Waiting On Proof Is Costing You Everything

Most entrepreneurs aren't waiting on opportunity. They're waiting on certainty. And while they wait for proof that it will work, someone else is already building the business, owning the market, and becoming the expert they dreamed of being.

In this episode of Success Is Not Convenient, Bernie Gallerani breaks down why proof is expensive and faith gets there first. You'll learn the be, do, have progression from Darel Rutherford's Being the Solution, why failure is feedback instead of identity, and the one question that changes everything: what kind of person would I have to become to make this work?

Your income follows your beliefs. Your leadership follows your confidence. Your business will never consistently outperform your identity. If you want a different result, you have to become a different person first.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey everybody, this is Bernie Gallerandi bringing in another episode of Success is Not Convenient. I love this topic today, and I hope you will too. Do you need proof or will faith do? Do you need to see something, touch something, and feel something in order to get to decide whether or not that is actually something? Or do you just have a vision of an idea that inspires you at such a high level that you're willing to put everything aside for it, even though you know maybe it won't work? Or maybe there's some doubt that it will work, but your desire is so high it will work. And what if I told you that the life you want doesn't begin when you finally have proof? It begins when you're willing to move without the proof. Every entrepreneur says that they want to be have a bigger business, they want to have a better business, they want more freedom, they want more income, they want more impact in the community. But if we're honest, most of us aren't waiting on opportunity. We're waiting on certainty. Write that one down. Are we waiting on certainty? Because if you're waiting on certainty, movement is probably going to be very small. See, sometimes we tell ourselves, once I know this will work, and once I have enough money, once I actually have enough money, and once I have enough experience, let's just say once I have uh someone who shows me that it's possible, let me let somebody else let somebody else show me that they've done it, then I'll do it. Then I'll go ahead and go. I'll go ahead and do the things if somebody can show me that it works. But see, here's the problem. If certainty always came in first, then there would be no entrepreneurs. That's what entrepreneurs do. We pave the path. There would only be employees waiting for instruction. There would only be employees. Why would we need entrepreneurs if everything we touched was successful? The greatest business in the world weren't built by people who had proof. They were built by people who had enough faith in themselves to move before the evidence actually ever existed. I'm going to tell you some interesting stories about that here in a minute. Just some personal stories or some things that I've experienced in this that has really solidified my belief system in moving forward, regardless of how difficult it might be. See, your future is built on your identity. And that's how you that's how people focus in on their growth as like who they are. And if you are the person who doubts yourself constantly, if that's your identity, then success is probably not going to be for you. And this reminds me of something that Dell Rutherford teaches in being the solution. It's a book that I highly recommend everybody. I've talked about in other podcasts, but Daryl Rutherford has a very easy concept about understanding being uncomfortable and getting out of your situation. And he talks about the word progression, the be do have mentality. I want you guys to hear this. Be do have. A lot of people think is that you do, you be, and you have. You do, you be, and you have. And that's actually the wrong order of things. It's the be do have mentality. See, most people live backwards. They think if I have success, then I'll do what successful people do. And then eventually I'll become successful. And that's why so many people aren't successful. That's backwards. It's actually not even correct. Successful people become someone first. Gosh, Bernie, this is this is deep. How do you become somebody who's successful without actually having success? We're going to talk about that. But then what they do is they act like that person. So you have to be the person and act like the person to do the activities to have the result. You don't have to have the result to then be the person to then having the result. You have to be the person first, not do the person. The doing comes second. And that's where the order of things are messed up. Then you have to act like the person who already has that, and those things will show up. Only then do they receive the results that they're shooting for. I'm going to give you some examples of this. There's a great thing, and I've done podcasts on this before where you're raising your standard. Like you're not working towards your dreams. You're only working from the standards that you implement. And it always starts with who you believe you are. If you believe you're a rock star something, in my world, it's real estate. If you believe you're a rock star real estate agent, are you doing all the things rock star real estate agents do? And the reason why most people are not rock star real estate agents is because they want to do what they continue keeping doing. And what they keep doing is what's getting them to where they are. It also starts with who you believe you are every single day. See, faith is confidence in yourself. Let's redefine faith for just for just a minute. Most people think that faith means believing something outside