DREAM THINK DO | Motivation, Encouragement & Strategy

My guest today is Pete Vargas. Pete has trained hundreds of people to become powerful and successful professional speakers. Just listen to some of these stats: Since 2003, Pete and his team have helped speakers book over 25,000 events that have reached tens of millions of people and generated over $40 million in revenue. Pete is the founder and CEO of Advance Your Reach, a company that helps speakers, authors, and entrepreneurs find and book stages so that they can share their message, scale their expertise, and reach the world. Pete is very passionate about helping thought leaders who have a message to truly build a business and a brand that allows them to reach the people they feel called to serve. I wanted to bring Pete on to dig into some specific ideas to help you reach more of the people you want to help. So let's get to it. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Website: www.advanceyourreach.com/dtd INTERVIEW: Pete, welcome to DREAM THINK DO, buddy. Hey. I'm excited to be here. Thanks so much for having me, Mitch. Well, I love your story and I want DREAM THINK DO-ers to hear more of it. I think sometimes when they hear about speakers reaching thousands and thousands of people, bringing in millions of dollars in revenue, all of that, it might be easy to think the start was easy for you. But you didn't start as a professional speaker. You started this whole journey in a much different way. Give us a little of your genesis story. Yes. What I would first say this is not just for professional speakers, but it's for anybody who is trying to attract customers. That's what I'm excited to share with you. I believe the fastest way to attract customers in a powerful way is through stages. So the first thing I want to encourage everyone who wants to do more speaking, and then encourage everyone who wants to attract more customers. Mitch, one of the reasons why I care about stages so much is my background. One of the earliest memories for me was my mom and dad yelling and screaming about who was going to keep me and who was going to keep my sister because they were getting divorced. I remember being four or five years old and it was like a tug of war going on with my sister and I. My mom got my sister and my dad got me. Over the next five to 10 years, my dad was both verbally and physically abusive. He would leave me in the trailer when I was in second grade. I knew what it meant every time when the Dallas Cowboys lost, and I tried to hide. It was a really abusive relationship. So my grandmother, his mom, said, "Enough is enough. You're coming to live with me." It's exactly what I did. So my dad came back into my life in my teenage years. I wanted to try to make things right with him through my teenage years. We tried everything. We tried church. We tried counseling. We tried his seven siblings telling him, "You've got to make things right with your son." I remember my grandma and grandpa always telling them, like always calling him "mijo," which means son, and saying, "You've got to make things right with your son." Nothing worked. So through my teenage years, I kind of gave up on it. I went off to school, to college. I thought I was going to be the next Jerry McGuire. I thought I was going to live that "show me the money" life, because two professional athletes, Emit Smith and David Robinson, had made such an impact on my life. My thought was if I could go represent athletes that are making an impact in the lives of people, I'm helping make the world a better place. But little did I know, Mitch, that it would be your community that I was going to help in getting their messages out into the world. At that time I didn't know that. At the end of college, I had two job opportunities. Go to Dallas, Texas into the corporate world and make really good money, or go to Harvard, Texas and be a youth pastor. My pastor called and asked me to take over the youth group.

