Thomas Green here with Ethical Marketing Service. On the podcast today, We have Drasko Raicevic. Drasko, welcome.
Thank you very much. I’m very happy to be here.
Glad to have you. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah. So my name’s Drasko Raicevic and what I do is I run a program and podcast called 10K norm, which is all about helping coaches that are inconsistently hitting that 10K per month mark overcome all of the kind of inner self sabotage issues to normalise 10K months and then the marketing support to help them stabilise it. Okay, thank you for that. One of the things which was on your list of things that you’re happy to discuss was developing habits Now, the reason why I’m interested in this is because often I think people attempt or try and create a new habit, but it’s kind of, I’m going to try this new thing. There’s not really actually much strategy behind it. So lots of people have discussions about personal development and there’s all sorts of strategies, around goals and procrastination, etcetera.
But around the topic of developing habits, I think we’re a bit – I don’t know. I think the knowledge escapes a lot of people. So what would you say? Some things that you can apply when attempting to develop a new habit? All right, well, I’m glad they didn’t ask me like a simple question to start with, right? And then we dive right into like the deep stuff. So I’m good with that. Okay, so to answer the question, I think I would give a little context um, with regards to my intro and kind of how I came to, because it is relevant to the question. So I actually owned a weight loss centre, so a brick and centre weight loss centre for 10 years and then close that down and that’s how I transitioned into doing online work and supporting other coaches and our gym. It’s initially started off as a gym and then as people came to me, like I realised, okay, it’s not like we need to help people better, which is how I got into nutrition. I always struggled with weight loss. So obviously habits as a big part of that and that’s how we integrated the lifestyle component to it, which was basically all about how do you manage the inner self to get the outer results that you want, which obviously habits are a big part of.
So we dealt with a lot of the cases that “seemed hopeless”. So people that had £22,000 to lose that had a lifetime struggle of weight and ultimately came down to emotional eating and not being able to separate emotions from food. So that’s kind of where my background is and you know what I got, we essentially in the studio ended up becoming life coaches that use the vehicle of weight loss to help people improve. So why that’s relevant to the conversation that habits is like when it comes to habits, I think there’s obviously it’s, it’s a hot topic. There’s a lot of things that are out there and a lot of them because they’re simpler to write on focus on the exact superficial behavioural aspect. So if I wanted to develop, you know, a workout habit, then you know, set your environment up for success. Like, you know, pack your clothes and put them right by your beds when you get up, you kind of their right then and there, you know, have reminders everywhere to kind of keep at the top of your head that, you know, I want to work out to get an accountability buddy make a bet with regards like if somebody loses, you know, this is what’s going to happen etcetera and all of those things work, but they don’t reliably work for everybody.
And ultimately, that’s true for a lot of different things. And if I have to kind of sum it up with regards to why is I think when people go to make habit changes there often playing the wrong game, So, for example, if we take weight loss and nutrition because that’s something everybody can relate to, right? Like if I want to eat better, I’m playing the wrong game, if what I’m focusing on is, you know what macronutrients I take in like how many carbs, how many proteins, et cetera. But the real game that’s standing behind me is that I eat every time I’m upset. Okay, no matter how perfect your plan is no matter how much external pressure you have, meaning you made a bet with somebody, you have a coach that’s supporting you there, your partner’s telling you gotta do this, your doctor is telling you to do this, you may even succeed but as soon as that external pressure is gone you haven’t actually changed anything. All you’ve really done is white knuckle your way through it. So that’s not actual habit change, right?
Actual habit change is gonna come from identifying and then playing the right game. So in that example the game you really need to be playing is first realising why do you go to food to soothe an emotion, increasing your tolerance for the discomfort of that and then slowly weaning yourself off of needing the food to actually soothe that need to use that emotion subsequently fill that need. So playing the right game I think is a critical part. That’s oftentimes miss. And the second part of that is I don’t know if you’ve ever read atomic habits by James Clear but it’s a very good book on on habit change. And the big part that I think sticks out there is like and it’s related to playing the right game but often times people will neglect the identity piece of the habit change bit. So like if I wanna get leaner but I never take the Time to see myself as somebody who is 20 pounds lighter, I can get 20 pounds lighter and then I end up back where I was like, you don’t actually have a weight loss problem, have a maintenance problem because your identity has never actually changed to be somebody who is that much leaner.
