My First Million: MFM Mini - The Way To Be Confident

All right.

Quick break to tell you about another podcast that we're interested in right now, HubSpot

just launched a Shark Tank rewatch podcast called Another Bite.

Every week, the hosts relive the latest and greatest pitches from Shark Tank, from Squatty

Potty to the Mench on a Bench to Ring Doorbell, and they break down why these pitches were

winners or losers, and each company's go-to-market strategy, branding, pricing, valuation, everything.

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If you want to give it a listen, you can find Another Bite on whatever podcast app you listen

to, like Apple or Spotify or whatever you're using right now.

All right.

Back to the show.

I want to talk about confidence.

Growing up, I was never super confident.

I was in a group, in my group of friends, let's say there were six of us.

You had the kid who always got into trouble, right?

He was always on an adventure.

And then you had the class clown, everybody loved that person because they were making

everybody laugh.

You had the person who was ambitious and they always got good grades, and they were always

sort of top of the class and doing good in sports, that sort of thing.

And then you had me.

I was the friend who was just there to support all of them.

I was just laughing.

I was like a laugh track of a show.

I wasn't even the character.

And I wasn't very confident.

I didn't talk very much, and it all changed for me when I was living in Houston, Texas,

and in 10th grade, my dad got a job in China.

And so all of a sudden, we were moving to Beijing.

And so pack up your bags, you're moving from Texas to China.

And on the plane ride there, I remember my sister was talking to me and she goes, you

know, how are you feeling about your new school or you're excited, nervous, whatever.

I was like, I don't know.

It's kind of the same thing, probably just another school, so it won't be too different.

And she goes, well, it can be.

I go, what do you mean?

And what she was trying to say was not the difference between China and Texas, but the

difference between me and China and me in Texas.

She goes, none of these kids know you, so you have kind of a fresh start.

That's pretty cool.

You can pretty much be whoever you want to be.

You could be however you want to be.

And I was like, what do you mean?

She goes, well, think about in Houston, like the kids in your school who are cool, right?

I had this friend, Kane.

I mean, even his name was cool.

My friend, Kane Holderfield, he was one of the cool kids.

Everybody loved him.

And he was always having a good time.

And I used to see these other kids, remember this kid, Casey, and they were always having

a good time.

And one of the reasons why was they were very confident.

They were confident in themselves.

And so they were relaxed.

They weren't always worried about what other people were thinking of them.

And I thought, man, that'd be great if I could be like that.

I didn't know how.

I didn't know how to be confident.

And over time, I have learned the secret to confidence.

I used to think, okay, here's what I originally thought.

I used to think confidence was either something you just have or you don't.

You're born with it.

Okay, that was wrong.

When I moved to China and when I landed after that flight, I ended up walking into school

on the first day of school and I carried myself like Kane.

I carried myself like Casey.

I carried myself like they used to do.

And I didn't know how to be confident.

I didn't really understand it.

I sort of faked it till you make it.

But what I figured out was that confidence is not something you do directly, right?

So confidence is not just puffing up your chest because that's bravado, right?

That's false confidence.

It's easily deflated by reality.

A confident person is not just a fearless person.

A confident person is confident as a byproduct of being adventurous.

Let me tell you what I mean.

Over time, I figured out that all I needed to do was focus on being adventurous, putting

myself in new unfamiliar situations and going for it.

If we were at a lake and there was a rope swing and I didn't know how to do the rope

swing and I didn't know if I would land right, then I must do it, right?

I got to lean into that adventure.

If there was a group of girls at a bar I wanted to go talk to, but I didn't know what to say,

I must go talk to them, right?

I must lean into the adventure.

And what I realized, one adventure after another, you sort of realize, well, if I keep putting

myself in these positions and then I come out the other side and sometimes it works,

sometimes it's good, and sometimes you belly flop, it doesn't work so well.

But either way, you end up all right.

Then fear goes away.

Anxiety goes away.

Confidence sets in that regardless of the situation, I'll be all right.

Good things can happen.

I have evidence that good things happen from being adventurous and therefore confidence.

So when I did my first business, we wanted to start a sushi restaurant.

We had this idea to create that Chipotle of sushi.

Another problem was I had eaten sushi for the first time like two weeks before that.

That's why I had the idea.

I was like, oh my God, sushi is amazing.

I haven't had this in my whole life.