Today's guest is Colin Murdy. Colin is the founder of the Murdy Creative Company. Murdy Creative makes these freakishly cool... beautifully simple leather binders. I'll tell you, I came across Colin and his story on Instagram. I was not aware of him, not aware of his company, not aware of the binders, any of that, but I'm scrolling through the Instagrams, as one does, and all of a sudden this pic with this gorgeous binder comes flying by. I am a sucker for high-quality leather goods, so I see this thing, and I am hooked. I take the bait, click it, and I realize these things are beautiful, but I'm also realizing there is this great story behind it. The more I dug in the more I realized… this guy is a true DREAM THINK DO-er. I knew I had to have him on the show, so now we're all up to speed. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Website: murdycreative.co INTERVIEW: Colin Murdy, welcome to DREAM THINK DO. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be on. Absolutely. Okay, you hooked me early on because I see the binders. They're gorgeous. I have one on my desk. It's right next to me. It's become my blankie. I love it, but it's that thing, and I click through. I start reading your story, and I'm like, "Man, we're like family!" Because you started experimenting with this idea in high school, right? Absolutely. It's funny how you kind of get into things and you didn't really mean to. I was actually a theater kid, and I did band, and I was in a lot of advanced math and science courses. When you do that, your schedule is really full in high school, and so I didn't really get an opportunity to take an actual art course. I always wanted to take a real live art course. The only one that was able to fit in my schedule was the experimental art class, and I thought, "This is going to be awesome. I love experimenting." I had no idea what it was going to be. It ended up being all of these old traditional styles of art, screen printing and all types and all these other cool things. One of them was this thing called stab bookbinding. I had been an avid journaler since my brother went off to college. My older brother, Marcus, went off to college my sophomore year of high school, and so I thought to myself, "This is awesome. I can recreate movie props that I love, and I can have ... I can take control of my destiny, and I can do all of these things with the journals that I like to write in and I spend all those dollars on. I can make my own." That's how I got into it almost by accident. It became a hobby, and I was selling them on Etsy. I started another company in the middle there where I thought it was going to be huge, but then it failed. I'm still making books on Etsy, and people were still ordering them. Things kept moving forward, and then it developed into what it is now. I love it. That's a huge thing we talk about on DREAM THINK DO: the power of experimenting. I think, especially with entrepreneurial dreams, to find the passion but also look for the proof, and the proof is always will people buy it, right? Absolutely. Am I creating something that people will buy? We'll get into the experiment that didn't work, at least in the way you thought. But you learn from those as much as you learn from the successes, right? Now, as people hear your voice, they probably realize you're not 76. Let's just say high school wasn't that long ago. Can I ask how old you are? Actually, I am 24. Awesome. So this whole experiment started in high school. At what point was it where you said, "Yeah, I'm just going to throw some stuff on Etsy"? Was that while you were still in high school still in that class, or was it while you were in college? Well, I've always been a big believer that if you like doing something as a hobby, if you can figure out a way to make that hobby pay for itself, that's always the best policy. Some hobbies can get really expensive if you don't properly capit...

Back in 2005, my guest, Shawn Askinosie left a successful career as a criminal defense lawyer to start a bean-to-bar chocolate factory and he's never looked back. Askinosie Chocolate is a small batch, award-winning chocolate factory located in Springfield, Missouri. They source 100% of their cocoa beans directly from farmers across the globe. Askinosie Chocolate was recently named one of the 25 Best Small Companies in America by Forbes and Shawn himself was named by "O," Oprah's magazine, as one of the 15 guys who is literally saving the world. Very cool. Shawn and his daughter, Lawren, who is the Chief Marketing Officer for Askinosie, recently published a book together called Meaningful Work: A Quest To Do Great Business, Find Your Calling, and Feed Your Soul. One reviewer wrote, "'Meaningful Work is not only a book about saving the world, it's about how businesses can and should solve problems in the world, and how positive change begins with individual action." I love it. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Meaningful Work Book: http://bit.ly/2NU9KNc Website: askinosie.com INTERVIEW: I knew when I heard his story that I had to have Shawn join us for an episode. Shawn, welcome to DREAM THINK DO. Thank you, Mitch. Appreciate the intro and I'm looking forward to this. Me too! You know, I look forward to every interview, but some I look forward to just a little bit more than others. I've been really, really excited about this. Many DREAM THINK DO-ers, have navigated a career change, or are contemplating a career change. How did you go from defense attorney back in 2005 and decide you want to make chocolate? The way it started, I loved my job and I think a lot of your listeners can probably relate to what I'm about to say, but I loved it and I loved it for a long time. I did it for almost 20 years. I never lost a criminal jury trial. Wow! I specialized in super serious felony cases and built my reputation in