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We've locked in low prices to help you save big storewide. Look for the locked in low prices tags and enjoy extra savings throughout the store. Ralph's fresh for everyone. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now, while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.

My name is Joshua Sheets. I am your host, and today on the show, I have some news to share with you. We're going to do something a little bit meta today, because I'm going to teach you a little class here on the development of confidence and courage and capabilities, while simultaneously sharing some of what I am doing.

Specifically, what I am doing right at this moment is recording the podcast live in front of a live audience online, which is something I've been doing a little bit here and there, but it's something that is really difficult for me. It's something that's really challenging for me because it stretches me to an area that I want to go, but an area that I'm just not 100% confident in.

It's something that is difficult for me to do. And so I'm going to share with you what I'm doing and how I'm doing it in hopes that it will help you with the things that are difficult to you, while also throughout this whole meta narrative, sharing with you some ideas and inviting you to become a part of these live streams.

Today, I want to talk about the development of confidence, because in the times that we're facing right now, you need it. I need it. And yet it seems to be increasingly in short supply. I know for me, I feel that lack of confidence. I feel you look around at the world, you look and see how difficult things are right now.

And you ask yourself, am I capable of this? Am I able to actually do this? Am I sufficient for this? You wonder, am I actually going to be able to get through this the way that I would like to? And yet, if you labor and focus on where you're not confident, the answer is probably going to be something like, no, you're not actually going to be able to get through it the way that you would want to.

No, you're not actually probably going to be able to survive the way that you would really like to. But yet, if you will focus on just simply developing confidence and guarding your psychology and really focusing in, well, you'll probably come through in flying colors. I love the quote just because it's so true.

It's a little bit overworn, but I love the quote that ostensibly was attributed to Henry Ford, who said, if you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. Now, here's the problem with confidence. If you wait for confidence to come to you. It may or may never come.

I have personally never found it to come. As I record this particular episode of Radical Personal Finance, this is my 717th at least episode of Radical Personal Finance. If you count all the different times where I've started recording and then had to stop all of a sudden, this is probably 950 of all the shows that I've recorded over the years.

But I've developed a lot of confidence with regard to recording a podcast. But as I record this particular one, I'm doing it live in front of a live audience. I'm trying to create a video feed. I'm trying to create additional materials and I'm doing it all myself. And I'm nervous as anything.

I'm frustrated with how I've lost a lot of my poise and my confidence. But I'm doing it anyway. The reason why I'm doing it is because I know that you don't wait for confidence to start. What you do is you begin and confidence comes over time. Now, my outline of today's show really comes from a book by Dan Sullivan.

It's called The Four C's, The Four C's Formula, something like that. And I read this book a number of years ago and it really helped me. But in The Four C's Formula, Dan goes through and he shares a little bit of a formula of how you actually build and develop confidence.

And there are basically four steps involved. The four steps are number one, you make a commitment. Commitment. Number two is you develop courage. Number three is capability. Then eventually comes, then finally you have confidence. But what most people look for is when they're trying to develop a new skill or they're trying to develop something new, they wait for the confidence to come in hopes that then they can figure out the capability.

And then over time, as they develop that capability, they eventually say at some point, I'll have done this so much that I'll make the commitment. Doesn't work that way, unfortunately. You have to begin with making a commitment. That's step one. And then having the courage to act even when you are not currently ready.

Because only when you make a commitment and you exercise courage will you then develop the capability that you want. And in time, the confidence will come. This is important. And it's especially important right now because if you really focus in on where we are right now, in uncharted waters, uncharted waters economically, uncharted waters really in most of the world, if you focus on where we are right now, what you realize is that you're going to have to reinvent yourself.

All of us, every single one of us is going to have to reinvent ourself to succeed in the new economy. Now, I don't know if that new economy is already here. For some of us, it is. Maybe you have been declared non-essential. I don't know if that new economy is coming in time.

I don't know if that new economy is going to develop over the next decade. I don't know. But I do know that all of us are in a place of continual reinvention. Let me share with you a little bit about some of the reinvention that I'm doing, specific as it relates to radical personal finance.

