How to Create Change as a Zen Hustler • Interview Part II with Steve Napolitan

---

In this interview learn more from Steve Napolitan on what makes change possible in life. Steve lives and breathes the ZEN Hustlers life and work style perfectly.

Below is the full video transcript from our video interview, enjoy!

Steve: What makes change possible is really within ourselves, I would say 97% of changes inside of ourselves. So if you're not ready for change, and there's lots of different reasons that we become ready for change, I always look for three things in anyone to see if they're good fit for like my Mentorship Program, or any of our programs.

“97% of changes inside of ourselves”

Do you want change or more in your life? Now seems like a silly question because you think everyone does. But you have to.. like really look in the eye and say, do I really want this change, because if you don't, there's no drive, right. And so some people get stuck on that, they just don't have enough drive. They're like, life's okay. And that's why some people talk about that middle road, you know, like, it's, you know, Good to Great, like Jim Collins read that book, a lot of people get stuck in Good because it's just like good enough. And they don't have a real drive to go to be great. Some people want to be great, and they want to go to that next level. So it's just got to be an indicator, and that's just up to you. But if you want that, if you have a burning desire for more change, good candidate.

Number two, you have to be willing to take action. Just because I'm living life and I work a heck of a lot less hours doesn't mean I'm inactive. I like laser focus on I'll do like a power for hours. And then I'll spend the rest of the day with my family. Right. So you can design how you want but you have to take action if you take zero action. And that dream or desire is going to be year after year sitting there on your list.

Third to be coachable. If you're not willing. So people get stuck in all these right? So they have the gym or desire, but they don't want to make movement, but they only want to do it their way. And then that's what then then they get stuck again, because they're not coachable to get outside advice. I'm okay to know when I'm meant to lead. And when I'm meant to follow fact, I'm a student and a teacher right now in this life. If you don't have those three things, then then then change doesn't really happen. We have to change the discussion because you know, especially in America, but it is worldwide, like a lot of especially like if you go into Asia, they work even harder than Americans. But this whole thing of grinding, never stopping. You know, it's actually a poison in our life. But I choose a different path because of a lot of reasons.

“But this whole thing of grinding, never stopping. You know, it’s actually poison in your life.”

One, if you don't allow yourself to recover, you're going to get sick. And I did from 19 to 31, I did exactly that recipe I listened to everyone else. I did no pain, no gain. If it didn't hurt, I thought it was going the wrong way. Like I was actually making choices to go towards the pain. And to the point where I was having heart palpitations got home, and I got on the couch. And I'm like, I think I told my wife, I think you have to take me to the hospital. I think I'm having a heart attack. It was it was luckily it was an anxiety attack. But I felt like my heart was coming on my chest. I was 260 pounds plus plus I stopped weighing myself once I hit 260. So total different look unhealthy, not sleeping well drinking coffee all day long. So I can grind and then not sleeping well because of that. And then I lost millions of dollars, millions of dollars. I lost good people, I lost staff members, I lost clients. I made poor decisions. But the reality now is that I'm rested. If we don't recover, just think of us as a battery. But you know, it's more valuable than time, energy.

“But you know, what’s more valuable than time... energy!”

Energy, if you don't have energy, who cares how much time you have if you're sick and bed if I put myself in the hospital, which was about to do, right? What if I kill myself or I'm not even even when I was home, I was collapsed. What kind of father would I be I was I was an asshole to I was so tired. And I look at it. I'm not a mean person. I'm a totally loving person, I want to have a lot of friends, I've always had a lot of friends. But then I know I could look back how mean I was. But it was because I'm tired thing about when you're tired, you're irritable. So I know I said things I didn't want to say, I finally decided that I was going to slow down. And I even told myself, it's okay if I make less money or if my business grows slower. And you know what's happened, I grew my business faster, I made more money than I ever have. Like in my whole life. This all came from me thinking differently, not grinding.

When you want to make change, you have to just have new new thought and new actions. So if you read a book, then what actions are you going to take?

If you go to a workshop?

What actions are you going to take?

If you get a mentor?

What actions are you going to take?

You know another misconception is like everyone says have multiple streams of income. And I think that caused me so much pain was I went for multiple streams right away, you know, not very few people teach build one stream. And then once that so build the next one you want change in your life, the next action step to do is to pick one thing, what's the thing that hurts the most in your life? What's the thing that bugs the crap out of you? What's the thing that's not working? What where are you like putting effort? It's not changing? And then focus on that. So then you can search?

Who knows anything about this one situation?

What books are out?

What workshops can I go to?

Who can I meet, you pick the one thing so if you read a book, what's the one thing that doesn't mean that you're not going to highlight a whole bunch of things, but just pick the one thing, go do it. Once you accomplish that, go back to the book and say what was the second thing, go do that only pick one thing.

Otherwise, you're going to overwhelm yourself again, anything outside of that I need to eliminate delegate or automate needs to either be eliminated delegate or automate. And those are really the three things. So whenever you take your your to do list, like whatever you've got going on, and you're maybe overwhelmed, you have too many things that you have to look at the list and say…

What can I eliminate?

