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Shine On Success
Shine on Success is a dynamic, story-driven podcast where extraordinary entrepreneurs, visionary leaders, and resilient change-makers share their journeys to success, revealing both the challenges and the strategies that led to their breakthroughs. Each episode offers a unique blend of inspiring personal stories, practical business insights, and actionable advice, allowing our guests to connect with an engaged, growth-oriented audience ready to be motivated and uplifted. By joining us, you’ll not only have the opportunity to showcase your expertise and inspire listeners but also to be part of a powerful platform that celebrates ambition, innovation, and the courage to turn dreams into reality.
Shine On Success
Break Free from the Script: Rewrite Your Life and Unlock Your Potential
Have you ever felt trapped by the roles life handed you, afraid to step out, speak up, or truly succeed? In this powerful episode of Shine On Success, host Dionne Malush sits down with a mindset expert who helps creators and performers rise above the limits they didn’t even know were holding them back.
Together, they unpack how fear of failure, of change, even of success, can quietly script our lives and how tools like NLP, hypnosis, and intentional mindset work can rewrite the story. Whether you’re stuck in self-doubt, battling imposter syndrome, or just ready for a breakthrough, this conversation will remind you: your identity isn’t set in stone. You have the power to evolve, grow, and design the life you want.
Connect with Albert here:
Website: https://bramanteartists.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dralbramante
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/albertcbramante/
Connect with Dionne Malush
- Instagram: @dionnerealtyonepgh
- LinkedIN: /in/dionnemalush
- Website: www.dionnemalush.com
- Facebook: /dmalush
- LinkTree: https://linktr.ee/dionnemalush
Have you ever felt like you're doing everything right but still stuck playing small? My guest today helps people rise above the rules they've been cast in, literally and mentally. I'd like to introduce Albert Bramante. He's a talent agent, psychology professor, hypnosis and NLP expert, and the author of Rise Above the Script. Albert helps performers, educators and creators unlock their true potential and today he's going to help you. Hi, hi, albert, welcome. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Thank you, dionne. I'm really happy to be here. I really appreciate the invitation and the for you to bring me out to the show.
Speaker 1:I'm excited to talk to you. I've been reading a little bit about you and my very first question is this what's one thing you want listeners to know about you right away?
Speaker 2:That I'm a truly dedicated person. When I put my mind to something, I really get it done, and I go above and beyond most of the time to really make sure that I deliver quality.
Speaker 1:That's really important. I love that. So tell me something. You had a childhood dream. How close are you to living?
Speaker 2:that dream I'm about. I would say 60 percent there. Uh, you know my, my dream was to be a doctor. Now, initially it was going to be a medical doctor, then it was going to be a dentist, a surgeon, all of that stuff. But I wasn't very good math, so math wasn't my strong suit, so I had to figure out something different. So I, you know, became a doctor in psychology. So that was part of my. My dream was be, you know, a doctor. And you know my grandmother's deathbed. She promised me to be a doctor and I you know somewhat honored that you know.
Speaker 2:So here I am, but I think you know the dream to be a singer, though I'm not gifted with a singer's voice, so that didn't. Yeah, I mean, I sing in the shower.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think it sounds good, but then no one ever said that to me before, right?
Speaker 2:I mean, you know my audience at Xero, always loved playing.
Speaker 1:So I always wanted to be a cardiologist when I was little, but I ended up going to art school, which has nothing to do with, you know, with heart, but you know it is what it is. And now I own a real estate brokerage, which still has nothing to do with cardiology, but definitely was one of my childhood dreams. So take me back to a place when you first realized that psychology and performance could be fused together.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I became kind of interested in each aspect separately. But I can tell you when I started working as an agent because that's what I primarily do full time as a talent agent for actors in New York, which essentially is an employment agency, so I represent actors for career growth and opportunities so what I noticed when I first started doing this type of work was I was encountering a lot of actors that were engaging in career self-sabotaging or self-defeating behaviors, which is like being a professional for auditions, not showing up for auditions, not preparing for auditions, or always coming up with excuses of why they couldn't do it, even though, despite the fact that they would tell you how much they really wanted to work on a project, ok. So I couldn't figure out where was this disconnect happening, despite the fact that they would tell you how much they really wanted to work on a project Okay. So I couldn't figure out where was this disconnect happening? And so it really dawned when I started my PhD program.