I was scared of it.

Why doesn't somebody make a kind of more accessible version of this?

So that was the idea.

And where most people would not have the confidence to go do it because they have no experience,

I leaned into the adventure.

So we're watching TV, watching the Food Network, the throw down with Bobby Flay.

And we see this, it's a sushi throw down.

So we skip class and we're watching this throw down and we see this awesome charismatic

chef from LA do the sushi throw down against Bobby Flay.

He seems great.

He knows his stuff.

We say, we got to get in touch with that guy.

How do we make that happen?

Well, my friend Googled him and we saw his restaurant in LA and my friend goes, my friend

Trevor goes, let's call him.

Again, normally, a lot of people would shy away from that, right?

That's an unknown situation.

What's going to happen if I call him?

What do I say?

Will it work?

Will it not work?

It's a great adventure.

All right.

So I pick up the phone, I call him, ring, ring.

Somebody picks up.

I'm so used to getting the run around with things that I just assumed I was going to

get the run around again.

I go, I need to talk to Philip Yee.

How do I make that happen?

Voice on their line goes, it's Philip.

Talk to me.

No, I didn't have much planned on what to say after that.

So I sort of stumbled and fumbled, but I was like, oh, Philip, my name's Sean and I have

this idea for a sushi restaurant, I think it can be really great.

And I just saw you on TV and I think that you're the perfect person to work with.

And he's like, who are you?

You're a kid?

Like, no, not interested.

But we kept pursuing and we were very persistent and eventually, eventually he did come on

board and became kind of like a life mentor of ours.

But that part of the story is not important.

Really, it's just picking up the phone and calling that was important.

Another situation I remember early on in my career, we were in a program called Kairos.

It was like a entrepreneur of society, basically they named the top 100 most innovative college

startups, which is like Forbes 30 into 30.

It kind of means nothing.

It was just people picking friends.

In fact, I think our school had no nominees and so just by default, by being the only

people to apply, we won.

So we get flown to New York, you go to the stock exchange and you get to present.

We got on CNN.

It was amazing.

During that process, we heard that there was a trip you could win if you were in that

group.

There was a trip you could win, like 20 or 30 people were going to win this, to China.

All expense paid trip to China and a courtesy of Alibaba.

I didn't know what Alibaba was at the time and we had missed the deadline to apply.

So we were not going to win and it was sort of over.

Well, I saw somebody carrying the sign for the contest and getting into the elevator

and go into the third floor.

So I said, okay, you know, hey, you know, taxi, follow that car, basically, right?

So let's follow her.

So we go into the elevator, I go to the third floor, I try to find this one and find her

and I go up to her and I say, hey, I know I missed the deadline to apply, and I just

made this up.

So I had a dream last night that I met a woman who ran the trip and I got tickets to the

trip.

I don't know how it happened, but in my dream it happened and then I saw you and you had

the sign that tell me that's not a sign and she laughed.

She's like, that's a sign.

Yeah, sure.

She goes, you know, the registration is closed.

I said, I know registration is closed, but you know, I would love to go.

I think, you know, I think I would make the trip fun for, are you going, if you're going

and I'm going, the trip's going to be fun.

Can you do it?

You have the power to make that happen, don't you?

And yeah, she did.

She made it happen.

We won an all-expense paid trip to China, went to the Alibaba headquarters, learned

what the heck Alibaba was.

I was just trying to get a free trip.

I thought that would be a fun adventure.

That ended up being extremely lucrative later because I learned about e-commerce through

Alibaba and now have an e-commerce brand because of that.

I also bought Alibaba stock and that did extremely well.

I only had a tiny amount of money, but it did super well.

So anyways, you can't predict what's going to be the result.

But the lesson I want to share is confidence to cold call somebody, confidence to go up

to a woman and say, hey, you know, I had a dream that I won, make it happen for me.

It's not confidence.

It's leaning into an adventure over and over and over again.

And the more adventurous you become, the more bulletproof you realize you are.

And that, the byproduct of that, is confidence.

Try it out.

Today, if you see an opportunity to be adventurous, lean in where you would otherwise just stay

on the sidelines.

Try it one time.

Tell me what happens.

Tweet it at me.

And trust me, this works.

If you ever want to be more confident.

This is the way to do it.

Don't focus on confidence.

Focus on adventure.

All right.

Thank you.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.