What can I delegate?

What can I automate?

And you're like, why didn't know delegate that, you know, two months ago, but for whatever reason, I thought I was the only one that can do it. But if you keep asking yourself, and then you get things away, so how do you start having multiple streams of income? Or how do you have multiple things going on multiple projects, is you get one built, and then 90%. That's my goal 90% of is done by others. So either we eliminated the fat, we delegated or we automated it. So you definitely made a machine that's working without you, then you start creating the next one. And you can just give them money and hire the whole team and automate the whole thing and just sit back. So at one point, you can have that luxury. But right now if you're built a builder, you need to do one thing at a time. And you need to look at what can you eliminate, what can you delegate, what can you automate?

If you don't have what you want choose? Again, like life is about choice. I think the thing if you want to ask yourself, if you want changing your life, then then do it. Choice is the word that I want you to think about. We all have to choice, choose, then you take what you get. And then you choose again. Now take what you get, is it literal, because sometimes you make the choice, and it doesn't come exactly where we wanted it. And then we actually push it away, we resist it. We're like, that's not what I wanted. And then that stops us. So then we don't make the next choice.

“Life is all about choice.”

But life is about momentum. And that's why my tagline is choose gratitude, create freedom. So in choice, we choose something, we take what we get and find gratitude. And no matter what it is, even if it's the result we didn't want, even if it if it was something that was negative in our mind, we find the gratitude. And once you do that, then it allows you to empower yourself to choose again, you want momentum in your life, you just keep choosing. And we all have to realize it's our choice, if you don't have what you want in your life. Don't blame anyone else. Because again, that's putting your energy out. Remember, I'm big on energy, when you blame you're putting your energy. So bring it all in. Even if it hurts, it's hard to look in the mirror and say that was me, I chose that or that was my fault. It's easier to say it's their fault. It's my computer's fault. It's all that but then you're letting your energy out of your life. Choose whatever comes your way, find what your what is meant to be grateful from learn from it, and choosing it. And if you create that circle, momentum comes into your life, that's unbelievable, be beyond what you ever thought you could have.

“Choose gratitude, create freedom!”

One of the big things that made a change in my business was being able to do business development and sales at a much rapid pace, not having to spend weeks or months getting in rapport. This is what the investors, this is what sales, whatever it is, because as an entrepreneur, we end up becoming the top salesperson and we're running the company. So you're working full time to have your sales and you're working full time to run the company. And that's 80 hours plus a week, right? So what I was doing what I loved, I needed to shrink down my business development and sales. So how I did that is I created a way that I was communicating at a higher level because what is sales? It's all communication. So how do we actually hit the points, so we make matches so much faster, I would go in where people were spending six months trying to make a sale and in 90 minutes, I was able to close deals.

It's all based on our language. So what I've done is I've created a thing called Survey To Success. And then in there, I tell you the way that you can ask the right questions, get the right information, and then deliver it in the way that's going to actually make the communication happen. So what I do is if you text in, Survey the word Survey to 720-00.

Then I'm going to give you a PDF on exactly the questions that I asked it speed up marketing. And then I'm going to give you five videos about how I utilize this one a day. And then after that, you'll get my show every week, because I really believe people should have a better life. And if you actually take action with these things, you can grow your business so much faster in less time, and be able to do what you love, not focus so much on having to do the same of the marketing. But what if you make six calls to the right, wow clients, I call them wow clients. So beyond your target marketing, like super Wow, client, two out of three of those are going to work with me. And I choose like usually that third one is me saying, hey, this isn't the right fit. But if you actually have a conversation and you ask the right questions, then you can actually figure out if it's a match, like immediately, and I see it and if I see it's a match, I can communicate clearly to that person. And then we have a deal. Because you're in so much integrity, you're willing to turn their money down, they actually can become an amazing referral source. Because they're like, oh, that's what Steve does. You know, and even though they didn't, they didn't work with me, right? So that's why, if you want these questions that I use, then you know, grab it survey, you text Survey to 720-00

“Get the free Survey to Success doc, text ‘Survey’ to 720-00”

So I just want to thank you so much for watching tremendous gratitude. And the reason for that is, if you're watching this video, you you're looking for new ways to do things, how not to grind so much and have more in your life. And that that actually makes me super excited. Because in order to make this change in the world, we need more of us. So I hope you got value from this. And I invite you to connect with me on social media, any which way my team and myself are active on there. And we're here to help because we truly want to change the way we live and work forever.

Jared: Everybody. I want to thank my friend Steve, I saw him speak at a C-suite enterprise, an event and he inspired me so much that I thought he is living the Zen Hustlers life. This guy embodies it, he embodies the business side of being hyper-productive and efficient, and also the mindfulness of Zen lifestyle. So if you want to seek out Steve, I'll put a link to his website. It's guys really my new mentor and I just want to thank you for being on the Zen hustlers platform. And feel free to reach out to Steve and find out more about his business. Thanks

Video transcription by otter.ai

---

Are you living the Zen Hustlers life?

Contact us for an interview request!