The jump from employee to entrepreneur can be a tough one and it all starts with your mindset. Jimmy shares his 9 years of experience as a Beachbody Coach and gives some tips to reprogram your way of thinking so you leave your employee mindset behind as you start your new business.
Tips to Start Thinking Like an Entrepreneur
Hi! My name is Coach Jimmy coming to you live from Dallas, Texas. My name is Jimmy Hays Nelson, but most people call me Coach Jimmy. I’ve been in the online business world for almost nine years now. You may have…you may know me from workout programs like Insanity or PiYo, but I’ll be honest, I really don’t consider myself a “fitness guy”.
Before I got started in business I literally….I actually was 100 pounds overweight, was a three-time college dropout, found myself living back at home with my parents in my early twenties, and really had given up on any hopes and dreams. I had no resume of success. Nothing that said that I was going to be successful in anything and I had a really bad habit of quitting things. You name it growing up, I quit it. Whether it was any instrument or Tae Kwon Do or art, any time something kind of got a little uncomfortable, I quit, I bailed. When things got hard, I got out and I don’t know if you can relate with that or not but that was my history of that.
You know it’s funny we’re talking about a mental battle today and I want to start with a story of and it goes right along with that. You know my senior year of high school I was encouraged to audition for the High School Musical that day or that year which was Singin’ in the Rain.
For those of you who don’t know me I’m a huge, I wasn’t a huge Gene Kelly fan then. I didn’t know the movie, I didn’t know anything about it. I literally went to audition for my school musical my senior year because the girl I was interested in had been in Annie the year before. And I thought “Wow, a lot of the cute girls are in musicals…” and somebody’s like, “Hey I stand next to you in church, I’ve heard you sing, you can carry a note. Why don’t you go do that?”
Get out of your comfort zone
And so reluctantly, granted…how do I paint my picture of me in high school? Just think Friend Zone, really funny guy, always kind of covering up his insecurity with a joke, but I was 100 pounds overweight and didn’t have a lot of confidence in a lot of things. I was just told that I had a lot of potential which is a flipping double-edged sword anyway. Because that means “Well, Jimmy, you could be good at something eventually one day, but you’re not now.” That’s the way I took that. So I mustered up enough courage to go in and audition for Singin’ in the Rain.
And it was one of these things where I went in, I didn’t know what to sing. I think I sang a song from church that I knew and I was, really, really nervous, I’ve never been so nervous. It’s funny people see me on stage now and just say, “Well, Jimmy, you’re really good on stage and you’re a great speaker, this must come naturally to you it must come easy for you.”
And before you ever say that to anybody else ever, hold yourself. Because I’m going to tell you there are hidden hours that people have busted their tail that you will never know about to make something look easy that you assume it’s just easy for them because it’s your way to brush off having to do the work to get good at something. Right? So why do I share that?
Because I went into that audition and I had this in high school and in college my first two editions that I would get so nervous to get up in front and do a monologue or to sing a song. I physically had a right leg twitch, like it was noticeable that it would, it would, I would get that nervous. I couldn’t control my breath, I couldn’t control my face getting flushed. None of that helps you sing better.
But by the grace of God, somehow I think I sang a praise and worship song something I could do just acapella. And then we had the callbacks where we read some lines and a few dance steps which I’d never done anything. For those of you who don’t know Singin’ in the Rain, it’s a big tap number. And again, fat guy, 100 pounds overweight, tap shoes, those things don’t really go together.
But somehow, the next day, we all went back up to the high school and the Theater teacher, we all were at the end of a corridor, and she put up the cast list and then like bolted. We just tore down the hall and you know I didn’t know what I just want to be a part of something. And I started at the bottom of that list and I start working up, working up, working up and my name is at the top of that list as Don Lockwood, which is Gene Kelly’s character.
Be Confident in Your Abilities
And I was excited and scared to death at the same time because I’d never watched the full movie. And then I put that movie and that may be one of the greatest performances of all time. If you’ve never seen Singin’ in the Rain, go grab it. It’s just pure joy and Gene Kelly is probably one of the greatest performers ever. And I watched that and thought, “Holy smokes, I can’t do this.”
