00:00:08:08 – 00:00:27:17
Nick McGowan
Hello and welcome to The Mindset and Self-mastery Show. I’m your host, Nick McGowan. And on this show, my guests and I unpack the stories that shape us, the lives that we lead on our path to self-mastery. So let’s not wait any longer. Let the games begin.

00:00:31:23 – 00:00:34:05
Nick McGowan
Hey, Greg, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

00:00:34:11 – 00:00:38:05
Greg Shepard
I’m good. And thank you for having me. It’s quite a treat. I appreciate it.

00:00:38:16 – 00:00:56:19
Nick McGowan
Absolutely. I mean, we’ve already had an awesome conversation. I love when I have to say to somebody almost like we need to pause this because we need to hit record because we need to just do the episode. Like we’ve already got into a lot of stuff, had all these different conversations. I know the crazy thing about you that these people are going to learn about you in a second.

00:00:57:02 – 00:01:05:14
Nick McGowan
So let’s just let’s just jump into it, dude. All right. So what do you do for a living? And what’s that one thing that most people don’t know about you that’s maybe odd or bizarre?

00:01:07:07 – 00:01:27:10
Greg Shepard
I have a lot of different things. I started a school for for founders to help them get past the failure rate as a passion that I had after I left being a congressional chairman for congressional candidates. And then I have a I’m an author, so I have a book coming out in June. And then I’m also an investor.

00:01:27:10 – 00:01:57:13
Greg Shepard
I have a syndicate where we invest into early stage businesses. And what people don’t know about me is that for many years of my life, early on, I used to get up in the morning and go to a hotel to eat breakfast. I would not eat lunch if I did. It was like Taco Bell being burritos and and then for dinner, I’d go to a happy hour and pretend like I was buying drinks.

00:01:57:13 – 00:02:09:00
Greg Shepard
And then I would eat happy hour. So I used to eat for free. And while I was, you know, starting as a founder. So that’s not a lot of people know about that.

00:02:09:21 – 00:02:26:09
Nick McGowan
That’s that’s kind of smart. I mean, like you figured it out. You sort of hacked the system. Is that part of what you talk to founders about? Like, all right, your starting your company where where’s the close east Marriott? Where where do you need to go? Do you like do you like pancakes? Like, how does that come into the equation?

00:02:26:09 – 00:02:26:16
Nick McGowan
You know?

00:02:27:07 – 00:02:46:18
Greg Shepard
Yeah, I don’t I mean, yeah, I don’t usually say I mean, I think this is the first time I ever told anybody this, but yeah, it was really, really, really hard in the beginning. I mean, I was hungry and I got evicted once. You know, it was rough, right? Because I didn’t come from money, hadn’t had any money.

00:02:46:18 – 00:02:51:17
Greg Shepard
So it was yeah, I was living based on what I could sell. Yeah. You know.

00:02:52:15 – 00:03:13:07
Nick McGowan
And I’m, I’m sure there’s a lot of people that listen to the show that know what it’s like to have a commission on life, or at least those larger months where you get commission and sometimes you can know that feast or famine. But I know you even said to me before, like you were intensive one point. So and there’s a lot that we can get into a whole lot that we can get into.

00:03:13:08 – 00:03:47:01
Nick McGowan
Why don’t we take a little bit of a step back? There’s the founder stuff, there’s that that ticket that you still need to tell these people about. We’ll get to that in a little bit. But let’s take a little bit of a step back to really the earlier stages of life and how you started the form, because I’m interested in knowing how you adapted to what you went through, managed your mindset through it, and now at this point you’re working on billion dollar deals and helping people do things that most people by themselves just have a really hard time doing.

00:03:47:01 – 00:03:53:21
Nick McGowan
So take us from the start. What did that look like growing up and how did that start to shape you into who you are now?

00:03:54:19 – 00:04:26:17
Greg Shepard
Yeah, I mean, I started from a family of a mixed bag of foster and adopted different nationality kids. I got beat up constantly, names and stuff because of autism and dyslexia and asthma. I couldn’t even go to PE because of asthma. I would go catch rattlesnakes and sell them to pet stores. Through the back door is like a black market.

00:04:26:17 – 00:04:28:04
Nick McGowan
You know, I got these rattlesnake.

00:04:28:12 – 00:04:44:17
Greg Shepard
Anti-Venom in. Yeah. You take a green stick and you slice it down the middle and you put a twig in between it like this. And then you can get from a distance, you pop it over its head, the stick breaks and it slams shut and it pins them down. And then you grab him by the back and throw them in a bag.

00:04:45:16 – 00:04:47:07
Nick McGowan
Oh, that easy. Okay.

00:04:48:16 – 00:05:13:17
Greg Shepard
And Rubik’s cubes. I used to import Rubik’s Cubes. I sold a lot of different things. And what I learned in my life is that you need a handful of things to me. You need a handful of things for mastery. And so there’s five things focus, drive, enthusiasm, discipline and optimism. To me, each one of those things make up a puzzle.

00:05:13:17 – 00:05:39:04
Greg Shepard
So focus if you can’t focus, I mean, you got a bigger problem, right? Drive is finding something inside that that drives you more than than an extrinsic motivator, like extrinsic motivation, like money or fame or whatever internal motivation is. Something like that’s why you play games, right? And do things that you don’t get paid for just because you’re internally motivated.