the defense of murder cases. To say that comes with a little stress would be an understatement. No kidding! When you love what you're doing, it doesn't feel stressful until you stop loving it, and that's what happened. I stopped loving it But I didn't have any hobbies, I didn't have an idea of anything else to do. I'd always wanted to be a lawyer. The real struggle for me in this transition, which was five years long by the way, was a struggle of choices. I just didn't feel drawn. I didn't feel called. I couldn't find my vocation. It seemed as though the more desperate I became, the further away it was from my reach, so to speak. Then it was just like this vicious circle of, "What's going to happen?" I really prayed a very simple prayer that went like this: "Dear God, please give me something else to do." I said that, sometimes many times a day, but I said it every day for almost five years. It was just a simple prayer, one born of desperation. I had no hobbies at first, so I started some hobbies. I bought a Big Green Egg grill and did all the meals on the Big Green Egg and loved it. Then I started baking, making cupcakes. I made thousands of cupcakes. Then I started making chocolate desserts and I had no idea where chocolate came from, zero. But one day, I was driving to a distant relative, driving to her funeral, and it was out near my grandparent's farm about an hour from here in southwest Missouri. I just had this idea. "Hey, what about making chocolate from scratch?" I had no idea where it came from. Yeah, where does that come from? Yeah. And this is the doing part. Within three months of that light bulb, I was in the Amazon, learning how farmers influence the flavor of chocolate by how they harvest the cocoa beans. Then I started to wind down my law practice. I bought equipment from all over the world, completed my last jury trial, and here we are. That's incredible. I love that. I know we've been back and forth a little bit,

My guest is Frank McKinney. Frank is an Ultra-marathoner, he's and actor and a speaker, and he's a "philanthrocapitalist." That's right, he spends a whole lot of time giving back. In fact, he and his wife founded the Caring House Project Foundation, which is a non-profit that provides housing, and self-sustaining existence for homeless families in the Caribbean, South America, Africa, Indonesia, and here in the United States as well. For example, at the end of 2017, they finished their 24th self-sufficient village and sheltered over 10,000 people in Haiti alone. How cool is that? Frank has been featured on Oprah, 20/20, CNN, Discovery Channel, Travel Channel. He's been featured in 2,500 plus TV and print stories. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: The Other Thief Book: https://amzn.to/2NR26jv Website: frank-mckinney.com INTERVIEW: Frank, welcome to DREAM THINK DO! You know, make that 2,501. Yes, exactly right, and extra hash mark! Hey, folks, I'm honored, I'm excited. I'm coming to you today from my oceanfront, tree house office. Too bad we're not on video because I'd spin the camera around and show you. I'm sitting 25 feet above sea level with 12 windows surrounding me in this tree house that I work from. Yes, this is where I wrote all six of my books, where I design my houses, and where I'm talking to Mitch today. Not because of DREAM THINK DO, but because of Mitch Matthews' smile. The guy has the best smile. I appreciate that greatly, and I wish I was sitting in the tree house with you. And gang, he's literally up in a tree in a beautiful, beautiful office. It's the coolest. Literally. He showed me before we hit record. He showed me his ocean view, which I do not have in beautiful Des Moines, Iowa. So, I love it, man. We met years ago, I was trying to think of the year where Dr. Molly Marty invited us to both speak at her conference in Chicago. The more I've learned from you and gotten to know you, the more I've been impressed. So I've just been so excited to have you on. I finally get to ask you some of these questions I've wanted to ask. How about that? I'm ready man. That's the whole reason I have a podcast, to finally ask the questions I want to ask. Let's talk about this, now, because I know, you know, DREAM THINK DO-ers as we talked about before I hit record, these are rock stars around the world. These are entrepreneurs, and leaders, and globe changes. A lot of them are fighting back from tough starts, right? They haven't just been given an easy life. They've had to really take a stand and really make a mark wherever they're at. And you are one of those people. You are one of those people who has truly shaped a life that's ... it's trite to say, but it's outside the box. You've blown up the box. But you're doing great things, you're building these million dollar homes, you're helping people all over the world. It almost sounds like you're royalty, but you didn't grow up in royalty. You grew up in pretty humble beginnings. You didn't grow up in these million dollar homes doing philanthropy as a kid. So, give us a little picture, a quick snapshot of Frank as a kiddo. What I want to hear is what was at least one moment where you decided, "I'm gonna do something different with my life." Well, first of all, let's start with asking the question, why does there have to be a box at all? Right! Either inside the box, or everybody says, you work for a nine-to-five, and you've got a job, then you must be inside the box. There's such a thing that's called and intrapreneur. Somebody who has entrepreneurial but they're inside a company. But they're in a box. But then you've got an entrepreneur who's outside the box. Forget the box. No box. We don't have a box. But back to my childhood. I mean, I was in juvenile detention multiple times before I turned 18 before it got real. When I realized if I kept it up I'd end up someplace other than a little fu...