And in the book he talks about thinking of this as like voting right? So if you think of, we’re trying to elect a new official. It’s how many votes does that person get the majority wins? But it’s not all or nothing, it’s you know, 60-40. So in terms of like building habits, how many votes am I putting into the person that I want to become and that isn’t only the habit and behaviour aspects, that is how I think feel and act, am I playing the right game? You know, all of those aspects go into it. So it’s, you know, habits is this like complex thing that we tend to simplify and I think in the culture, I want to talk about the beginning, it’s just easier to talk about like one splice of it because it will get clicks, it will make you feel like you’re actually making change, but there’s so much, it’s like the tip of the iceberg kind of problems. So I was actually gonna that answers your question, but that’s I think the more honest answer than just do XYZ. It’s a good explanation.
I was I was going to say about the book because in the last, the last person I spoke to reference that book. And then I was briefly on social media I think linked in earlier on today and another person recommended that book. So I don’t know what’s happening. Atomic habits seems to be very, very popular at the moment. It is a great book on that topic. I think as far as like, you know, if you want to read one book on that topic, it really dives into all of the aspects very nicely. So yeah, highly recommended in relation to weight loss, I can sort of understand that there may be emotional significance around that topic if it’s like a business related goal or target. And would it be accurate to say you’re looking at looking at your values maybe before attempting to change your habits so that you’re attempting to address some of that deeper stuff rather than the surface level stuff that you referenced.
Yeah, 100%. and I would say that, you know, even as far as the work that I do now, one kind of common theme is more often than not, people don’t have business problems as much as they have personal problems that show up in their business, right? So to like there’s a reason why like if it’s again similar to I’ll probably keep on back these references but similar to diets, right? Like all that’s technically work. Like if you do keto, if you do paleo, if you do high carb, low carb whatever, but non work for everybody. I think it’s the same when it comes to like, let’s just say marketing tactics, right? Like you can scale your business with a weapon or you can do it with a Facebook group, you can do it with ads, you can do it with whatever That’s not really going to work for everybody. Um, not to bring that back to values and business habits. There’s always going to be a gap between, like your, your values. It’s like your intentions, the values that you intend.
So like this is possibly like what it is that I want to live for and then the demonstrated values, right? The ones that you actually do. So I can have a value of, I want to put myself out there for my business and I value people knowing what I do and having integrity and what I say etcetera and that’s all good and great. That’s who I am. But then there’s this gap between you demonstrating that value. So going back to what I said before about playing the right game we have to analyse okay. Like why is it that that pattern is showing up and more often than not it’s going to be some combination of a like false or limiting cognition, but with regards of what I think that is going to lead to the recognition of the emotions that that internally creates. So if on some level I feel like I will lose love from you know, a parent or spouse, a friend.
If I put myself out there and promote my business is going to be very hard to execute on the inherent values that you want to demonstrate right. So I think a lot of this work that comes into instilling business habits comes into identifying the right game. But then the other part and spent a lot of time working through this in the technician program that I run which I call like feeling management is every time you go and level up every time you go and you do something that isn’t the current default. So basically I’m adding new habits that are going to work towards my excellence, not work towards my survival. You’re going to get hit with some sort of emotional resistance. It may not be very visceral in the sense that I understand it more often. Not. We will feel a sensation in our body but not have the associated story with that we have to do the work to uncover with that story is but our ability to transcend that is directly correlated with our ability to increase the threshold for those emotions.
Be able to transmute them into something more positive, be able to let them go. That really becomes the like, like that is the cause usually of the bottleneck as far as like the personal side of why I can’t make the business work. When you have the ability to do that, it becomes a lot easier to create the space for the actual tactics to work. Or if you to figure out like, okay, I actually did this tactic yielded this result. It doesn’t coincide with my values, it doesn’t coincide with my disposition, I’m going to try something else. But at that point you have the feedback of reality to tell you that is the case. If you haven’t gotten that feedback, everything else is really just conjure and you’re sitting in that resistance, right? Like you’re not playing the right game. So does that answer the question that the original there’s a couple of times we’ve referenced it and it sounds a lot like in a conflict if you ever come across that term, is that accurate to say? Yeah, I think it’s that sense of cognitive dissonance, right?
