Only once you’ve eliminated all your self-limiting beliefs, that’s when you can move beyond the excuses that hold you back. People who are struggling to find their purpose in life are too afraid to take the leap. If you hate your job, quit it and find something that you enjoy. Pursue your hobbies and stop making reasons for why you can’t pursue that hobby. Remove your self-limiting beliefs with your host Dr. Kim Grimes as she talks to Dennis Yu and Alex Carl about forgetting about your excuses and just focusing on what you want to do. Dennis Yu is a digital marketer and agency builder. He is the Chief Technology Officer of BlitzMetrics and host of the CoachYu Show. While Alex Carl is one of Dennis’s students. He recently quit his job to be an entrepreneur. Listen to their stories on how to remove those excuses, those limiting beliefs so that you can find your purpose. Start pursuing what you love today!
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Watch the episode here
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Moving Beyond Excuses That Hold You Back Part 6: Eliminating Your Limiting Beliefs With Dennis Yu And Alex Carl
Our topic is moving beyond excuses that hold you back. This is a series. I want to get different perspectives so that we can reach as many individuals as possible with this show. Let me remind all the readers what it is that we are talking about. It is easy for us to deceive ourselves. I always say, “The easiest person to deceive is the person in the mirror.”
Deceiving ourselves is another way of saying we are lying to ourselves. We are good at catching other people when they are lying but what we are not good at is catching ourselves when we are lying. One of the reasons why we are so good at deceiving ourselves is that we don’t call a lie a lie. We don’t say that we are lying to ourselves. Instead, we make up or recreate excuses. We disguise our excuses as reasons because we want to be seen as reasonable. What do we do? We dignify the lies we say to ourselves by calling them reasons.
We come up with thousands of reasons why we should be doing what we should do, why we can’t encourage ourselves or why we don’t love ourselves. Those are the reasons behind why we are telling ourselves that we are not worthy or we don’t know our value. We dignify these reasons. It’s because of that that we stay stuck instead of being open and honest with ourselves.
Reasons are masquerade excuses, and excuses are limiting beliefs. What are those excuses that are keeping you from having a face-to-face with yourself? What are those excuses for facing yourself? It’s easy to find a reason and excuse. It’s easy not to tell the truth to yourself. That’s why we are having this discussion. That’s what it’s all about.
The excuses that you have that are holding you back and keeping you from moving forward in life, what are those excuses? What have you created? What have you told yourself? How come you are not moving forward in school, your career or your job? How come you are not living your dreams? Why are you stuck in toxic relationships? We can spit out all the excuses, attempt to save face, and shift blame but we know better.
Let’s jump into our discussion. We are going to share some steps, guides, and intricate details on how we can move forward beyond the excuses that hold us back. I have a phenomenal guest here. I can’t wait for you to meet him. Before I jump in, I need to share this with you because sometimes, it’s better to show you something instead of saying it. Let me show you this video real quick.
“I love seeing the light bulb go off. You see a student that is struggling and frustrated but then after a few tries, maybe with a little bit of mentoring from other people like their team lead or someone like me, they get it and do it over and over again. You see them start to make money because they’re doing it in the real world with clients that are paying for this execution, making money for these plans. The thing that warms my heart is when I see these young adults train up other people that help them turn their light bulb on. That means everything.”
“We are getting talent that’s raw and undeveloped. We are building it up through these different levels. Think about how much-wasted talent there is of these kids that are working at pizza for $9.10 an hour. You give them a little bit of training to do things like setting up a pixel, boosting posts, setting up remarketing it. Is does really hard to do? It’s not hard to do. You could probably train someone through one of the courses that we have right here at DM to know how to do that. All of a sudden, that person’s worth 5 times or 10 times now, that’s what we are doing.”
“We create jobs for young adults through mentorship, and we teach them digital marketing. This is what an apprenticeship is where people adctually learning and doing, and it complements the school system. What’s cool is that when you can tie the passion that these kids have, it could be the Golden State Warriors, where they are like languages. We work with Rosetta Stone. They are able to do something that they love, and the employers are able to test out digital marketing staff that’s following processes. It’s not like social media posting kind of stuff but driving direct revenue off of social.”
