Trade Comfort For Growth Before It Trades You

Change sounds glamorous until the work begins. We’re honest about that friction—how a simple switch on a phone plan or insurance triggers outsized dread—and we unpack the psychology that keeps us stuck even when the numbers say go. With Omar in the chair, we tackle loss aversion, fear of rejection, and the quiet comfort of routine that masquerades as prudence. The goal isn’t to hype you up; it’s to give you tools that make movement practical, humane, and repeatable.

We start with real, everyday choices that reveal deeper patterns: the heavy “cold call” phone, the gym membership we won’t cancel, the ego that says we can rescue any failing venture. From there, we introduce reframes that right-size risk. A story from military training illustrates how distance and structure keep you safe; apply the same logic to outreach, and “no” stops feeling like danger. You’ll hear why not everyone is your customer, how to disqualify fast without being rude, and how to protect your pipeline by protecting your time.

Then we get tactical. Baby steps beat bravado every time, so we break down method fit—matching the way you learn and work to the outcome you want. One shift from online self-study to an in-person cram course turned stalled licensing into momentum, proving that strategy, not willpower alone, drives results. We close with a simple operating system for change: define the identity required for your goal, prune the habits and distractions that tax it, and design first actions that are too small to skip. Add clear metrics and kill criteria so you pivot with data, not ego.

If you’re ready to trade comfort for progress, press play. Then share your one small change for the next seven days and tag us—we want to hear what you’re testing. Subscribe, leave a review if this sparked action, and pass it to a friend who needs a nudge forward.

Want a signed copy of my book? Get it here!

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hello there, I'm David A. Spect, and I want to be your coach. If there is anything that I've learned in my 30 plus years of leadership and coaching, I've learned that mindset is everything. Join me and my guests as we explore the positives and negatives of the thing between our ears. This is Keep This in Mind. Alright, let's see if we're official. Yes, we are. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus, etc. Good morning and welcome uh to the show, the the Zoom, the podcast. If you're listening, because we are uploading this to the podcast platform. 30 Minutes of Wisdom. Now, Omar, last week I or yesterday when I said, Hey, you want to zoom tomorrow? I said 30 minutes minutes of brilliance, but I felt like that was a little too cocky for for a title.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

But you know, if you don't toot your I graduate from LSU, sorry. I mean, well, there you go. You know, somebody right there would would say there's false advertisement.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Yeah, so yeah. So um, I want to jump right in again. You know, we we we try to keep this in 30 minutes as much as possible.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

How is it?

The Cost Of Change vs Comfort

SPEAKER_02 1:14

But at the end of the day, one of the things, and I'll tell you the story, and this kind of will set up our discussion. Um, my son came in, uh I think it was last Friday, and he said, Dad, I was talking to the ATT guy. And it's not me. I've I've got nothing. Yeah, somebody's somebody's trying to jump in. Yeah. Anyway, um, you know what I can do? I can turn off my Facebook front and quit out of my browser. Let's do that. Yes, sir. We do we do work on the fly here. So maybe that'll keep keep everything from going. But anyway, he said, hey dad, I talked to the ATT guy. He came by my house. Um I think we can save a ton of money by switching our cell phones from Verizon to ATT. We're real close to, you know, our you know, the end of our contract, blah, blah, blah. And he could look tell by the look on my face, it's like, really? You know how much of a pain in the butt it is to deal with with cell phone companies? Do you know how much of a pain it is to port numbers over from one company to another? Do you know he could just see the look on my face, you know, and immediately he was like, Well, look, if you don't want to do it, and I got thinking about that, running the numbers, I could probably save a hundred bucks a month, which is you know, twelve hundred a year. I mean, it's not, you know, it's insignificant. But the pain or the annoyance or the discomfort of making the change, my brain just wanted to put the brakes on it. And then I saw it happen again. I saw it happen again yesterday when I was looking at insurance for my car. As a veteran, I can, you know, there's some options for me. And I saw an area where I would save 50 bucks a month going from the company that I've been with for 20 years to uh another well-respected company. And it's like, why am I so adverse to making a change even when it is obvious that it's of benefit to me?