And the way that I usually break this down is we have our higher brain, which is rooted in excellence, right? It’s the one that visualises and thinks about and really taps into what our potential is and that part of ourselves thinks in words, it operates in the language of words and thoughts. Our primal brain and this distinction that I learned from Dr Jeff Spencer who works as a lot of different like high end athletes and things like that is like a high performance coach but when he talks about his like human mindset and champion mind is he says our primal brain which is where our emotions and our actions actually live. So they speak the language of emotions and behaviours and actions, it’s not our thoughts that actually do that but where that primal brain lives, it always goes first. So what ends up happening is we have values, we have you know this thing that we want but when we try to execute it we bring it down to the level of actions and feelings as soon as we do that we hit that resistance point and that becomes that inner conflict and the cognitive dissonance of I think this these are my values, this is what I want but then I feel all of this resistance to it and because that primal part of us always goes first it always gets first dips but are higher brain has final say.
So again it comes back to our ability to transcend and work through that turbulence of that resistance, overcome that, soothe it down, replace it with something that is more favourable embody that emotion and then over time we can begin to create a new default which is kind of like the business habits that you spoke about. So yeah, I think that inner conflict, cognitive that’s a very universal thing that comes across like it is humid. There’s nobody that doesn’t experience it because of the way that our brains are set up like first dibs for the primal veto and final say for heart rate. Like the like the descriptions there, are there any easy ways other than you know, doing the work of determining whether it is some sort of deeper meaningful issues versus just strategy. Kind of the surface level things that you referred to earlier, I think look for patterns right at the end of the day. Being rooted in reality is the biggest gift that that you can have.
So if I look at, you know, the long, short medium term of my life, what things tend to repeat? Okay, and what data do I have to support or not support that. So what I mean by that is like if I take a look at, okay, what’s been going on in this particular thing? So let’s just say it’s you know, I can never seem to get over this particular threshold in my business, whatever the monthly amount is or whatever the quantity of clients it is. So has this been happening for a long time? Yes. When I look back, what are the commonalities, while the commonalities are, you know, every time I seem to hit this thing, I always switch to something else. Okay, is that verifiable over time? Yes, I’ve switched to this tactic when this happened, switched that tactic when this happened. Okay, so at this point then it’s not the tactic because I keep switching them every time I hit this threshold.
So I have evidence that tactic actually worked. It seems that every time I hit this, there’s something about that, that this apparent self-sabotage seems to happen. So now we go into what is that about? So I think it’s reality is ultimately what tells us, gives us the data gives us the feedback because ultimately everything around us that we’ve created is just a lagging manifestation of where we’ve had our focus. Right? So like what’s here today is because of where you focused yesterday, right? The today didn’t just appear because you change something. It is a lagging representation of everything that we’ve been thinking, feeling and doing So the evidence for what’s happening is there. And usually it is in the patterns of the repetition of things. We don’t want that, the clues lies, regards to is it tactics or is it me and generally is going to be some combination of the two. Can I give you an example?
So the I don’t know, it might be a little clearer for people so they can see and this is back years ago, this is now I was sort of attempting to drum up business and I heard the sort of phrase or like a principle which said that if you’re willing to do like 2000 cold calls every week or the time frame is you’re going to swap out the timeframe for whatever the right amount is, then you’re, you know, you’re going to have all the clients that you need And obviously within a business, having all the clients you need is very desirable. So I was like, Okay, let’s do this. So I did like somewhere between 30 and 50 cold calls or something like that when you can imagine what happened, because no one likes cold calls and I was like, I know that like in theory, if I just continue to carry on, I know that the result is going to be there, but I don’t want to and I put it down to how you want to spend your life.
I was like, okay, it might be true that I can make the most of my business or whatever, but I just continuing but you know, I just don’t want to live this way. So I’m going to find some other way of doing it. Who’s there? Can you elaborate on what, what may be going on there in a deeper meaning level? Sure. So, I mean, okay, I guess I can elaborate on it generally or I can kind of ask other questions to see maybe like what was it for you that stood out? So which way would you like me to take that? I would say generally for other people. Yeah, for the general, okay, so in that instance, I think that’s a perfect example of what I just spoke about, right? So you identified a strategy, you went into reality and you said, OK, I’m going to do this. You have a demonstrated reps like that. You put it like I made 30 to 50 calls a day. I did that for X amount of days. These were the results. So I would say win number one is kind of like you honoured your own words.