My guest today is Mike Michalowicz, who has just written another great book, and it's going to disrupt this nasty cycle of the grind. The book is called Clockwork. Here's the thing. Mike can be trusted. If you've read any of his other bestsellers like Profit First or The Pumpkin Plan, you know he's hilarious, wildly transparent, and incredibly strategic, especially as he talks about his adventures of building and selling multiple million-dollar businesses as well as helping many entrepreneurs around the world. I have appreciated his wisdom and strategies, especially in the area of making your business more profitable, so when I heard he was going after the subject of time... I knew I had to get him on the show. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Clockwork Book: https://amzn.to/2wOwpkn Profit First Book: https://amzn.to/2M1bH5F The Pumpkin Plan Book: https://amzn.to/2NoQKpM INTERVIEW: Mike Michalowicz, welcome to DREAM THINK DO, buddy. Thank you, Mitch, so much for having me on your show. Absolutely. All right. The new book is called Clockwork. There's some timeless wisdom in here, but especially for entrepreneurs, helping them to build a business so that they can actually breathe, so they can actually have more of the life they want, all of that. Why go after time? What was the catalyst for you to say, "All right, it's time to go after this subject?" It's time to go after time. Right. I just noticed that I did that, right? I was going to break into Time After Time, but nobody wants to hear me sing, so… Good song. Yeah, right? A good song. Anyway, I had a realization when I was reading about Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Basically, he said there are these foundational needs we have, which are like food and water, and it builds up to shelter, and belonging, and self-actualization, but if we are missing a base function, like if we don't have any food or water, we will ignore everything else to get that priority. That's the base need of all of humanity. Well, I believe there's this Maslowian hierarchy of needs for business, for entrepreneurs. I think what the base is, the oxygen, if you will, is sales, meaning we need sales coming into our business to sustain. If there is no inbound revenue, nothing else matters because our lives are in jeopardy, our corporate, our business life is in jeopardy. Once we have some degree of sales, then the next level up, what I consider the nutrition, the food, and the water, is profitability. Sadly, I discovered something about my own business that I think applies to entrepreneurs in general: When I didn't have profit, meaning there was no money going into my pocket, I thought the solution was more sales, so I'd actually push harder to sell more. In fact, if sales is oxygen and profit is food and water, I was starving to death but instead of getting nutrition, or profit, I was trying to breathe in more air. I was gasping for air, more oxygen, more sales. What a business needs to move up this hierarchy of needs is sustainable sales. We need predictable profit. That's the next level up in the hierarchy of needs. Once a business achieves those two, then the next level of needs is time. Many entrepreneurs work simply to sustain the business, and that's it. It's a perpetual work. The demands on us are ridiculous. We compromise any form of life. We just work, work, work. Now, once we have sales and profit, now it's all about capturing time so we can bring back a balance so that we can live life the way we want, and we can work in our business the way we want. Instead of doing everything, we can become selective. That's why the subtitle for Clockwork is Design Your Business To Run Itself which, in turn, frees you up to do what you want, when you want in life and in business. That's beautiful. As I was reading through Clockwork, one of the things that struck me - I've seen that in businesses that are struggling,