When I began radical personal finance, my dream was to build an audio podcast. That was my dream. And the reason was simply I loved audio podcasts. I love to consume audio. And I really loved how I could get so much audio in and learn so much through audio learning.

And that was something I couldn't do in another way. So at the time, years ago, I used to drive probably 30 hours a week, commuting, driving for work. All that time driving, I would learn, I would learn, I would learn, and I would learn through audio. I loved podcasts once they started to come out.

Years before, I would always buy courses and I would listen to educational audio. Since the time I was 17, 18 years old, I would listen to nothing but educational audio any time I've ever been in the car. Before that, I would listen to NPR. So I still kind of a nerd.

I was never really listening to music. That wasn't really my thing. But educational audio transformed my life. And then when all of a sudden podcasts came out and I realized that they could be consumed quickly, they could be consumed without having to go through Joshua buying a bunch of CDs, it totally changed and revolutionized what I was doing.

And so I wanted to be part of that. And so I set out to create an audio podcast. And it worked very, very successfully. Radical Personal Finance is still at this point in the top few percent of all podcasts. It's not the biggest. It's not necessarily the best, but it's in the top 5%, which is very satisfying to me.

And yet, as good as that is, it's not going to get me where I'd like to go. And thus, I have to reinvent myself. Now, that's been a major change in my own personal goal-setting process. When I was just getting started, I wanted to focus on audio podcasts, but I had a little dream.

I had a dream of sitting with a laptop and being able to make a living with Joshua and his laptop anywhere in the world. And in fact, I was able to succeed that. Right now as I record this, I'm sitting here with a laptop on my desk, microphone and a laptop, and I am making a living.

My goal when I originally started Radical Personal Finance was six figures from a laptop so I can live anywhere in the world and be able to do it all by myself. I wanted to be a one-man band. I wanted to do everything by myself. And I did it. But the problem is, once I did it, I realized that I needed to reinvent because I needed to go bigger.

I needed to do more. And that scared me. It still scares me. Right now, I am scared. I'm scared because I often—and this is the same thing you experience, right? I'm scared because I think, "Well, I don't know if I can actually help enough people. I don't know if I actually am smart enough.

I don't know if I know enough." It's very humbling to put your ideas out in public because you know that there are people that are way smarter than you, and you constantly think about where you could be wrong. And yet I also know that I have been able to help a lot of people and that I can help a lot of people if I will stay focused and effective.

But yet what got me here won't get me there. I have to keep on focusing on building something new. I have to keep on focusing on developing. And so the change is the change from audio only to incorporating other points of communication, to incorporating video, to incorporating more text.

And it's simply not possible that I, as a one-man band, can do that effectively. So I have to expand my capabilities. I have to grow. And that is scary. It's scary to change your capabilities. What I want you to know is it's scary for all of us. Every single one of us faces exactly the same thing.

If you go and talk to the person that you think is the most successful in the world, the person that you admire, the person that you look up to, that person every single day faces challenges. That person faces things that make them scared. And yet if they're going to grow, they have to embrace that process.

So here's what I want to focus on. I want you to really pay attention to how to build confidence. I encourage you to go and find Dan Sullivan's book, The Four C's Formula. Dan Sullivan is, of course, the founder of Strategic Coach, one of the world's greatest coaching programs for entrepreneurs.

Go and just do a search for Four C's Formula, and you can download the free e-book right off his website. But in that book, he goes through and talks about the kind of change that is required for you to actually successfully build the life that you want. And you have to begin with a commitment.

You have to say, "I'm going to make a commitment to do something even though I'm bad at it." I'll share with you, I live by little pithy sayings, little aphorisms. They just lodge in their brain, and they encourage me when I'm feeling discouraged. But one of those little pithy sayings that really I find helpful and encouraging is simply this.

You don't have to be great to start, but you got to start to be great. I think Zig Ziglar used to say that. I'm not sure if it was someone else from him, but I'll attribute it to other people. But you don't have to be great to start, but you have to start to be great.