Speaker 2:We have to do this dissertation, which is kind of like a monumental research paper, and the advice was to tackle a problem that's kind of eating at us, and that was what was really getting at me at that time was what's up with these actors. So that was kind of like the way I can merge the two together. I love psychology and I love acting, so actors, so where do I, where can I combine the two? And that's that's where I did that.
Speaker 2:So that was actually the moment that and this was about 20 years ago that I realized that I can merge the two of them together.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's awesome. So you've worn a lot of hats, right? Agent professor hypnotist. What thread ties all of those together?
Speaker 2:I would say mindset would be the unifying factor because, you know, hypnosis and LP and psychology all works with mindset and in order to be successful in a really dominant acting field or acting community, you need to have a stellar mindset, a growth mindset. So I feel like it ties it all together, is the concept mindset? So it's having that rock solid growth mindset that's going to be helping you be successful as an artist and you can use the tools of psychology, hypnosis and nlp to reach that so what is one of the biggest mental blocks, or mindset blocks you see in the performers or creators that you work with today?
Speaker 2:fear. I would probably say fear, and that could be, you know, fear of failure, fear of change, fear of success, even and that was probably the most, I think, paradoxes that really uninteresting concept.
Speaker 2:You know when I started my grad school study, which was fear of success. Because when you talk about fear of success, most people are going to look at you and say, well, who would fear of success? I wouldn't. I'd want to be successful. That's the goal. Consciously you're saying that, but subconsciously, internally, there's often a fear about that because it could be change, it could be relationships could, could be sabotage of rooms.
Speaker 1:In a sense, it would become successful so for me, I have to tell you something, because I had fear of success, because I felt guilty. I felt guilty to be more successful than people that I knew, and so I you know it was. It took me a long time to get over that, but that was definitely a fear of if I'm too successful, you know what happens next. So it really was. It was a difficult point where I remember one time I won an award and I was so like embarrassed that I won, even though I worked so hard to get there and I didn't tell anybody about it. So I held that in for a long time. Now I tell everybody about everything because that's my story. You know now they get to know my story. But I've definitely had a fear of success. So that that helps. So how does hypnosis and nlp help with someone struggling with imposter syndrome? Because that's kind of what I was having right. I was yeah the same world well it.
Speaker 2:it has to do a lot with working with limiting beliefs, and the limiting beliefs that you could possibly have could be not feeling adequate or sometimes reprogramming. What needs to be done is reprogram some of the messages you receive from our parents and from society, from our teachers, from our elders when we were growing up that might have been well-intentioned or you know the people that say well-intentioned. Our parents could have well-meaning intentions, intentions but gave us the wrong messages growing up.
Speaker 2:you know, that's what might be to me and certain happened to a lot of people that you know. We know that gotten the wrong message, to receive the wrong messages from their parents. You know setting them for failure or just not help. You know setting setting up with the negative belief systems or limiting belief systems.
Speaker 1:They may not have meant to do it, but sometimes you know that definitely happens with people, oh 100%.
Speaker 2:You know there's the not realizing it's happening or that's just taking place, however it is, and one of the things we can use is to rework that. So you know, undoing that, you know the patterns undoing those belief systems, undoing those imprints, and that's where hypnosis and NLP comes in, once the limiting beliefs are kind of reframed into. Enhancing beliefs is what I would call it, even though it's not really a term, but enhancing beliefs, which is the opposite of OK, now that I'm removing that pain, I now going to give you that help. You get that propulsion, you know, to move forward. And then the imposter syndrome should be less, you know, less and less of an impact, because you won't feel that way anymore, I think.
Speaker 2:One thing for me that changed my imposter syndrome was just getting older and realizing I really don't care what people think anymore you know well, yeah, and I joke about that because ever since I turned four after I turned 40, that was like a one thing. It was so liberating. Like I said, I wish I had that capacity to give this to my 18, 16, 18 year old self would be to simply just not care, because that would have liberated a lot of people for sure.