So you were able to like you have evidence that you were able to overcome your own resistance to doing this thing that was new that aligned with the values that you had. So win number one. Right? But now you have a new circumstance which is I did this thing and then I learned something or I gather data. Now you get to assign it new meaning so that you know, you could have also went away is like you know what, I am a complete failure because I Clearly can’t make 2000 calls a week. Therefore, my business is never going to grow. I might as well shut down, right? Like that. That is a valid story that you could have made based off of the evidence that you had collected. Fortunately you chose a different story which is okay. So I did this thing, I got honest with myself that you know what I can see the possibility of this and clearly other people have shown that this works. but this doesn’t align with my disposition. This makes me hate the business that I’m in and hate my life ultimately.
You know, what’s the point of doing this right? And then you decided to change course. So, you know, in that regard, I think it was the right loop of the way that things happen. I think more often not what happens is we judge ahead of time and say, well no, like I’m too scared to make cold calls. Therefore, like I can’t make this business work and we just get into these doom loops where nothing happens. Whereas in your example, you did it, you gathered the evidence, you executed your own power of observation to see what happened. You execute your own power of choice to then decide this is what I’m going to do with this information. This is how I’m going to move forward and because I know what I want, like I want more business now, it’s just a matter of how do I close that gap with the right tactic? And then when that comes about, you go and run through the same process of where’s the resistance? Where’s the story? And on and on and on. So that’s how I would look at that particular example.
Good stuff. Good stuff. I like this conversation. I think like how you turned like what I perceived as a failure into something positive? I do enjoy that. You’re very welcome back. What do you think of the opinion, which is what I’ve heard about when you’re trying to implement the new habit, be slow to do it, be slow to implement, because if you do go and do what I did, which is, I don’t know, try something doesn’t work out and it can be damaging to your self-image. So if I perceived that as a failure, then the next time I go and try and develop a new habit, I’m going to think well yeah, I did that previously and that didn’t work either. Be slow to create new habits, what your thoughts on that. So yeah, I would say the slowness aspect, like, again, how faster, how slow you go, It’s very relative, right? Like even again, bring it back to weight loss because he understands that it’s like, you know, somebody who is, let’s just say losing like £5 a month and you be like, oh my God, like £5 of mountain is like nothing like what am I going to do with this?
What we fail to realise is that anything that is moving in the right direction is a step closer to what it is that I actually want And while it might be going slower than I want, it will actually be here faster than I expect. So somebody that’s losing £5 a month in a year, you know, we’ll have lost 60 lb right now, a year in the grand scheme of your life isn’t a long time, But like in terms of like, somebody hasn’t seen you for a year and they see you £60 lighter, that is like a massive transformation. But we fail to realise is that it is the small incremental sustainable bits that ultimately compound to what it is that we want. So in let us say a business type situation, I mean, it’s a human thing, let’s just say we’re going to a business situation. So, you know, let’s just say cold outreach, right? Like it’s not necessarily cold calling, but like x amount of time you want to spend doing some sort of cold outreach to people that aren’t aware of you to just introduce yourself.
Okay, if the sustainable amount of that habit that I can do as demonstrated in reality that I have evidence of is Three outreach a week. Like literally, I just add 10 people on LinkedIn. I know that you know, five will accept three. I’m going to send a personalised video based off of my limited resources of what I currently have on my table, the energy that I have, how much of this I want to do. I’ve demonstrated that no matter what I can finish three. Okay, so that means in a matter of a month, you’ve made 12 introductions In a matter of a year, you’ve made over 100 if somebody asks like, do you want an extra 100 introductions of people likely to like be involved in your business, like would you not want that? Of course you would. So when it comes to creating habits slowly that there’s the aspect of compounding bits over time and a good way to think of that as when it comes to like improving, improving anything.
