This One Mindset Shift Will Make You Unstoppable | The Liz Moody Podcast

0:00There's never been a time in the history of the world where 22 to 30 year olds have made more money independently than we are sitting right now. I don't know if you heard about this thing called podcasting and social media. No, tell me about it. So it's this thing, right? It's free. It's literally free. You do not pay Instagram. You do not pay Facebook. You do not pay TikTok. And you can make content and miraculously, it leads to monetizable events. And yet, I think a lot of people feel like other fears that I heard. It's oversaturated. I don't have something to offer. What would you say to somebody who is like, sure, Gary, but there's millions of people trying to do these things.

0:34Those people have nothing to do with you. In fact, there are millions of people actually right now making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on social media, either selling stuff or being a personality and monetizing in different ways. So then why not you? Nothing to offer. That's just an excuse of fear of failing because I think we've all established you can fucking offer anything and it works. Some people just offer being attractive. It's called modeling. Like, there's a lot of them. Some people just make skits or make jokes. That's at scale. Some people talk about thoughtful, important subject matters like you.

1:17That's great. Some people give business advice and entrepreneurial advice. That's good. Some people have hot takes on sports. Some people tell you how to cook. You do know I can take the next four hours and 19 seconds. I'm not gonna ruin this podcast. But it goes all the way down to like some people talk about painting with fingers. Some people go into little child's play with action figures. and make millions of dollars. I'm just not interested in you telling me the global economy has inflationary issues when I know thousands of people every week start the journey of selling on live shopping on whatnot or TikTok shop, monetizing their content on YouTube.

1:55Like there has never been a more prosperous time in the history of mankind because of the scale that social media is on and the cost of entry is zero. than right now. But if you want to talk to me about inflation and tariffs as your excuse, you can knock yourself out. But Paul, in a suburb outside of Minnesota, who's struggling to get a job at 24, by his parents paying for him, he gets to continue to call excuses versus if they didn't, he'd have to fucking figure TikTok out or get a side job or figure out how to flip on Craigslist or eBay. I don't fucking want to hear it. And especially the parents that are actually paying for their kids a lot of time, they're the most financially sound people.

2:42If you're a parent that's only making minimum wage, you're not paying for your kid's lifestyle. I'm talking about parents that are middle class, upper middle class, and wealthy areas ruining their kid's life because I've talked to the kids for the last decade secretly on DM. Here's the insight if you're paying for your kid. If your kid is 27 year old dude on your fucking payroll for his equinox and uber and rent and vacations you are through your actions you're gonna like this liz not through your words through your actions are telling your kid that you do not believe they are capable and when a parent tells a kid that they are not capable that kid is not capable what are you telling a 27 year old fucking man when you're paying for it when he's on the fucking family plan?

3:31The fuck do you think those parents are telling them? They're telling them you're a loser and we have to pay for you because you're not capable. What would you say to people who are worried about AI taking their jobs very soon? That if that's actually how they're thinking, that they should adjust. If you believe that AI is taking your job and you're a designer using Adobe and you have no ideas, you're just an order taker, you don't come up with a creative idea your boss does and says make a picture of a moon smiling at a cow and the milk comes out and the man drinks it. Well then you're fucking dead.

4:09But if you have an idea, if you're creative and strategic, you've got time. How much time? I'm not sure. I think, you know, there's a lot to this and the technology is profoundless. It is profound. You'll be doing your podcasts, like me and you can do this interview typing it out in a minute in like five years because the voices are mapped. Like it's profound. I don't know, but I would say that if you're actually scared, what I definitely tell you that you shouldn't do is hang around and drink beers and complain about it. Learn a new skill, apply for a new job, figure it out. Like when the tractor was invented, 80 % plus of society worked on farms.

4:48And a lot of people sat around farm, just like on this day, many years ago, and said, this fucking tractor is going to take our job. And we got new jobs. I don't know if If you know this, we used to ride horses, not cars. It's five minutes ago in the scheme of things, less than a hundred years ago. Do you know how many people are employed in this beautiful city to clean up horse poop on the streets? Tens of thousands, tens of thousands of human beings worked in New York City a hundred years ago and their job was to clean horse poop because we all used them to get around. I don't know if you know this, Liz, no longer horse poop cleaners in New York City as a job.