My guest today is Bernie Swain. Bernie is the founder of the Washington Speakers' Bureau, one of the most successful and well-respected speakers' bureaus in the world. Since launching in 1980, the bureau has represented US presidents, prime ministers from Great Britain, countless American and world leaders, business and economic visionaries, authors, media personalities, sports legends. Bernie's bureau represents some of the most successful people and well-respected minds in the world. He knows their well-told and well-known stories as well as many of the behind the scenes stories too. Recently he put all of that in a book called What Made Me Who I Am. In this book, Bernie does an incredible job of collecting a series of lesser-known stories from well-known people. Tales of grit, determination, sometimes involving love, sometimes involving luck, but great stories of real people doing extraordinary things. So I wanted to have Bernie on to talk about his story and some of his favorite stories from others as well, so let's get to it. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: What Made Me Who I Am Book: https://amzn.to/2NapMPn INTERVIEW: Bernie, welcome to DREAM THINK DO. Thank you, it's great being here. I appreciate the time you're sharing with me. It's an absolute honor. Often when I have people on for DREAM THINK DO, they walked out a dream and sometimes it was a lifelong dream. Something they dreamed of doing as a little child, but if I'm understanding your story, you weren't five years old dreaming of someday having a speakers' bureau. No. It sounds like this started in a completely different fashion. It was totally different. In fact, I was in my early 30s when the change took place. No one in my family, to give you an idea of where I started from, and maybe this will tell the people that are listening to the podcast, that no matter where you begin from, you can succeed in life. No one in my family ever attended college before. In fact, my mother and her family were farmers who grew up in Central Virginia and basically lived off the land. My father, with five sisters, a brother and assorted relatives, grew up in just a two-room house in the poorest of mining towns in West Virginia. When my grandmother couldn't take care of him, he spent part of his childhood in an orphanage. So, when I was in high school, there was never really any conversation in my home about my going to college. That wasn't a given. Yeah. My family, I think, expected me to do well and find a job and succeed and be happy, but there was never any conversation. I had a teacher in high school. He was the athletic director and the football coach and he encouraged me to go to college. In fact, I would have never gone if it hadn't been for his input and influence in my life. I wanted to be just like him. I wanted to be something as a football coach or an athletic director or teach physical education. So, he set me on this path and I went to college and graduated from college. My first job was the football coach and the junior high school ninth grade phys ed teacher at the junior high school I had previously gone to. Wow. I spent a year there and went back to school to get a master's degree and then went on to become the intramural director at George Washington University, and then the assistant athletic director. I was months away from becoming the athletic director at the university when a friend of mine sent me a copy of Fortune Magazine. In the magazine was a story about this lecture agency called Harry Walker. In the article, it told how Harry Walker went to the Gerald Ford White House and signed Gerald Ford, who was the president at the time, Henry Kissinger and Alexander Haig to speak for him after they left office. At the end of the article, Henry Kissinger is quoted as questioning the high commission rate that Harry Walker wanted to charge and says, "Why don't I simply sign with one of your comp...