Right? Well often like we’ll get excited about improving the ceiling. Like I had my best month ever, then I had my best month ever. And then what we don’t realise is that when something goes up it usually tends to crash and often times. And this isn’t just my experience, but with other people that I’ve worked with, its like usually the most dangerous time is once we hit a high month because we think it’s going to continue. But the reality is the only thing that sustainable is actually where your floor is. So if you think about like a graph, you have your ceiling which we’re always trying to like push up. But by definition, if it’s your best then you shouldn’t be able to actually go over it too often. And if it is your best then the energy expenditure in terms of resources, focus time is actually quite high. So you shouldn’t be able to sustain it. So it’s very likely that if you keep pushing I e. I want to implement the habit quickly, you’re likely to crash and burn and then go through a period of nothing.
Whereas if you focus on the floor, right? So if you look at a graph, you have your high ceiling and then you have the lowest point which is your floor. Your floor by definition is something you can maintain no matter what the benefit of that is, the compounding. But if you really want to improve something, improve your floor. Like if you can make your floor goes close to the ceiling as possible, you’re now improving something that can continue over time that you have evidence is going to give you and get you closer to what you want but you’re never blowing yourself up in order to actually get it. So the long term view is always focused on the floor. It doesn’t matter if it’s like business and income producing activities, any kind of output, exercise, weight loss, you know, date nights with my partner right? Like I don’t need to make an elaborate thing every single weekend. But it is important that three times a week we have an hour to ourselves, that distraction free, that’s a floor. You maintain that your relationship goes up.
So I think as far as like slowing down the habit bit that is a key component just putting in those manageable, reliable reps. And then the other part of it is the playing the right game. Because if you set the goal on the floor, you can’t hit it now you have data to either question is this really my floor, am I playing the right game? Am I moving towards like you have more data to actually work with at that point? So I think it is prudent advice to go slowly. I think you just want to know why it is that you’re going slowly or why somebody’s making that as a recommendation, interesting stuff. How do you know this, where does this come from? Honestly, a lot of it came from me wanting to solve my own problems because you know, I certainly have dealt with my share of you know, all kinds of bullshit when it came to all of these things, so solving my own problems I think is the number one bit inherently I do like to help people.
So I’m always looking at ways of like how is this applicable to other people’s situation naturally? I see and can read between the lines for a lot of things. And what I think I also do a good job at is like discerning who it is that I listen to. I think we all consume a lot of information when I look back through my career, I’ve always been pretty discerning at like who it is that I follow, whose advice do I take in you know who’s courses do I buy, who’s coaching? Do I buy it always seemed to have worked out well there was very few instances where I’m like this is a complete waste? so I think it’s a combination of of a bunch of those different things and just naturally being extremely inquisitive about my own self, so it’s like I will see how something manifests and me and my capability to analyse these things in me gives me more capacity to then see it play out in other people and I think it’s always what made me prone to you and a good coach at the end of the day, Do you have any mentors that you think are worth mentioning?
Um So I’ve never had like a mentor in the sense that like, you know, you seek somebody out, they take you under their wings and like, you know, they tell you what to do and you do it or whatever, you help them with things and learn kind of behind him, that that was never my experience. I literally, for me it was always like I paid to get into the room that I wanted to get into. So joining masterminds, joining programs, taking this coach, taking that coach like that was always my in and whatever the point in my life was, those people served me well. So like, I mean sure I can give you a list of like all of those individuals or if you want to give me like an area and I give you a recommendation, but for me I never had like a mentorship type relationship, so I don’t want to speak on that, it was always buying into the room that I wanted to be. Okay, interesting.
So if someone’s watching very interested as I’m sure they would be and they wanted to develop a new habit, what would you say that they should do? So first thing I would say is ask yourself what and then ask yourself why? So like what? Okay, so I’ll take like a weight example. I’ll take a business example because I think those are one is easy to understand and the other one is very relevant to you and your audience, right? So you know What, I want to lose 50 lb why? Because I feel like I need to not exactly, that’s not actually the real reason why, so I’m sure you are like a lot of listeners are familiar with kind of that fivefold, Why were you ask why, You know five times kind of get to the core of the issue. Oftentimes when it comes to why do you want to lose weight? It is some aspect of, you know, I want to accept and love myself, I want to be a role model for my kids, I want to be around for my kids et cetera.