“We work closely with colleges. We have a lot of companies that we work with. We work with a lot of businesses as well. All of these ties together. You should be able to walk away from your job for three months or your business and come back to it and have it be as good or better than it was before. If you can’t, then you’re an employee. The key to doing that is to hire virtual assistants but you can’t just hire people. You have to have a process that you are hiring them into. You have to have a business model where these people that you are hiring are trained up and are able to execute tasks with reliability and competency. I’m going to talk about how you do that and all of these pieces together.”
“When I was in high school, I was one of those Asians that always wanted to get the 4.0 GPA. That’s called the paper tiger, where you get A’s. I remember one professor pulled me aside and said, “You might be barking at the wrong tree because while you might be getting the A’s, you are missing the bigger picture, which is about building relationships. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to understand how to do things that are not measured on a paper or in your GPA.”
“I have learned this the hard way because I wanted to go work for Nike. I applied and I had one of the fastest times in the world. When I was 14, I ran a marathon for 103 hours. I even went to the Louvre to see the Nike got us a victory like a statue. It wasn’t until I had a mentor Al Casey, who is the CEO of American Airlines. He also pulled me aside and said, “Dennis, it’s about who you know, and not what you know and about who knows you.” That made such an impact on me of mentors that were opening doors for me.”
“That could see around my own blind spots. No matter how hard I work, no matter how smart I was, can still critical to have a mentor that can tell you about these things. I thought, “How can I replicate that experience so that thousands or hundreds of thousands of other young adults could also benefit from mentorship in a way that I did?” Every bit of success I have ever had is not because I’m smart or anything like that. It’s because a mentor has opened doors for me.”
This is my guest. I have a little bit more that I want to share with you. By now, you all know that I’m talking about Dennis Yu. He is a former Yahoo search engine engineer who optimizes ads and analytics across search and social platforms. He’s taking his passion for digital marketing and turning it into training to create good jobs for aspiring digital marketers.
Dennis’ personal mission centered around mentorship. He teaches from experience, helping people from all walks of life grow their experience in digital marketing. “I’m on a mission. A mission to create millions of jobs,” he said. Dennis believes that training should be open to everyone willing to put in the effort, no matter what stage in life they are or how much money they have.
Dennis has been building brands and teaching marketing for over thirteen years. He specializes in helping young adults grow into leaders of tomorrow by confidently developing their marketing skills through training programs and seminars with enterprise clients, such as Golden State Warriors, Nike, and Rosetta Stone.
He said, “None of these works would be possible without the generous support of partners that he has,” such as DigitalMarketer, Social Media Examiner, Fiverr, GoDaddy, Keap, who used to be Infusionsoft for those old school, Omniconvert, OnlineJobs.ph, Tom Ferry, Barry Habib, and others who believe in training up millions of digital marketing professionals.
Dennis has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, CNN, CBS Evening News, and he also co-authored Facebook Nation, a textbook that taught in over 700 colleges and universities. Dennis is also the inventor of the 9 Triangles Framework, which partners with schools to train young adults.
He held leadership positions at Yahoo and American Airlines. He ran collegiate cross country at SMU, and he told me what that stood for. I know that now I’m jacked up. I’m going to let him tell you. He completed over twenty marathons, including a 70-mile ultramarathon. Dennis has flown over 5 million miles in the last couple of years. He has given over 730 professional speeches and counting. He hosts his own podcast called CoachYu. Dennis is also the CEO and Founder of BlitzMetrics. Please help me welcome my friend, my brother from another mother, my mentor, and coach, Dennis Yu.
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Welcome, Dennis. It is a pleasure to have you.
Thank you, Dr. Kim. It’s a huge honor to be on your show. We get to add that to the list.
Thank you. Please do me the honors to introduce Alex Carl.
Mr. Carl here is someone that all young adults should look at because he just quit his job. He’s making $20 an hour in Amazon with a great job. He’s an entrepreneur like a lot of us. He didn’t realize, except with his friends like me, Austin, and Maddie saying, “You should jump headfirst into entrepreneurship.” It’s funny because you will see people like Alex who are very talented but they didn’t have the mentorship and that little direction like what you provided. He’s here to share from that angle as well. There’s a difference between people like you and me who have already made it in some sense versus other people going through that journey. I love seeing it from other perspectives. I love having Alex here.