00:05:39:15 – 00:06:15:10
Greg Shepard
So for me, drive is finding something that motivates you internally, you know, internal motivation and then enthusiasm. I feel that enthusiasm is contagious and, you know, you can’t make anything happen without some idea of enthusiasm. Like, I get on this podcast with you and you show this incredible enthusiasm and excitement and it makes me excited. And if you’re trying to build your life, your life is somewhat a structure of the people that are around you and the people that are around you need to be charged by your energy, otherwise you’re taking it.

00:06:15:10 – 00:06:55:23
Greg Shepard
You’re not giving, right. So pulling energy away from so focused drive enthusiasm. Now, discipline to me is is like the linchpin. Like if you can’t get the other ones together and you just need to get then it’s discipline, right? Which is, you know, like in the morning I do a cold plunge, right? So I go, I get in the ice bath and it is super hard and more often than not is a struggle just just to do that 6:00 in the morning, you know, or when I was training to do the marathon swim last year, you know, I had this massive fear of sharks in the water and I was swimming in the ocean.

00:06:56:16 – 00:07:23:06
Greg Shepard
And it took me months just to be able to go into the ocean. But it took a lot of discipline to try to get control of my fight or flight reactions in my mind to control my own self, you know. So you got focus, optimism, discipline, drive, enthusiasm. These tools are that the to me the trades of of mastering anything you know.

00:07:23:06 – 00:07:34:08
Greg Shepard
So whenever I go after to try to knock something out, I use that handful of things to try to get control of the scenario and myself, I don’t know if that’s a good answer, but.

00:07:35:13 – 00:07:57:22
Nick McGowan
Yeah, it’s a great answer and it’s certainly a great jumping off point to be able to talk through this because I think at the at the core of this show, there’s authenticity. That’s at least my goal with all of this. And I think when a lot of people hear like the focus drive through spasm, discipline, optimism, like you can almost think of that like fucking rah rah sort of deal.

00:07:57:22 – 00:08:25:20
Nick McGowan
But even based on the conversations we’re having, it’s like that’s the surface of almost the 80% of bullshit that you see. But really taking the principle itself and doing something with it and ingesting it into your own and understanding that this is what this looks like to me, then I think that’s the core piece to it. So I love that you start off with I have these five things like at least I can start with this because people are systems based and we need to be systems based.

00:08:25:22 – 00:08:37:04
Nick McGowan
So but how did you get to that point? Is that something that you just kind of pieced together? And over the course of time you’re like, Oh, well, shit, look, there’s a pattern here. Or is that something that you you intentionally put together?

00:08:37:22 – 00:09:01:14
Greg Shepard
I mean, some some of it was just discipline was something where, you know, I, I would have to deploy a lot of discipline to get through a lot of things in my life because as an autistic, dyslexic, things can be very frustrating and really hard. So you have to be like, I have to deploy a lot of discipline just to read something.

00:09:01:14 – 00:09:29:21
Greg Shepard
I read it like a fourth grade level. So because things move around on me, you know, they’re literally moving. So it shows as if I’m reading, you know, and comprehension wise, you know, I comprehend through imagery, not through words, right? So that it takes a lot of discipline to read something four times and then get it once, you know, and keep doing that over and over and over and over it.

00:09:29:21 – 00:09:50:14
Greg Shepard
This is now it’s a lot easier with computers because I have it read to me. But that’s a huge thing, right? Just just that right there. And then, you know, to be optimistic is like the biology of hope, right? You have to have some hope or what? Are you optimistic about? So my hope was, you know, I’m going to do better than everybody told me.

00:09:50:22 – 00:10:11:17
Greg Shepard
You know, everybody was telling me I was going to be a, you know, loser, basically. Right. So, you know, I was like, I’m going to do better than everybody told me. And that was my hope, you know, that I was going to be able to drive in that direction. I think that throughout my life, I have assembled these things by finding you know, by doing retrospectives.

00:10:11:17 – 00:10:28:09
Greg Shepard
I do retrospectives on myself. So at the end of every week, I do a retrospective on the week. I look at the week and I say, What did I set out to do? What did I do, and how would I grade my my own performance this week? And when I do that, you know, a lot of things create patterns.

00:10:28:09 – 00:10:36:15
Greg Shepard
And those patterns of the five things I mentioned, the handful, you know, and they just keep coming up over and over and you’re like, okay, this one’s important. I’m going to make sure, you know.

00:10:38:05 – 00:10:59:06
Nick McGowan
That’s a good point. And being able to go, alright, it, I got it, you know, even that awareness and that’s a big thing that I think really matters with your mindset and how you manage it. You know, just in general is what you’re aware of and what you’re not aware of can hurt you. But you know, if you’re aware of something that’s going on for you to see the pattern in all of this and go, All right, cool, I’m putting these things together.

00:10:59:18 – 00:11:25:16
Nick McGowan
But talk to us about how how that was formed out of all the all the businesses that you had worked in and worked with, like now that you get to tie all that stuff together or what have you seen through your own journey that people that are going through that right now or have a business or at least a leader in a company and wanting to build it, how do they actually put those things into place that again isn’t fucking rah rah session?