5:27I got another one for you. I lived through this. You know how many people worked at the fucking Yellow Pages, at the height of the Yellow Pages before search engines? All these people that are crying right now, if you're crying so much, I don't see you crying for the Yellow Pages executives and salespeople that got fired across the land. I don't see anyone crying for the taxi industry when Uber came along. What about all the servers that should be working at restaurants right now, but don't have jobs because you're ordering all your fucking food from seamless. It reminds me of the quote that's like history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes.

6:02Like we always feel like we're in unprecedented times. But if you look back, there's precedent. In fact, I was a DNF student, but I got A's and B's in history and I never understood it. It was never. It was like this funny joke. I just was like, oh, maybe I'm interested. I don't know. It was very weird because I paid attention. And in hindsight, I feel like it was just a precursor to my destiny, I use history. The reason I get big accolades for seeing around corners is because I use history. The iPhone. Do you know that I can show you an article about the kaleidoscope? You know what a kaleidoscope is?

6:34There's unlimited articles written in Europe when the kaleidoscope came out saying that the kaleidoscope was ruining kids' lives the way we're talking about iPhones because they're just in this thing the whole day. Interesting. The television was demonized. I got a good one for you. Electricity. Do you know the whole thing about that? Everyone go chat GPT and Google this up. It's fascinating read. When electricity was invented, most people did not bring them into their homes and chose to stay with candles because humans demonized electricity and said demons were in it. Demons. So humans are incredibly good at being scared about tomorrow and over romantic about yesterday.

7:17I don't do that because that doesn't work. It's never worked. How do you use AI in your day-to-day life to increase your efficiency? I use it as my strategy thinker. So as you can see, the way my brain works, I'll just have like thoughts. I'll be like, why are jean jackets back? Like literally, that's how my brain works. I'm like, literally, this is a chat GPT the other day. This is literally a prompt because I'm a strategist, cultural strategist at heart. I wish it was on my screen, but it clears on the cache. When do you think or is there any indications on social media right now or in popular culture that makes you believe that the clean shaven look during the height of the friends era where dudes are gonna be clean shaven because we've been on a 20 year run of facial hair, stub, mustaches, beards.

8:04Do you see any indications? And I literally for about 30 minutes talked back and forth on, is there anything around the corner that would lead us to believe that there's something to happen with clean shaving? Because from an investment standpoint and from a marketing standpoint, I wanna think about how Gillette needs to think about things Do I want to invest in the next dollar shade club or not? Is there something to be had? So I don't use it more like do this for me or do that for me, because I have a different life than most people. I have three full-time admins, two full-time chief of staff.

8:33I had none of them. I would do a lot of efficiency work that way. And by the way, they're doing that. They're getting all these chatbots and all this infrastructure agents in place. I think it's crazy when bosses discourage their employees from using AI, because I'm like, don't have them do your work for you, but have them use AI to be so much more efficient with their jobs. In fact, I am going the other way. Like I have a company-wide meeting coming up that's saying, hey, good news, we're growing so much. No one's losing their job. But if we are not three times more effective and efficient in a year, we've got a real collective team conversation.

9:08You're not fired, but I expect you to do a lot more. Not because I need you to work more. Fuck, I want you to work less if you want. You can work three hours a day instead of nine, but you need to AI the fuck out of that shit. Agree. And so that's where that's going. It should be viewed as a positive and I think like teachers are missing it a lot when they're like discouraging. Teachers are fucking teachers. By the way, on the record, I believe education is the only thing. The only thing. The more you're educated, both knowledge or socially, the better you'll be. But when these school systems, I mean, did we not learn from the calculators or from the internet?

9:42I mean, we go through this every time. Like it's gonna exist. let's train students to use it well, to be able to distinguish what's good information, what's bad information. Liz, I'm 49. Do you know that we couldn't use calculators in the SATs? I couldn't. And then five minutes later, it was like mandated. And like, what do you think is going to happen? Like, what the fuck do you think is going to happen? Yeah. Okay. Another reason that I got constantly that people felt like they couldn't go after their dreams was they don't feel like they have enough time. One thing that I heard from so many listeners is, I'm afraid of being judged.

10:12I'm afraid of being perceived. What would you say to somebody who isn't going after a dream because of that reason? Well, it's funny right before we started off, I guess, official. I don't know how you edit here. Like you were like, this is what we're going to do. And I was like, oh, shit. In my brain, I was like, crap, the problem. I'm going to have to be very thoughtful here because the seed, there's a lot of nuances. But the truth is, it's all one answer. And it's this first thing we're touching on. There is so much to this conversation that it can probably eat up everything. And I'll go there because I think we're going to bring the most value in this.