I am blessed by your presence, Alex. Thank you so much for saying yes when you stood on that edge, and you were like, “Should I or should I not?” Thank you so much for saying yes to Dennis. Thank you most of all for saying yes to the future, and because of that, your life will change forever. I know it like I know my middle name. I want to take a moment to acknowledge you and welcome you to the show.
Normally, what we do is I will ask my guests, “How did we meet?” Dennis, I have to share this with our audience because this was truly a divine intervention for me. You may or may not see it but this is what happened. I don’t know if I laid this out to you before. I want everyone to know how I met you. Not only that, the way we met speaks to your authenticity, genuineness, and who you are. What is so amazing about you is that you show up like this every time I meet you. I had the opportunity to meet you in person. There was no difference. This is who you are, and I love it.
Your time is everything, and when you put your value on that, you feel that you're worth more. Share on XHere’s how I met Dennis. It was in February 2021. I had watched Dennis on a video from DigitalMarketer. They had training. He had a video that talked about one-minute videos. I went through watched them. I remember paying attention to him but also, I remember saying to myself, “I would love to meet him.” That was my silent prayer, and I let it be and let it go.
After I did the training, I went online and looked at his website. I saw some offerings that he had that I was interested in. I signed up for them. I’m not even expecting to interact with him at all. The little chat box popped up. I’m thinking it’s a bot like someone is manning this. I typed in it a question. I’ve got an instant response. Dennis’ face was there. I was like, “Okay.” I asked another question, and he responded again. I was like, “This is actually Dennis Yu.” He made sure that I knew it was Dennis Yu. I was like, “My gosh.”
There was something that was said to me. Dennis had no clue that this was mentioned to me. It was about what I’m doing, rebranding, walking in my greatness, and all of it is a marathon and not a sprint. Dennis did not have any indication whatsoever that this was something that was said to me months prior. In my communication with him, I asked him a question. I can’t recall the question but his response was, “Kim, this is a marathon, not a sprint.” Dennis didn’t see it but I lost it. I knew right then and there. This was an answer to a prayer. This was a divine connection.
When Dennis said, “Do this,” I was doing it. I was like, “God, you heard my prayer.” That’s how we met. He is so personal and real. He helps you to be who you are. That’s why I’m saying, Alex, “Do you have goosebumps?” That was the reason why I said what I said because this is what I know about the man that you are sitting next to. That’s how we met. Since then, we have been communicating. He’s my mentor and coach. I follow in his footsteps. I say that every good leader must be a good follower. I’m a good leader. I want to say that but I am following in his footsteps.
Let’s have this conversation because I wanted all my readers to know how I met such a phenomenal person like you. It wasn’t my doing at all. It was a simple prayer. It came true, and I’m owning it. Thank you again for being on the show. Let me ask this question. What does it mean to you to be you unapologetically? Dennis, you go ahead and answer. Alex, you jump right in after him.
Being you is two things. One is you have to eliminate a lot of the doubts and fears, which aren’t you. Shedding those things that are limiting self-beliefs that cause people to say no because they don’t feel they are worthy prevent a lot of people from great things that could be happening in their lives. The other side of that coin is you have to believe in what other people have to say about you. There are a lot of people that support you.
That’s the best way to know who you are is to ask your friends, “What is your skill? What is the thing that you should be doing? What is the encouragement?” A lot of us are going to reject that because when somebody gives you a compliment, a lot of people will say, “No, it was nothing. That’s not a big deal.” I found that I have had a lot of opportunities that I threw away because I was holding onto that negative piece, which later I discovered wasn’t me. Therefore, I discounted myself because I thought maybe it would be pompous or I would fail.
I will give you an example. Many years ago, the folks at Raytheon, which is a multibillion-dollar defense contractor said, “Can you build the intranet for our company?” At first, I thought, “No, I don’t want to do that. This is a huge company. I don’t think I’m good enough at building websites to take on a client like that,” but then I thought, “I will take it because I have built a lot of big websites.” Back then, the internet wasn’t anything. It’s easy to build a website. Guess how much I charge them for the website. I gave them an hourly rate. I’m one of the top people in the world in building websites. How much do you think I charged them per hour?
I would say minimum wage, $20.