Speaker 2:So give me a mental strategy that our listeners can apply today to gain clarity or confidence in their life so the one thing to get clarity and confidence is to really sit down and focus on what you really want, and I'm not talking about what other people expect you to do, what, what your parents expect, what your family expect you to do, what your parents expect what your family expect you to do.
Speaker 2:What is it that you want? What is it that makes you happy, what is it that makes you passionate? And focus on that, because you're living your own life, not somebody else's life, and so that's the first step is to figure out what it is you really want, rather than focusing on what you don't want. What do you want? What makes you happy?
Speaker 2:So sometimes I like to use an exercise. We use an exercise in an update called I am statements. So it's I am blank, and there could be like 10 of these what are you and really think about this? I am blank, and that's going to be unique for everybody listening and everybody around us. The I am statement. So focus on the identity again, and that's where sometimes, like someone like me or any other you know, nlp practitioner or coaches help you with is focusing on who you are, and that's the first step of clarity is, once you figure out your, you know, come to an identity that you embrace. And your identity can change. It's not like a static concept. A lot of people think well, my identity set stone and lost for life. It is not. It can change over time and sometimes, in all the just you know fade, new ones will become. And we're a work in progress.
Speaker 1:As long as we're still living, we're going to always be changing and evolving I mean that makes sense and I'm constantly wanting to change and do new things and learn, but there is something like I feel like right now I'm on the information overload. You know, there's just so much stuff that I'm trying, you're doing and I'm thinking I gotta calm down a little bit.
Speaker 2:There's yeah right, it can't be effective doing all of these things exactly and and that's what sometimes called decision paralysis where it's like there's so much an overload of information because now, with technology, with ai and all this stuff on our fingertips, we have access to, you know, things we never dreamed we would, which is great on some level. But with the thing about the human brain is like sometimes, if we're presented with too much information, we go on overload and we shut down. It's like we get nothing, you know, get nothing done and that's why, if you know, you know, myself included, there's a lot of people will have so many books and so many courses that we bought. What's being done? Nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So the key is to pick one thing at a time.
Speaker 1:One thing at a time.
Speaker 2:And focus on that and then, once you're complete with that, then you can move on.
Speaker 1:That's what happens to me. I feel like I'm everything every day. I said something this morning. It's not the interruptions that I get from everyone else, it's the ones I get from myself. Yeah, I'm interrupting me, you know. So I I totally feel that. So let me talk to you about you're doing a lot of things. You have this it's a bramante artist, right, and you're a college professor. You're hypnosis nlp. What does a day in your life look like?
Speaker 2:very interesting because there's the thing about what I love being an agent about is there's no set predictability. It's not like, okay, this day is gonna be this, isn't this, and, and you know. So there, I'm sure there are advantages of being a team, but for me, every day is unique and I think the important thing is being prepared and ready for it. So I, I mean, I have goals. They'll say like today I want to complete this, or you know A, b and C and I have a calendar. This is what I need to set.
Speaker 2:So but other stuff, I leave stuff over for chance, because what can possibly happen? So I could possibly wake up in the morning. You know, after I do my morning routine, I'll, you know, sit and look at my agents of emails that come in, answering emails that are pressing and only pressing matters, and then focusing on the job submissions for a day, because my job as an agent is to pitch actors. So finding the day-to-day jobs that are available in the job boards that it's described to, and then submit the appropriate actor for that, and then I might, you know, I teach. The college professor job is flexible now because I teach on Zoom.
Speaker 1:Oh cool, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Which is great, yeah, so I don't have to leave the house. I can really just, you know, switch to, switch on modes, and that's what I'll sometimes. You'll then prep. If it's during regular semester, I'll prep for the class too. I'll spend a couple days, you know a couple hours, prepping for the, the class, getting my notes ready, and then I'll go on zoom and then I'll usually go back to working on the talent side of things in the classes or as ended. So you know, but but there's a lot of unpredictability. Sometimes in a day, some days, you get really busy.
Speaker 1:Some people go for it, some people aren't. Some people don't want that in their life.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that to work in the entertainment show business it's not for everybody. The one thing you have to there has to be that tolerance for inflexibility, that tolerance for uncertainty.
