You don't become confident by lying to yourself because you can't bullshit your own brain. Hey, it's Brad here. It's 2026 and you're still using a tape measure and grid paper to do your drawings. That's why I'm excited to tell you about today's sponsor, iGUIDE. With the iGUIDE Planix R1 camera and laser system, you can capture an entire home in about 45 minutes. all of your measurements, photos, and a detailed floor plan all at once. No hand sketches, no guessing, no more, was that wall 10 foot or was it nine foot? Or, oh man, I forgot to measure the window offset. You just hit start and walk away. That's it. You're starting the job with accurate as-builds. And you can export straight to DXF, DWG, or RVT files so you and your team can get to work immediately. Miss something? Well, you don't have to worry about that because it's all right there in virtual land waiting for you. This is how you avoid costly mistakes. This is how you reduce change orders. And this is how you run a tighter operation. And more importantly, it's how you protect your margins. If you're serious about operating like a pro in 2026, it's time to upgrade. Go to hammerandgrind. com forward slash iGUIDE. That's I-G-U-I-D-E. to order your iGUIDE Planix R1 camera today and start running your jobs the right way. Hey, welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Brad, and today is going to be a really important podcast. And this is something that I see coming up all the time with my clients and his contractors in general. I'm going to read this here because I want to make sure I don't miss anything out of this. I was doing this ahead of the podcast. So bear with me as I read this. One of the biggest things holding people back in business and honestly in life isn't the lack of skill. It's not lack of opportunity or even a lack of work ethic or poor work ethic. It's low self-worth. It's the constant fear of being judged, fear of looking stupid, fear of failing publicly, fear of what people are going to think if you actually go for something bigger. And what most people don't even realize is that this is happening. They call it procrastination. They call it perfectionism. They call it overthinking. They say things like, I'm just waiting until the timing is better. I need to learn a little bit more first. I'm not ready yet. But really, what's actually happening is they're just scared. They're scared to post content. They're scared to raise prices. They're scared to sell. They're scared to stand out. And they're scared to be judged while trying. And what's interesting is that there's actually research around this idea. And we're going to get more into that here in a second. But there's research around thinking positive or thinking less negative. So I just wanted to read that because I wanted to make sure I didn't miss anything. So let's kind of get into this here. We got a couple different segments. The first segment is on how fear controls more than what you realize. Okay. As I said in the opening here, Fear isn't always obvious. It's not always obvious. It shows up as the procrastination, the perfectionism, all those things that I mentioned before, overthinking, avoiding content, avoiding difficult conversations, telling people that, oh, this customer isn't a good customer of mine. Now, don't get me wrong. There are bad customers out there and we want to avoid them like the plague. But many times, many times you didn't do a good job with that customer. Because you have some fear and then you sell yourself or sell it to yourself or sell it to others that this wasn't a good customer. When in reality, it was a good customer, but your fear kept you from going outside of your comfort zone. That happens a lot. And we talk about this a lot in the Profit Club. It's like you got to make sure, you know, that it was a bad customer and that you didn't just sabotage it because you have some fear that's underlying there. Back to this research I was talking about. There was research that was done once on cognitive thinking, you know, and a lot of cognitive behavioral therapists kind of referenced this study and stuff. I don't have the exact study yet, the actual like where it was done, but this was a legitimate study. Just trust me on this. The question is, what do you think is better for improving your situation? Do you think it's better to think positively? Or do you think it's better to think less negatively about yourself? So is thinking positive going to grow your self-worth? Or is thinking less negative going to grow your self-worth? What do you guys think? Just real quick, think about it. Answer to yourself. Or if you're watching this, put it in the comments right now before I answer. Go to the comments and just type it in the comments. What do you think it is before I answer? So here's what the answer is. thinking less negatively. And that may shock some of you. It's not about thinking positively. It's about thinking less negatively. You can think positive all you want. You can say positive affirmations in the morning. You can say that you're amazing and you can do I am statements