The number is $20. I charged them $20 an hour. Other mentors of mine said, “You’ve got to build at least $150 to $200 an hour.” I did the math on that, and I thought, “For $200, I could buy 200 Big Macs. There’s no way anything I could do is worth that much.” Imagine how much food you could buy for $200 even at a nice restaurant. You could buy a bicycle back then for $200. That was because I didn’t believe in the talent that I had, even though I had friends that said so. There were these fears inside my mind that said, “You are not worth it. You shouldn’t take that on. It’s going to be a failure. You should do something else.”
Your time is everything. When you put value into your own time, you have value to yourself, and you feel worth more.
He’s got the same situation. How much money were you making at this job?
If you have a goal that you believe in strong enough, then the excuses just disappear. Share on XI never made great money but it was $20 an hour. It was hard work. I worked in interior design. I worked as a home designer. I would go out to people’s homes. I would spend time when I wasn’t at work working. At that, I was being paid $17 an hour. At the end of the day, I would sell $50,000 worth of furniture and be walking away with $17 in that hour.
I said to myself, “I can make a name for myself. I can go out there on my own.” I have a big corporation behind my back working for the company but I figured I would take the risk, go for my own, make a name for myself, and have value in myself. I started at Amazon to build and have some startup money, and I will go from there. It’s all still in the works.
Thank you so much for sharing that, Alex. I don’t want you to feel like you are on the spot. I want you to be Alex like when you hang in with your friends and they say, “Alex, what’s up with this?” You can come right back with an answer and that’s what I want you to do. It is about doing some self-examination and seeing who we are and how we are showing up because, Dennis, what you shared was how you were showing up then because you did not know. Even though you have friends who told you some things, what you did not know was what you needed to know about yourself. That required you to do some work. Share with us how you are able to navigate around pushing beyond excuses, masquerading reasons or unbelief.
If you have a goal that you believe in strong enough, then the excuses disappear like the hot knife going through butter. One of my dreams was I wanted to run a 4-minute mile. I wanted to run the D1 track. That voice inside my head said, “You will never do it. You are 4’11”, and not born as an athlete.” My parents told me I wasn’t ever going to make it but I wanted it badly.
I surrounded myself with other people who were successful and have run four minutes in the mile. I remember taking the initiative. There was a 5K race. It was the Redondo Beach, Turkey Trot. I ran 16 and a half minutes for 5K, which was fast for me. I medaled in the first three in my age group. At the end of it, the guy who gave me the award was Steve Scott, who’s the American record holder in the mile. When he put that thing around my neck, I thought, “I’m going to ask him for some encouragement. I’m going to ask him some questions because he’s the fastest American in the world at the mile. I want to be able to run a faster at the mile.”
The advice he gave me is the same stuff you could get if you read Runner’s World. It’s the same stuff that you read if you read Journals on Physiology but because he said it to me and encouraged me, “Son, one day you are going to be successful, and run that four-minute mile. I know it.” Imagine having your idols telling you that you are going to succeed.
There are a lot of people that want to give you advice, especially people who are friends, and they mean well. My mom wants to give me advice on how to run a software company. I love her to death, and she loves me but I’m not taking her advice on how to run a software company because she has never done it. Forget about the excuses for a moment. Go a step further and say, “What is the thing that I want to do? Who has done that thing that I want to do?” Take advice from that person. When that person clarifies where you should go and what you should do, all the excuses fall away from that.
When you want something bad enough, you are not going to have these different kinds of excuses. You know it’s something you need to do. It’s like a deadline or a final exam. One of my favorite ways to get around the excuses about being tired or, “I’m not ready,” is I will take my laptop to a Starbucks without my power cord, so I’ve got two and a half hours before the laptop runs out of juice to get that essay or project done or to send that email, whatever it is.
If you are like me and you procrastinate, wait for the very last minute, you know that thing is due in a month, and wait until the day before to get that thing done, there are all kinds of excuses. “I will do it tomorrow. I’m tired. I’m not ready now. I need to do this other thing first before I do this one thing.” I find that for me and maybe for you that, having that focus that comes from a deadline, which has those particular milestones or things have to be done being set by a mentor, is the best way to be able to focus.
The more you think about how, “I know I’m lazy,” the voice in your head says, “I’m never going to succeed because I have always failed.” You need to leave that. It’s easy to say that but the way to do it is you have to surround yourself with other people that believe in you. Anytime I have had something good that’s happened in my life, it has been because someone else believed in me. That person believes in me. He’s someone who has done the thing that I want.