Speaker 1:That makes sense, and that's how I do my business too. The same way, it has to be somewhat flexible, or, you know, it's just impossible to not be available, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was giving a presentation the last month to you know college, you know soon to be college graduates that are looking to do a career in arts management, and that's one thing I said is there has to be a tolerance for unpredictability yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 1:I love that. So we talked a little bit about a day in your life. It's busy, I'm sure, but tell me a little bit about one of my new favorite things, and seemingly yours is ai. Tell me what. What are you doing with ai?
Speaker 2:well, I'm playing, you know, experimenting with it. I was a little skeptical in the beginning, just like I'm sure everybody else was, but I really found it so amazing in like automation and just as a brainstorming tool. So I use it a lot for brainstorming, okay, whether it's it's coming for ideas, doing research you know, basic research so or sometimes just completing things, like a lot of times if I'm writing an article or I don't want to write a piece of content, it'll help me with coming up with an outline or maybe just brainstorming tool. So I'm, when I say about ai, I kind of have like I'm in between, like I love ai, but I also still want to contain the human side of things.
Speaker 2:So I often like to use the term ai assisted, not ai generated yeah, because if if sometimes, if you, you know, look at a text that's completely purely ai generated, it's very robotic and it's very impersonal and I think now, because we're so available, we can automatically tell you most listeners, most readers can tell whether something is human written or AI written. So what I like to do is come up with a piece on my own and then I might run it through AI and say help, improve, keep the messaging intact, but improve maybe something here and there, and it'll give me a different way of looking at things. I'm like, well, I didn't think of that and I'll take it back and I'll rewrite it and then put, put voice, and then do it again and then eventually do it in. Or if I'm writing like a, a pitch letter or a sales letter, what I might do is is say to the ai, after I complete my thoughts, and kind of solicit, and I'll say okay, make this better, make this more enhanced, enhances, or you know so.
Speaker 2:And the one tip that I can give your listeners that I really found at levels of game is you rank the prompts one, two and three. So, like the first time we do something through chat gbt, it'll give you an output. Then you say now turn this into a level two answer. Yeah, and then it will give you a level two answer and then you say now turn into a level three, which is definitely different. That's not perfect, but it's definitely really sometimes mind-blowing.
Speaker 2:And I'm still learning, and the thing about AI is that it's such a rapidly improving developing landscape that you know, daily there's breakthroughs and there's breakthroughs happening to the point where we're going to see such amazing exponential growth, sometimes within a month or two months from now. Even so, because it's such such an expanding time, yeah, I learned.
Speaker 1:I had to be behind over the weekend and I learned about automation. So I've been really good at the writing side of the guy, learning it and making it sound like me. But then idea of workflows and automation I can't even believe how amazing that is. So I know about this much, but I'm working on seeing if I can do some things to help in my own company, which would be, super awesome.
Speaker 2:And I'm worrying about it too, but I'll admit I probably don't really know maybe a small speck of what's out there and I'm continuing to learn about it. So I think it's an exciting. It's so, it really is.
Speaker 1:It has definitely given me some time back where I can do a lot of things quickly and take the time that I need, because I'm right now I'm helping my husband who had a liver transplant seven weeks ago, and so I've been this caretaker but I'm able to come in, do the things I need to do, get them done. You know, help him when needed, so it's been perfectly time for my life. So the reason I did this podcast was to share that people can go through adversity and push through to the other side. So can you tell me one time in your life where there was a major adversity that you pushed through and saw the light at the end of the tunnel and pushed through and got there?
Speaker 2:Well, I would definitely say career education was a PhD process, so I'm really glad I went through the process of getting the PhD but there was a lot of hardships between you know, completing dissertation, balancing my time I was a full-time professor at that time when I was completing it and when you're a full-time academic, they it's a lot different than me.
Speaker 2:Part-time, you know to a point where you're kind of they own. You know there's a lot of committee work, that there's a lot of stuff outside of this teaching class. You do service. To do service to the college, you have to have office hours and you know service to the college community, and so I was doing a lot there. And then combined dissertation, which is a process in itself because there's so many revisions that have to be done. The way I just did it was by being focused. Now that's one. You know adversity, I would say for me there was a lot of odds that I overcame as a growing up.