00:11:25:16 – 00:11:27:21
Nick McGowan
But I like to use the core of it.

00:11:28:17 – 00:11:47:12
Greg Shepard
Yeah. I mean one of the things is that if, if you, you know, there’s moments in everybody’s life where you feel like life is just fucking kicking your ass, right? And in those moments, I always say to myself, you know, if life is given me all it’s got and I’ve got it under control, then I’ve got the upper hand, right?

00:11:47:12 – 00:12:13:16
Greg Shepard
Because if life is kicking my ass with everything it’s got and I’m still here, then, you know, that’s the best I can do. I can do better. And that’s one of the things. And then the other thing that I think of is, you know, like if whenever I’m moving forward on something, I’m always thinking to myself that this, that it got this out of the way, like some negative thing, you know, I got this out of the way, all right?

00:12:13:22 – 00:12:39:00
Greg Shepard
And I got this out of the way. And I’m always really appreciative of all of the mistakes I make because, you know, your mistakes are just steppingstones. Like, if you’re building a ladder, each wrong is a mistake. You step on it, you fall through, you put a bigger rung on and you try again, you know. So I always feel like, thank you when I get a mistake, whenever I, you know, fuck up on something, I’m like, okay, thanks, Jesus.

00:12:39:22 – 00:12:40:21
Nick McGowan
That’s out of the way.

00:12:40:21 – 00:13:20:14
Greg Shepard
Yeah, yeah. You know, I think that something that’s critical for me is, is sort of understanding that the process of being successful in whatever you choose to do, like selling big companies or starting big companies or, you know, climbing El Capitan or whatever it is that you’re going to do that the the process of doing that begins in the very beginning when you decide that you’re going to accomplish it and when I mean accomplish it, I mean, at like you will die trying to get this thing done and you have that level of commitment.

00:13:21:05 – 00:13:38:04
Greg Shepard
And I think that that’s really critical because it’s really easy when things get hard to just sort of be like, Yeah, this isn’t for me, which a lot of people do. But when I choose something like at the beginning, when I did this one marathon last year, I didn’t know how to swim. I couldn’t even get across the pool when I was struggling with asthma.

00:13:38:04 – 00:14:08:03
Greg Shepard
And I remember so many times I was like, Fuck this, this is I don’t even know how this is. Before I got into the shark problem, right? I was just like, oh, my God, how am I going to do this? And I just stayed with it, you know? And a year later I did it. And I keep doing that to myself over and over because what I think is really, really, really fucking important is struggle or it is healthy to have struggle are cells need struggle to go to get to autophagy and recover and start regenerating cells.

00:14:08:03 – 00:14:38:05
Greg Shepard
Your muscles need struggle, struggle to build. That’s why we train. And I think that the brain in the emotional disposition also needs struggle. So I think struggle is healthy and I think it makes you stronger. So whenever people are going through really hard times, I’m like, Hey, it’s making you stronger. Like it really is from a, from a biological level and even from a physics level, you know, struggle is the key to, to, to getting better and stronger and etc., etc..

00:14:38:05 – 00:14:57:13
Nick McGowan
That’s that’s an interesting take on like the catalyst in certain ways of being able to get you to do things where like it’s kind of a forced situation, even a situation where you’re struggling through something and you realize like, fuck this, I don’t want this anymore, I want to get out of this, or I have to get out of this situation or whatever.

00:14:57:23 – 00:15:17:18
Nick McGowan
I often think of the suffering like there’s meaning and purpose in suffering. And likewise what you’re saying, it’s kind of that same box, you know, just the different side of it because struggle is a major portion of that, you know. So there’s, there’s that peace that you need to have that almost a relativity to understand how to get through it and how to do that.

00:15:17:23 – 00:15:35:00
Nick McGowan
But it also sounds like you’re kind of putting yourself in the shit where you’re like, all right, I’m having a hard time breathing, can’t really swim. So what’s the longest and furthest fucking place that I can go? And like, how do you do it? So, but how do you get to that? Why that makes sense to you to go?

00:15:35:00 – 00:15:50:00
Nick McGowan
This is the thing because I think there’s importance in that process of what you do to understand, like, this is the thing because it’s not everything you do that with. So what? What do you go through to be able to land on like this lines with me and this is what I feel I need to do.

00:15:50:19 – 00:16:09:12
Greg Shepard
One of my you know, one of the things that drives me is, you know, I have asthma. So I try to do things that challenge asthma. You know, I have different fears. I specifically take on things that I’m afraid of. I want to take on things that I think are impossible to prove to myself that I can do the impossible.

00:16:10:00 – 00:16:35:00
Greg Shepard
So when I was young, you know, I look at my whole life and everything I’ve done is is me basically proving to myself. It used to be proving to others, but then it became just proving to myself that I can do things that are impossible and that motivates me, you know, to know that, you know, like, you know, I’ll choose something and be, you know, like I’ve met Barack Obama twice, right?

00:16:35:00 – 00:16:53:13
Greg Shepard
And how many people have met a president? You know that, let alone twice. Right. And this it happened. You know, you know, climbing Capitol Hill and all these things. There’s so many of them to name off. But, you know, each one of these things that I do or things that I think, yeah, there’s no way I’m going to be able to pull that off.