10:41so we talk a lot about people's feelings in society these days right anxiety depression I don't think people realize how big of a topic true self-esteem is versus the facade of self-esteem and I don't think enough listeners realize right this second as they're listening and this is like a statement that I desperately hope stops somebody dead on the treadmill and makes them pull over on the car right now makes them pull their poor dog back for a second because they need to stop while they're walking the dog if you're listening you really have to ask yourself how many of your decisions do you make day to day month to month year to year based on what other people think and i would argue almost everyone listening right now has their balance way off on this that they don't listen to their soul their intuition their destiny their heart their wants themselves because they're over worried about the judgment because unfortunately most people are parented by a parent who overvalues other people's opinions and it becomes a condition that they believe is important immigrants always here i'm an immigrant i was born in the soviet union don't embarrass us in front of the neighbors well then all of a sudden you're like fuck the neighbor's opinion is important and matters more than my own opinion correct situation some kids realize that their parents use them and their accomplishments in school or in sports as their parents' self-esteem monitor.

12:14Like, it's so sad how many parents, you know why parents put Harvard stickers on the back of their car? It makes them feel good. Like, it starts early. Everybody sees where I'm about to go. That big bumper sticker, proud honor school, you know, honors school student, honors student at James Madison Middle School. The fuck is that? Like tell your kid you're proud of their work ethic and how they got there, not put a fucking bumper sticker on your car. So what? So the other parents think you're a good parent because your kid's a good student. There's no correlation of being a good parent and having a kid good at school.

12:46My mom's the greatest parent of all time. I was the worst at fucking school. I'm a good human being. I wasn't willing to conform to a system that was not teaching me the things I needed as an entrepreneur. And I knew that in the 80s, let alone now in the 2020s when we actually understand it a little bit. So yeah, what do I think, Liz? I think that people live their lives based on opinions of others, often of people they don't even give a shit about, or often people they don't even like. There's a lot of people right now that deeply resent their mother, like don't like her. Love her because you have to, because it's your mom, and you were inside of her, and there's that thing, right?

13:19Even when your parents are a piece of shit, you kind of weirdly love them. It's like epic. I actually think it's amazing. I think it's one of the best things of humans. But no, no, they are listening right now and they're like shaking their head at their, wherever they are. Like, yeah, I'm pissed at my mom. And yet they will still make a decision tomorrow about their child against their child's best wish against their own belief to appease, to get validation from their mom because they're in a narcissistic or fucked up. And then that, that's at least it's mom. There's people out there that aren't posting on social media because Johnny pants, 19 is going to say they're ugly.

13:55they're literally not going to pursue their dream about being a famous gardener or selling more t-shirts for their little side business or sharing to the world a good piece of positivity around being a well-balanced parent or executive. They will not do that right now. They will not post that video because they're self-conscious about maybe being 10 pounds overweight or having a zit. This goes back to perfect lighting or sound. like I have so much respect for how you two see how the sound should be in here but I don't think like a car passing by in New York City is taking away from the experience in fact I think it's enhancing it because every fucking podcast is nice and quiet but getting a little that new like I think the imperfections they're good and I don't think these things are absolute if everything was so absolute like about you have to be beautiful to win in Hollywood well what about Brody and his fucking crazy nose.

14:52And then we just see him so much and now we think he's the most handsome. Adrian Brody, is that right? His nose is fucking crazy. I think that the people who have more interesting faces are more enjoyable to watch. Yes, and I'm aware that AI is about to map what's beautiful and we're all going to be addicted and super attracted to humans that aren't even humans because they're AI and they're in social and you won't be able to tell the difference. And I'm sure and I know that there's a mapping to what we consider as beautiful. you know we've I think we've all mapped that like I've heard that a million times I don't know the math on it but like symmetrical I definitely know my nose isn't it and then there's the counter there's unlimited people that we find attractive that subjectively if they were just regular people on the street we would not only not find like super attractive we would maybe even find like not really attractive at all and yet we're attracted to them because storytelling because charisma matters because kindness matters personality traits matter and so I don't know like this is all very long winded.

15:49I'm sorry, audience, but I'm incredibly passionate about this, which is that most of us are unhappy because we're not able to love ourselves and follow our intuition and we're overvaluing the external. And I want more people to go into their cocoon within themselves, get themselves right, love themselves more because everyone else is going to have a negative opinion. So why, like if you don't, if you can't be your biggest cheerleader, Liz, what the fuck are we doing? How the fuck are we going to live if we don't love ourselves? First of all, I agree with everything that you said. And I think it is so important.