We're doing something new with this episode. If it works… we may turn it into a series called, "Ask Mitch." Here's the backstory: I was recently on the phone with a fellow DREAM THINK DO-er, and we were on a topic that I get a lot of questions about. So I asked for his permission to record the call. This is a person with an idea for a business, and he's passionate about it. He's excited about it but he's also a little scared. We're going to talk about what to do when you have a business idea but you don't feel like you have the money to pursue it. Money is one of the biggest perceived problems that stop people in their tracks. As you'll hear in our conversation we blast past that problem, and talk about no or low-cost opportunities to build his business idea. The strategies that we're going to talk about are things anybody could apply. As you listen to the interview though, know that we'll take a little time getting his background, tell a little bit of a story but then we'll really dive into his situation as a case study. I hope you enjoy it, I hope you benefit from it. Listen To The Podcast: INTERVIEW: That's awesome. So tell me a little bit more about the business. I started it last summer doing aerial photography. I went to a demolition. I live in Pennsylvania and went to a demolition across the Susquehanna River, and I saw all these drones flying around. I got a card from the owner who is based out of North Carolina. He was doing drone video and I thought that was pretty cool. So I figured I would just go ahead and give it a shot and see what I could make of it. That's awesome. So you went out and got a drone. I know there are all sorts of certifications that you can get for flying a drone. So you're all good to go on that? Yes. I actually taught myself. Went through, watched a couple classes on YouTube. You can actually pay to have classes but as a college student, I don't have money for that. Well, most of the answers are on YouTube anyway, so why not? I went out there, passed it the first time. I got all my certifications, and I'm set to go. I know you're just getting started, but where have you been finding business at this point? I've done a couple promotional things just try to get the business going. I've had one client so far through a co-worker my dad used to work with. I filmed her grandparents' farm. They were moving out of the farm and wanted just keeps out there as a memory, so I did a video for them. They were also using it to list the farm for sale but it doubled so they could just have it as a memory. I know the key to being an entrepreneur a lot of times is the pivot. It's like learning, growing, learning, growing but when you think about this, who would you love to have as clients? Who would be your ideal client knowing what you know right now? People in real estate. They know they want something, but they really want someone to put everything together. That's what I did when I did the farm. I walked around the landscape and told them about this one shot with a creek. It was right alongside the house, and I thought it would be a cool approach. That was their favorite part of the film. Just when they give you the opportunity to just take the lead. Yeah, so you like to have that little bit ownership to be able to say, "I'd recommend this," and you love it when a client says, "All right, I trust you. Let's try it." Yeah because I do all the editing, too. It's great when you know what is going to look good on a video and they can just let you run with it. That's awesome, I love it. I have a number of questions but I know when you reached out, you had some questions as well. So what are some of your questions right now when it comes to your business? Primarily I would say capital. Capital is the hardest thing especially being a college student. I bought a computer with a small loan,

Today I've got an awesome guest for you. I am excited to bring back my friend Jon Vroman because he was with us – get this – back in episode 34! Jon is a social entrepreneur and award-winning speaker. He's also a committed husband and father of two. And just for fun, why not? He's an ultra-marathon runner as well. He has an amazing non-profit, called the Front Row Foundation. They create these incredible, unforgettable moments for individuals who are braving life-threatening illnesses. It might be a NASCAR race, a professional sporting event, a concert, Broadway play. They've done it all. They create a video for the person, their family and friends as well. It's just such a gift. It's so beautiful. Jon has been busy since last we spoke. He's written a best-selling book called the Front Row Factor: Transform Your Life with the Art of Moment Making. Plus, he's launched not one, but two podcasts. The first one called, Front Row Factor podcast. The second one called the Front Row Dads podcast. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Front Row Factor Book: https://amzn.to/2nqN1cS Front Row Factor Podcast: http://bit.ly/2M9wcRP Front Row Dads Podcast: https://apple.co/2ARDV2p INTERVIEW: Jon, welcome back to DREAM THINK DO, buddy. Mitch, this is fun, man. I was looking forward to this all week, and I just came off a pretty stellar three days, and this is going to be a great time. I appreciate who you are. I love it. I mentioned the Front Row Foundation. Tell people a little bit why the Front Row is so important, this concept, why do you live and breathe to get people into the Front Row? What I love about your question is you asked why. We can tell people what we do, and they'll get it in 20 seconds. And I learned from my buddy Clay Iberra that when people ask me what I do, I often say I help people live life in the Front Row. And they say that's cool, what does that mean? Exactly, tell me more. Well, I'll tell you a story. It's the story of Sophie. I got introduced to Sophie about a decade ago, and this is very early on in our work with the charity. Sophie was battling a life-threatening condition, she had a brain tumor, and she was in the midst of heavy treatments. In and out of the hospital, daily, weekly, fighting migraines, multiple surgeries. She's fighting for her life. Our charity goes to work to try to help her see her favorite performer who in this case is Kelly Clarkson, from the front row. So we start working with the family, and we put together an incredible day. We pick her up at the house in a limousine, little Sophie's wearing a purple dress, we pour her sparkling cider, we treat her like a princess. She is just having an awesome time leading up to this event. She knows that she will eventually see Kelly Clarkson live that night. And by the way, I should mention she is a true fan. The way her mom describes it when she gets in the car with Sophie if she didn't turn on Kelly Clarkson, her daughter would just cry. When the Clarkson comes on, Sophie's smile always gets big. Every night before they went to bed, they had a dance party on the bed and danced to Kelly Clarkson. So on this night, she went to dinner at the Rainforest Café, and then off to the show. They had an incredible concert with Kelly, and the surprise came at the end when Sophie has fallen asleep, this is pretty late night for her, especially based on all the treatments that she was going through. But we snuck her backstage, and we were waiting in a room for a private meet and greet with Kelly. When Kelly walked into the room saying, "Hey, everybody," little Sophie awoke from this nap, looked up and got this beautiful smile, and Kelly and Sophie locked eyes. We have a picture of that moment. I will tell you, that picture is so important for us, and that's why we do what we do. Because eight weeks after that event, Sophie took her final breaths,

This week, we have a long-time friend of DREAM THINK DO, Lise Cartwright. Lise has written 27 bestselling books on the subjects of health and wellness, entrepreneurship, the side hustle, and she also loves to write about writing books. When I saw the title of her most recent book called Mind The Chatter: Master Your Inner Voice, Gain a Positive Mindset, and Get Your Power Back I knew we had to have her back on DREAM THINK DO. We needed to talk about busting through that negative self-talk so you can make more of your dreams and goals a reality! Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Mind the Chatter Book: https://amzn.to/2AP1pVM High Performance Habits Book: https://amzn.to/2vNSiip Dream Job: Redefined Book: https://amzn.to/2OUL3xJ INTERVIEW: Lise, welcome back to DREAM THINK DO. Oh, thanks for having me back. I'm so excited. This is awesome. This is the third time you've been on! I'm super excited about this book. I put it out to the DREAM THINK DO community that you were going to be back, so I got a bunch of questions that hopefully, we'll be able to get to towards the end. I really want to talk about the new book, Mind the Chatter. You've written on so many different subjects. Why go after this subject of negative self-talk? Why was that important for you now? Because it's been a large part of my journey as an author. I guess that's probably a big part of most people's day-to-day living; this constant voice. And it's not necessarily that it's negative, it's just that it's not always helpful. Definitely in my experience for the last few years, when I started becoming more and more hyper-aware of the thoughts that were running through my head, I started to think how can I turn them around or how can I frame it so that it doesn't feel like it's always so negative. It's the ultimate self-sabotage when you've got this constant chatter going on inside your head. How can you possibly be super successful if you're undermining yourself at every point? It's so true, and it's so subtle. A lot of times that negative self-talk is a part of the brain that's trying to keep you safe, right? Yes. The same part of the brain that's trying to keep you out of dark alleys and from making bad business deals. It really can creep in. When I saw that this was the subject of your new book and we talked about it a little bit, it just made me smile so much. Because you have helped me publish and you are awesome at writing your own books. You also coach others on getting their book done, getting it published, making it successful. I don't know if you remember, but back with Ignite, basically