00:16:53:19 – 00:17:17:15
Greg Shepard
But I try, you know, because at least if you try, you have a chance and you don’t even try, you automatically have zero chance of you try at least maybe you have a 20% thing or 50% chance. And so for me, it’s proving that I can do things that are impossible. Like that’s a really big deal to me, partially because everybody told me things were impossible for me, you know, growing up.

00:17:19:14 – 00:17:41:14
Nick McGowan
Well, it’s interesting that you say now it’s important to you because I wonder if it was always just important to you, but that you weren’t able to actually understand that and thought it was. Well, it’s the external world like it. I have to show them. But in all reality, like that was a deep seated thing for you to be able to go, All right, I’ve got to show myself.

00:17:41:22 – 00:18:04:06
Nick McGowan
And I think that’s the thing that we can tap into, like we, all of us, even the people that are like, you know, I just don’t have that. It’s like now you just don’t have the thing that you found that actually makes you feel that way. So how do you how do you go through that to find that, like looking back on what you’ve done and like that those processes in a sense, what would what’s that advice for that sort of piece?

00:18:04:06 – 00:18:04:13
Nick McGowan
You know.

00:18:05:15 – 00:18:27:09
Greg Shepard
I think that whenever you have fear or things that you can’t, that you think you can’t do, that drags you down. And that’s like it’s like a quicksand. So the more that you show yourself that you can do things that you can’t do, the bigger the world becomes to you and the more fun it is and the more stuff you can do to, you know, experience that.

00:18:27:18 – 00:18:52:03
Greg Shepard
And where it all stems from is, you know, growing up, everybody, you know, call me names and, you know, it was rough. And so for me in the beginning, I had this chip on my shoulder. I’m going to show them, you know, I’m going to show them who is you know, I’m not allowed to use the words, I think probably, but the things that they would call me and and I would be like, I’m going to show them.

00:18:52:03 – 00:19:10:03
Greg Shepard
But then I passed by all of them by such a long stretch that I was like, you know, they’re not even in my brain anymore. And so then I started saying, I’m going to show myself, I’m going to show myself that I can do this thing like that swimming thing. And I’m going to I got out of there the first day and I was like, Oh my God.

00:19:10:03 – 00:19:28:19
Greg Shepard
And I was like, okay, this is exactly what I’m after, right? I don’t think I can do it. That’s what I’m doing it for. And then I can show myself that I can do things that I didn’t think I could do and that the feeling of that is hard for me to put into words, but it really like like gives you more fullness, I guess.

00:19:28:19 – 00:19:32:01
Greg Shepard
Is the best the best way to explain it? I don’t know. Sorry.

00:19:33:05 – 00:19:50:07
Nick McGowan
I think that’s a good way to put it. Fulfillment, the I almost feel like it’s like you’ve gotten over the mountain of that where a lot of people are on this climb or they feel like they’re on a climb. But once you get past that ego climb of like, Hey, I’ve done all these things and here’s this, then it’s like, well, I’m the only one that matters.

00:19:50:12 – 00:20:12:12
Nick McGowan
Like, it’s just my mission to do these things and being able to actually run with those things specifically and again for that awareness of like, this really sucks. Well, that’s what you said you’re going to do. Fuck, okay, this is going to continue to suck, but do you also do you enjoy the progression of when it doesn’t suck?

00:20:12:12 – 00:20:18:11
Nick McGowan
Like as you start to get into it? And have you found love for some of these things?

00:20:18:11 – 00:20:35:21
Greg Shepard
Yeah, I learn things about myself and I learn things about other people. You know, I go into one of these sports and what my goal, what I do is every year on my birthday, I choose something I’m going to do for the year and I train all year for one thing, and then I give that one thing. And so when I start, I don’t know anything, right?

00:20:35:21 – 00:20:54:14
Greg Shepard
And I’m going in a in a pool or cycling or running or rock climbing or whatever it is. And I don’t know the people or the culture. And, you know, I’m like an imposter to them and whatever, right? I don’t care about what they think of me. So I go in and I’m learning about them and I’m learning about their culture.

00:20:54:14 – 00:21:15:03
Greg Shepard
And I and I have to become a rock climber. I have to become a swimmer, have to become a runner cyclist in order to accomplish the objective, which is part of the experience. Right. You have to become a real entrepreneur in order to experience being a real entrepreneur. And you can’t just fake it, but you can’t get that far if you fake it right.

00:21:15:11 – 00:21:33:07
Greg Shepard
It’s you have no choice. And so it shows you that if you become what you want to be, you can become what you want to be. Right? If you if you transition your life and say, okay, I don’t know how to swim by the end of this year, I’m going to do a swim marathon, which, you know, to anybody is like, holy shit, this guy knows how to swim.

00:21:33:19 – 00:21:59:04
Greg Shepard
And I became a swimmer right? I started to enjoy it. And I was doing these things, you know, I was swimming miles every weekend, you know, and and you just get into it. It’s the same thing with all this stuff. So it’s same thing with with an entrepreneur. If you’re a founder or if you’re a salesperson, if you’re something like that, you have to actually become what you want to be, meaning you have to set your intentions on where you want to be, and then you have to become those things.