I will give you one more example. I told you I wanted to work and do all this stuff for Nike. I couldn’t even get an interview. I had built websites for some big companies up until then. I was one of the best on the planet but I wanted to do stuff for the web, social media, and marketing for Nike. Fast forward, I had a mentor who was Tony Schmitz.
He started three NASDAQ-traded companies. He’s very well known in the world of the internet, made stupid amounts of money, and told me that I could do it. He laid out a plan that didn’t make sense to me but I followed the plan anyway. A couple of months later, Nike paid us over $1 million for analytics, and we are running Facebook ads for Nike.
When there's perfect love, there is no fear. When you have gratitude, fear is impossible. Share on XIf this were the Dennis of many years ago, I would have charged them $20 an hour instead of charging $1 million. Imagine what has to happen inside of you to say, “Ms. CMO or Head of the Digital at Nike or Head of Nike, I will tell you that project you want to get done is going to be $1 million,” with a straight face. What self-belief, strength, courage do you need to have with a straight face? Look him straight in the eye and say, “That’s going to be $1 million.”
That right there took some gumption, and they paid it. Alex, please share some of the things that you do that help you push beyond your excuses, limiting beliefs or reasons that you give yourself are. Dennis shared that you quit your job. Were there times when you wanted to quit prior? If so, what were those excuses that you told yourself that kept you at that job?
Previously, before Amazon, when I worked at Crate & Barrel, I thought, “If I quit, I might not make it on my own.” That’s the first thing I thought. “I have this whole company behind my back. This is a steady job. If I leave, I won’t be able to come back. I might not make it myself.” There are millions of fears but when you know that you are going to be happier without that company, it doesn’t matter which way you go as long as it’s a different way. You will find your way. Interior design is so competitive now but I’m going to try to market myself and build a clientele.
Alex, you have an advantage. Talk about the house we were in a few days ago.
My friend’s parents have an $8 million to $10 million house. You go in, and I can explain all the design aspects. “Why was this couch put in this spot, in this direction, and facing this way? Why was the chandelier picked to match that couch?” I feel like I grew up with an eye for interior design. I have that eye. I have faith in myself that I can make it.
That’s amazing because when I hear interior design, I see a female. I want you to know that. The fact that you are not that and the opposite of that speaks volumes. I know they exist but the interior designers that I know are all female. It sets you apart off the top. To have that eye, to be able to look and see like, “These curtains don’t go there.” You need to come to my house and put some stuff together, and because I don’t have that gift or talent that you have, that’s the last thing I’m thinking of.
You said it’s about you believing in yourself, and what Dennis said was to surround yourself with those people who have done that and who have achieved in that area. There are a number of things that Dennis shared but that is doable. It’s finding those interior design designers who have scaled the way you want to scale. Let me ask you this because you have shared some information. How does being honest to yourself impact your life now?
It’s so much easier because you don’t have to worry about what other people think. You don’t have to worry about failure. Here’s something that’s taken me twenty years to learn. I was afraid of public speaking. I was afraid of being out there as an introvert. I didn’t speak English and all kinds of things. I hid in a box because I didn’t want to be made fun of by these other kids. I then realized one thing. The fear of public speaking or general fear is the most selfish thing out there. When there’s fear, you are worried about yourself, how you look and sound, and what other people might say about you. That’s completely selfish.
Imagine you are a fireman. You are going into a burning house and saving these children. You are not worried about your hair. You are focused on the thing that you want. If you looked at the thing that you are doing, where you are serving other people, you are a surgeon, and helping people who have a heart condition, a mechanic, and fixing cars, helping other people. When you are focused so much on helping other people, you are not worried about yourself. Fear never enters into the equation. When there’s perfect love, there is no fear. When you have gratitude, fear is impossible.
I would like to add on. It’s also not something to fear in doing that. It will come naturally. You will see it fall in place, and it will be easier to grasp. You will be able to move forward. The drive and ambition to make that jump are important. You don’t have to worry but you need the drive and ambition to know your worth. Jump over to the next step like going up a staircase and keep going.
What you are saying is, “Do it afraid. It’s not fear. Just do it” This is amazing. Here’s what I would like you to share. There are people out there that are still trying to find themselves. They don’t know how to be truthful to themselves. What can you share with them? What kind of advice can you give those out there and the world is still trying to tell them who they should be and shouldn’t be?