So getting to the bottom of why it is you actually want to do the thing is going to help you define the actual habit you want to implement because it’s like if I want to be a role model for my kids, it’s not the actual destination that’s going to matter. It is actually them seeing you in the process of struggling through and overcoming the, you know, whatever emotional challenges, the physical challenges of losing that way, that is actually what they’re going to see day to day over the course of however long it takes you to do that. So now it’s like, if that’s what I really want, it actually opens up the question too. How else can I show my kid that I’m a good role model, right? It could be what I do around the house. It can be how I speak to my partner, it can be how I show up at work, how I show up for that. Like there’s so many different ways to do that. So Number one is that And the same thing if you’re looking at business, right? I want to have a massive revenue goal.
Okay. Why? Right. And usually when you dive down, and this is a distinction similar to the floor and the ceiling that I learned from. The division called Nick Peterson is great business strategist. I recommend you guys check him out. But he always talks about this distinguishing factor between more and closer, so like why do you want more revenue? Well, because I want to send my kid to private school. Okay. How much does private school cost Cost? A year. Okay, so you don’t actually need more revenue. What you need is enough revenue to profit. 30K. In the least risky, least energetically. Expendable way possible To make that 30K. Then you’re done. Like why go through the headache of making 100K. and profit which carries more. Risk More energy expenditure probably takes you away from your kids to begin with. When all you really need is to make 30 K. For this goal like that 30 K. May even exist in your business right now we’re not looking for because you’re focused on more but more doesn’t necessarily get you there.
So I think the hardest part and also the most impactful part is really narrowing down. Okay, what happened? Do I want to implement and why? And seemingly behind that is what do I want And then I can identify the gap between where I am and what I want that will determine the habit that I need to create or will determine. Do I need to create a habit or they just need to do with certain thing because it’s like let’s just say in the private school and the 30 K. Example, I may not need to make a habit of outreach you know three times a week to make that extra 30K. What I actually can do is just go to my current client list Or former client list. Send him an offer, ask them what they need help with and I might be able to get the 30K. I need from what’s already in front of me. No habit actually necessary. So I think it’s unfair to say this is the way to make a habit when I don’t actually know where you’re at, where you want to go, Why do you want to go there?
What’s currently in front of you? And then we can define the gap and we can then decide doesn’t make sense to actually move forward. Interesting. Makes me think of because anyone in, I think in your case when you talk about weight loss, I think you will know as well. I’m sure if you had clients, for example, they’ll be like, well I want it, I want to lose weight. and in business people always talking about, I want to make more money or make more revenue, whatever it might be. But for whatever reason it eludes a lot of people to think about why and getting specific about what it is that they want to achieve and then being able to determine what they need to do in order to achieve that. Why is it that we kind of go straight to the end goal and miss all the steps and meaningful stuff in between – well there’s a few reasons why. So let’s just go with the more superficial reason why it’s like our attention is really the thing that is stress the most in this current, you know time that we’re in as far as like attention is currently doing today, Like I watch something, somebody gets paid, I click on something, somebody gets paid everybody and everything is vying for attention.
And one consequence of that is because our primal brain always goes first and it’s always looking for things to either like reinforce you know what we currently believe and what we currently think, looking for danger, et cetera, it goes into this mode of words and it’s relational to like we are very tribal, so we were always comparing by default ourselves to other people. So you can almost assume that by default we are going to compare ourselves to others. So in the highlight reel of social media, there’s always this reinforcing messages, I need to be here, I need to have a seven figure business, I need to have a jet, I need to have this, I need to have that. So our brain is always scanning the environment for that. So we now, because that’s at the forefront, we define our goals by what we feel like we should do, I should run a webinar because this person, you know, made millions off of it, I should run a Facebook group because this person succeeded with it.
But again, it ignores the hard work and which is the second point of what is it that I really want. Oftentimes asking, what is it that I really want has a few inherent consequences if I truly genuinely define what it is that I want and I’ve also truly generally defined what failure is. I like, what I truly want is to be at home with my kids at five p.m. Every single day, every single day. I don’t do that, I’ve failed, right? So we don’t like that, right? The other part of it is oftentimes, what we truly want is kind of hidden under all of these layers of stories that we have about what’s possible, what specifically possible for us but might not be possible or is possible for other people. All of the associated bag issue we’ve kind of alluded to during this call, so it’s easier to default to what’s in front of us. It’s like I just need more because I think more is going to solve our problems then and it’s also more complex brain likes complex things because they tend to keep us in the loop versus let’s just say in the previous private school example, that’s a pretty simple goal.