and you can do all of these things that are good. They're good things to do. You know, that's positive reinforcement. All that is all good things, but you can't bullshit your own brain. If your brain doesn't think that that's true, it comes up as a lie and your brain instantly rejects that. So if you do the, what was the, uh, the SNL character, like Gary, uh, smiley or whatever, the guy that's like standing in the mirror and he's doing self affirmations. If you know what I'm talking about, he's like, I'm positive and this and this and don't gone at people like me. You can do that. You can do all those positive affirmations standing in the mirror, but your brain's going to be like, I hear you. I hear you say that you're fearless. I hear you say that you're strong and that you're confident. But your brain says, you know what? That's bullshit. Yeah, that's bullshit because we don't believe that. Because after we leave the bathroom, after we say that affirmation, the entire day we are affirming what the brain already knows. Is that, oh, I'm not actually fearless. You know, I'm not actually amazing. I just screwed up that sales call. Man, I can't believe I said that. Oh my gosh, I did this. And, you know, the guys did something wrong and I jumped at them and I shouldn't have done that. And like all we do all day is just beat ourselves up. We just beat ourselves up all day long. We don't even like half the time forgive ourselves. We don't even give ourselves permission to actually make mistakes. which is by the way, human nature, everyone makes mistakes. And so the brain's like, no, I don't believe you when you say that you're fearless and that you're confident and all this stuff, because you just gave me 50 instances just today where you said we're worthless, we suck, we don't know what we're doing, whatever it is. And a lot of times it's subconsciously, you don't even realize you're doing it. The talk in your head, the self-talk, that's what that's happening. A lot of times because we've done it so long and it's so programmed in our brain, we don't even realize we're doing it, but we are. And all that's doing is reaffirming the negative. So less negative talk is what actually helps you become more positive and have a higher self-worth. You can't overdo, you know, if I came up to you and I smacked you in the face, right? You'd be shocked. Like, what the hell? What are you doing? And I said, oh, I'm sorry. you know, you're a good person and I really like you. Does that make any sense? Like you're still pissed off because I smacked you, but me saying a positive affirmation or something positive to you doesn't remove the pain of me smacking you in the face. The pain is still there. And I can say it as much. Oh man, you're so great. You're so awesome. And then boom, I smack you in the face again. Right. You're going to be like, what is, what is happening here? What are you doing? Right. Like, why are you smacking me? But you're so amazing. I mean, you're such a great person. You're such a great dad and a great husband, a great business owner. Look how awesome you are. Bam, I smack you in the face again. No matter what I say to you positively, the only thing you're focused on is why in the hell is he smacking me in the face? And that hurts. That's what's happening psychologically, subconsciously. You're trying to override pain, negative thoughts with positive affirmations, and it doesn't remove the pain. It doesn't remove the negativeness. Is there a word negativeness? I don't know. Sounds good. Let's go with it. So that's what I'm talking about. Like you, it's negative, negative. I can't even talk now. Negative. All right. Reset. Leave this in to Laura. Leave us in because this is funny. It's the bloopers reel. My editor sometimes edits out some stuff like that. I'm like, no, leave it in there. All right. Shows up as procrastination, perfectionism, waiting until they're ready. Stuff like that. Right. they're not physically stuck, they're mentally trapped. So you can't go from I'm going to fail to I'm unstoppable. That's when your brain's like, no, come on, dude, seriously, you just said a while ago that you're such a failure. I can't believe I'm such a failure. Now you're going to tell me you're unstoppable. I don't believe you. Right? So it discredits all of the positive that you're doing. Your brain rejects the fake positivity, which I just said. and doesn't believe what you're saying. The real goal is reducing the self-doubt, the self-criticism, the catastrophic thinking, right? Most people don't fail because they can't do something. They fail because they're scared to be judged while trying. Let me tell you something right now. You do not have to be perfect for your employees or for your customers. Nobody expects you to be absolutely perfect all the time. Matter of fact, when you try to be perfect is when you actually come across as not being genuine. It has the reverse of impact that you're trying to create. Confidence isn't, I never make a mistake. That's not confidence. Confidence is, I made a mistake, I learned from that, and now I use it and