It’s so easy to get confused when looking at social media and all the advice that other people have for you, and what you feel you need to be or what you should be, instead of who you are and who you want to be. The most deceptive and dangerous of all the advice out there is, “Follow your passion.” Everyone is going to be an influencer. Not everyone is going to be Elon Musk or Richard Branson. If you like to play video games, maybe there is a way to have a career in video games but the best way for people to be successful is to look at where your expertise is.
Look at where you have the expertise – usually, it's some kind of hobby –because there's always some kind of industry around that hobby. Share on XWhat is something that you have put a lot of time into? Therefore, you have developed real expertise and share that expertise. You can be more vocal in the community that you are a part of. That’s usually going to get you a couple of steps closer to the thing that you should be doing that your heart wants to do. For example, Alex knows a lot about Jeeps. He’s going to Moab in a couple of weeks, which is a big Jeep community.
He’s done a lot of work on his Jeep. We picked it up from the shop, which is amazing. He can talk about all the modifications. He has a lot of knowledge. There’s always more because when you are in a community, you surround yourself with other experts, and there are always people that know more than you do. That’s a good thing. You want that. You never want to be the smartest person in the room.
For me, I have been around the people that built the internet. There’s a guy I had seen at the urinal twice a day in the men’s bathroom, David Filo, who was the Key Programmer at Yahoo. He was the richest man in the world under 40. When I first started at Yahoo, I thought, “These guys are going to fire me because I’m incompetent because I don’t know what I’m doing.” Look at these different people that I’m with. There’s Rasmus Lerdorf, who sat a couple of cubes away from me. This guy invented PHP. He didn’t just know PHP. He’s the guy who created a programming language that powers most of the internet.
I sought to be in that situation because I knew that I had some skill in building websites that I could leverage into something bigger. Another way to look at it is to say, “Who you are and your techniques and where you put your time is a multiplier of what you already have.” Let’s say you pull a bill out of your wallet. Whatever bill you give me, we are going to put inside this magic box and press the button, and then all of a sudden, it becomes ten times bigger. If you give me a $1 and I put a $1 in here, out pops a $10. You put a $100 in here, out pop $1,000.
The idea of following where you have a skill, where you have invested your time, therefore you have knowledge. That’s the thing you want to put inside the box because this thing or your personal brand is going to multiply what you have. A lot of people will say, “One day, I want to be this other random thing,” and they have no knowledge and no network. It’s something that they heard on social media. “I want to collect cars.” Is that what you want to do or is it you think if you did that, you would be cool?
Look at where you have the expertise, where you have put in some time. It’s usually some hobby. Odds are there’s some industry around that hobby. For example, you could service all these Jeep dealerships, repair centers, different adventure communities, people who do parts and service, and trips. Those guys don’t know a thing about marketing. You don’t even realize how much power you already have because it’s stuff that appears common sense to you.
Alex, go ahead and share.
I want to talk about how I grew up. I grew up in a not very diverse place. It was Westport, Connecticut, not far from Manhattan. It’s a very wealthy town, and I was pushed all throughout high school, middle school, and college by my parents to, “Go for above a six-figure job. You won’t have a happy life if you don’t make above six figures.” They pushed me to be an accountant that will make good money. I was like, “Who wants to push around numbers all day?” It will make great money but you have to do what makes you happy.
As Dennis was saying about putting things in the boxes, you can go from high school to college but you need some time in between to figure out what you want to do. Personally, my brother went to school for Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Safety. For five years, he was in school. Now, he works for Sikorsky doing nothing pertaining to his major.
I did a year of school and then figured out, “I don’t know what I want to do.” I can’t figure it out in a matter of months. As Dennis was saying, anything that you are good at and enjoy, that’s what’s going to make you happy. You are going to shine doing stuff that you enjoy. There is a career in anything. That’s how I thought. I have quit so many jobs thinking like, “This isn’t for me.” There comes a time when you think, “I don’t want to work for a big company. I want to work for myself to start my own company.” That’s the boat that I’m in now. I’m running things over.
I’m not doing it for the money. My whole life, my parents have tried to make me strive to make all this money. I grew up in Connecticut and moved out here in 2021. Moving out here was the best decision of my life. People are different out here. There’s no rat race of Manhattan. They are very patient. They say, “That’s enough. You don’t need over $100,000 to be happy.” You should strive to make enough to be comfortable but money is not everything. Most people go after money, “What’s going to make me the money?” What makes you happy is going to make enough money.