Okay, so all I need to do is just pay for my child’s private school and change nothing else. Like it just, it almost makes us feel guilty at the fact that that’s so simple when the sexy story is, you know, I created this complex funnel, have all these automation is I’ve got like 10 different add sets running that are gonna like power that like that’s a sexy story that you can tell yourself and other people, But Hey I you know needed an extra 30K. I sent it out to my list and I was able to help whatever 5, 10 clients and I paid for my child’s private school. It one sounds like sexy that I wanted to talk on stage. The other one is like a you know a story that you might tell somebody over coffee. Right? So I think that the inherent like sexiness of it is also part that trips us up into doing things we don’t need to be doing unnecessarily. So that that is what I would say as far as like how do I unpack it?
It’s the hard work, the emotional work. The cognitive heavy work is actually in the stepping back because you’re gonna have guilt associated with that. You’re gonna argue against the simplicity of that. You’re gonna have resistance to not doing more. That is the part you really have to sit with. That is the part you have to develop and then that that will actually get you closer to what you want. And of course these things are easier said than done, which is why it’s always good to have an external voice that isn’t wrapped up in, you know the baggage and the drama reflect those things back to you. But it very much is possible if you’re willing to build a tolerance to sit with those things. How have you use some of these principles in your life? How have I used them in my life. So most apparent would be this past Year 1/2. So I had my gym for 10 years and I ended up closing it down right before Corona, hit which you know in hindsight was 2020 because I would have had to close it down anyway afterwards.
Now the reason that I closed it down was because I blew myself up from all of these emotional issues that I tell you right now. So I was like, I grew my studio with very little organic and mostly paid media and I fully bought into the like you’re one funnel away and like I did all the courses for that. I got good at running ads. I got so good at marketing to people in pain that what ended up happening is I attract the people that would sign up and would very quickly afterwards have to leave for random reasons, they get divorced, they have surgery, they break their leg, they lose a job. Like just like I was getting so good at attracting desperation and pain and that was one of the objective reasons that why the business crumbled because even though it’s profitable in the front end, the back and never like the margins are on the front end on that profit, never supported the continuity on the back end.
So I wasn’t aware of like I just didn’t have enough emotional maturity as I do now to a admit that to myself, but more importantly, and as I alluded to previously, like I do spend a lot of time being introspective and what I only realised after I had to close that was that that business has all the potential to succeed and there was a lot of things that were good with it, but ultimately I was trying to solve my own problems because I believed if I could help these other people overcome their issues, then that means I was good enough to overcome my issues. So for a long time I was first emotionally very constipated, like I could recognise these patterns and emotions, but it’s like looking through glass, like I’ll be like, oh there’s anger, there’s depression, there’s frustration, you know, there’s anguish but I wasn’t truly feeling them. So that on the subjective side was a big part of why that business ended up crashing and then that opened up the floodgates of like okay now I realise I made these mistakes clearly I’ve lived my life in like with a lot of blind spots and got as far as I did with him and that’s fine, I don’t want to continue living this way.
So again, objectively I moved into then doing odds and things for other coaches. I didn’t want to coach anymore because I was like I’m done with that life, that’s not me anymore. And when I realised at that point is all of these emotions that I was ignoring. I now had to not only Live with like feeling them, but I had to learn how to process and actually live with feeling not just the remnants of the business closing down that are done for 10 years, but like previous trauma and things like that that come up. So you know, one of the things they don’t tell you is like when you start doing this kind of personal development work and all this inner work is like, yeah, you need to get honest and feel your emotions but like feeling or emotion sucks, like there’s no part of it that is really like sunshine and rainbows because you know, nobody does work to feel joy. Like most of the time we’re doing work with like the shadow side and processing all of that. So I then had to learn like how do I navigate actually having all this in the surface for it to come up and that like, the benefit of that kind of happened as we closed off last year and kind of moved into this year where I realised there were so many things that I unknowingly had ignored starting the previous business, moving into just using my skill set to help other coaches now realising like, no, it’s not that I didn’t want to coach, it’s almost like I had PTSD from failing at it before, this is who I am, but now I need to embrace all of the tools that I’m learning to make sure that other people don’t have to go through the same bullshit experience that I did.