00:21:59:04 – 00:22:28:07
Greg Shepard
And I don’t mean fake it. I mean you really have to do it, you know, and think that way and meditate on it and start thinking in the way that those people that you want to become think like. And then I believe for me anyway, and it sounds sort of, I don’t know, cliché or weird or whatever, but when I set my sights on something and I meditate on that and I really think about it, I visualize the reality like it actually happening and what I’m going to look like and every detail of it, it just it happens every time.

00:22:28:23 – 00:22:45:03
Greg Shepard
It doesn’t mean that you don’t have to try. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have struggle. It doesn’t mean that there’s moments where you don’t feel like you could do it or you’re going to fail or whatever. But that the the undertone of the whole thing is that this is a process to become who I want to become.

00:22:45:19 – 00:23:04:01
Greg Shepard
You know, and one of the things I do at the beginning of the year, I is I close my eyes in meditation. I say to myself, what do I want to look like, feel like? What do I where do I want to be? All of these different things that that are, you know, sort of like broadly who you are in your life.

00:23:04:01 – 00:23:14:17
Greg Shepard
I picture those things. And then right at that point, that’s when I that’s when I engage. And in choosing what those solutions are that make sense.

00:23:14:17 – 00:23:46:20
Nick McGowan
Yeah. And that makes total sense. And I as you talk about that, I think of the, the whole way that you’re able to go through the process of what you want to be able to become, you have to become that person like you have to be that person to get to that thing anyway. So if your goal is to become that person, then you might as well shoot past it and go, All I want to do this thing, that’s that that person will want to do because then you would have to be that person.

00:23:47:07 – 00:23:55:19
Nick McGowan
And so break down some practical tips for people to be able to actually use that and put that in a place like how how do they do that? How do they figure that out for themselves?

00:23:56:19 – 00:24:19:23
Greg Shepard
So what I do is I have every year I have a list of things, right? So I have habits I want to keep, habits I want to break and goals and the goals are broken down into educational, family, personal and fitness things. And then I set my eyes on those things. And then every single day I have reminders that come up and tell me, remember, you made this goal.

00:24:20:10 – 00:24:44:02
Greg Shepard
So if I’m sitting here at my desk and it’s 730 at night and I’m tired and burned out, and it’s like, okay, now you have to go swim two or three miles. I’m just like, and the alert comes up and I’m like, Fuck, fuck. All right, I’ll go do it, you know? And that’s where the discipline comes in, you know, it’s I feel like discipline is just like the struggle thing I was talking about.

00:24:44:02 – 00:25:06:11
Greg Shepard
Like you, it’s a you build it like a muscle. And in the beginning, you know, you have very little discipline and then you start to build it. And this is all this comes from the challenges I do and the things I set out to do in my life is I’m like, I’m building my capabilities. You know, when you’re at the beginning of applying discipline, you’re like, the kind of person’s going to be like, Oh yeah, fuck that.

00:25:06:11 – 00:25:12:22
Greg Shepard
I’m not doing that right. And then at the end you’re like, Yeah, sure, I’ll do it. In fact, I’ll do it every day, you know?

00:25:13:12 – 00:25:16:06
Nick McGowan
Yeah, it’s wildly different than before.

00:25:16:23 – 00:25:32:12
Greg Shepard
Yeah, totally. It. It doesn’t affect you anymore. It’s like, you know, you acclimatize to wherever you live, you acclimatize to whatever you’re putting in your life so you can climate tired to being around assholes or you can climates being around cool people.

00:25:33:02 – 00:25:59:03
Nick McGowan
You know. Exactly. And that’s it’s the reps that you put in, like you’re saying, flexing that muscle, stretching that and growing that. And I’m glad you go back to the people, because if you’re doing that in a bunch of shitty people’s groups, you know, of like negative people that are going to pull you down, like those being family members or, you know, core people that are part of your community now like that’s instantly going to hurt your workouts.

00:25:59:03 – 00:26:18:13
Nick McGowan
Like to be able to actually get those reps in to be able to do it. So it sounds like that’s also portion of what you look at where you’re like, This thing sucks, but I’ve already fucking made the decision, I’m going to do this thing. So what does your support system look like for this? Like, do you have people that are like, Oh yeah, he’s he’s got to go swim for miles and it’s dumb o’clock in the morning or whatever.

00:26:18:13 – 00:26:20:02
Nick McGowan
Like what? Your support system look like?

00:26:20:10 – 00:26:43:20
Greg Shepard
Yeah, my wife and my kids are amazing. They’re so cool about it. Like, really cool. And you know, for the most part, honestly, I just don’t give a fuck. I just do what I need to do, you know? I’m just like. I’m just like, I’m going to go do this and, you know, if you have a problem with it, I don’t give a shit because this isn’t for you, it’s for me, you know?

00:26:45:05 – 00:27:05:13
Greg Shepard
But but I feel like it. It certainly helps when you have people that are appreciate what you’re trying to accomplish, even if they don’t want it, even if they don’t do these things that you like to do, it’s important that they appreciate what you’re doing and they respect what you’re doing. Right. And the people that don’t, you know, I just called Bruning, right?