improve myself and move on without letting it keep me back. That's confidence. Making a mistake has nothing to do with confidence or being a failure or anything. The only time that you're truly a failure is when you quit doing something. And I don't mean like failure as in you're like a terrible person. I just mean you failed at that task, right? So as long as you make mistakes, you can make 10,000 mistakes. But if you never quit, you're not a failure. A mistake is not a failure. Quitting is failure. You guys need to really, I'm beating this like a dead horse because you have to understand this. I see this every single day. Even people in the profit club, even clients that have had major success, major success. They've made lots of money. They got off the tools. They've hired people. They built systems. They have a business that's running really well. They still have this problem because it doesn't go away. You have to stay on top of it. It's very easy. You get hurt. right? I got tennis elbow right now, my left arm. I don't know how, just got tennis elbow. Hurts like hell. I can't lift. I can't do, I really can't even do hardly any lifting because it hurts so bad. When that happens, you kind of stop lifting, right? You stop going to the gym, you stop exercising, you stop doing some of this stuff. And then that kind of knocks you out of your routine. And then you start sleeping a little bit later because you can't go to the gym and blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden, a month later, You've gone down this rabbit hole and you're back where you were six months ago because it doesn't take very long to undo everything that you've done. You have to stay in a constant state of alert. This is why community is so absolutely important. Having a strong community around you is what keeps you from getting back into the woe is me mentality. You know, we have, and this is what I love about my community. We have guys that are posting like, hey man, I'm struggling right now. Like. We just had a fantastic two months and all of a sudden a lead stopped coming in and now I'm feeling a little scared. I'm nervous. I'm worried we're not going to have enough work trying to keep the guys busy. We're having real talk, real conversations, real emotions, raw, unfiltered talk and emotions. And people in the community are there to help them lift them up. Not with fake positivity, but with real examples and real talk. Right? That's why the community is so important. But I'm not here to promote the community. I'm just saying, if you live in a silo, if you live on an island, and you have negative self-talk, you are fighting a battle that you can't win. No matter how many books you read, how many videos you watch, how many of my podcasts you listen to, it doesn't matter. If you try and go about it alone, you will probably never win. Every great successful person on this earth has done it with a team of people, a team of supporters, a team of employees, a team of strategic partners. They all do it with team, with help. They don't go and do it alone. Michael Jordan had a team of experts and trainers and people to help him. Elon Musk doesn't build rockets by himself. He has a team that helps him. You have to get to this mindset of like, this is your ego, by the way, when you're like, I can figure it out. Let me put my name on the business so I can prove everyone that I'm awesome and I'll do it all by myself. And more times than not, those people fail. By the way, that's why you should never put your name in your business because when you do fail, then it makes you look like a failure because you actually failed because you actually quit. I mean, seven out of 10 businesses fail. I mean, I just, I digress. I mean, I say it all the time. People still do it. So this is what's happening with... Your brain, your fear is what's controlling you. Okay. Your fear is controlling you. So how does this show up with low self-worth? How does it show up financially? When you have low self-worth, which is what is the byproduct of fear. Okay. When you have low self-worth, you start undercharging because you don't fully believe in your value. You're discounting to avoid rejection. You're discounting to avoid rejection. you need the job. But because at the root problem, you're scared of rejection. When I talk to client, when I talk to contractors, and they go, or I see them on Facebook, whatever, it's just like, man, I got to sell every job that comes in. That is fear manifesting itself big time. When you think you have to sell every single job, that's because you have a fear of rejection. And you can argue with me all you want. But deep down inside, you don't want to be rejected. So by winning, you are avoiding the rejection part of it, right? Now, some of you say that's competitiveness. Well, I would argue with you that super competitive people are actually overcompensating because they have a real fear of losing. So they go out and they just overcompensate and they become super competitive and they realize that that works. Like when I'm super competitive, I win and that works and