SPEAKER_01 3:40

Because it's the secret of the unknown. Because you you tell yourself, I'm gonna do all this work, I'm gonna go through all this pain and possibly how about if it's worse? How about if I'm not actually saving? How about I did all this and I'm literally even just the same, or it's the same company, the same service, or even worse. That's a story that we always tell ourselves because it's easier. Because think about it. Oh my gosh, yeah, it's like people canceling memberships to the gym. I'm I'm I've been a member of a gym now for like a year, multiple gyms, but this one I don't attend, and it's like, well, I don't want to disappoint them. They're not sending me a Christmas card. Yeah, who am I who am I disappointing? I mean, being an entrepreneur, you know how many people disappointed me by that stop showing up?

SPEAKER_02 4:35

Yeah, yeah. And gosh, you you just made me think of all the things, right? When it when it how many times has it not worked out, right? And that and you have that trauma in your brain when opportunities present themselves.

SPEAKER_01 4:49

And and believe it or not, the what's crazy is our wins outweigh our losses, but our our losses we deem them to be like on a national stage, like we got punched or slapped in the face at the Academy Awards, or maybe you know, we lost the national championship game and we got blown up because we build it to that, but we never focus on the wins, man. And there's way more wins, even the most mid-person has wins, but they always focus on the losses or focus on future losses.

Cold Calls And Fear Of Rejection

SPEAKER_02 5:25

Yeah. Um, I I I've seen it, you know, as you well know, I've kind of begun the transition into real estate. And one of the things that they want us to do, you know, that that is a prospecting tool, and and you've done you've done this before, you know, the cold call, right? You know, hey, you find your a for sale by owner, or you find an expired listing, and you pick up the phone, and hey, how's it going, bro? You know, and the resistance to making that first call, you would think I was trying to call the president of the United States and saying, Hey, Donnie, what's up?

SPEAKER_01 6:02

You know, it's just like that that phone looks like it weighs 500 pounds, man. You try to pick it up. Uh you've you've got other better things to do, like your your desk is clean and you you you you you need to check those old emails again. Everything is way more important. Oh my gosh, how about and the the craziest part is these people are strangers, so who cares what they tell you? Well, yeah, I mean, right? Yeah, it's not like your parent, your cousin, your brother, your best friend, your childhood friends like Dave, screw off, press on. It's literally someone that if they're mean to you, who cares, man? More than likely to, that's not a reflection on you. They're they're Ebonese or Scrooge, man. Move on, but but you know, once you hear that, it's like, oh my gosh, like, oh, they they don't like me. It's like they don't did it, they probably don't even like themselves. And it's not like you're you're gonna invite them to play golf, it's not like you're gonna, you know, hey, you know, fall's coming up. You guys want to watch football together? No, man, don't worry about it. On to the next, on, on to the next cold call.