00:27:05:13 – 00:27:25:23
Greg Shepard
Like you broom under the desk, man from away. You know. So I go through people in my life typically every year, and I look at, you know, people that are acquaintances or friends or colleagues and I look through it and I kind of go, Yeah, I don’t want to spend time with this person because I’m not getting value or I’m not giving value right either.

00:27:25:23 – 00:27:49:07
Greg Shepard
They’re getting value from me or I’m giving them value or both. Is a good relationship where you have that intrinsic, you know, shared value, right? And those sort of relationships will grow you as a person and grow the other person in parallel with you. But the other people, they they’re taking away from you. It’s like a headwind, right?

00:27:49:07 – 00:28:13:05
Greg Shepard
And so if you’re facing a headwind in life is a headwind and you’re facing a headwind and you’re, you’re, you have a big four by four sheet of plywood in front of you, it’s going to be really hard, you know, whereas if you have a sharp bow like a boat, you’re going to be slicing through, you know? And so I think that people that don’t add value and take value away from you produce headwinds and make your life so much harder.

00:28:13:17 – 00:28:16:20
Greg Shepard
You know, like pulling an anchor, you know?

00:28:17:16 – 00:28:42:01
Nick McGowan
Yeah. Like unnecessarily at that point. Like if you’re, if you feel that as a person, you should be able to go through. And it’s interesting that you have a yearly kind of cleaning in a sense, to be able to go, Yeah, this isn’t really working. Or, you know, maybe we can just shelve this for now, but to understand what is stopping you and what is slowing you down, I, I believe that you attract more of the right things at that point.

00:28:42:01 – 00:28:54:20
Nick McGowan
Like the more you say no, it opens up more specific yeses, which then gives you a larger and different network of people that are positive and being able to be part of that support system.

00:28:54:20 – 00:28:59:13
Greg Shepard
Yeah, I got social Tetris.

00:28:59:13 – 00:29:00:14
Nick McGowan
That’s a cool way to look at it.

00:29:01:00 – 00:29:22:02
Greg Shepard
But yeah, and sometimes it’s, it’s and sometimes it’s like the the you just have to put them into categories, right? It’s like sometimes it’s like this is somebody that I’ll hang out with on Friday and smoke a joint with. Right. And this other person, this kind of person. I’m going to go to a convention with or this person I’m going to go train with.

00:29:22:02 – 00:29:45:07
Greg Shepard
And so I have like categories for different people and I don’t cross-pollinate. I think people do that too much and then you end up sucking up everything, you know, because you have a mood and hanging out with one person, right? Like if I’m hanging out with a, you know, some of my friends or Navy SEALs from when I interviewed the Navy SEALs for the book and hanging out those guys, you know, most of them aren’t going to smoke a joint with you.

00:29:45:07 – 00:29:53:15
Greg Shepard
Right? But then you’re hanging out with somebody else. You’re going to smoke a joint with them. You want to different experiences. So why pollute one experience with another experience.

00:29:54:08 – 00:30:09:23
Nick McGowan
Huh? Well, so speaking of experiences, let’s kind of think through life. And what were some of those or at least one or two of those major, pivotal moments that you can look back at and go, oh, shit, that is right. Right. There’s where life changed.

00:30:11:06 – 00:30:44:19
Greg Shepard
I can tell you when when some of my business affiliate traction was sold as part of a $9.25 million deal with eBay. Right. And when I when I sold that and then later, six months later, I sold them another company. And then I became the chief strategy officer and then the chief technology officer for three years. And when I sold the business and it was a shit lot of money and we’re talking about a lot of money, more money than I had ever seen in my bank account.

00:30:45:10 – 00:31:09:08
Greg Shepard
And, you know, I’m having is like nightmares. Like, it wasn’t real, I swear this is true. I’m like sweating and I wake up and look at my phone and go, Holy shit, it was real. It was real. It actually, you know, this happens several times a night for like the first week. That was a real moment when I’m looking at my phone and I’m looking at and I and I’m just like, Shit, man, that’s a lot of fucking money, you know?

00:31:09:08 – 00:31:35:05
Greg Shepard
Like, it was, you know, it was a real big deal coming from, you know, the humble beginnings that I came from. It was like, this was unbelievable, you know? And it was that was a moment that substantially changed a lot of things, the way I see the world and, you know, specifically a lot of wealthy people and how men, you know, this was how much money I had.

00:31:35:05 – 00:31:56:09
Greg Shepard
And then I look at other people that are the uber rich people and I’m thinking, man, that’s too much money for somebody, that that money should be spread out a little bit. That’s just insane. You know, because you can’t even spend it. You know, you’re making, what, $800 on every hundred thousand dollars you invest per month? And some of these people have 400 billion, $500 billion.

00:31:56:17 – 00:32:15:00
Greg Shepard
You have to really think about the income that that’s generating outside of their wealth itself. Right. That was like a big pivotal moment for me, raised to realize that and say, wow, holy shit. Wow. You know, the the big deal that was one.

00:32:15:00 – 00:32:16:07
Nick McGowan
Yeah. What a realization.

00:32:16:10 – 00:32:42:11
Greg Shepard
Yeah, yeah. It’s a serious change. Right. That was one. And then the other one was when, when I got my book deal with the publisher. Actually, that’s the most recent one because I was just like, oh, and I got a, I got an honorary Ph.D. from a university that I could never even get into. Like, there’s no way they would ever accept me into this.

