Why you need to stop being an amateur and start going pro

Chris Albert 00:00:01 (link to this point)

The Warrior Soul podcast is written, edited, and produced by me, Chris Albert. Our mission is to provide tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas that help The US military veteran community to show up as the wisest, strongest, most capable versions of themselves in the civilian world. If you're not a veteran, stick around because anything we talk about will most certainly apply to you as well. This podcast is made possible with the help of F Bomb Nutrition. They make delicious packets of fats that you can carry around anywhere with you in little portable packets.

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They don't have any sugar. They also make a lot of cheese snacks. They make meat sticks, and it's just a great company. These guys send packages of this stuff to the troops who are on the front lines overseas to supplement their MREs, and we didn't ask them to do that. They just did that on their own initiative.

Really great company. If you wanna get 20% off your first order of f bombs, head over to www.dropanfbomb.com and use the code Warrior Soul at checkout. This podcast is also brought to you with the help of Save the Brave. Savethebrave.org is a five zero one c three charity for veterans. They run camaraderie events that include fishing, golfing.

They also do a lot of work with gold star families. And unlike a lot of other organizations, their board doesn't take a salary. Really great organization that is doing amazing work. So go and check them out at savethebrave.org. With that, thank you guys so much.

Let's get into today's programming.

This is Chris Albert, and I'm here to remind you of one thing. Someday, you're going to die. That's not some morbid statement or scary idea. It's solid fact. Your time here on this earth is limited.

And we need to be reminded of this as much as possible for one simple reason, to live your best life while you can. This is the Warrior Soul Podcast.

What is going on, ladies and gentlemen? This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul Podcast, and today is a Warrior Notes edition of the podcast. Today is Friday, June 5, when I am recording this episode, the year 2020, and it's been a really crazy few weeks. We've had this COVID nineteen situation going on since March, and we have also had mass unrest with the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer. And so things have been anything but normal here in The United States Of America.

And, you know, today, what I wanna do is is I'll kinda wanna get back to basics with you guys. We've been covering a lot of different stuff, stuff related to COVID, stuff related to the mass unrest with the the case of George Floyd. And today, I kinda wanna get back into personal development and talking to you about things that can enhance your life right here, right now. And that's not to say that I'm ignoring the other issues going on. It's to say that I've been talking about those issues quite a bit, and I feel like I've been neglecting you guys, neglecting the things that are going to move you forward as individuals.

And yes, society is important. We need to be aware of what's going on in our country. But if we are falling behind as individuals, then we aren't going to be able to have the impact that we need to have on society in order to create change. And that's what this show is about. This show is about empowering US military veterans to stand up in their communities, leaders in the civilian world.

The kind of leaders they were in the military, we want them to be the same kind of leaders in the civilian world, having a positive impact on their communities. And through these Warrior Notes episodes, I deliver tools, tactics, strategies, and ideas to help you to do just that. Now what I wanna talk to you about today is something Steven Pressfield talks about in the book, The War of Art. And it's the idea of going pro, professionalizing yourself. Right?

Now what does that mean? What does it mean to go pro? With the way Pressfield puts it, and and I don't have the book in front of me, so I might murder this, but essentially, he talks about this time, you know, when he wanted to be a writer. He didn't sell his first book, I think, until he was in his fifties. And he became a very prolific author, but he talks about the fact that this this concept called resistance kicked his ass up and down the East Coast for thirty years.

Right? He was in the Marine Corps. He got out. He wanted to be a writer. But at the same time, he was being a waiter.

He was being he was doing all these other different jobs. He talked about the fact that he was living in his van at one point, and his typewriter was underneath a bunch of records and a bunch of clothes. And finally, he decided that he was going to go pro, meaning he was going to do the necessary work to become the writer that he aspired to be. And I can tell you that the idea of this podcast, the Warrior Soul podcast, it was spinning around in my head for a really long time before I actually hit record on my first my first podcast. And then after I hit record on my first podcast, I was thinking about this as just an activity that I was doing.

It wasn't anything that I thought would have a major impact on my life. And then one day, I woke up and I looked around, and I thought about the things in my life that made me happy. And this podcast was one of them. So I made a decision that I was going to put everything I could into developing this podcast into what I wanted it to be. So there was a whole list of guests that I wanted to get in touch with.