of themselves. But entrepreneurs also need another kind of faith: faith in themselves, faith in the confidence before confirmation. They have to have confidence in who they are before they actually see any sort of results. They get confirmation on that effort that they do. It doesn't start with the result, it starts with who you are. Faith is believing you are capable before the business proves it. I'm gonna say this to you faith being is believing that you are capable before the business ever proves that you can be capable. Faith is believing that you're worthy before the market rewards you. Faith is betting on yourself before anyone else bets on you. If your confidence disappears every time results don't show up immediately, then your faith wasn't in yourself. Your faith was in the result. Hear this. We tie ourselves to the result, not to the person who we are going to be or that we say we are today. You get discouraged because it doesn't come easy, but a successful person who says that's who I am knows it doesn't come easy. That's why the podcast says success is not convenient. I keep stressing this a lot on these podcasts. Success is not meant for everybody to see, it's available for everybody to see, but it just glimmers itself. It shows up and goes away. And you get to ride on that success for a long time. If it shows itself for a short amount of time, then like, wow, that person's really successful. But most successful people are always trying to figure out what the next level is for them. So your faith is not in your results, and your results always lag behind belief. Your results always drag behind your belief system. And so if you're always focusing on what shows up and versus what is possible for you or what's going to happen for you, then discouragement shows up because results show up very little to the effort in which you put forward. The real fear isn't failure here. People say that they're afraid of failing. That I don't think that's the truth. I don't think that's true at all for anybody. I think that they're afraid of discovering that they aren't who they hope they would be or dream to be. Let's stop there for a second. I think that people are afraid in finding out and having discovery of themselves that they are they are not who they hoped they would be. It's not that they can't be, it's that they haven't changed who they're being first. Failure feels personal to people. We attach our identity to one outcome. The business didn't fail, the marketing didn't fail, the offer didn't fail. We think we failed. We think we failed if it failed. We think it failed if it didn't fail. We did we just we call ourselves a failure all the time because we know that it's so hard to get there and we don't have the resilience because we haven't bought into it at a high enough level. That's why failure hurts so much. Is we actually think failure is real, but failure is progression. See, failure is what tells you to pivot. Hear this. Failure is what tells you to pivot. How do you know to turn right or left if you ever didn't have something that didn't work? Here's the blind obvious here that we all need to understand. And I hear it all the time from my entrepreneurs that I work with, but it's so hard. Yes, it's hard, but that's why there's so many few successful people that do it. It's not that you can't do it, it's that you're too attached to failure versus the outcome. If you only focused on who you were, failure would just be a turn right or a turn left. But because you're not attached to it and you can jump around to who you feel you want to be because you don't have any s you don't you can't solidify and and and anchor yourself into any thought or idea because it doesn't feel right. See, what we do is we confuse an event with an identity, we confuse a failure at one point with an identity. See, failure is just a turn, it's feedback. If I can change our minds about what failure is like, you know, I my wife and I uh get a chance, we have four different companies that we run, and every one of them had setbacks and failures, every single one of them had challenges, every single one. So failure is just a uh is just feedback that this isn't working for you the way you wanted it to, so we need to to pivot. It isn't a definition of who you are, it's not. I'm gonna give you guys an example. When I opened a second business to to uh uh piggyback off the business that I had, so another service to provide, I got sold or discussed with the partner of how this was going to work. And after a few months, it was overwhelming for the partner, and the partner basically quit. Well, I needed the partner because they were the service provider. Did we fail? No, I just had the wrong partner, and thank goodness I found that out within a just a few months of trying to do business with the partner that they were the wrong partner. So, what was the business a failure? No, that relationship didn't work out, but that was why I had to pivot. I had to turn left or turn right. And so what I did was I called somebody else who I was really good friends with, and I said, This is my situation. And they said, Well, we'll be down there tomorrow. Let's talk. And we were in business together for years, and unfortunately, that person passed away, and then I had to get a different partner. My point is though, it doesn't always work out. Even with the partnership that I have today with the third partner, which is the first one quit on me, second one unfortunately passed away, and then the third one that I have today, that it wasn't smooth sailing. It was there were challenges there. But we've been in business now for four years together and it's worked really well. Remember, you're just turning left or turning right when something doesn't work out. It's just saying, hey, listen, we need to pivot. This is important. See, your brain