And that whole process of being in that show I don’t know how good it was but it got done. But something was born in me that I was like I want to perform. I feel like I’m supposed to be on stage in front of people. Which is funny when you’re 100 pounds overweight because you feel like you were designed to do something yet you hate the prison that you’re trapped in. So you immediately start thinking this is why I can’t. If I never succeed it’s ok and you start building in excuses and there was a root of bitterness that started in my mind of why I…there is this thing out in front of me that I wanted you know the gold sparkly thing. But that there was a wall, there was like a glass wall that I couldn’t get through. And I started building these excuses of, “Well, you know I could sing or act as good but you know I’m overweight. I’m overweight because well I can’t afford a gym membership or I don’t know what to do or this is the food my family feeds me at home and I can’t help it.”
I also knew quickly that I wanted to be better and so to be better I wanted to go to the right schools. I remember knowing at the time that the hot school for musical theater at the time was a conservatory in Cincinnati. And so I started doing my research and unfortunately we didn’t have the money to number one fly me there and really just the application fees or anything. And so that just added to my bitterness. Oh I could be great but I can’t afford to get to the training I want to.
Focus on What You Can Control
And it made me really bitter at these kids whose parents paid for college, right? And in my head I was like, “Oh, well, I have a better work ethic than them, it’s just that I don’t have the same privileges they have. And they’re wasting these privileges.” I just got really bitter and nasty. And I would go into things working hard, I always had a good work ethic, but I had a really shitty attitude at times because I just felt like all the odds were stacked against me. I went into a lot of things like already with my dukes up ready to fight, right? And so mentally I started taking out, now, already being 100 pounds overweight and growing up an obese child, there was a lot of baggage already there mentally. Coming from a family that I felt pulled between a broken home that my parents were divorced when I was four, but feeling pulled between those two families my entire life there was a lot of baggage that came with that.
So you know let’s fast forward you know three-time college dropout so I attempted to go to college, I would get scholarships but I couldn’t afford…like we get classes paid for but I couldn’t afford books and housing and just living things. So I would end up at a school for a semester, I would do one show, I would get good reviews, but I just couldn’t stay.
And so I wasn’t anywhere long enough to gain any momentum to get better. I was like you know, change your voice teacher, change an acting coach, change whatever, and again that just added to the bitterness and just being I was really underneath the surface people would probably think I was a really like a jovial fun guy, I was pissed off all the time right underneath the surface.
I just got really bitter and nasty. And I would go into things working hard, I always had a good work ethic, but I had a really shitty attitude at times because I just felt like all the odds were stacked against me.
And it’s funny because when I look at what I’ve done as an entrepreneur, a lot of it has been motivated by anger. Just to be straight up honest with you guys it’s because it was going on here. So that’s what we’re talking today is how do you win the mental battle. I share that story because I need you to win the mental battle because it was a mental battle that made my…that kept me from achieving more sooner because I didn’t jump on attacking that.
So I was introduced to some programs that helped me get control of my physical body you know. I started doing a program called Power 90 and that’s what helped my weight loss and I moved into P90X and saw some amazing physical transformation to the point where I gained confidence enough to move to New York City to pursue you know my dream of being a musical theater actor. It was there that I was introduced to the business that I’m in now.
Stay Positive
For those of you that don’t know I’m in a home business. So my home businesses is actually tied with those products, Beachbody, and I jumped into this business and I didn’t jump into this business thinking I’m going to build a big business. I jumped in this business as a broke ass actor who liked the programs, liked the supplements, and I liked the fact that I could get a discount and I liked the fact that I had access to a community because, again let’s go back to the mental game, I was a better person around these people that saw more in me than I saw in myself. I was a better person with these people uplifting me and seeing more in me than I saw in myself.
So in my head I was like this makes sense to be a part of not thinking, “Oh, this is how I’m going to pay off $60,000+ in debt and this is how I’m eventually going to bring my wife home from her corporate job and this is how we’re going to create a seven-figure business.” None of that was in my head.
In fact, when I first jumped in and we started getting into trainings, again the same root of bitterness came up, so we were introduced to a system for building our business and I followed that sucker to a T. And I saw other people following the same system having more success than me. I don’t know if you’ve ever felt that way where you’re like I’m doing the work, you gave me the training, I’m doing what you said in the training and I’m watching other people have success and that’s just pissing me off even more. What’s wrong with me or again building things in my mind.
