Below are the show notes and script that covers the podcast more or less. These notes will be more concise and tight as I find my narrative style and framework for the show. So bear with me.

Welcome to THE Heroik Hour Podcast and thank you so much for tuning in to episode two. I appreciate the opportunity to share a little bit of Heroik TLC, technology, leadership and culture to help YOU elevate, connect and grow and give you the adaptive mindset and skills that will get you mission ready for life.

And if you like what you hear in this and other episodes, Please subscribe to this podcast, share it with a friend, engage with us, check out our website at getheroik.com and join us on the insider Group.

For those that don’t know, The Heroik Insider Group is an exclusive non-solicioutous web community hosted on the Slack platform, that allows you to collaborate, share and have some accountability, with like minded, multidisciplinary professionals – Most Importantly,  it’s the easiest way to interact with me and the Heroik team, oh, and it’s free for the first 100 people, so find out more and apply at getheroik.com that’s G-E-T-H-E-R-O-I-K.com

In the last episode I introduced the concept that heroes aren’t born they’re MADE, and made is an acronym for 4 core Heroik values or pursuits of mastery, abundance, discernment, and exploration. In the last episode we talked about mastery, And In this one I’m going to talk about abundance, specifically defining our version of an abundant mindset, what it is – what it isn’t, how to cultivate one, and 21 tips to bring more opportunities into your life. This one is going to be a bit longer, a bit more fun and challenging, and hopefully it finds you well, and without further ado – let’s get started.

1. Earlier in the year, I was working on some exercises for an upcoming Heroik Leadership Summit, and I asked myself this core question,

Why do I do this? Why this Heroik Endeavor? Why seek to build a life in this way and not some common path?

I had to think deeply about this. Often times in these kinds of exercises people fire from the hip and tell you what they think you want to hear, and often we tell ourselves what we think other people will want to here, but we don’t know if they are really true to ourselves.

Bullshit answers aren’t satisfying to me, to our customers, clients or audience.  I prefer to do my own stunts, my own deep diving and explorations.

And so for several weeks, So I really explored on and off the screen, on paper, sketch, erase, talk, refine, and map out ideas before I came to a satisfying, decisive answer, that sounds utterly simple, almost cliche despite the long meandering road I had to travel to arrive at it.

I want to build, live and enjoy The Great Life.  Not the good life, the good life isn’t good enough. I want to take the risk, to build, achieve, live and enjoy The Great Life.

Abundance is imperative to enjoying a high quality of life. And that’s why I created this company, to build the means and assets to build The Great Life for myself, my relationships and connections to  my family, my team and provide a community with the means to do the same.

For some people “Getting by” might be nice, but Michelangelo said

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” -Michelangelo

And also -I’m capable of appreciating a lot more and doing more with it.

I want great wealth, the means to build, explore, expand, share, help, connect and advance in every area my imagination dares to dream.

And because if you’re the only kid in town with a yacht and private jet, life becomes dull, I too want my tribe, my community and YOU to live well and have them means to build live and enjoy The Great Life.

2. To become Heroik, along with being committed to mastery you need an abundant mindset. You have to be able to see opportunity everywhere, recognize potential building blocks that add value to your environment and to others, be in the habit of taking action to take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. Money is an important part of a balanced breakfast, no money is an essential part of The Great Life. These skills will help you build, live and enjoy,

3. Modern Definition of Abundance

• The common definition of an abundance mindset is based on the belief that there is more than enough of everything to go around.
• My problem with the common bumper sticker definition, is that it is vague and seems to ignore real world conditions, making it great at 50,000 feet but harder to apply when your boots hit the ground.

• It’s focused on things, physical stuff, and doesn’t address scarcity, in fact it tries to deny that scarcity of physical things exists at all.
• So as an intelligent person, I need a better definition of an abundant mindset that is WAY higher in protein and way lower in empty carbs, rainbows and unicorns.

4. Heroik Definition of Abundant Mindset –

The Heroik Definition is a bit more substantial, specific, and pragmatic, than the pie in the sky version that most people are kicking around.

• There’s an abundance of OPPORTUNITIES to build all the wealth and resources you need to build The Great Life. There is a visible and an invisible  supply enough to make every person wealthy without depriving anyone of a means to build mass quantities of wealth. So there’s no need to covet the wealth of one another person because there is plenty more opportunity to build endless riches where that came from.
• Now, Some opportunities are more easily seen or perceived than others. Some require more vision, or critical and creative thinking in order to see.
• In our definition, There can be a scarcity of the visible supply of opportunities, meaning the paths to wealth you can easily see and perceive. Usually the opportunities you see are what others have brought to fruition for themselves. And they may seem to have a monopoly on a particular means or path to wealth, but usually, this is simply because you haven’t thought critically and creative enough to make an adjacent play. But, You can run out of water, sugar, oil, or do-do birds, whales or what have you.
• You shouldn’t limit your definition of abundant thinking to the supply of opportunities that are making everyone else rich.
• When we’re talking about the way or nature of opportunity, the supply is infinite because opportunities can take different form as long as you can think critically and creatively and take action to build them.
• So if you’re worried that all the oil money is made and you won’t get rich via oil, you may be right, but there are new paths to great fortune that have yet to go noticed. This is vastly different than the Happy Meal version of the abundant mindset that most tainted gurus are selling you.