loves proof. You love to have it. Proof feels really like safe. Proof eliminates the uncertainty, but we don't always have it. But here's the irony about all of that. If someone else has already proven everything, then you're probably already late to the party. Do you realize how many more businesses and opportunities are out there today than they were even there 10 years ago? See, entrepreneurs are paid because they move before everyone else does. And yes, there's going to be some scariness in all of that. And they see the possibility before everyone else sees the certainty. I know what it is I know, and I don't even have the things that I can see. I don't have them, and I they're they're they're they're a reach, but I know what's going to happen because I understand you got to work the process. I have a big, crazy, hairy, audacious goal that I'm working towards over the next three or four years. And it seems literally impossible to most people. Matter of fact, I've said it to some people and they're like, wow, that is just aggressive. Yeah, but I'm not doubting it. I know it's gonna happen. I'm just working the process. Has everything worked out the right way? Nope. Have things already fallen apart in this journey? I've been in this journey for six months. It's a four-year project. So I'm already in it six months. Has it worked perfectly? No, it's actually not worked perfect at all. But if you're to say to me, is it still gonna happen? Of course it's gonna happen because failure is part of what makes you pivot. If you're waiting until there's no risk, someone else has already built the company while you're sitting there waiting for the perfect time. Someone else has already owns the market in that particular area. Someone else already became that expert that you dreamed of years ago. See, proof is very expensive, and faith gets there first. Hear me. Faith, do you need proof or will faith do? If you if faith will do, you get there faster. If you need proof, the chance of you ever getting there is slim to none. So, what faith do you have in your ideas and concepts? Let me give you an example. Um, as a real estate agent, when I started off 22 years ago selling houses, my coach did a visualization with me. And I love this because it really wasn't based on Daryl Rutherford's book being the solution or the be do have mentality. But that conversation really was that, even though I hadn't even read that book yet. So that's the ironic part about telling the story today. But I had been in the business about a week or maybe two weeks, and my uh real estate coach at that time asked me to do a visualization, and he asked me this question. And he says, if you were to pick an agent who was super successful in your mind, um, what would that agent look like to you? And he went went all the way down to how much money they would earn, how many homes they would sell, how they how they dressed, did they wear a suit each and every day? What kind of car did they drive? What color was the car? And the visualization was extremely deep. He asked me a lot of questions for about 20 minutes and he wanted me to visualize the person that I wanted to be. That's the being person, by the way. Who do you want to be? And then the yes, an interesting question at the very end, and he said, Is that person you? Well, I think that was a kind of a silly question at the time because he asked me to visualize who I want to be, but then he asked me at the end, is that you? What do you think my response was to that? It was no, I'm not that person. And he says, Well, congratulations. As long as you continue to think that way, you'll never be that person. You'll never have that car, you'll never have that business, you'll never have those employees, you'll never have that income, you'll never have that lifestyle. Because he says it starts with who you think you are, not who you want to become. Does that make sense? Who we say we are right now is who we become later or who we are. If you're miserable and upset and don't like to work and don't like to take risks, then you're gonna have that life. And that might be perfectly okay with you. But if you're planning on having something you don't have, then there is gonna be a risk associated with that. And the question you want to ask yourself is who do I need to be in order to accomplish those goals? Let's be honest here for a minute. Sometimes seeing someone else succeed does help a little bit, right? It helps helps us to build a journey. And I've I said another podcast, I built my whole business on watching other people, I stole everybody else's ideas. And you did, but you still got to implement them, you still got to take a risk. And there's nothing wrong with using somebody else's ideas. Sometimes you need proof that it is just possible, and that's okay. And if you see someone who grew up where you grew up and they have success, you're like, well, you can't use that story. Someone who started with less money than maybe you did, and then all of a sudden they have an abundance amount of money and success. What kind of excuses do we tell ourselves? Someone has fewer connections in life, but they still become successful. Someone that's older. I know a gentleman who started a business at 67 after being bankrupt and became a multi, multi, multi, multi, multi, multimillionaire within seven years. I'm gonna say this again bankrupt at 67, multi, multi, multi-millionaire by the time they were 74, multi, many multis. You know, you see people that are younger, these young kids that are just making ridiculous money because they're doing things that we don't do. We sit there, go, well, if we had that talent, we would be that same kind of person. Well, then go get that talent. Do you realize how many people are successful like this? So, well, you have to have this college education. You have to have a