“Well, of course. You know they’re in better shape, they have better whatever, they got more money to spend on blah, blah, blah.” Again it was I just was really good at pointing out and justifying why other people were having more success than me and never putting it back here. And I remember that I had a mentor at the time early on that I jumped on the phone with and I just, I just whined as a big baby.
Have a Healthy Headspace
Just, “Well I’m doing this and this isn’t working blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.” And so he went over all the steps and like I’m doing that I’m doing that I’m doing that. And then he stops, “He’s like Jimmy what do you like reading and listening to? Like what’s in your head every day?” And I was like “I don’t know, like I watch a lot of ESPN and I watch the news or I just listen to music.” And it wasn’t until I realized that until I was willing to attack my mind and have a mental hustle that was every bit as strong as the hustle that I put in to physically transform my body. Or that I was trying to put into my business, none of it mattered.
If I didn’t master this, this, and the money and the business and anything else nothing, nothing was going to matter and nothing was going to take hold. And so it started with a book, it started with a book called The Slight Edge and I hate reading guys. There’s a lot of reasons I’m a three-time college dropout. I’m not a big reader. I have a lot of books I listen to audios, but I read that book. Because it was thin and it just talked about the little things you do every day in life and how they add up and make a big difference.
It’s, an example is if you know if I have a cheeseburger today or if I have a salad today, I can’t tell the difference tomorrow. But those same little choices over time if we’re looking here and we just veer here so let’s say person A goes this direction, person B goes this direction well that’s not a big deal and that’s not much different. But if you keep that path going eventually you’re going to look up and one person is going to be in a very different spot than the other person is.
Invest in your mental well-being
So I made a commitment somewhere along the way that said, “Okay, before I do anything in the morning when I wake up I’ve got to get a hold of this thing. Because even, I’ve kept off my 100 pounds for almost 10 years, I’ve been in business for almost nine, this mofo and me wrestle every damn day.” I remember after my hundred-pound weight loss building my business and looking in the mirror and literally I didn’t respect that dude that was looking back at me.
I just felt like the negative chatter in my head would be, “You’re a fraud. You’ve quit everything in your life. You’ve never been successful. Why are people going to follow you? You’re going to put this weight back on.” I mean all this just noise in my head all the time. So I had to find a way to like grab that stuff like aggressively, grab it by the throat, and kill it every day. And I did the same thing this morning.
I was up at 4:40 and the first thing I did was put in something that feeds my mind and my spirit. It really is something you have to start making a priority.
I see all this stuff and we all love the same like entrepreneurial people that tell us, “Oh, it’s the hustle and it’s the work from the beginning.” It is. But I’m really telling you if you don’t get a hold of the way you think none of the how-to steps are going to matter. If I can’t change the way you think, the what you do’s don’t matter. They really, really don’t. And so what are some of the ways to do that?
Reject Negative Influences
First, it starts with you making a commitment like you setting an appointment with yourself. And I’m going to tell you, you got to do that first thing in the morning. It’s not you turning on the news. It’s not you turning on the radio. It’s not popping the mother flipping TV on. God dangit…it’s not checking your Facebook and your email while you’re still in bed when your phone rolls over. Because all that is you’re immediately on somebody else’s schedule, you’re in reactionary mode, and you’ve let somebody else affect your day.
Whether it’s good news or bad news. I mean what if the first thing you do you flip over and you check Facebook and its some noise in a news feed about politics or somebody dying or somebody complaining about something. Congratulations! That’s how you just, what was already going to be a tough mental battle for the day just got eight times worse. Because now you’ve got to overcome that also. Because somebody else decided to use their public forum as a place to just complain.
Nobody’s going to follow the complainer, nobody’s going to follow the whiner so you got to fix this!
So this is what I do is, I get up, I grab my phone, I have my headphones and as I get up I put in something mostly I might pull something up on YouTube that’s you know if you put in motivational video on YouTube there’s some great, there’s some great like compilation videos. It’s usually like really motivational and epic movie scenes with like music underneath it, and usually over the top with the voiceover is from motivational speakers like Les Brown or Tony Robbins or Zig Ziglar or Jim Rohn.
