Nick: Young Entrepreneur Lifestyle podcast, Episode #2.
Hello, and welcome to the Young Entrepreneur Lifestyle podcast, a show where we help you build a life and a business on your terms. I’m your host, Nick Palkowski, and in each episode, we’ll be learning from mentor, speaker, and serial entrepreneur, Peter Voogd.
Peter, thanks again for joining us on this episode of the podcast.
Peter: I’m excited, Nick, as always. Thank you for having me.
Nick: Peter, how does it actually feel to be a podcaster now? You’re on episode #2. It’s a milestone.
Peter: I’m excited. It’s great, man. I’ve done speaking, consulting, coaching and leadership, but I’ve never really done podcasting, so I’m excited to explore this new venture.
Nick: Well, you can officially say you’re a podcaster now. I deem you a podcaster. So, congratulations.
Peter: That’s awesome. I appreciate it.
Nick: Peter, one thing that I’ve really noticed just here working with you on this podcast, going through and producing it for you, I’ve really realized that you kind of hold everything to a really high standard. Why might that be important? Why do you do that in your life? Why might it be important for our listeners to keep those high standards?
Peter: Really, really good question. I appreciate you for noticing that. I wasn’t always like that, but your standards usually rise by the circle of influence you have.
One of our downfalls I think in our current society is so many people have given up on their goals, their dreams, their true passions. Just to be blunt, it seems like giving up seems to be the common theme of today. We’ve been conditioned to kind of take what we get versus fight for what we want. And sadly, most people have lowered their standards.
So that’s why I’m glad you asked that, because I want to raise people’s standards on this podcast. Your standards play a big part in your current situation, your performance, your happiness and creating the life of your dreams.
For me, I think I raised my standards because everybody around me was raising their standards, and I realized, Nick, I wasn’t giving my all. Once my standards rose, everything else in my life started to rise. You get exactly what you tolerate, and life’s going to organize around the standards that you set for yourself.
So, I have some thoughts. Can I share some tips on kind of what I did and how to really raise your standards as an entrepreneur?
Nick: Yeah, I think that would be awesome. That would be very valuable to our listeners.
Peter: So, there’s five steps to really raising your standards. The first thing – it sounds funny, but you need to raise your standards. You have to pick two or three areas of your life that you want to be improved in.
Nick: Peter, before you dive into that, what do you actually mean by standards? Like, what are you talking about when you say standards?
Peter: So, what you tolerate; how people treat you. Here’s an example. If you raise them, you’ll raise that area of your life. So you get what you tolerate. If you tolerate being disrespected, you’ll always be disrespected. If you tolerate being overworked and under paid, it’ll continue for you. If you tolerate being overweight, you’ll always be overweight. If you tolerate being broke, you’ll always be broke.
So think about the areas: happiness, income, your spouse, how your boss treats you, your health and energy. That’s what I mean. Think about what areas you want to improve in.
Nick: Awesome. So, you were saying the first step is to actually go about and raise your standards?
Peter: Exactly. Pick two or three areas.
Income-wise – you’re sick of not having the money you want. Okay, this is the first step – you get four more, remember? So the first thing is raise your standards, take some time, pause this, and think about what areas you want to raise your standards in. That’s the first thing.
The second thing is you have to come up with reasons. It doesn’t stop with the raising standards – that’s where it starts – but finding empowering reasons for raising your standards. Why do you want to raise your standards in those areas? What would it do for your current lifestyle, your current results, and what would it do for your future?
Nick, I really want people to put some thought into why they should turn their shoulds into musts, because reasons come first, results come second. Does that make sense?
Nick: That makes perfect sense, and I love the way you phrase that.
Peter: So after you have the reasons, now you have some strength and some motivation behind your standards being raised.
The third thing: rituals. Rituals define us. All results in our lives start with the standards, and then they’re followed up with rituals.
Successful people that I’ve been around – and I’ve been very blessed and fortunate to be around a lot of high level entrepreneurs, millionaires, billionaires, CEOs, amazing athletes, and just amazing people. I humble myself around them, but it’s great. What I’ve noticed is they have routines and rituals for everything they do. They don’t leave their success up to how they feel or luck or other people, they assure their success and they guarantee their progress by creating result rituals.
Success isn’t really about luck, it’s about awareness. A ritual, by the way, is something you do consistently that’s been proven to get results. For example, if one of your standards is to lose weight, reasons would be because you’re sick of feeling this way, you want to feel healthier, you want to feel alive, you want people to be impressed by you, you want to look better in your swimsuit – I don’t know, whatever means the most to you. Rituals would be three times a week, you’re going to work out. Four times a week, you’re going to run around the block. I don’t know. You’re going to eat greens three days a week. You’re never going to eat past 7:30 P.M. We’ll get into energy later, but does that make sense on rituals?