degree. No, you don't. I don't have a degree. I own four companies. We run six, seven hundred million dollars annually through our companies. You don't need to have a college degree. If you get one, good for you. Happy for you. If you like that, perfect. Nothing wrong with any of that. Well, it wasn't for me. You don't need to have it. And if you're if you doubt yourself, you're like, oh, I wished I had had it. I could say that to myself. Okay, I wish I had had it, but what do I wish that I had? College life, a partying and drinking, hang doing stupid stuff to try to figure out my life. No, I worked and I learned a business. I was self-employed at a young age. I had to run a bit. What everyone else was in college, I'm trying to figure out my life. Would I go backwards? No way. Would I do it differently? Absolutely not. Would I go to college? Nope. I put my kids through college, but I tell them the same thing. Now go do something with it. Because just because you go to college doesn't mean you're gonna do anything with it. Your excuses begin to start disappearing, not because they've changed, but because your belief changed. You don't need to have any of those things. You don't need to even look at what somebody else did and point the finger and go, well, they did that because of this. No, they did that because they did that. Sometimes borrowed beliefs become personal beliefs. You know, sometimes somebody tells you something and you believe it and you live your whole life that way and you get nothing. Sometimes someone says something and inspires you and you live your whole life that way and you end up with a massive amount of abundance. Like it's just all about what goes on inside your head. That's why having really good mentors matter. That's why reading a lot of books and educating yourself matters. That's why watching a lot of podcasts and being inspired by other people, that really matters. They expand what is possible for you. So here's the question that I want to ask you right now, or maybe you should ask yourself. Instead of asking, what if I fail? Because that's typically what people do. Like, what if, what if, what if, ask yourself this question. What kind of person would I have to become to make this work for me? Like, in order for me to accomplish the goal, what kind of person would I have to become? Start thinking about like the differences of how you feel. Write down or really meditate or think about what you want out of your life. And then notice what it does to your to your thought process, to your body. Does you get do you get excited about it? Do you get a little scared? By the way, both are good. If you get a little scared and excitement is not quite at the same pace as being scared, that's okay. That means you're learning something different. If you're really excited, you're really, really excited, that's a good thing too. But you got to go out and work the system. You got to notice the difference between you doubting yourself and being excited about something. Here's a question about outcomes for you. One question is about outcomes, and the other question is about identity. Identity always wins. Identity on who you are. I just did a podcast on this. You guys have seen it. Identity always wins. And if you become the person capable of building a million-dollar business, eventually you'll build one. But you have to become the person. And this is a hard one. I recommend everybody go read Daryl Rutherford's book book, Being the Solution. It is a pivotal thing for most people who ever read it. They come back and go, man, that was such a great book. Now, whether you do something with it is up to you. I'm giving you the material, the idea to go educate yourself. What you do with it is up to you. And if you become the leader who inspires people, people will eventually follow you. It's happened to me over the years. Just be the person who leads. Results will chase identity. Identity doesn't chase results. Results chase identity. What's really holding you back? What is holding you back? What is really preventing you from being the person that you want to be or should be? Let me ask you some hard questions here. Who told you that you weren't capable? Who convinced you that playing small was responsible? Who taught you that comfort equals security? When did you decide that who you are today is who you'll always be? When did you make that decision? See, most entrepreneurs aren't stuck because of lack of opportunity. They're stuck because they're trying to protect an old identity. It's just too easy being you. They just keep saying, that's just not me. It's just easier being who I am. I've never been good at sales. Well, you just keep telling yourself that, and that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm not a leader. Well, again, the words that you use will dictate your life. I'm not that outgoing. Well, that's fair. You don't have to be all that outgoing, but it doesn't mean you still can't be successful. I'm not confident. Well, let's work on that. Read books, watch podcasts, be around mentors, be around coaches. They'll help you build that up. See, these aren't the real facts. They're just labels in your life. That's all they are. They're just labels that you've put on you. Here's the fun part: you put those labels on you. You accepted them. No one else can take responsibility for that. And those look those labels that you put on yourself become your personal prison. You're actually putting a raw wall around yourself and you can't figure out why you're not growing. You chose it, the gate, shut the door, and put the lock on it. You actually put the gate and imprisoned yourself based on your standards and your beliefs and your righteousness. See, you already have evidence. Here's something interesting for you. You actually do have proof. You just ignore it. If you're