Speaker 2:I not to spend an entire time on this, but I I was a premature baby okay, had a lot of health problems as a child and, you know, for the first, like five or six years, it was a lot of physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, uh and and so a lot of experts. When I say these experts in quotations, we're not, we're telling my, preparing my family for the fact that I most likely will be institutionalized and will not be able to live a productive life.
Speaker 2:Now, yeah, I mean, this is back in the early eight, late 70s, early 80s, so there may not have been much knowledge about knowledge about neuroplasticity and all of that, and I might have been showing signs, I was, of that possibility. So I don't necessarily blame them or sit there and say, oh, roger's done that. They probably were doing the best they could with what they were seeing and observing. But what I will say is that was a major thing. So not only did I exceed those expectations, but I got a PhD. You know, received a PhD.
Speaker 1:That's huge. That's a huge adversity to overcome. So congratulations for that. You did push through to the other side. So let's talk about your book. What inspired your book? Rise Above the Script?
Speaker 2:So, as I was saying earlier about my dissertation, what inspired me was a real issue of why these actors self-sabotage, and there was nothing written at that time about the psychology of hackers and performing arts. Even when I received my phd, you know, 10 years ago, my advising team, my chair and my committee were pushing me to publish because I had such an innovative type of research and work done. So it took me a while to do that, so in in, I was just. I really wanted to kind of like leave a legacy and I was like I had the PhD.
Speaker 2:I now want to add author to my identity, so, but I was the type of and I'll admit you know to everybody here I'll call myself out on this I was doing my own imposter syndrome because I kept saying me write a book and so 2023, I was part of a mastermind for authors and one of the statistics that came out that was said, was that only one percent of authors who say they want people who want to the authors actually write a book. The other 99 never write a book and I was easily becoming the other 99.
Speaker 2:So in 2023, I said I'm gonna really write a book because I'd like to leave a legacy, I really want to help these actors out, and I wrote the book initially for actors, and that's why I bought my title for performing artists. However, the truth about the book is that it can be applicable to anybody, whether you're an art actor or not. There's a lot of information in there that can apply to anybody from any profession, and so I just wanted to kind of leave a mark into the world and, you know, to achieve something. I always loved books growing up. Now let me write one.
Speaker 1:I love that so let me ask you this what script do you think most people are unconsciously living by?
Speaker 2:I would say self-doubt, and this has a lot to do with the programming we receive. So it's a lot of times I can't do this or this is impossible, and the truth is that it can. You know, if you really sit down and work through it. It may not go exactly the way you want it to, but there's ways that you can work around it, there's revisions that you can do, and I would say that would be the biggest trip is I can't really, or yes, but you know, and and what? Fill in the blanks, whatever that would be. So the idea here is, if we really sit down, we can, we can change, we can change things and no matter how old we are, we can always change so you mean, I have hope so we all do everyone 57 in three days well, happy birthday.
Speaker 2:So yeah, and that would be one thing I'd say you're 50 years young, yeah, I don't feel it today, but I thank you for saying that.
Speaker 1:So if someone is listening and feel stuck in their current role, well the focus when you feel stuck.
Speaker 2:Okay, what does that look like? That would be the first thing I'd want to know. Okay, what do you mean by being stuck? Because that's one thing I'll write. You know, as coaches, we like to ask questions. It's sort of like what do you? What do you mean by being stuck? Because that's one thing you know, as coaches, we like to ask questions. It's sort of like, what do you mean by stuck? Because stuck could mean different things for everybody out there.
Speaker 2:So what does stuck mean to you? And then, what is it that you really want to do? What's the burning thing that you know you really wish you could do? And write that out, write that goal out, and then the next thing is to break that goal down into action steps, because and and I'm not a big fan of to-do lists I gotta look actual calendars, like putting it on the calendar and then and I'm gonna borrow a little something that I learned from napoleon hill mastermind get involved in the community that's going to support you yeah, that is.
Speaker 1:That is great advice, and it's been well known for many years that that's something that business owners should be doing. In any role that you're in, you should be doing like, yeah, to have people to bounce ideas off of it, especially if you're more successful than you.