That was on point. What makes you happy will make you enough money. That is the key. Here is the one question that I would love both of you to share. How has learning how to love yourself and accept who you are made your life better?
There is a career in literally anything. Share on XFor me, it’s an ongoing process because the idea of learning to love yourself feels like pompous, being a peacock, bragging a little bit, and being a jerk, “Look at that guy. He’s so full of himself. He’s cocky.” I then realized there’s a difference between cocky versus self-assuredness and a basic level of confidence, as opposed to being weak and in fear. There’s a middle ground on that.
The simplest way I see that is when I see other people do good things for me and before I felt, “I’m not worthy, so I don’t deserve it,” I have pushed that away. There have been a lot of people that have offered to do a lot of nice things for me, and I said no to them. That made me a bigger asshole, even though I thought I was being very kind and gracious.
The New York Times bestselling authors Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg are superstars in the world of digital marketing. I remember hanging out at their house, having dinner. I thought, “I need to try to put on my very best behavior because I’m around two of the biggest folks in our industry. I need to sound smart, bring a gift every time, and constantly be on my best behavior.” I can’t relax at all because I’m not worthy of this.
We spent the whole afternoon playing basketball and eating tacos in Austin and doing stuff that had nothing to do with internet marketing. I said to him, “Why would you want to hang out with me? We are not talking about internet marketing, and I’m not helping you on any internet marketing project.” He said, “Dennis, I’m hanging out with you because I liked you as a person. It has nothing to do with the fact that you are good at Facebook ads, building websites or that thing.”
He said that to me several years ago, and we celebrated our birthdays together. We both have the same birthday, October 6th. We were in Las Vegas, and we went to Di Fara’s Pizza, which is the best pizza in the United States. He’s from Brooklyn, so he knows. We went all the way out there to celebrate my birthday and his birthday in Vegas. Even then, I was thinking, “I don’t think I deserve that. I need to try to even it up by doing something for him.”
This is still hard for me but it’s hard for everybody to feel that you are worthwhile of other people’s time. I feel that for myself. I need to constantly be doing stuff to show that I’m valuable when I don’t need to be accomplishing something every single day. We can go on a hike in Boulder, and that’s fine. The old Dennis would be like, “We need to make every minute count. We need to be getting projects done. We need to be making money. We can’t sit around and walk the Pearl Street Mall. That’s wasting time.”
I hear you saying being present to the moment. Alex, go ahead. What is it about you accepting and loving you that impacts your life for the better?
I haven’t thought too much about that, and I’m still at that turning point. Where I am now and what’s gotten me there is being very independent, knowing that you are the only person who can make a change in your life. You are the only person who has control of your life. No one is going to do everything for you. You are the only one who can help yourself. You’ve got to realize you can’t rely on other people. You need to do more for yourself. That’s what all I have now.
That’s perfect because what I hear you both saying in what you were doing is, “How do I be me unapologetically? How do I show up authentic just to be me?” Your friend said, “I liked you as a person and who you are.” It’s being present to the moment. That’s what I was saying as well, Alex. It’s being present to now. Both of you are in Boulder, Colorado. You guys are in the restaurant, and you are on my show but being present, having this conversation, and enjoying each other’s company because of who you are and how you show up in the world. Not because you are so popular, smart, and have a lot of friends or money. None of that whatsoever.
It’s about being you, and that is it. That’s what this show is all about. It’s helping people show up to be themselves and be you unapologetically. With that, I want to thank both of you. Thank you so much for saying yes. Before we go, what I would love for both of you to do is to share some closing remarks for the readers but also let people know how do they get in contact with you. I know readers, they are going to want to reach out. How can they do that? How can they connect with you, Dennis and Alex? Let them know. Give some takeaways. What is it that 1 or 2 things that you would love our readers to take away from this conversation?
I was with a friend on my podcast before. He’s on a billion-dollar mission. He’s buying companies and growing them. He made $87 million in 2021, which is great. A few years ago, he was completely broke, even though he appeared to be successful. He couldn’t pay his rent years ago. He got married. All kinds of bad things happened.
