Seth Bolt, bassist of rock band NEEDTOBREATHE, and his brother Chandler, CEO of SelfPublishing.com, explain why some, but not all of your friends can be Pop-Tarts. Wait...what?Hear the Chandler brothers' full interview in Episode 30 of The Action Catalyst.
You have this phrase that you write about called forced opportunities.
Yeah. Yeah. So what I'm talking about there with the forced opportunities is I love putting myself in positions that are going to force me to really think outside of the box or they're going to force me to do stuff that I wouldn't normally do. So the example there when I ran a $100,000 business was I kind of put myself out there and decided to take this opportunity.
And then we had the training where they – it's like the initial training with the company. Basically what I did is – I went up to the CEO, the guy who was doing the presentation, and I said, hey, I have a big goal. I want to run the number one business in the country. I want it to be over $100,000. And I just kind of made a challenge and a bet with him there.
Like, I want to accomplish one of those things. When I did that, it's funny, like when you start vocalizing those things and telling, I made it a point to tell as many people as I could, because then I knew it was going to force me to deliver on that. When you're telling it to everyone you see, your mind starts telling you like, okay, I actually have to make this happen.
You know, you're going to put yourself out there to a point to where you're going to figure out ways to make it work. And when you have a specific deadline or when you have a specific number of
or a challenge that you want to hit, that's when it really becomes real, and it's either a success or a failure, but either way, you're moving forward because you're forcing yourself to be put in that situation, and it's the forced opportunity that you give yourself.
So, Seth, sort of back to you, one of the things that you said is you said your friends are like a food pyramid and the reason why all your friends can't be Pop-Tarts. Yeah, I grew up – some of your listeners may be able to relate with this. I grew up in the South and in a very conservative home, so my mom was always – super picky about my friends and who I hung out with.
I actually heard this tagline from a lot of friends, but you show me your friends and I'll show you your future. And I thought it was cool that my parents made it enough of a priority that I put good people in my life to influence me. But I actually heard that from one of those people that were influencing me.
You know, you show me your friends, I'll show you your future was sort of a good example of how even though I love to have fun, I love to laugh, I love to cut up. I've got sort of five core friends and one of those is that for me because I need that. But it's really important that I don't have five friends that are that way. I mean, it's balance. You need that in your life.
But, you know, I have my friend that I call for when I need financial advice or when I need spiritual advice or when I need advice about maybe being a better friend even to those five friends, you know, the people that strengthen me in different ways. I think that balance is key. So that's what that's about.