There was a whole list of things I wanted to do as far as the website. And what I did was I created a list of those things, And I decided that I was gonna do those to the best of my ability at that point. Remember, I never had a whole bunch of money to put into this thing. So what I did was I enlisted some help, I got the website revamped. I got myself a microphone.

I actually didn't have a microphone for the whole first period of this podcast. There's months at the beginning of this podcast that you listen to where the audio was absolutely horrible, where, you know, I I really sounded like an amateur. And I probably still sound like an amateur because I there's constant improvement here. But I made a conscious decision that I was going to do everything I could to professionalize myself. That meant trying to do the research necessary to do what I had to do to enhance this audio, to make it at least industry standard.

And then, you know, going out there and actually practicing my interview skills, and then actually following up on that list of guests that I wanted to bring on. So I'm talking about people like Robert Greene, people like Donnie O'Malley, people like Nick Koumalatsos. I had this huge list that of people that I wanted to reach out to, but I was scared. I told myself that I wasn't ready to do it yet. And what I'm gonna tell you right now is this, if there is something that you want to do, there is no difference between you now and you as the person who's actually going to do those things.

You need to get that through your head. There is no transformation that's going to occur. There is no thing that there's no, like, spirit that's gonna come over you that's gonna completely transform you. It's you right now, the person you are. If you are going to do the great things in your life that your mind wants to do, that you're dreaming about, you have to make the decision as the person you are now to go do those things.

We we we tend to think that there's gonna be some kind of angel from heaven or some kind of sign from God that's gonna come down and say, hey, it's okay for you to do this. That's definitely not the case. If you wait for that, you're gonna be waiting forever. You need to professionalize yourself and you need to make the decision to do that. I'll give you another example.

Right now, I am in a new business. I am selling anchors with Fortress Marine Anchors. Right? And I am stepping in into a leadership role. And so what I need to do is every day, I am going through sales training.

I'm not waiting for that transformation to occur. I'm not waiting for somebody to to give me permission to do what I wanna do with this company. I'm sitting here every morning. I'm going through the free sales training that Grant Cardone puts out for veterans. By the way, I put that out on the the the show we did with Grant Cardone.

There is absolute free sales training that you could take, and that's through American Dream University. That's another thing we talked about constantly on this show that you could do right now. Right? I am studying accounting every single day. Right?

And the reason why I'm doing those things is because I know that those things aren't just gonna come to me. They're not things that I'm gonna manifest out of my brain. I need to learn these things. And if I don't learn them, I'm never gonna learn them, and I'm never gonna be the businessman that I really want to be. So here's the deal, guys.

Every single day is a chance to make yourself better at what you want to do. There's so many of you who are already doing this in the gym. Right? I see a lot of guys out there pursuing pursuing their goals in the gym, but they're not doing it anywhere else in their lives. They're not pushing themselves forward financially.

They're not pushing themselves forward in their relationships. They're not pushing themselves forward professionally. You need to start doing that stuff right now. You need to take that same work ethic you had as a marine, a soldier, a sailor, an airman, coastie, a whatever you were, you need to take that same work ethic, that same training mindset. You need to take it to what you're doing right now every single day.

And I hope that slams home with you guys. And, you know, for me, a big thing that I decided to do was it didn't matter if it was a half hour or two hours. Every day, I was gonna sit down, and I was going to work on what I need to do to make myself better. That's how it happens, guys. That's how you get places.

That's how you accomplish things. So don't wait. Don't wait. Write it out. Write down a checklist of items you need to learn.

Write out the things that you need to do, and start to get to work. Right? Take it one by one. Task orient, prioritize, execute. That's what you gotta do.

I hate being preachy like that, and in my own ears, I sound like a broken record. I hope that I don't sound like that to you. But if you guys have any questions on this, please let me know. Remember, American Dream U. That's up at americandreamu.org.

They have the mission next program where you can go through business training if that's what you're trying to do. You can learn about giving a kick ass job interview. You can learn about finance, accounting, all types of things up on that amazing resource. And if you need anything, I am here. You can reach out to me anytime at chris@warriorsoulagoge.com.

And that's all I got, guys. So I hope you guys have an amazing weekend. You'll be listening to this in a week after I've recorded it, and I will be talking to you all very soon. This is Chris Albert with the Warrior Soul Podcast, and I am out.