughts really match the outcomes that we're looking to create because that's really the question, right?

18:19I love what Jim Rohn once said. He said, you know, if somebody wins the lottery and they want to keep it, right? Like if you become wealthy and you want to keep it, you have to learn how to become a millionaire very fast. And so this idea of become is really the real question. How are we learning to find mastery over our thoughts so that we can really start, you know, and you know how it is as a business owner, you're an entrepreneur as well. Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is just simply to get focused, sit down and get to work, Right? So how do we master that? That's the question. Focus.

18:51One of my favorite words in the world, follow one course until success. How can you master that focus? Fire Nation is so critical to the success of any entrepreneur going forward in any venture. And again, you've interviewed over 400 of these top achievers. And I mean, again, I named some of the companies Fire Nation. I mean, Doug has been rubbing elbows with people at the top of the top for a very, very long time. So, Doug, take the stage for a second as we wrap things up. What do you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from everything that we talked about today? Where can we find out more about with what you have going on with your film that's coming out?

19:28And then we'll say goodbye. Sure, absolutely. So, I guess just to give you guys the info on the film, head over to www.howthoughtsbecomethings.com and you can see the film. We've got some of the top thought leaders in the world in that film with me. Just some powerful, powerful stuff. And then, of course, you can find me on Instagram and other places like that. Feel free to drop a note. But here's kind of the value bomb that I want to share. And I really, first of all, appreciate you having me on the show. This is one of my favorite podcasts, by the way. You're just awesome. But here's the thing, everybody.

19:58You've got to recognize that if you own it, you can change it, meaning your current situation and your future. If you want to create something that really will make a difference for you, the legacy that you want to create, you've got to get out of denial. You've got to take responsibility for everything that's going on in your life, which starts with your thoughts. You can't waste time with things that are not going to provide value or up-level you to the experiences that you want. And life is short, man. You've got to get going. This is it, right? So decide what you want and then chase it with everything that you got.

20:28That's the key. Many, many value bombs have been dropped, Fire Nation. I just want to reiterate one of those. If you own it, you can change it. Think about that, Fire Nation. Absorb it. If you own it, you can change it. And of course, make sure you head over to howthoughtsbecomethings.com. howthoughtsbecomethings.com. Fire Nation, this film is absolutely worth the watch. So take time out of your day, consume this great content because you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with DV and JLD. So keep up that heat as we've been talking about all episode.

21:08and if you head over to eofire.com and type Doug in the search bar, the show notes page will pop up with links to everything we've been talking about today. But again, your strong call to action, howthoughtsbecomethings.com. Check it out and Doug, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey, Fire Nation, today's value bomb content was brought to you by Doug and if you're ready to rock your very own podcast, Well, I got a free podcasting course for you where I teach you how to create and launch your podcast for free.

21:42Visit freepodcastcourse.com and I'll catch you there, Fire Nation, or I'll catch you on the flip side. One of my favorite conferences to attend each year is HubSpot's annual Inbound Conference and is coming up fast. Join us in Boston from September 5th to the 8th, 2023 for an event like no other. Inbound brings together leaders across the business space, including sales, marketing, customer success, and operations teams. The goal at Inbound, to help you discover all the latest trends and tactics you can implement in your business right now. Learn, be inspired, and walk away with practical tips to help you tackle your next challenge, supercharge your sales and marketing, and ignite your customer service.

22:28Inbound is featuring many must-see speakers this year, including Reese Witherspoon, Guy Raz, and Neil Patel, just to name a few. Whether you choose a general admission ticket or go the VIP route, you're sure to leave Boston feeling on fire. Visit inbound.com to get your tickets today. I remember that state of constant overwhelm with my ever-growing to-do list too. My solution, hire a VA and start delegating. Learn how to optimize your time with Belay CEO's latest book, Rise Up and Lead Well, where she shares the exact framework she has used with her own assistant to maximize productivity. Text FIRE, that's F-I-R-E, two, five, five, one, two, three to get your free copy.