watching this video, which I hope you are, and if you are, you're watching this video, you're hearing this message, so you're watching it. Don't ignore it. Look at it deeply. Look at everything that you've already overcome in your life. Look at the problems that you've already solved. Look at all the great accomplishments you've already had. Look at the obstacles that once looked impossible that now you're thriving in and you're conquering in every single day. See, the business you have today probably scared you when you started. If you look back a couple of years when you started your business, that business scared the heck out of you. And for some reason you had enough goal to move forward and create something really great. But are you stuck? Is now the normal for you. Growth always makes yesterday's impossibles become today's ordinary. When you when you think of something that's not possible, and then you go through all that and you accomplish it, and now you're like, well, this is my life every day. And this is a life that I live constantly. Where when you work really hard and you accomplish something, you want to like lay back a little bit and and sit back and enjoy your life. Nothing wrong with that. But how long are you going to sit back and enjoy that and instead maybe consider getting up at some point and doing it again? You know, my business mentor shared something with me, and I've shared this on this podcast before, where I was frustrated because of lack of growth. And he shared with me, well, this is why you're feeling this way, and this is how you get out of it. The question is, do you, is it important enough to get out of it? See, what happened to me before the growth from yesterday, which seemed totally impossible today, is ordinary. So who's going to challenge me today? Me. I'm going to challenge me. And if I ask enough questions to me or to my mentors or other people, they're going to challenge me. I appreciate that. Why wouldn't you just continue to keep stretching and growing all the time? See, your business will never outgrow you. Here's the truth every entrepreneur eventually learns your business will never consistently outperform your identity. It can't. Your income follows your beliefs. Well, you're like, well, Bernie, that one kind of hurts because I want to make a lot more money than I'm making. Then change your beliefs about it. Your leadership follows your confidence. Your sales follow your certainty. Your team follows your example. Are you a good example for the group of people that you work with? If you don't believe in you, then why should anybody else believe in you? If you don't even believe enough in you, why would anybody want to follow us? So let me leave you with one question. Do you really need proof or will faith do? Because the entrepreneur you've always dreamed of becoming already exists inside. They're simply waiting on today's version of you to stop asking permission, stop doubting, become that person first. Be the person first, then act like that person on a daily basis. And then let life catch up. Let it catch up. It's going to lag behind. And that is the have. So who are you today? Are you the down and out guy or girl that beats themselves up every single day because they don't have what they want and they don't believe they'll ever have what they want because they're too busy being right? Or are you a dreamer, a big time dreamer? You know, you have your parents say, Oh, he's just a dreamer. Be a dreamer. Believe about doing the impossible for you. And then go and say, if I was that person, if that person today actually was me, how would I have to act and look and behave? What would my life look like? I'm going to go back to that story about my coach and my uh that that shared that vision vision with me. And when he asked me, is that you? And I said no, and he says it'll never be you until you become that person. And I remember going out and I went out and bought the car that I thought, and I didn't necessarily have the money, but I bought the car that I thought I needed to have in order to be the person. And I went out and got a couple of new suits, and I just changed how I did things and made sure that the suits I wore every single day made me look like the person that because I felt really good in it. I felt good in the car, and I really kind of upgraded my office and made my office really great. And guess what happened? I became the person I wanted to see my life like. And I did it while I didn't have anything. You know what kind of a risk that is to put yourself in financial debt to say this is who I am? But I had to back it up with effort. I had to back it up with standards. I had to back it up with who I was, who I thought I was, who I believed I was, who I was being. And guess what happened? Eventually, life caught up and it showed up. And I was that person, and I am that person. But more I was that person because now I'm so beyond that person. That visualization of that person is gone. I'm now into a new person. I left that guy behind. That's where my dreams were 22 years ago. That's not where they are today. So remember, be, then do, then have. Be, not the other way around. The life that you dreamed of is on the other side of becoming someone that you've never been before. Oh, that's crazy, right? Like you're saying I have to change. No, I'm saying you have to think differently. Thinking is the conversation. The action comes from who you identify you are. Don't wait until you're confident to act. Act until confident becomes your identity. The world doesn't reward those who wait for certainty, it rewards those who move with conviction in your life. Your future is watching you. The only question left is will you keep asking for proof or is your faith in yourself finally enough? Thank you guys for this time. Go out and be somebody powerful.