Speaker 2:That's, that's the biggest thing. You need to surround yourself with people more successful than you are, and I'm going to say something that's a bit unconventional. That might sound unconventional, but lean into your competition for advice. That's good advice Because they, you know, yes, at the end of the day, we may be competitors, but I've worked, I've talked to other talent agents. All the time. I got a lot of great advice from other talent agencies Because they, especially those that are more senior than I am. So we learn from you know, you learn from the coaches, you network with other coaches and that's the important thing is to learn from each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love learning. I love it and I love masterminding. It's so important and, to be honest with you, the last two years I've kind of stepped back a little bit, but I miss it a lot and I know that I want to get to my next level. I need to find some people that are in this space that I'm in and learn from them. So that's great advice, albert. Thank you for sharing that. So what is one book that changed your life?
Speaker 2:It's interesting, I would say Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl was on my list. You know, on the fiction side, a memoir side is Tuesdays with Maury.
Speaker 1:Tuesdays with Maury is such a great book.
Speaker 2:I agree, I love that book. You know, though I don't know if it was necessarily a book, but you know, I read a lot of books on psychology and the brain and that really kind of like made me so interested in it.
Speaker 1:Did you ever read the Power of the Subconscious Mind? I haven't, but I've heard of it. Yeah, it's a really good book I've always believed.
Speaker 2:I've never read a lot of books in the subconscious mind because I really believe it's so powerful and that's something where hypnosis and healthy works, because we communicate this up, not your mind that makes sense.
Speaker 1:So do you have a daily non-negotiable daily.
Speaker 2:Non-negotiable for me is to set my. When I make a commitment, I stick to it.
Speaker 1:Simple seems so simple, but it's important and it's how people face your integrity, right, you know, by sticking to what you say yeah, and that's your integrity.
Speaker 2:You're in your work.
Speaker 1:You have to be at your work and you deal with a lot of people in the in the industry, the entertainment industry, and I'm sure they expect nothing about that.
Speaker 2:100 that's.
Speaker 1:The reputation is so important in any business, of course, and the only way you're going to maintain a reputation is following integrity yeah, so you can tell us any story about something to happen in the acting side, kind of fun and interesting, that won't get you in any trouble, uh well, you know, it's just.
Speaker 2:It's so thrilling, like when we help actors reach their dreams. Yeah sure, and for me to be able to Aren't we all acting in a way? Yeah, we're all playing a role. A persona, if you really want to believe that.
Speaker 1:A mask.
Speaker 2:You know whether we're. You know when we're in front of our boss, we're acting as employees or working with our clients. We're acting as coach and we're working, you know, with our family. We're pursuing the family role, Right, you know?
Speaker 1:with our family. We're pursuing the family role, right yeah, so that's so interesting. You have so much to offer the world. There's just so many things we could talk about. So tell me this what's next for you?
Speaker 2:What's next for me is I'm going to be launching my own podcast. So yeah, that's coming up. I'm working on a couple more proposals.
Speaker 1:I have for books.
Speaker 2:Okay, two new books that I want to write or I want to take. So that's sort of like what I'm doing. I'll be launching a group coaching program myself.
Speaker 1:So if you want to go, to my website right now, albertbermontcom.
Speaker 2:I'll be updating that, and so I currently, right now, have recordings online that people can get If those recordings have anything to do with self-confidence, to overcoming addiction, to leadership of public speaking enhancement. So there's something on there for everyone, whether you're an athlete looking to improve your mental game that's amazing, so thank you for sharing that.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say how can they get a hold of you? But go to your website. Yeah, go to my website.
Speaker 2:And then, of course, I'm on social media, like dan, you know instagram for sure we're gonna have you.
Speaker 1:So thank you so much for being with me today. You're very interesting. You have a lot of things off into the world, so keep being you. I'm glad you're here. I believe you're a great city in your life, because without that you wouldn't be here sharing all these great stories and advice with us. So if you could share, like or subscribe to this episode, that would be amazing. We used to say if we could just help one person. Now we want to help lots of people. So anybody you know that could benefit, just reach out to Albert at albertfermontecom and get to know him like we are. So thank you, Albert, have a great day.