The Door Metaphor: Safety To Act

Not Everyone Is Your Customer

SPEAKER_02 7:18

Oh man, you you remind me of something that I was taught, and and I need to be, I need to remember this. So when I was in basic training, they had a thing called a dorm guard, and they were the people that stood at the door, and you had to show your ID to get into the dormitory, et cetera. And every one of us had to do our turn, and most of the time it was in the middle of the night. But the drill sergeants, their job was to try to get in the door, to try to throw you off your game to see if you would flinch. And I remember our drill sergeant saying, Look, that is a a you know, a six-inch thick steel door with bulletproof glass in the window. What can they do to you but yell? You're not letting them in. If they don't provide you with what you need, and I remember they tried to do it, it was like three in the morning, and then the guy's like, You're gonna let me in, brother. I'm like, you're not on the list, brother, you know. And and I remember going, yeah, and he's like, When I get through this door, I'm gonna beat the hell out of you, and da-da-da, you know. And finally, my instructor came up the stairs, showed his Cordesos, came in. The other guy gave me like the dirtiest look as he walked through the door, but my drill instructor said, Good job. So the truth of the matter is a phone, you know, the the distance from one phone to another phone is far thicker than a six-inch metal door. And yet we treat it like we're face to face, and this person's gonna punch us if we say, Hey, do you wanna, are you still looking to sell your home? Are you still uh are you interested in insurance? Are you uh whatever, you want to buy an ad? What whatever the the the the pitch is, we seem to feel like it's it's it's life or death on every single call, and that is just simply not the truth.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Or or we waste time trying to to convince them that you're not a jerk, that that you're not a dick. And it's like you're wasting money, you're wasting time. Not everybody is your client, not everybody is your prospect. So quit playing vanilla, man. Things you can tell right off the bat, click on to the next phone call. Yeah, and this is coming from a guy that had fear of rejection, right?

We Crave Routine More Than Results

SPEAKER_02 9:42

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And same. And flip it the other side, right? Know that the person on the other end of the line has the same avoidance of change that you do. Exactly. I saw a meme the other day, uh, and it it really kind of illustrates this. It's like, honey, don't think he's gonna leave you for another woman, he's been ordering the same subway sandwich for 25 years, and that and that's true, absolutely true. And I was like, you know what? And and I see it, I see it in even younger generations. My son sons are very tradition-oriented, you know. If we ordered Pizza Hut pizza on on Christmas Eve at the Christmas Eve party when they were kids, then they still want Pizza Hut pizza on Christmas Eve, you know, every year moving forward. We are very traditional, you know, very routine-driven people. So our us getting out of our own way to make changes that are good for us shows other people that it can be done.

Baby Steps Over All‑In Fantasies

SPEAKER_01 10:51

Oh, certainly, certainly. We're we're creatures of habit. I mean, another example. I, you know, I graduated from LSU in the dark ages before Hurricane Katrina, small college town, uh, you know, middle of nowhere, an hour west of New Orleans. After Hurricane Katrina, huge it boom population buildings, restaurants, whatnot. But I still treat it like okay, there's all these new places to go, but I'll still go to the same places over and over again because that's because we're always like it it it's it's comfort because oh my gosh, yeah, those new places might be amazing, they might be way better. But what if it's not? And that that's that's just how we're wired. Yes, in the sense, how how about if I try something? How how about if I try to lose weight and do it on a consistent basis, and I keep on working out and I keep on putting everything on a scale, and I've got a food journal, but it's just not working out for me. Oh my gosh, how about it? It is genetics. How how about if I'm one in the billion? No, but we we tell ourselves that so it's easier. Hey man, it is what it is. I'm I'm playing the back nine, big big bone. Yeah, I'm big bone, it's genetics. Blame my ancestors, uh, you know. I I'm my ancestry's way better than science, way better than common sense. It is what it is. Let let me go through the drive-thru of In N Out Burger. Which we have those here now, you know. I I know a four-hour wait. People are willing to wait four hours in the grand opening in their car, but they don't have four minutes to write down their goal. Come on now, and that's that that's crazy.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Come on now. So let's let's turn it then to practical application, right? We recognize that we're creatures of habit. We're right, we recognize that if we've done something once, changing direction is difficult. We recognize that if even if we've presented with a better opportunity, uh, we still hunker back to comfort. So what are some of the things you've done personally in your life, and I'll I'll I'll share as well, where you got over it. What did you do to get over it? And and and what were the results?