it helps me get farther in life. But deep down inside, they're struggling. They're struggling. I'm not talking about being competitive. I'm talking about being super competitive. Those are different, right? Being competitive, there's nothing wrong with that. Being super competitive, you're trying to prove to yourself that you're worthy. So you discount because you're trying to avoid rejection. You let clients disrespect boundaries. Oh, man. I could do a whole podcast on this one topic. All the time, I see you guys letting your clients dictate the rules, telling you what to do. violating your boundaries, either one, because you didn't set any or two, because you're a pushover. This is the proverbial right here. When I hear people say, you know, when you get on the job and the customer comes and says, hey, Brad, while you're here, would you mind doing this? And then you go and do it because, quote, you're a nice guy, right? I'm doing air quotes. You're a nice guy because you want to make them happy. All of that. That whole train of thought, that whole mindset is from a low self-worth. It's not because you're being, you know, that's not providing value. That's not helping the client. That's not that, well, if I do this now, they're going to like me and then they'll hire me again and do more work. That's all low self-worth manifesting itself in those situations. You know, when a client comes to me in a job and they say, hey, Brad, while you're here, would you be able to take care of this, you know, fix this door that's not closing properly? And you know what my response is? Yeah, absolutely. Let me take a look at it and get you a price on what it would cost. That's it. And usually like, oh, okay, you can't just fix it while you're here? Well, yeah, we can fix it while we're here, but let me tell you what, you know, figure out how long it's going to take and what it's going to cost. That's it. There's nothing else that has to be done. But the ones that are people pleasers, aka low self-worth, they will do it because they're afraid of telling them. know or telling them, I have to charge you. So they're avoiding the whole situation, the conflict, if you will. They're avoiding the whole possibility of conflict by just giving in and doing it. That is a low self-worth problem. That's a fear problem. If you do those things and you say, no, that's not true, Brad. I don't have low self-worth. I'm very confident. You're lying. You're a liar. I'm calling you a liar to your face. And if that pisses you off, good. Go prove me wrong. I dare you to prove me wrong. I want you to. I tell people all the time. I had a guy message me yesterday, email me. He said, hey, I'm building this new platform for contractors and people to be able to find apprentices and for apprentices to find job. Another app. Basically, it's another job board app, right? With some other benefits. And he says, can you take a look at it for me and tell me what you think? I did. I looked at it. Very well designed, very well designed, but nobody's going to use the app because of these problems, right? And so I wrote out a very long email of like, not a negative email, but just like, this is what I see happening and what's happened in the past. And this is what I would recommend and blah, blah, blah. But basically said, you know, I wouldn't use this app and I wouldn't recommend it to my clients based on the current setup of it. And you know what he said? He said, thank you. Thank you for the feedback. I really appreciate it. And I told him in that email, I said, If you go and build this app and you have success with it, please come back and tell me I was wrong. And I mean that. I want you guys to prove me wrong. You know why? Because if you do, it's because you went out there and busted your ass and you did something. I'm happy to be wrong. I'm very happy to be wrong. And I don't like being wrong. I like being right all the time. I'm just being honest with you. I like being right. but I like being proven wrong with real facts and real evidence, not your emotions, right? If you say, well, that's not true, Brad. That's not true about me because, you know, I always work hard. That's not evidence. That's not evidence. I'm sorry. You know, or I always tell myself, I don't ever think that I, you know, I have low self-worth. You know, I always think highly of myself. That's not evidence. That's you lying to yourself and that's you lying to me trying to prove to me, which I know is true. And you're trying to prove it to me and yourself. If you have high confidence and high self-worth, you don't even care. Like you truly don't care what people think. You don't care what the client thinks. Now don't get confused with bad customer service. That's not what we're talking about here. You can have great customer service and not care about their feelings or what people think about you at the exact same time. You can have both. They're not, they're not, they don't, they don't go together, right? Because you don't care doesn't mean you have bad customer service. That's not what we're talking about here. People with