So in short, there is a near infinite supply of opportunities for wealth we can easily perceive, and there are infinite opportunities in the invisible supply that can provides with the means to build live and enjoy The Great Life.

• Having this kind of abundant mindset improves decision making, It opens possibilities, options, alternatives and creativity which in turn results in sharing of prestige, recognition, profits which in turn bring exponentially more opportunities and profits.

• This doesn’t mean that you won’t have to work hard or compete in markets. The Heroik Mindset, is focused on the ability to scout and mine opportunities, through easy recognition or critical and creative thought.

5. Where our definition comes from?

• The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles – written in 1910,
  • So 27 years before Think and Grow Rich,
  • And 94 years before The Secret.
  • The Science of Getting Rich –  was written as a logical and reasoned approach to why
    • a) You should desire to be rich
    • b) it’s good and healthy to desire to be rich
    • c) God wants you to be rich
    • d) how to go about doing it.
  • 5 Favorite Quotes
    • #1 “Get rid of the idea that God wants you to sacrifice yourself for others and that you can secure his favor by doing so; God requires nothing of the kind. What he wants is that you should make the most of yourself, for yourself, and for others; and you can help others more by making the most of yourself than in any other way.”
    • #2 “It is the desire of God that you should get rich. He wants you to get rich because he can express himself better through you if you have plenty of things to use in giving him expression. He can live more in you if you have unlimited command of the means of life.”
    • #3 “Man’s right to life means his right to have the free and unrestricted use of all the things which may be necessary to his fullest mental, spiritual and physical unfoldment; or in other words, his right to be rich.”
    • #4 “There is no labor from which most people shrink as they do from that of sustained and consecutive thought; it is the hardest work in the world. This is especially true when truth is contrary to appearances.”
    • #5 “Faith is born of gratitude. The grateful mind continually expects good things and expectation becomes faith. The reaction of gratitude upon one’s won mind produces faith; and every out going wave of grateful thanksgiving increases faith”

This book will cost you all of like $4 on Amazon, and it’s short. You can find different audiobook versions of it as well. You can hear where Think and Grow Rich and The Secret stole the information from and transformed it into heal clicking and magical thinking. My friends and family make fun of me for highlighting nearly every page of this book. That’s how profound it is.

6. So how do you apply this Abundant Mindset?

Cultivating an Abundant Mindset  and using it to build, live and enjoy The Great Life and really comes down to a few simple steps

• Cultivate an unshakable faith in yourself to see opportunities as they are, as they could be in all things, in yourself, in others, and the world around you. You have to believe  and be grateful for your ability to discover, notice and create opportunities for yourself and others.

• Look closely to see opportunities beyond the visible supply. Be a student of the cracks in the mountains, because this is how you climb them, not by worshiping them for their strengths and mass alone, but
• Steward an environment that supports your advancement and growth.
• Build wealth by leveraging Opportunities you find by taking action to add or create value for yourself and others.
• Enjoy and Repeat.

I believe that these are well known and self explanatory, but I am going to take the extra time to focus on two of important elements here; stewarding an environment that supports your advancement, and creating and adding value.

SO FIRST UP – You Need a Heroik understanding of value creation.

You’ve created or added value when you’ve advanced the condition of others. There’s tangible value and intangible value. There are direct physical benefits and more indirect benefits like peace of mind, security, wisdom, etc. and these can be annualized.  There’s a link to The Great Life article that teaches you how to calculate the value you bring.

The bottom line, whatever value you bring to the table, you should always give more in use value than you take away in cash value. In other words, the customer should get more bang for their buck. This ensures that they will speak highly of you, that you in turn will grow and advance as well. This should be a strategic principle of your practice and design principle of your product development.

Next Steward an Environment

You need to design your life in a way that increases the volume of opportunities that come your way, and increases your ability to recognize them. How do you do this – Build an environment that nurtures what you want, more opportunity, and thus more wealth. Don’t worry we’re deep diving here and I will give you plenty of specific tips.

Start by Practicing being more mindful about your environment. Your environment influences your thoughts, attitudes, beliefs, and directly and indirectly shapes the opportunities that come to your door. Look at your environment and filter it through the Heroik golden Rule

Cultivate that which serves you and hit the eject button on that which does not.

Look around, look at your office, your home, your clothes, your body, your friends, your thoughts, all of it. Is it serving you? If not, hit the eject button and make room for more growth and opportunity.