That’s the stuff that I get to. A lot of times I will also pull up, I’m a big fan of Steven Furtick, he’s a pastor at a church called Elevation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina. I will go to the Elevation Church YouTube channel and pull up one of his sermons right? I just got to…I got to mentally win the battle before I physically do anything before anything I do with my business before anything I do as an artist.
Be Patient
Because like right now, so it’s been five years since I’ve been on stage in fact I went and saw a production of Aida the other night. I was great. It was amazing. I love that music and I’ve made it my commitment so I can reclaim my artistry this year. In some ways you’re going to see it my business. I’m going to find really entertaining ways to continue to be an artist-preneur if you will.
But I had but right now I had some vocal issues when I stopped performing and right now I’m working on getting over that. I’m working with people getting the tool back, my instrument back working. Because that’s just what kills like you’re sitting in the audience and you watch these people these gorgeous voices and there’s like this angst in me. Because I’m like that’s my jam, my jam for years you know and getting it back, but I have to, the mental battle is, “Jimmy, you’re out of practice. You haven’t done this in five years. Your voice feels tired already.” It’s, I mean this, this battle is real that any of my fellow artists that are on here know that the mental battle of, “You’re not talented, somebody else is better-looking, they’re in better shape on stage, oh you don’t look great in that costume you know you should have lost five more pounds.”
I mean when you are an entertainer and you’re front and center it can be a brutal world because you’re going into an audition and all you got is eyeballs judging you from the minute you walk in that room you know. And it is a lot about your talents and your aesthetics, right?
So I had to get over this mental thing and so I don’t know what it is that you do and what your mental battle is, but I’m telling you if you will attack it and quit being a victim and this is what I said at the beginning of this that I had, some of you guys need to put on your big girl panties and your big boy undies and get over…quit feeling sorry for yourself, quit wallowing in your bullshit. There’s no time for that.
Use Your Time Wisely
Do you realize that it takes the same amount of energy and time to wallow and feel sorry for yourself as it does to reach out for help, to swallow your pride, to plug into a support community, to pop up that motivational thing in an audio or read a book or get it? No and you know why you don’t do it because there’s effort. Because it’s so much easier to pull the covers up over your head and just feel sorry for yourself and play the victim mentality. There’s no time for victims.
You were called to do something great. There’s something in you as an artist, as an entrepreneur, as somebody in this world that you’re like, “I’m supposed to influence people somehow.” And you ain’t going to influence shit feeling sorry for yourself and nobody’s going to follow you. Nobody’s going to follow the complainer, nobody’s going to follow the whiner so you got to fix this. Now how, what are ways to do that? Well number one, go tell somebody like ask for help. That’s the hardest I see it all the time in my business.
I see it all the time in my business, somebody gets started and they hit a rough spot and instead of going, “I messed it up, or I’m feeling down or I’m dealing with depression,” their ego tells them that they’re going to withdraw and go fix it. “Don’t let anybody know you’re struggling, God forbid don’t let anybody know you’re dealing with depression, god forbid don’t let anybody don’t let them see you sweat like don’t let him see you be a wounded animal.” And so what you tell yourself is “I’m going to detach from anything positive, I’m going to detach from this group. I’m going to go fix it on my own and then I’m going to come back and act like nothing was ever wrong.”
And you know what happens is you detach and you go isolate yourself and it gets worse. Because the minute those, you think the mental demons are bad when you’re around people and you have something going on those m-fers get nastier the minute you’re by yourself.
You’re like the wounded animal out on the Safari and the lions go, “we’re eating that one, we’re eating that one.” And so you want, you got to get around people that are going to, basically what you need is you’re going to get around people that will give you a quick hug and say “Hey, it’s alright,” and they’re going to smack you in the ass and say let’s do something about it.
Take Action
You know I tell the people that I mentor all the time, I don’t mind you coming and telling me like something’s wrong. Don’t put on a fake face for me. It’s not, it’s not a fake it till you make it thing and it’s not like just pretend everything’s positive all the time. No, we all have bad days and we all have stuff we’re battling through. But I say when you bring that to me as a mentor and you bring that to me as somebody that you’re working with as long as you allow me, as long as we’re solution oriented that’s what I’m looking for a solution oriented.
