EPISODE 041

“SS: I would spend and hour and a half in the parking lot of our real estate firm and I would be coaching people for $50 an hour while $50 for 90 minutes because I couldn’t stop helping them, I just loved it. Then I had that moment of making a decision to jump and I jumped.”

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:25.1] ANNOUNCER: Welcome to The Fail on Podcast where we explore the hardships and obstacles today’s industry leaders face on their journey to the top of their fields, through careful insight and thoughtful conversation. By embracing failure, we’ll show you how to build momentum without being consumed by the result.

Now please welcome your host, Rob Nunnery.

[INTRO]

[0:00:43.4] RN: Hey there and welcome to the show that knows publicly sharing your failures is not only the fastest way to learn but is also the fastest way to grow your business and live a life of absolute freedom in a world that only likes to share successes, we dissect the struggle by talking to honest and real entrepreneurs, not the overnight success stories and this is simply a platform for their stories. If you get already, my voice is just completely wrecked after a week at Tony Robbin’s Date with Destiny at Palm Beach Florida.

It was an amazing event but the after effect is that I can’t talk very well. Regardless, today’s story is a beautiful one, it is of Shanda Sumpter, Shanda’s a bestselling author, entrepreneur and lifestyle specialist and the founder of Heartcore Business, a multimillion dollar enterprise, through her business coaching book and tailored series of online marketing courses, Shanda presents a step by step system to take participants out of the daily grind and into a life that they actually love.

We discuss the tactics and methods Shanda uses to overcome a negative mindset and the importance of mentorship for building a business.

She goes into the most overlooked area that beginners miss when starting their own company and Shanda outlines in full detail, her actionable strategy for building a new business if she had lost everything today and started over completely.

But first, luckily, all I travel with is a backpack for one reason only it’s clothing from an innovative Toronto apparel company called Unbound Merino, they have clothes made out of Merino wool that you can wear for months on end without ever needing to have it washed. This means I can travel with less clothes since they clean themselves. Checkout the show notes page for an exclusive Fail On discount that you won’t be able to get anywhere

If you’d like to stay up to date on all the Fail On podcast interviews and key takeaways from each guest, simply go to failon.com and signup for our newsletter at the bottom of the page. That’s failon.com.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:42.9] RN: All right, welcome to the fail on podcast, I am sitting down with Shanda Sumpter, we have probably the best backdrop of a podcast in podcast history right now.

[0:02:52.6] SS: I agree.

[0:02:53.6] RN: We’re sitting, you’ll probably hear it in the background and I think there’s a lawnmower going but we are sitting on a bluff in La Hoya which is nice for me because it’s about 200 feet from my house so thanks for coming to me today, I appreciate that.

Just to get into it, usually I like to ask this later on but just in context, what does failure actually mean to you?

[0:03:17.0] SS: Success, I literally just finished leading a call with a few hundred people and now it’s talking about how your connection with stretching, like your connection with working needs to be one of – I wouldn’t say excitement but obsession in the essence, for instance, right now, I’m building out a new product funnel and the back end of all of everything in my company works really well.

We’re working on the front end. Long story short is we got the front end working, the back end stop working. The back end hasn’t stopped working for years. It was like this moment of obsession of, “Wow, when I solve this piece, what’s going to happen?”

The ripple effect of what that means for not only, inside my company but the millions of people that we get to serve. I was saying, you know, you talk about routine or comfort zone, comfort zone is just another version for another language for routine.

People often don’t realize that they’re in a routine of being frustrated as they’re failing at things but failure is, I mean I’m sure, a lot of people on your podcast have talked about this in the essence of, it’s just a part of it. There’s nothing that we ever do that just works, I mean, it just doesn’t happen like that.

That’s how masters get created, right? I get excited when I’m failing on something because I’ve actually done something new and now I actually know what I need to focus on now to fix something, to get to the other side of that thing.

[0:04:52.4] RN: Exactly, it’s a good point. On that note, you said, the back end broke first time, it’s happened in forever. That was for you, that was like, it’s almost like – and I could tell just by talking to you, it was a moment of excitement because you get to solve something and you get to figure out and dig in why it was a challenge and what happened. To prevent it from happening again.

Has that always been kind of your mindset of looking at challenges and getting excited by them or has it been something you’ve developed?

[0:05:20.1] SS: No, I’ve developed. Tony Robbins movie, I thought was, he said something that I thought was brilliant in it and that was that he built himself. I think entrepreneurs have to understand that you build yourself and that’s the cool thing about your podcast is you’re helping people build themselves, right?

No, not at all, I mean, I used to fail and think I was a loser, I would fail and wonder, if this is ever going to happen. You know, not just in being an entrepreneur but being in corporate America. I mean, I had such low self-esteem, I mean, now getting up on stages, it’s crazy that I do what I do because I was, I mean, I’m asking for one of my first raises and I cried.