It’s not like I can pad the world so that they don’t go through it. They’re all gonna have to go through their own version of it. But if I can compress time for others, that would be the reason why. So the last year and a half very actively has been my own progression into actually learning and using these tools for myself, which is why I kind of evolved into the tank a norm program because I think so often in the marketing world it’s like all tactics, but we avoid just like it is and I, it’s like it’s all diet, it’s all macros, very few people actually go into how do I close the gap between I make a recommendation and somebody does it that there’s a whole world that exists in there and I just figured like the same problem exists here. It existed for me. I just didn’t know it and again, it’s harder to read the label when you’re inside the bottle but through my process and through the people that, that I’ve worked with in the last year and a half that has now crystallised into like, yes, like I, I now know how to apply this.
It’s gotten me out of one of the harsher times in my life. I know I can apply this and help other people so that’s kind of a long one version and part of like what it is that I do now and why. But I would say that’s a pretty recent example of how I’ve applied all of this, giving some great answers. So thank you for all of that. Do you feel tired after going into all that psychology for lack of a better time? Not right now, I feel pretty pumped up. I can message you afterwards and let you know how it feels, but right now it’s good. Would you like to share a little bit about what your goals are? So my main goal right now is to actually create a business around what it is that I want. so often before like with the gym et cetera. The one thing I knew was I didn’t want to and I gotta get more contact. Like I went to business school than the Whole 9 to 5 thing didn’t like it and then at the time like I spent a long time doing martial arts, was teaching that on the side, decided to then teach boot camps after work and that’s how that morphed into the studio.
So I knew I didn’t want to do a 9-5 and I was like okay well I’m good at this, let me try doing this and I just figured it out on the way. But as I went through that journey, I didn’t put together the fact that it’s not enough to just move away from what you don’t want, you actually have to truly ask yourself what it is that I do want. So I just then looked at all the successful gym owners that I knew and that’s part of all these networking groups. I’m like, okay, so that that’s what success looks like in the gym world, so that’s what I’m going to emulate. So now that I’ve had, you know, the experiences of that, this is the first time that I get to actually create a business that’s going to support the life that I want, that’s going to support who it is that I want to be and ultimately how it is that I want to live my life? So for me, my goals now are to continuously go back to that, go back to asking what is it that I want to go back to analysing what’s the gap, Work to close that gap and get better at continuously saying no to anything that doesn’t align with that piece.
So it’s not necessarily like one main goal, it is more of a principle that I’m looking to structure this next chapter of my life with. I would say that by far would be the most important one. Okay, just before we wrap up on developing habits, are there any like misconceptions that you hear, which you think? I wish? I wish that wasn’t saying within developing habits, do you, can you think of any of those? I mean, I would say like to 21 days to like make a habit or like 60 days to make a habit. It goes back to what we talked about with the speed, right? Like It’s irrelevant, right? Like if you’ve had bad habits for 20 years that you end up breaking in a year of concentrated effort, is that really a long time in comparison to how long it took to get here? No. Right. So like when you set these arbitrary numbers that, you know, at some point, we’ll probably developed in a lab with very simple habits.
Like I’ll put on my like, they’re very like superficial behavioural habits that these rules get made of and while they are true, they are verifiable. It’s only as good as its application to your actual life. So I would say these kind of Simple rules that ultimately leave people guilty. Like, but I, you know, I did this 21 day challenge and I didn’t get the result that I wanted. Like now you’re getting into guilt now you’re getting into these doom loops to just keep you from actually sustaining this. Like, the ultimate truth. I think about habits is it’s going to take longer than you want, but shorter than you expect, Right? So that maybe two Days, five days, 60 Days or two years. But that’s the ultimate truth. I think I would say it’s that it’s just these kind of heuristics that really aren’t rooted in anything personal. Real well, thank you again for all the information. It’s been quite an intense episode. I think a rewatch is worth it. I’m going to enjoy editing this one.
So Drasko, where is the best place for people to find you?
So best place would be at 10knorm.com. There you have all of the links to any of the podcast episodes. My social media, which is just @Drasko_V. Alright. And I’m saying go to 10knorm.com, but it’s easier to spell so that will have all the details. And even with my podcast, I do basically like an accompanying resource sheet with it because I try to make as valuable as possible and all those can be downloaded there. So 10knorm.com would be the easiest place.
Very good, Drasko. Thank you.
Thank you for having me.