A lot of people ask him nowadays, “How did you become so successful? It’s because it looks like an overnight success.” The truth is it took him eight years to get to where he did. The CTO of Facebook, when they were building Facebook, it took them ten years before they even made their first few hundred dollars. For me, it took ten years before I went from a corporate job to making some real money. Not that money is the thing.
A lot of people on social media will make it look like success can happen immediately, that you can have the Lamborghini by next month. Therefore, if you are struggling or failing, then you are a loser because everyone else is winning. What does Instagram look like? It looks like everyone is winning all the time. Therefore, something is wrong with you, and you are a loser. The reality is that all of us are struggling.
A mentor of mine, Matt Kamen, said, “If you don’t quit, you win.” I never thought of myself as a winner but for sure as heck, I don’t quit. I’m very loyal to my friends. I never give up. It might take me more tries than I thought but when I commit to something, I will get it done. I always come through for my friends. I have kept the friends I have for a very long time. Alex knows this. My advice to all of you out there is don’t be afraid of failing, losing a job, and some minor setback because when you look at that bigger picture and the journey you are on, that’s going to be a speed bump that you don’t even remember that you can look back on, and laugh.
Some of the dumb things that maybe made you cry before or created anxiety for you, you look back a few years from now and say, “I can’t believe I’ve got all mad about that. That was no big deal at all.” It’s not that your problems go away. It’s that you become bigger. You become so big and strong that those arrows that used to hurt, you brush them off like mosquitoes now. If you want to reach me, google me on whatever your favorite channel is. You will probably find that on there.
I want to agree with everything that Dennis has said. In addition, be yourself and know your worth. Those are the two most important things. You can text me at my number, (720) 810-6102. We can FaceTime, call, and text.
This has been so amazing. Thank you. Words cannot express my gratitude for having both of you on. Thank you so much for saying yes, Dennis. Thank you, Alex, for saying yes to Dennis when he said what he was about to do. I enjoyed this and that our readers will enjoy it as well. This opportunity, I don’t take lightly. I have enjoyed following and working with you, Dennis. You have been a true blessing in my life. I can’t wait for what’s next because there’s more to come. With that, I bid you farewell. Thank you again. I will be in touch. Alex, I look forward to meeting you again. It is a pleasure. You both rock.
Thank you, Dr. Kim.
Thank you for your time.
It’s easy to lose yourself in this episode’s clashing ideas, conflicting beliefs, and the flood of information, not to mention the COVID-19 pandemic. With society’s rigid expectations and endless opinions, self-expression and self-appreciation can feel challenging and daunting, where most of the time, it causes you to dumb down and hide who you are. Before you know it, you are going with the flow.
We are here to put an end to that dispiriting mindset and begin to own your authentic self. We are here in this safe space. We are here to help you share and initiate influential conversations about you being you because this is what I know. You Are YOU, Unapologetically. There is no doubt, none whatsoever. Being you, that is who you are. No one is better at being you than you. How about you be you unapologetically? Thank you so much for reading. I can’t wait until we get together again on the next episode. Thank you, guys. You take care and hang in there.
Important Links
- DigitalMarketer
- Social Media Examiner
- Fiverr
- GoDaddy
- Keap
- Omniconvert
- OnlineJobs.ph
- Tom Ferry
- Barry Habib
- Facebook Nation
- 9 Triangles Framework – YouTube
- CoachYu – YouTube
- BlitzMetrics
- Tony Schmitz
- Dennis-Yu.com
About Dennis Yu
Dennis has been building brands and teaching marketing for over 13 years. He specializes in helping young adults grow into leaders of tomorrow by confidently developing their marketing skills through training programs and seminars with enterprise clients like The Golden State Warriors, Nike, and Rosetta Stone.
None of this would be possible without the generous support of partners such as DigitalMarketer, Social Media Examiner, Fiverr, GoDaddy, Keap, OmniConvert, Onlinejobs.ph, Tom Ferry, Barry Habib, and others who believe in training up millions of digital marketing professionals.
Dennis has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, CNN, CBS Evening News and co-authored “Facebook Nation” – a textbook taught in over 700 colleges and universities.
About Alex Carl
My name is Alexander Carl, I am a genuine and optimistic guy always seeking adventure. You can find me off-roading/camping in the Rocky Mountains in my free time and for work, I enjoy interior design and transforming people’s homes into spaces they both love and can function well in.