SPEAKER_01 13:34

The number one thing that holds us back is we all had that inner voice that says, Dave Omar, what are you doing? This isn't for you. It it's trying to bring you back to your old negative beliefs, your old patterns. What you have to do is you have to be louder. You also sometimes have to take a step back and go, no, no, I am gonna do this. I I am ease into it. A lot of times people hear, you know, oh, just go all in. Well, I'm gonna go sign up for a marathon. I haven't ran since like 40 years ago, but let me try, let me try to do a 10 miler, and then after that, I can hit 26.2 miles. And it's like, no, you have to baby step it. And anything. If you're eating two large pizzas a day and you go cold turkey, yeah, man, you're gonna fail. You you you just have to stretch and and that's that's that's how you do it. It's like building a muscle, but you know, Rome, like that goofy saying, Rome wasn't built in a day. So whatever it is that you're trying to overcome, if if you have this fear of flying, I don't recommend flying, you know, cross country or uh on a 20-mile, a 20-hour flight. Just just fly somewhere like you know, Nashville to Atlanta, Miami to Nashville, Miami to Atlanta, these short flights, and then you you realize, oh my gosh, yes, I survived like the 99.999% of the people out there.

Rethinking Strategy: Find Your Mode

SPEAKER_02 15:15

That's so good. And you you you reminded me of of my own journey into real estate. You know, people think that, oh, Dave just became a real estate agent because you know it's it's Facebook official, right? You know, nothing really happens until you make it, you know, Facebook official. But that journey started in October of 2024. And it was it was a conversation that I had, and I'm like, okay, yeah, I'll I'll give real estate a shot. I'll I'll get my license. And then I tried to do the online curriculum way of getting my license. I spent the money, I got the tools, I got the you know, all the things. And about three months into it, and only like 15% of the course curriculum completed, I said, Well, this must not be for me, because I wanted to stab myself in the eye before I looked at another uh module on the online course. And so as I continued, I felt like a failure. My my buddy that that was talking to me about real estate came up to me and said, Hey man, you know, this flip that we just did, if you'd have been the agent on it, you know, you'd have made this much money. And I'm like, you know, well, way to rub it in, dude. And then I sat down with my wife and I said, I still think I'm supposed to do this. And she says, Well, what are your other alternatives? And I said, Well, there's a two-person cram, you know, two-week cram in in-person class. And she said, Sounds like that's what you need to do. So I did it two weeks from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. each night, Monday through Friday for two weeks. So, you know, after I did all the day, all the crap that I deal with every day, then I have to go spend four hours every night learning this. I learned it, I passed it. I went and took the state exam two weeks later, I passed it. So it wasn't a failing on my part. I was not able to learn in the manner that I tried first. But so many times when it doesn't work the first time, we just give up instead of trying to figure out a way, okay, well, this way didn't work for me. Is there another way that I can do something where it can work for me?

Entrepreneur Ego And Sunk Costs

SPEAKER_01 17:26

Or how social media is yes, it's a tool, but it can also hold you back. Imagine 2024, you're just blasting it on social media, and Tina got involved and she was blasting, saying, Dave is gonna be a realtor, and all your social media buddies coming out with the cyber hugs and the congratulations and the kudos. And Dave's a great guy, I'm proud of you. You're gonna kill it, and you're like, yeah, awesome. You got that dopamine, man. You felt like you know, you felt like you were one on one of those Netflix um uh uh shows about selling New York and selling some sell selling Murph. You're like, man, I feel like I'm a rock star, everybody knows me, everybody's happy, everybody's proud of me, and you never go through it. And the thing is, everybody forgets because you know, everybody's really just into their own thing, and then here you are years later without the license, right?

SPEAKER_02 18:31

Yeah, and and so my my my my lesson there is figure out what you really want, and then explore the pathways to get there because you know, unlike unlike you know, headed to heaven, you know, there's only one road to heaven. There's many roads to your personal destination on this earth, you know, to your goals, to your dreams. And I thought my road was gonna be paved with newspapers and and magazines and all the things, you know, owning these things. I was gonna be a media mogul and I was gonna write books and be the next out of the room.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

You're gonna be William Randolph Hearst, man.