And so if you have a big dream, at some point in time, it's going to require you to start. You're going to have to bake that first loaf of bread and go to your neighbor and sell it. That's my kid's business, so I use that as an example now.

They bake bread, and they go and sell it. Now, the nice thing about children is they don't have the same hangups that we as adults often have. But at some point, if you're going to build a baking business, you got to bake a piece of bread and sell it.

Or you got to pull out a phone, and you've got to videotape yourself. Or you've got to start up a live stream like I'm doing right now and say, "I'm going to build the skills to be really, really good on video." But I know I'm not now. I'm not asking for sympathy.

I'm better than a lot of people. I've practiced this, and I've built these skills for a long time. But you don't have to be great to start, but you've got to actually start at some point if you're going to be great. Number two saying that I live by that's really helpful for me is simply this.

Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first. Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first. When I started Radical Personal Finance, I sat down with a $20 voice recorder that came with my Dragon Naturally Speaking CD. It was just a cheap piece of junk. I stood in the middle of my bed, and I started talking.

And I knew that I wasn't very good, that I wasn't going to be very good for a while, but I was going to do it, and I made a commitment. The commitment that I made to myself when I started this business was that I was going to record 1,000 episodes of the show whether nobody listened or not, whether anybody listened or not.

And right now as I record this, this is about episode 717. That was the commitment that I made. I said if nobody listens, I will do 1,000 episodes of the show. That commitment has carried me through a lot of hard times. My current commitment, what I'm doing right now, is to start to build the skills of live streaming, to start to build the skills of video, I'm making a new commitment.

During the month of May, I'm going to live stream three episodes of Radical Personal Finance per week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I'm going to live stream on Facebook Live on my Radical Personal Finance page. I'm going to live stream three episodes per week, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 2 o'clock Eastern time.

That's my commitment. Monday, Wednesday, Friday at 2 o'clock Eastern time, three times per week. During the month of May, I will live stream Radical Personal Finance. Now that's scary to me because my life is in constant turmoil. I'm never in the same place. I'm always moving. Sometimes my children are screaming in the background.

Sometimes they're not. Sometimes I have a good internet connection. Sometimes I don't. Of course, I'll adjust to that. But when you make a commitment, it forces you to start to find ways to change things. The commitment forces you to start to say, "You know what? No matter what, I'm going to get involved, and I'm going to make this better." The commitment helps you to find new ways to do things.

For me, for example, the commitment requires me to develop new solutions. Right now, this is my first live stream on a new technology solution, a new setup with a bunch of gear, with a microphone, and all the stuff recorded, because I want to create good quality. But it's only through making an actual commitment, it's only through actually saying, "I'm going to do this, and I'm going to do it well," that you then wind up figuring out how to do it.

You have to start with a commitment. Now, when you start with that commitment, you're going to immediately need courage, because courage is what will allow you to actually start to make action. So you have to start with the commitment and then exercise courage. It takes courage to go ahead and say, "How am I going to turn on that camera for the first time?" You pick up your phone and you say, "Hi, phone," and you start talking.

It takes courage to publish that first podcast episode. It takes courage to write that letter to somebody. It takes courage to ask that girl out on a date. You have to develop courage by simply doing what you're scared of. Now, you can find ways that are going to make things simpler for you.

You can find ways to start to exercise that courage in a way that makes things less scary. There are safer environments. You can start with your friends. You can start with your neighbors. For years, I'll just tell on myself a little bit, for years I did a podcast and I never published it to any of my friends.

You would think that you would start by putting your stuff online. I didn't put my podcast onto a Facebook profile or anything for a long time because I was scared. So it still worked. Things still developed, but it's okay to be scared. We're all scared, every single one of us, every single one of us.

It's okay to be scared, but it's not okay to not act. Now, in time, what happens is if you continue exercising courage, you will in time develop capability. You'll build skill. And that thing that you do that seems so easy to other people or so, sorry, other people look at you and they say, "Oh, well, it comes easy to that person." Well, reality is it didn't start out easy.