16:19It is like, why am I letting my fear of some stranger's opinion keep me from going after my dream? Or somebody in my life, why am I letting somebody else dictate my own life? But like you said, we are indoctrinated in this from our earliest, earliest memories. It sounds like you think that self-love, self-acceptance is the cure. A big thing I've been thinking about lately to add on this convo is when are we supposed to stop blaming our parents? like right now a lot of people are listening and they're like like i know what's happening like they're like yeah my fucking mom she always cared about and right and they're 39 years old and they're listening to you and i right now and my question to 39 year old susan and ricky is when do you become accountable to the fact that for the last 20 years you've been a grown-up or at least 15 and you're capable of getting therapy you're capable of hiking and getting that shit out of you.

17:12Well, and I also think there's such a difference between awareness and action. Like you can be aware to the end of time. Like you can be like, this cause this cause this cause this. But if you don't do anything with it, you're just wasting your life. Like this is your life. You don't get another chance to live it. And Liz, I would argue that the second you've become aware, it flips to being 100 % your responsibility. I would agree with that. Right? Because before you didn't see it. Listen, let me be vulnerable. This may blow your mind because Gary Vee is candorous as fuck. It's a platform of mine.

17:43I shoot it straight. We've been candorous for the last 10 minutes here. Gary Vaynerchuk, in his day-to-day life, for the first 40 plus years of his life, if he was close to you and loved you, he struggled with candor because he viewed candor as fear-mongering. He didn't have a good relationship with candor. He couldn't find the middle. I thought if I told my employees that they were doing a bad job, that they would be scared and have bad days. You know, I really struggled with candor. I didn't see it. I didn't know that lack of candor was my kryptonite. How did you find out? Pain. Things in real life shit.

18:22Like a Facebook group was created of former Vayner employees that were like talking shit about me. And I was like, damn, I'm like one of the great, and I looked at it. Well, and it's like so important to you to be like. Oh my God. And by the way. You're famous for your employee culture. Yes, and good news. And good news. No bullshit. Good news. Batman's a former employee. But like good news, I was winning 94%, which is an unheard of number. But guess what? Look at the goosebumps I'm getting here, because they're coming. That's 6%, like even though I know that I was better than 99 % of the people out there, I didn't want one person to think I was a bad boss.

18:57And I had to like look at it and be like, why are these 30 people, it was only 30, but like why are these 30 people mad? And I could look at, and I'm in my shit, I know my employees, I'm like, these are all the employees that I didn't have the strength to tell them the truth while they were there. And then out of nowhere, they got fired. I wasn't candorous. And then in my youth, in my 20s, I would blame them. When I was running the wine store for my dad, I'd be like, how did Ron not know? And by the way, I would sit on this shit for a year or two. So I'd decide Liz is getting fired. Back in the day, sorry Liz, but I'm just gonna use you.

19:33At Wine Library, I'd be like, Liz stinks. I gotta fire her? It would take me 12 to 18 months to fire you. Yep. And you know what happens during that time? Once you decide, you're not managing as well. All this shit's happening. I didn't have the strength at that point to be like, Liz, can I see you for 15 minutes? Liz, listen, you're lovely. This is what I call kind candor. Liz, you're a nice person. Right now, it's not clicking. I have the unfortunate duty to make a subjective opinion and subjectively, as your manager, as the owner of this, as the guy who's running it, I don't think you're doing the right stuff.

20:01Here's what I'm struggling with. I viewed that as Liz would panic, Liz would quit, Liz would be upset, and I didn't want to do that, you know? But I didn't realize that would be what would fix it. And it would be kinder to me. To me, the fired employee. I have a friend who manages a huge, huge company and he's like, the sooner that I say this is not a match, I have a thing called match there, it's like we're looking to find our matches. If it's not a match for me, it's also not a match for them and I'm likely holding them back. And if I can give them information that helps them find a better match for their next career, that is much kinder for them.

20:35your friend was further along than I was. And the other thing that sucked in this story is I had so many things going well. Like I had so many other things. Well, good intent, good person, talented, teaching mentor, not selfish. I had all these great things that it hit it even more because it was so functional and going so well, but why not strive for perfection? Meaning you'll never get it. There's, there's a flaw I'm sitting on right now that I can't see. But once I understood five or six years, six years ago, seven years ago, that candor was a problem, I wrote a book called 12 and a half and talked about candor being my kryptonite, that being my half.