00:32:42:22 – 00:33:06:12
Greg Shepard
And I’m just like sitting there and I have this thing and I’m just like looking at it, and I don’t really tell anybody about it. I’m like looking at this thing and I’m just like, How crazy is that? That I got a degree from the school I could never possibly get into, let alone get a degree from. And now my, the, my educational courses are taught in a whole bunch of universities all around the world.

00:33:07:04 – 00:33:31:16
Greg Shepard
And here I am, somebody that and I mean, when I say barely graduated from high school, I mean, barely graduate. Like by one point I graduated from high school after five continuation schools. Right? So that kind of stuff really stuck out to me to like how like life is just so crazy, but it’s not like I didn’t try for these things.

00:33:32:04 – 00:33:35:09
Greg Shepard
I did work. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:33:35:23 – 00:33:54:22
Nick McGowan
Yeah. You haven’t said anything yet that has been straight up or even partially given to you even before we hit record. And I’m just, I guess questions and we’re shooting the shit like there’s none of that of like, well, I was gifted this thing and that put me in this direction. It sounds like for the most part, you life sucked and you were like, Well, this doesn’t need to suck.

00:33:54:22 – 00:34:14:00
Nick McGowan
Fuck all of you. I’m going to go figure this out for myself and just try really hard things like let’s make it simple in a sense. Like just doing hard things consistently and just putting yourself in the spot to be able to do that can get wild shit. We’re literally you’re the example and example of that and just walking through and doing these things.

00:34:14:07 – 00:34:27:20
Nick McGowan
You still haven’t also talked about the fucking thing we talked about before we hit record. What’s the special thing? Because that’s that’s kind of a huge moment that most people can’t say that they’ve had, at least to this point. When this episode comes out.

00:34:29:10 – 00:34:32:18
Greg Shepard
I have a ticket to space, my tickets are spent.

00:34:32:21 – 00:34:39:09
Nick McGowan
He has a ticket to space. An actual ticket to space. Like what an awesome thing.

00:34:39:09 – 00:34:45:08
Greg Shepard
So what’s cool? You see, it’s like floating in there and stuff. It’s kind of cool.

00:34:45:08 – 00:35:13:11
Nick McGowan
Oh, gravity, right? Oh, man. So, you know, the the Ph.D. that’s that’s in and of itself is awesome. And the curriculum and everything that you’re doing with that I bring up the space ticket because that’s such a wild thing that a lot of people can’t grasp their heads around to think like getting a space ticket. But I wanted to point that out because again, in this is doing hard things as an example and just consistently showing the fuck up and doing the work.

00:35:13:20 – 00:35:32:09
Nick McGowan
Like even you say you do this work and it doesn’t matter with the other people. Like part of that is like an air of like fuck everybody else because it’s important to you to do these things, which also shows other people how to do crazy, awesome things. So I appreciate that you do it and that you’ve stepped into this craziness.

00:35:32:09 – 00:35:39:16
Nick McGowan
But that space ticket like that’s that’s just wild thing. Like if somebody is like, hey, you want to go to space? Yes. Where where do you need me to sign?

00:35:39:19 – 00:35:44:16
Greg Shepard
I’ve been waiting for five years. It’s next year. I yeah.

00:35:45:00 – 00:35:46:09
Nick McGowan
I’ve been waiting 38 man.

00:35:47:20 – 00:36:17:07
Greg Shepard
I, I mean I think to your point there that, you know, we were talking about muscle, you know, building up your muscles and struggle creating that. I think that what you just brought up is another example of that same way of thinking, right? Is just trying with every bone in your body. And I think different for people that are used to struggle because if you if you had money in your family or some sort of back situation, you can only fall to the safety net.

00:36:17:07 – 00:36:39:15
Greg Shepard
But if you don’t have that, you’ve got no safety net. Right. And, you know, if you throw one person in the pool with a floatie and another person without one, and both of them don’t know how to swim, one of them’s going to learn how to swim, you know, and or drown. And drowning is not an option. So, you know, I think that that helps, too, is just being like, you know, this is this is me.

00:36:39:15 – 00:37:01:04
Greg Shepard
And the the last part of that same process is this you this is you creating you. But who you are doesn’t necessarily need to be who you are. Right? You can start out of this person and you can create yourself however you want. Like an avatar. You can build who you want. You can become who you want. It’s like a video game or something.

00:37:01:14 – 00:37:20:09
Greg Shepard
I don’t think a lot of people realize that. They think, Oh, this is who I am, but that’s not true. I mean, you look around at people in entertainment, you know, rock stars and movie stars and business people in film Anthropocene and all these people all around the world that do these things, they did not start out as that person.

00:37:20:21 – 00:37:38:03
Greg Shepard
So for self-mastery, one of the first steps is to say, okay, who do I want to be? I mean, you need to know two things, right? You know where you are and you know where you want to be like a GPS if you don’t understand where you want to go, you could be driving around forever and never get to your destination.

00:37:38:15 – 00:37:57:06
Greg Shepard
So what I do all the times I check where I am and where I want to be and make sure that I’m directionally correct the whole time and I’m following and you make a detours and traffic and whatever the hell. That’s fine, right? But as long as you’re going the direction of where you want to be and who you want to be, I think you can you can plow.