Because I felt so unworthy, isn’t that strange?

[0:06:01.3] RN: That’s amazing. What was the mindset shift that allowed you to go from then to now?

[0:06:07.6] SS: A combination of studying a lot, you know, John Assaraf was just sitting with my new husband and they were just having dinner together and Ash is a seven or eight time iron man and he was sharing with John, how when he cuts videos because he now owns this hydration company called high burst.

When he cuts videos, how it takes him so many takes. John said, “Well, how long does it take to do an iron man? How much practice do you really put in,” and it was an aha moment hearing Ash share that conversation with me because I was like, you know, imagine if we actually stopped and realized that if we got obsessed with our thing and we were okay with studying which means there’s going to be – as the helicopter goes by.

If you were okay with that, you’d recognize that you just keep getting better. Life doesn’t get easier, business doesn’t get easier, it just doesn’t. You do get better. If you could walk through those stressful moments without getting stressed. I remember when I had nothing, I was losing my house, I was losing my car, it was a really down moment for me and I hadn’t started my business yet but I was in corporate America. Sales commissioned. I had nothing and I remember what got me out of it was not writing what I was grateful for because as grateful for nothing at that moment.

I have never been good at pretending you know? Because if you don’t really believe it, the pretend – it just doesn’t have the same strength. I remember just saying, what’s the worst that could happen right now? It was moving back to Canada and move in with my mom.

Everything in me didn’t want to do that but I still was okay.

[0:07:48.6] RN: You’d have shelter, you’d have food, you weren’t going to die.

[0:07:51.5] SS: Exactly. But we act as if somehow, keeping up with the Joneses, if we don’t make it, we’re somehow less than. If you could get out from that thought process then you can win this game.

[0:08:05.2] RN: How are you able to do that? Because I know – I hear you, Knows the challenge for me as well. But for somebody listening that’s maybe at that point where they’re at a crossroads, on one hand they know they have more in them, another hand, they’re comfortable in a job. How do you break through that shift of asking yourself that question? What’s the worse that can happen and being okay with downgrading your lifestyle or whatever it may be.

[0:08:31.4] SS: Yeah, not everybody’s okay with that but you have to get okay with that. You know, there’s a couple of key thing that I’ve done. First of all, I did get okay with that, I was like – I actually didn’t think I was going to make it anyway so I was like, “What’s the worse that can happen, I’ll move in with my mom, okay, I’m fine then,” it somehow takes the pressure off, if you can get the pressure off you, you stop retracting and you can actually expand.

From that moment, I was actually able to start writing down what I was proud of myself for and why. It’s funny because I read the bible every day now, I’m very spiritual but I just started reading the bible about a year and a half ago. In the bible, it tells you, pride is a horrible thing.

The truth is that back in that time, I had to get connected with my self-worth. I wrote what I was proud of myself for and why. I would write it for 10 minutes twice a day. I’m not kidding you, on day two, all of a sudden I felt invincible. I felt so powerful and so strong, I started asking people for help which is the same equivalent of asking for a sale at that point in time, right?

Whether you’re an entrepreneur or you are in corporate America, I started asking for help or I started asking for the sale. Then somebody ended up lending me money, I was like $5,000, it was enough to pay my mortgage and then just kind of feel the confidence and go after it, there’s things I’ve done in the meanwhile.

I’ve started endurance sports, there’s nothing like training for a half marathon. Who you are in the process of training for that shows you who you actually are inside your business or inside your life. When you’re close to let’s say, your money - It’s really easy to work really hard but working hard doesn’t mean that you actually create an end result that you want because most people work hard for a certain amount of time and then they stop. Train for an endurance race and see your pattern.

Because you might train while feel good and then not train when you don’t feel good or you get a sprained ankle, you’re like, I can’t run anymore because I have a sprained ankle, I can’t train. Well, a pro would just hit the pool. “But I don’t know how to swim,” it doesn’t matter, just go download something online and just do a workout.

Go to a bar class, go lift weights, go jump on a trainer to ride a bike, they’ll keep going, they won’t stop at the thing that gets in their way, they’ll get around it and when you start to learn how to train your brain to be like that, it’s just the same everywhere.

[0:10:59.5] RN: I want to go back to what actually got you – when you’re in corporate America, what actually got you down to that lowest point, what was the catalyst that was like, I can’t do this anymore, was that the situation?

[0:11:12.0] SS: No, I never let go. I just let go of the stress, right? If you can let go of the stress, you can access ideas and you’re just one idea away from success. I mean, you just are. The only thing that guarantees failure is you stopping. If you just create a habit, so I was a great starter, I was a shitty finisher.

You’ve got to become a good finisher to be able to create anything in life. I had this – my only...