21:13I started to make social media content. I started talking out loud. People that really follow me know that five years ago, there was no conversation of this. And now in the last five years, I bring this up often as I'm doing right now. And so I would say to everybody who's listening, when you know that you have a shortcoming, that you inherited it from your dad, that was reinforced by your dad or mom, and your environment of the neighborhood you brought in, once you realize it now it's your responsibility and what did i do i put myself on blast i say this shit out loud it's you think it's fun for me to come on this awesome podcast and be like i sucked at this this sucks your friends better at me like it's not fun that wasn't enjoyable the last five minutes but it's growth and i want to be better and i need to be better and i always want to be better and i will always push myself for that because i'm grateful for what i've been given talent wise.

21:59And so I owe it to the universe that gave me all these great attributes to work on the ones that I didn't have. Well, and I think you're also pointing out something incredibly important, which is that growth comes from discomfort. Like your muscles are not growing bigger because they're just sitting there. They're growing bigger because you're working them. They're getting micro tears and then they're building upon themselves. And that's the same with almost anything in our life. We need to steer into our discomfort like you did to grow. It's inherent to the process. Adversity is the foundation of success.

22:28I believe that more than anything. I believe me being an immigrant, coming to America, living in a studio apartment with eight family members and having no money, to being picked on because I couldn't speak English, to then being a bad student and having grown up teachers tell me I was going to be a loser, to being really good at sports until fourth grade because I have remarkable hand-eye coordination on the record. Oh, I just want to like throw something at you and test me. Yeah, it's surprisingly good on the flip side I don't know if you could tell I do not have the most power speed athleticism and so that eventually became something I wasn't as good at all those things that happened to me in the first 15 years of my life all that adversity made me unstoppable unlike all the people we're about to talk about I'm not scared to lose I don't give a fuck Liz a fuck what you these two and the millions at home that will listen to this over the next decade think about my accomplishments or shortcomings, especially when we talk about on the professional field of that play.

23:30Okay. We are all about pragmatic action steps here on this podcast. So I would love one pragmatic action step that anybody listening who does have that fear of being perceived of being judged could take to get to the place that you are now. Do what I just did. Take your phone right now, make a video and tell the world what you suck at and post it. Love that. I love that. Steer into the discomfort. You love it because you know what the fuck you're talking about and you know what I just asked was incredibly hard. You yourself, as you just thought about it, was like, fuck. You know, like I myself, I just said it and was like thinking through and I'm like, I don't want to do that.

24:08That's just fucking hard. This candor thing, it took me a few weeks to be like, oh fuck, I'm going to have to like talk. Like, you know, like I didn't want to. It's fun to hide. it's easy to hide. It's easy to be cynical. It's easy to deploy hate. That shit's easy. The other stuff is hard. Accountability, hard. Deploying love in the face of hate, being the bigger person, hard. Hard. So you want an action step, Liz? I hope that every one of your incredible listeners, and one of the reasons I said yes to this is because I know you have a great community. I hope they take a video right now and be like i've misstepped here.

24:50I over coddled my child Do you know what a woman or a man right now who has a 26 year old child? taking a camera First call your kid that you're gonna do this because this is gonna cause all sorts of heat and says hey i'm a parent I have a 26 year old for the last five years i've been paying for their lifestyle and I made a mistake Nobody wants to post that on social But I can tell you right now because i'm going right there every parent of someone who's over 22 years old that continues to give them money and pays for their lifestyle is ruining their kid's life. Even with the way the economy and the world is changing, it feels harder to get ahead these days.

25:30Even with. Between their normal job, between the chores of everyday life, they don't feel like they have the time. What would you say to them? I would say to them a couple things. First line is everything great is hard. if we're talking about following your dreams and living on your own standards and having freedom, that is a big deal. To like live on your own, not have a boss, that's a privilege that is earned. That's an earned privilege. It's not handed to you. It's an earned privilege. I would say they're right. Most people are caught. Let me explain the next part. That's going to hurt feelings.

26:11I would say that most of them are overspending. The reason most people can't quit their job is because they need the income to pay their bills. My question is, what are your bills? This goes into a very important conversation for the people that said that. If you're chill, if you're like neutral, mazel tov. If you don't want to eat shit for three years to have even more on the back end, you're allowed. It's the people who complain that their life sucks that say their excuse to me is, well, I can't do anything, Gary. You don't fucking get it. You have it good. I'm like, you don't fucking know me, bro.