00:37:57:06 – 00:38:15:14
Greg Shepard
And every time you accomplish something, you’re like, man, that’s another notch, right? I’m getting closer. And maybe by end of your life, you will be who you want to be and where you want to be. And if it takes that long, what a great ride my mom used to tell me. I said, There’s too much I want to do in my life.

00:38:15:14 – 00:38:30:21
Greg Shepard
I’ll never get it done in my whole life. And she said, That’s the beauty of life. How boring would it be if you were like, Yeah, I achieved everything I wanted to do and everything I wanted to be and I’m, you know, 40 years old or something. You’d be like, That’s all life got. I mean, come on, you know.

00:38:31:04 – 00:38:51:17
Nick McGowan
Oh, man. Yeah, that’s that that’s important to continue to look for those things to, you know, and say, I want to seek these things out and do them well. Look great. It has been a pleasure, man. I appreciate you being on. I want to ask, though, what’s that one piece of advice you’d give to somebody on their path towards self-mastery?

00:38:51:17 – 00:39:18:02
Greg Shepard
I would say. I mean, it’s going to sound kind of cliche, but I think meditation and visualization on what you want to become in whatever it is and self-mastery, it could be entrepreneur, it could be, you know, some sort of an athletic venture, even a really good father or a really good mother or whatever. Like you have to picture what you want to be.

00:39:18:02 – 00:39:37:14
Greg Shepard
That’s where you want to go. And then meditate on it. And meditate is I mean, you know, some people pray and that’s meditation and some people do mindfulness or whatever, whatever your version of isolating your thoughts down and controlling the thoughts to focus on the things that you want to focus on, those things being those things you want to become.

00:39:38:00 – 00:39:50:02
Greg Shepard
That’s my advice that that that’s what I do. And I swear, it’s like magic. I don’t understand it. I really don’t. I wish I could explain it, but I don’t understand the physics behind it.

00:39:50:02 – 00:40:06:16
Nick McGowan
Sure. And and people need to experience that. So even just leaning in and that’s why I have this show to be able to ask those questions, to be able to get into some of what your processes look like and how you’ve built this and what you’ve done. Because it’s going to work for somebody else or at least a piece, you know, for them to go.

00:40:06:18 – 00:40:13:07
Nick McGowan
I can add this in to what I’m so, man, I appreciate you being on. Hey, where can people find you and where can they connect with you?

00:40:14:04 – 00:40:33:15
Greg Shepard
Can I say one more thing before you go that I think is important? At one point I was talking to a psychologist. Right. And a psychologist said to me, this is I want you to think about the control that your brain has over your your life, your thoughts have over your life. You know, your thoughts become words. Your words become action, your actions become realities.

00:40:33:17 – 00:40:56:09
Greg Shepard
Right. And so he said to me, he said, What I want you to do is, don’t think about a carrot. And so the negative self-talk is exactly that. Right? You can say I’m this, I’m that. And do this negative stuff and your brain hears it and your brain doesn’t understand that you’re not that you’re joking. Your brain thinks you’re real and there’s science behind that.

00:40:56:09 – 00:41:08:04
Greg Shepard
So be careful what you tell yourself, because whatever you tell yourself is you’re providing a pathway that you’re going to go down. So I just wanted to throw that in there.

00:41:08:04 – 00:41:09:16
Nick McGowan
Yeah, I appreciate that.

00:41:10:06 – 00:41:49:20
Greg Shepard
Yeah. My website is Gregory Shepherd Econ S.H. EPA, R.D. So Gregory Sheppard, Econ and then my social media handles and all that stuff are on there. I post a ton of stuff all the time. I spend 2 hours a day on post, you know, getting media ready to be posted and do a lot of research and stuff. So that’s that my email address is Greg at BOS start up science dot com and then the business for the the mastery program for entrepreneurship is start up science dot I oh and that’s that’s my handle’s.

00:41:50:21 – 00:41:56:14
Nick McGowan
Awesome in look great it has been a pleasure to have you on I appreciate you being here. Thank you so much for your time.

00:41:57:13 – 00:41:58:20
Greg Shepard
Your call Kat thank you.

00:42:00:07 – 00:42:22:22
Nick McGowan
Another great conversation on today’s episode of The Mindset and Self-mastery show. So what did you think of the show today? I’d love to hear your thoughts. Check out the Instagram or Facebook page. Join the conversation if you enjoyed the episode, please jump over to iTunes and subscribe rate and leave a five star review. It helps us be found and helps others be healed.

00:42:23:11 – 00:42:43:18
Nick McGowan
If this episode opened your eyes, made you think or smile at all, then I’m sure it’ll do the same for your friends. Check out the show notes for more info from today’s episode and check out other episodes on the Mindset and Self-mastery show dot com as well as our YouTube channel. Just go to YouTube and look up the mindset and self-mastery.

00:42:43:18 – 00:43:03:06
Nick McGowan
Show. Thanks again to our incredible guests for being real, honest and vulnerable with us today. I’d like to thank our sponsors and most importantly, I’d like to thank you. Thank you for hanging out with us today. Your support means the world to us. And with that, remember, your mindset matters and so do you.