Like “Okay, great. You’re right, that does suck, what are we going to do about it?” Because I can’t work with people that won’t get up out of their pity party. You can feel bad, if you just need to rant and you can ask some of my leaders that I’ll let them rant and just him bitch for a little bit. And then I’ll go, “Great. Totally. Do you feel better? Yep cool, what are we going to do about it? How do we get out of this spot? How do we get out of the quicksand?”
I have a five-day motivational video series called 5 Days of Fire. You can go to 5daysfire.com and it’s about how do you create your own momentum in your own motivation right? How do you get unstuck when you find yourself in one of these bad situations? And an analogy I use in those videos is it’s like you’re in quicksand right you’re up to your shoulders in quicksand, you’re stuck.
It’s not a “fake it till you make it” thing and it’s not like just pretend everything’s positive all the time. No, we all have bad days and we all have stuff we’re battling through.
And like you can’t just get out of quicksand and go sprint and be great. You just got to find a way to wiggle a little like just, and if you just find a little way to wiggle then maybe you can move your shoulders, then maybe that arm comes out. So you got to find a way to wiggle today. And maybe this video is part of that wiggle. Maybe the fact that you’re plugged into this right now this is part of that wiggle. But you know what? Even after you get done watching this video, this awesome video, maybe you get done with this and you’re just amped and I had a lot of fire lit underneath me.
Then you got to put some action behind that emotion immediately and the minute you feel motivated, the minute you feel you know, “Oh, I got my mojo back!” Then you got to put some…you got to put some action behind it. You got to go do something so whether that’s, go get that workout done. Maybe you know for me, I really, it’s not that I love working out, I work out so I don’t kill people it’s therapy for me. If I didn’t work out I probably would be in jail for just you know assault because it’s my therapy.
I go in and I throw some weight around and today I went big. Did a biggest bench press I ever did in my entire life, that’s 300 pounds for me. I’m sure there’s somebody on here that’s like, I can do 300 pounds, that’s great good for you. For me, new record I was really excited about that. But it wasn’t about the weight it was about like thinking of the things that I was out of control of in my life. So that’s always been a big deal for me like when I can’t control something it’s frustrating to me. But you know what I can control? Throwing that m-fing weight up and go okay how do I take control back of something? What is it that I can’t control that affects my situations?
Brush the Haters Off
Because you can’t control what other people are going to do. There’s going to be people that roll their eyes at me, that call me out, and tell me that my business is a pyramid scheme and it’s bullshit. And I piss somebody off every day I really do and I don’t mean to. It’s just I’m me and for all of you to go preach it there’s another thing because I made somebody uncomfortable. I put a mirror up in front of them and ask them to look at themselves. And some people don’t want to do that and the minute you start changing your world, you’re going to have some people really close to you that are going to try to pull you down.
Again that’s why you have to win this mental battle it’s probably multiple times a day set it on your phone.
So right now take out your phone when you get done with this and set alarms. So let’s say you get up at five you know fix your mindset at 5 at 10 a.m., at noon, at 2 and at 7. And when that thing pops up, go to your go-to. Whether that’s the motivational video on YouTube, whether that’s the audiobook, whether that’s the book you’re reading, like you’ve got to go like refill up the tank.
So that’s what you got to do it is vital for you to win this mental battle because you were called to do something great. And when you do something great you’re going to affect somebody else’s life. And when you affect somebody else’s life that makes the world a better place and they get to do something great that affects somebody else’s life.
But you got to win this mental battle first. I need you to take this seriously. I need you to do this. There are people that are counting on you to be great. There are people are counting on you to win this battle so you can champion for them so they can move. So if you can’t do it for yourself you got to do it for them.
Your family’s watching you. The people that you love are watching you. Your children are watching you may need you to win this battle for them. You can do it. I believe in you. And if you need any help please reach out to me I am here to help because I fight this battle every day and I will be in the trenches with you.
Thank you for taking the time today. I ask that that you just in the comments let me know something, a victory today. I want to celebrate a victory with you today. Please share this with somebody that needs to desperately hear this message. Let’s pay it forward today. I thank you for taking the time and spending it with me. My name is Coach Jimmy and we’ll talk again real soon.