That person developed capability because they exercised courage. And so capability comes after you start to do. And then finally that leads to confidence. Eventually, you can go ahead and get to that place of confidence. And when you start to develop and exercise that confidence, you'll feel really good for a while.

And then you become bored. And you'll have to go ahead and say, "Well, this was enough. This was a little bit boring. How do I go ahead and add in something that requires me to grow a little bit?" Because the zest of life comes when you're exercising courage. The zest of life starts to come when you really want something and you commit.

It's really exciting because you're nervous about it. You're nervous. And that nervousness, once you get through it, is really exciting. I did a thing recently. I was at an adventure park. And they had this high jump, right, where you jump off a platform and you grab a bar. I don't know what it's called.

But you jump off a platform and you grab a bar. And you're hooked up to a harness. There's a repelling harness on you. And you're totally safe. The problem is that I hate heights. I despise heights. But I made myself a rule in life that if something scares me, I'm going to do it.

And, of course, with intelligent analysis. I'm not going to do something stupid. But if something scares me, I'm going to do it no matter what. So my commitment came in. I had to do it because it scared me. And so I washed up that ladder. And I just stood there.

And for me, it was one of the most difficult things in the world. Some people, I guess, have practiced long enough that jumping off of platforms is comfortable for them. But for me, it was really tough. But after I did it, I jumped off the platform. I grabbed the bar.

And after I did it, though, I was proud of myself. And that's one of the most valuable things to cultivate is that sense of pride. That sense of pride in, yeah, it was hard, but I did it. It's worth developing that. So I want to close out of that with just simply a reminder that if you want to make progress, you need to begin by making a commitment.

Commitment to something that you want. Don't wait for confidence. The confidence will come much later. Don't wait for confidence to start something. Start by making a commitment. Then exercise courage to start. You don't have to be great to start, but you've got to start to be great. Then in time, you'll develop the capability.

And then in time, that will lead to confidence. Recognize that if you repeat that process over and over and over again, people will look at you and think that you're just born for success. That it's easy for you. But it's not. It's not easy for any of us. It's just simply those who put that process in place, whether they knew it or not, again and again and again, build more capability, build more solutions, build more ability.

Right now, as I record this on March, or sorry, April 30, 2020, we are in a place of time where you need confidence. We're in a place in time where you need confidence in order for you to survive for some people. Right? There are hundreds of thousands of people around the world right now.

I doubt it's you. But there are hundreds of thousands of people around the world right now who don't have any food in their house due to all of the economic effects from COVID. For most of us, we're not at that dire situation. We're in a situation, though, where you may have to retool for a new job.

Right? You got laid off. You've got no work. You can't get hired in your industry because you're non-essential. Well, this is a time where you're going to have to buckle down and learn something new. You're going to develop new skills. You're going to have to go figure out how to get hired somewhere else.

And you're not going to be confident about it. But you still got to do it. You still got to do it if you're actually going to get the results that you need. So you need to study how to develop confidence. And you need to start practicing it. And that is a skill that will see you well in every area of your life.

I would invite you. Thank you for being here on the podcast. I would invite you, if you would like to be part of kind of livestream May. I should come up with some kind of fun name for it, but I don't have one. But if you want to be part of livestream May, first of all, give me a good name for it.

Better than livestream May. Come by Facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Like the page there at Facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. I'll be livestreaming there on that page. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during the month of May. If you're just here on the podcast, that's fine. I'll release, if possible, if it all works properly, I'll go ahead and release the audio in the podcast feed so you can have that.

And I'll still focus on trying to create a really good audio product for you. But it's going to take some time for me to learn how to do a good video product as well. And so I would love for you to join me for that. Go to Facebook.com/radicalpersonalfinance. Like the Facebook page.

While you're there, join the community group. I don't remember what the URL is, but just go to Facebook.com and search for Radical Personal Finance Community Group. And join us there in the group. And we would love to have you in those places. Thank you for being here. I look forward to being with you during the month of May.

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