low self-worth constantly rehearse negative outcomes. Now, back to me telling you, and you're going to say I'm a liar. Have you ever, ever got a lead, right? And you look at the location, the zip code, or you talk to them and find out where they live. or there's something about them, you get some piece of information, they tell you like, hey, I'm a single mom and I don't have a lot of money, but I need to have my bathroom remodeled. If you have any of that information and you instantly think to yourself, they'll think that I'm too expensive. That is a negative thinking pattern. Do you understand what I'm saying here? That's a negative thinking pattern. They'll think I'm too expensive. You're telling your brain, brain. Anytime that we talk to someone that meets this criteria that we made up out of thin air, then I instantly want you to be the default answer to think they're too expensive. So whenever I go and sell them, please make sure I sabotage the entire conversation. Because the whole time I'm there talking to them, I'm going to be talking down to them and I'm going to be thinking this is a complete waste of my time and you're not actually going to provide any value. And then when you don't get the job, you're going to say, see, see what I say. They'll think I'm too expensive. In reality, they just thought you were a dickhead and they didn't want to hire you. This happens all the time. I've had people in poor, poor, poor areas hire me to do a kitchen remodel in a piece of crap house and I was premium price. And the thought did come up like, I don't know if these people are going to hire me. We do premium stuff and this is not really what we do. Not in a negative way, but just kind of like in a shocked way. And they hired me and I did the work. So one of the things I tell all my clients is like, don't assume anything. Don't ever assume anything because a lot of times your assumptions are negative self-talk that you're injecting into your brain. They won't hire me. You know, things like that. Oh, this job is like, I've never built a built-in fireplace before. I don't think I'm capable of doing that. I don't think I'm good enough to do that. I can't help you with your job because I don't know how to do that. You know how many jobs I've done I've never done before, but I'm confident in my skills. And I tell the client, well, you know, I've actually never built a fireplace before, but I'm happy to do it. And if I screw it up, I'll give you your money back. But I'm pretty confident we're going to get it done right. And then we go, and maybe it takes me a little bit longer than I thought because I'd never done it before. But at the end, it looks amazing and the customer is so happy. Like that's the difference between like being confident and... you know, having this negative thought and low self-worth of like, oh, I can't do that. If I screw that up, man, it's going to be really bad. You have to have confidence in your ability to fix mistakes. You have to have confidence in your ability to fix the mistakes, not confidence that you're not going to make any mistakes. That's where a lot of you get tripped up. That's where some of that procrastination and analysis paralysis comes and perfectionism is because you don't want to make a mistake. So you're confident that you can avoid the mistake by not doing it. Your confidence is, I just won't do it. Therefore, I can't make a mistake. Right? And then we lie to ourselves like, oh, I don't do that stuff because that's out of my wheelhouse. Or, you know, I'm too busy. I'm too busy to do this other project. Those are all lies because you're not confident you can do the work and you don't want to make any mistakes. And so therefore you avoid it. Right? Confidence is making mistakes and being able to fix it and move forward. It's not make, it's not, the confidence is not making any mistakes. That's a lie. Everyone makes mistakes. I make mistakes every single day. So do you. Why do we pretend like we don't make mistakes? It's dumb. It's just insane. The problem usually isn't reality. Okay. How many times have you, I do this. This is one of my, this is like one of my negative things that I do. I'll have an interaction, like say a conversation. And when it's over, whether it's a good, like good or bad, like positive or negative, it doesn't matter what the outcome of the conversation was. If I feel like I didn't accomplish what I wanted to accomplish in the conversation for the next two days, I'll replay that conversation in my head 10,000 times. Oh, I should have said this there and I should have done this. And it would have been awesome if I reply with it. That's that's that is actually like insecurity. right? I.E. low self-worth fear. Like that's how some of that manifests in me is like, I'll, I'll just drill down on this conversation over and over and over and over again. I should have done this. I should have said that. Right. So I'm not, I'm not without fault. Like again, I told you this a hundred times, everything I say in this podcast, I either struggle with or do or have done. I'm not immune to any of this.