about the day before it was supposed to launch something went very wrong. Yes. There was a big part of me that wanted to shut it down, but you were all about pushing through. So you do know that voice. You know it in yourself, you know it in others, so you're the person to write this book. By the way, we got Ignite out, and launched it on time, thanks to you, and I'm so glad we did. What I love about your approach is that you dive into some of the science that's out there, but you've taken a creative approach too. You gave this voice a name. Yes. What's the name, and why did you do it? It's so funny. I've had so many people ask about this name. My philosophy is very much that we have conversations with ourselves all the time. I wondered, what would it look like if I gave that voice a name? I need to separate this voice to be able to deal with it. I remember sitting at some point, I think I was going through it coming out to a book launch, and this inner voice was super loud in my head. I remember going, "Neville, shut up." That was just the name that came into my head. It's not specifically directed at a person or anything like that. You don't have a Neville from your school days. No, no. Well actually, I do have one from my school days, and I'm very upfront in saying, "Neville,

My guest today is Val Vigoda. She started to sing and sight read at a very young age, and then started to play the classical violin at the age of eight. She wound up joining the Army ROTC to pay for school, so she rocked Princeton and went on to serve in the military. Then she actually made a switch. She continued with the music but began playing the electric violin, and that lead to her touring the world with well known artists like Cyndi Lauper, Joe Jackson and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. She went on to form her own band called Groove Lilly and continued to tour the world with them. Next, she decided to take some time off from the road so that she could focus in on raising her son, Mose. That's when she spent about ten years writing music for Disney. Then, most recently, she has won awards for additional musicals, including her most recent called Ernest Shackleton Loves Me. If that were not enough, she's been touring the country as a speaker, sharing the stage with people like former First Lady Michelle Obama. She speaks with audiences about facing your fears, rising to challenges, pushing your edges, and thriving in uncertainty. Listen To The Podcast: RESOURCES: Website: ValVigoda.com INTERVIEW: Thank you so much, Mitch. I'm delighted to be here. Thank you. Absolutely. I can say, watching some of your performances, it's just so captivating to see you play, and see you sing, and then see you inspire the audience. I want to hear about all of it, but as I was doing my research, this question kept coming to me; you were classically trained on a standard wood violin. You now use an instrument that is, let's just say, technologically advanced. What was it like when you made that transition to go from that classical, classically-built wood instrument to something using this level of technology? What was that transition like? Well, it was actually a gradual thing. The violin that I play now is actually called a Viper. It's a six-string flying V-shaped violin that's sort of strapped onto my body with a guitar strap. Of course, it's called a Viper. Of course, it is. Growing up as a classical violinist and also a singer, those two activities were always very separate for me, and I loved both of them. I loved playing the violin. I loved singing. I loved singing in choirs and singing by myself. As I grew up, I realized that what I really wanted to do was combine those two. I wanted to write my own songs, and I wanted to sing, and I wanted to use my violin in that way. So I started experimenting with that. Playing an acoustic violin in more of a pop setting, in a band, can be challenging regarding projecting sound. I bet. You can put a pickup on the bridge, and there are many different ways to amplify an acoustic violin that way, but there are also some trip-ups, especially if you're singing. If you have a mic on the bridge, your breathing can be picked up by the violin mic. There are many feedback issues, and the natural warmth of the instrument is hard to capture when you're doing it in an electric setting, so I started looking at electric instruments. The first couple that I used were sort of like regular violins but just electrified, so it's a resonant chamber on the hollow body. It would be a solid body instrument, and it would be sort of like an electric guitar. You plug it in, and sound would come out. As I started experimenting with that, the violin was sounding pretty good, but I couldn't very well sing and play at the same time. I saw someone very inspiring when I was living in New York. This woman played at The Bitter End. Her name was Allison, and she was amazing because she could play and sing at the same time. I said, "Oh, she can do it. I can do it," so I started working on that. Then I heard about this amazing inventor, a violin maker named Mark Wood, who makes a bunch of different styles of violin.