Ep 98: How do you adopt a mindset that can turn every problem into an opportunity with Tab Pierce

The Grateful Mindset

With a gratitude mindset, you focus on the endless possibilities in business and life because you already appreciate what you have. When you cultivate gratitude, you begin to focus less on yourself and more on others. Taking your time to reflect on the unique position you’re in and being thankful makes it easier to focus on the reasons you’re doing what you’re doing. 

That’s one of the things that I always tell people. Learn to be grateful because it’s challenging to be grateful and not to see the goodness and the possibilities that could be in your life.

Step # 1: Shift your mindset from victim to being in control 

Life will always have ups and downs. There are times when things won’t go according to plan. Turning these challenges into opportunities means being accountable for the things that you do. Shifting to the driver’s seat mindset means taking responsibility even for the failures.

In a way to help me heal and to help me pay people off, I had to learn that I had the power. I was at the bank. I had the money that they wanted. And so, they were beholden to me. I wasn’t beholden to them. And once I started to make mental shifts like that, I started to have these just huge advancements. Now, some of them were much easier to appease to what I wanted to do. And some of them were not. We had a hard money lender that did everything but physically break my legs. They were brutal, to say the least, and they were the last ones I paid off. And it was hard to go with this mental shift. If you’re making this shift from the victim to being in control, you can act. Otherwise, it’s like a victim mindset. You will never be able to go anywhere. That’s really an important shift.

Step #2: Take care of yourself first

To take care of your affairs, you must take care of yourself. You will not find rest if you don’t give yourself a break. No matter how hard you work, you can’t keep on grinding forever. Without energy, you can’t solve problems, untangle knots, or run things. 

I show up to $750,000 in debt. I was over a hundred pounds more than I weigh right now. It wasn’t until I finally.  I was like, ‘You know what, I’ve got to start doing stuff like taking care of myself. And I have to do that. And you’re right.  You get these thoughts and ideas. And when you allow yourself to do that, the irony is, my business is going better. My life is going better. My marriage is better. Everything goes better when I take care of myself.

Step # 3: Think of it as an opportunity pipeline

Don’t think of it as a resolution when changing your mindset and shifting to an opportunity mindset. It’s hard to turn a resolution into an opportunity. That’s because all you’ll see are the obstacles that you’ll encounter with this resolution. Instead, systematically turn your dreams into reality. Tab Pierce advises us to break down our goals into six parts. These parts are as follows:

• Identify six opportunities that will impact the year
• Choose major opportunities per week that will impact the month
• Set six things to do each day that will impact your week 

I call them opportunities, six major opportunities a year. I have six major opportunities a month that happened to impact the year. I have six major opportunities a week that impact the month. And of course, then impact the year. And then I set six major opportunities a day or goals that impact and flow down into those. I chose six because that’s what’s meaningful to me. I mean, I thought four was too little. Seven automatically tips the scale, and it’s too much. So six, that’s my magic number

Step # 4: Let your ideas and thoughts percolate

While it’s good to act and achieve your plans, it also helps to let your thoughts brew for a while. Taking the time to think hard about your thoughts lets you refine your ideas. It gives you a fresh perspective on how to attack the problem. 

So I give myself about 90 days to really think about it. To really percolate on it. To really come up with some great things. If they’re really good, then why should I change them? Now, as I said, with refiners, it was like, ‘I am trying to build a community. So if I can’t reach it this way, maybe I could reach the real objective another way. And I’m willing to do that.

Step # 5 Say them out loud

Verbalize your goals. Sometimes, people tend not to share or talk about their opportunity pipelines. That’s because they become vulnerable. They’re scared of letting people see them vulnerable. By acknowledging your inadequacies in front of others, you’re pushed to realize that you’re not perfect and there are things you can improve. 

They don’t want to tell you their goals. They don’t want to tell you what they’re doing because they don’t want to be accountable. If they open up, they see it. Then they’re going to be vulnerable. Women are great because they’re like, ‘I’m going to do this.’ And they open up, and they talk. Men are like, ‘I don’t want to do that. And when I wrote the book Upsurge, I was completely vulnerable. You’re letting all these people know your inadequacies. And what I learned was that my inadequacies were actually my strength. I think the fact that I’m willing to go out and see. That I’m not perfect. That I’ve got all these things that I’m working on. It makes me stronger than the average person that just wants to internalize it and make people think that they’re great.

Step # 6 Anticipate detours; be prepared

Not all destinations follow a straight line. Occasionally, there are twists and turns. When you have everything planned out, it’s hard to accept that what you initially planned out didn’t work. 

How should the team look at challenges? 

(00:28:17) “But what we noticed is any client that really thinks about it profoundly and maybe does some pre-planning, we’re seeing them be able to keep another 15 to 20% of their profit back in their pocket. But for someone who is working so hard doing e-commerce, I think that’s a pretty big deal to add to the bottom line to the margins.”