Nick: That makes perfect sense. That’s awesome.
Peter: The fourth thing is role models. Find somebody who you can model who raises your standards and who’s playing the game at a higher level than you. Study those who have standards that you’re striving for. Read about them, listen to audios, watch videos, just absorb yourself in those people who have elevated their standards already that are higher than society’s standards.
I don’t know if you’d agree, Nick, but I know this is a core belief of mine. Society actually lowers people’s standards. Would you agree with that?
Nick: I would completely agree with that.
Peter: It’s like, don’t get your standards based off society unless you’re happy with mediocrity, right? Eventually the standards you thought were too high are now the norm for you. And that’s the key, right? So find role models and elevate your circle of influence.
Number five…
Nick: Peter, before you go on with that one, I just wanted to highlight the fact that you – a lot of times I hear people say, hey, I don’t necessarily know some of these people. I don’t know someone who’s having a lot of success in their life. But like you said, you can go out, you can find audio books, you can go out and follow someone on the Internet, follow someone, get some mentoring through their books, through things like that, through courses. It doesn’t necessarily have to be an individual one-on-one relationship to start with.
Peter: 100%. That’s actually how you develop yourself to where you have more value to where you can reach out to higher level people.
I was reading over Think and Grow Rich, the book, for – not being sarcastic, probably the 17th time this morning. Napoleon Hill has passed away years ago, but I still learn from him. So that’s a good example.
Nick: Awesome. It’s on my six month reading rotation as well.
Peter: Good. So, let me review. Raise your standards; come up with reasons; create rituals, and then find role models to emulate.
Number five: relentless discipline. Ultimately, discipline creates your lifestyle, and consistent discipline separates the extraordinary from the average. Self-discipline is really doing the right thing whether you feel like it or not.
I love Eric Thomas, a friend of mine. I’ve done interviews with him. He’s amazing. He said something that stuck out. He said, on the end of all your feelings is really nothing, but at the end of your principles and standards is a promise. And I’m like, oh – that just stuck with me.
If you do things based off your feelings, you’re not going to do very much. So have relentless discipline to do what you need to do when you know you should do it, whether you feel like it or not. Start with little disciplines and then keep yourself consistent by focusing on steps one through five.
I have a quote that I used to read to my team all the time, and it’s engrained in my head. It’s by Michael Jordan, and he said, ‘It’s my standards that make me successful. Every day, I demand more from myself than anybody could humanly expect from me. I’m not competing against somebody else, I’m competing with what I’m capable of.’ So that is what people need to really understand. You’re competing with who you were yesterday, not your neighbor and not your friend. If you do these things consistently, Nick, you will not believe how much it elevates everything around you.
Nick: That’s awesome. So, Peter, before we wrap up, any final words for our listeners?
Peter: The speed of implementation is a huge part of success. What separates the mediocre from the extraordinary is how fast they implement. So use this stuff. Implement it. Don’t be that person that says, oh, I’ll do it later. Now matters more than ever.
So take this, set your standards, and start raising them today.
Nick: So, Peter, what is coming up on our next episode of the podcast?
Peter: I’m glad you asked. What I think is really hurting a lot of entrepreneurs is momentum breakers and distractions. People don’t know how to get rid of them, and they don’t even know sometimes subconsciously what’s stopping them from massive success. So I’m going to talk about how to really get rid of distractions so you can purely focus on your most important work and get rid of momentum breakers that are killing most people’s productivity.
Nick: Thank you so much for tuning into this episode of the podcast. Here at Young Entrepreneur Lifestyle, it is one of our standards to actually deliver you a high quality podcast chock full of actionable information that you can go and implement immediately.
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Before we wrap up, I just have a few quick announcements for you. One, if you would like to leave a question that could be answered on a future podcast, all I’m going to ask you to do is to go to Youngentrepreneurlifestyle.com/question, and you’ll be able to leave a voicemail question right from there, right from your computer, no problems, right from your phone even. It’s super simple, and you might hear your question on a future podcast as well.
Finally, before you head out, be sure to go and leave a comment on the show notes. We have show notes filled with great information, and you can find those at Youngentrepreneurlifestyle.com/002 for episode # 2. Let us know how you are putting implementation to work for you. How are you taking action right now, and what are you doing to raise your standards?
Until next time, go out and take action.