SPEAKER_02 19:12

Yeah. And and you know, meanwhile, I've got a you know, just this morning I got an email from uh a place in Louisiana that's like, hey, our newspaper's closing down. Do you want to buy it? And I'm just like, dude, you just closing down for a reason. It's called y'all don't support your newspaper.

SPEAKER_01 19:30

Yeah, but but the best part about it is everybody has such an ego and so narcissistic, especially entrepreneurs. I can turn this around, I can turn around this falling knife. I I I can raise the Titanic, I can do a way better job than the captain of the Titanic.

SPEAKER_02 19:52

I can keep Blockbuster open. The one that one blockbuster out in Wyoming or wherever it is, is like we're on a gun.

SPEAKER_01 19:58

I think they finally they're they're they're finally closing. But yeah, it it it it makes zero sense, but a lot of times it it's like when you look at a at a retail area, and it always folds no matter that out parcel, whatever, no matter what goes in there, and you're like, why do people keep on putting businesses in there? It's because we believe that we have the magic bullet. Who cares if it's a bad location? Who cares if it's death? I have all the answers. And you see, you you save yourself a lot of money and a lot of heartache because a lot of entrepreneurs, oh, I can I can build this empire, I can show those people that I can cre I can turn this around and make it profitable, and uh never buy someone else's headache. That that that's a lesson I learned, and it's a very costly lesson.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

So the the the overarching thing is number one, we're we don't like change. No, not good it is for us. Number two, sometimes you gotta change anyway because markets shift. And number three, be very strategic on how you change to mitigate the potential losses, right? There there's no guarantees, right? You could again, I could have a 30-minute uh appointment with Tony Robbins and come out of that thing 30 minutes later thinking I have the keys to the kingdom. And then six months later be in the same position I'm in because I wasn't strategic about what I did. That Tony Robbins is not going to run my business, you know. Uh the the uh Grant Cardone is not gonna sell real estate for me. You know, at the end of the day, it's my decision, it's my life, it's my business, it's it's it's my identity. Look at the tools for what they are. But understand that the execution is on you, and if you don't change, you're never gonna move forward.

Sacrifice, Identity, And Execution

SPEAKER_01 22:08

You have to constantly change. If you're right here at D, if you want to get to E F G, life Mother Nature, God, Jesus Christ, whatever you believe in, says okay. But in order to get there, you have to make sacrifices. You have to sacrifice people that are holding you back, vices that are holding you back. Watching four, five, six hours on Netflix a day only makes Reed Hastings and the shareholders money. Does not make you money. You have to realize what is it that's holding me back, and who do I have to become in order to get to that next step? That is so good.

SPEAKER_02 22:53

That is so good. I think that that's that's a good good way to end our conversation today. Omar, thank you for being here. His podcast, what if it did work, available on all the platforms. Um, again, Elevate Success Path. Omar and I are the primary coaches there. Go to elevate successpath.com to get more information about that. Omar, it has been once again 30 minutes of brilliance, but we'll call it 30 minutes of wisdom.

Closing Wisdom And Next Steps

SPEAKER_01 23:27

And I uh you know what it it is wisdom, yeah, and it's knowledge and it's free knowledge, and it's the same amount if you pay a guru 20, 30, 40,000 until you realize that you are worthy and that you are enough one season that Jesus Christ died for you, so you are a rock star until you implement. You can read 50 books, 100 books, until you realize that you are a rock star and you literally start implementing stuff. It might as well listen to a podcast on LSU football and um Florida football because you know they're both dynasties in the making. Yes, yes, I'm sure we are.

SPEAKER_02 24:09

You know, every year is a new beginning. So God bless you guys. Thank y'all for tuning in, and we'll see you next time. That is going to do it for this episode of Keep This In Mind. For more, visit Davidaspect.com. Like, follow, and subscribe. Thank you for listening, and remember, applied knowledge is power. God bless you.