Here are 11 Tips to help you add value to the people in your social environment

1. Take the time to make other people remember that they’re important. If you do this, they’ll care about you, and treat you with greater care.
2. Use people’s names and spell them correctly. People love hearing the sound of their names, even unconsciously. Add them to your contacts with a note. Make this a habit. We take it for granted, but if your name number and a note isn’t in my phone, I won’t remember you or think to connect you to others I know.
3. Look them in the eye and smile when you talk to them. Eye contact is huge. Make them blush. Getting eye to eye with your barista can lift their spirits.
4. Thank them sincerely, with a specific and complete sentence of praise.
5. Treat yourself and others as important people, who generally have similar goals of living well, being happy, and getting things done effectively. Attitude is key. If you get in the habit of treating as worthless, you won’t give them the time of day, the small talk that leads to quick chats, and conversations, and real opportunities. I’m not advocating for the shotgun approach to networking, you don’t and shouldn’t give everyone a slice of your time, but don’t dismiss them out of hand because you pre-judge them to be not worth it. Instead, recognize that you’re making choices to focus on other things.An abundant mindset is one that doesn’t see a scarcity of opportunities, so you can always afford to do what’s right by your customer, your organization and yourself. You can afford to build a sincere relationship, and help people try to solve their problems. This alone will increase the number of opportunities that come your way.
6. In a challenging discussion, reframe the opposing perspective to reflect your understanding of their position. Do this for a few reasons – First, showing that you’re paying attention is respectful. Second building a reasoned approach from their position is likely to play in your favor if your goal is mutually beneficial. Take it from me, as a guy who loves to debate, in the real world, treating challenging discussions as negotiations is a more effective approach than treating them as debates. You can win the debate but lose the customer, spouse and so on. In negotiations however, you have a shared interest in keeping all parties at the table.
7. Think big and talk big. Advocate for the favorable outcome you desire and convince your team you’re capable of achieving it. Elevate their spirits. In this way you’ll also instill more confidence and passion in yourself and your pursuits. Talk positively about yourself and your team. This has a profound impact on performance and is far more productive than the berating strategy that most low performing managers practice.
8. Fire people from your life who are dragging you back in the bucket with the rest of the crabs. Fire the haters or confront and conquer them – do not sit and suffer fools who don’t believe in themselves and are afraid to suffer alone. They will try to drag you down with them. You are also judged by the company you keep, so re-evaluate your crowd. Select friends who aren’t overly concerned with petty comparisons and one-upping you.
9. Seek advice from successful people – and always take the time to filter it through yourself. There’s no guarantee that their advice is golden, but the odds are increased significantly.
10. Get your social sunshine. Go mingle in new and different groups for no other purpose than connecting with human beings. Opportunities will follow. Focus on the quality of connection, the strength of the root not the numbers alone.
11. Don’t hog the glory, invest it instead with others.

7 Tips to Build Up Your Mental Environment

1. Dress the part. Look important. If you do, people will believe that you are and treat you as important.  If you’re an advancing individual with his/her eye on the corner office dress the part. If you live in California, make sure your summer look even has an air of quality about it.
2. If you’re intelligent, discerning, or often labelled cynical, Look for the hidden positive in every situation. If you’re capable of recognizing the situation in high definition, work with equal effort and clarity to dig for opportunity within it. Chances are, the opportunities you find are greater than the surface shots that most notice. Use your strengths, take your time, and share the big insights as appropriate.
3. Dig deep, find things that you are for, and rally to them. Build and strengthen your enthusiasm muscles by figuring out what you want to support/embrace and engage. We’ve made a pastime- of hating on things and it does little for us until we use our dislike as a guide to what we do like. Find what you are FOR.
4. Talk yourself up – find a mantra. Start with “I am Heroik.” You are what you think you are.
5. When faced with a challenge ask yourself reflective questions to align with your abundant goals:
   1. Would an important, successful person worry about this?
   2. Is this the way a successful person would speak?
   3. Is this what a successful person would read, do, enjoy?
6. When it comes to money, dispel any notion, idea, person, who talks trash about money or believes that it’s evil. That’s like saying success and growth are evil, because Money is the energy of success and a fuel for growth.
7. OWN your results. Don’t bother blaming others. At the end of the day you are the person whom you have the most influence on, so focus your repair and refinement efforts on yourself. When you fail, don’t wallow in self-pity, analyze the situation and figure out what you could have done to prevent it, what you can do to pivot from it now, and refine yourself, your efforts and your model.

Your Spatial Environment

1. Place a value on open space – it’s the welcome matt for opportunity.
2. Save space on your calendar for critical thinking – there aren’t many productivity systems or KPI’s that account for the value of taking time to think critically, reflect and review on a regular basis, our methods do, but most don’t.
3. Give yourself more time and space to accomplish things. Most people suck at estimating the time, energy, attention and money required to get things done. Slow the heck down! Give yourself much more time.

I just gave you 21 tips that you should already know, that high performance sales teams definitely know and use everyday.  Even if each tip only increases the likelihood of a great opportunity in your life by 1% , that’s 20%, all day, everyday, lasting value. And for that, you can make your checks out to Heroik Media. I’m kidding….I’ll gladly accept credit card payments as well…

Here are a few books that I strongly recommend you read to really build a healthy abundant mindset,

• The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles
• The Magic of Thinking Big by  David J. Schwartz
• The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth by John C. Maxwell
• Entrepreneur Revolution by Daniel Priestley

And as far as tools and resources; I highly recommend you mastermind these books with a group in a community. There is a lot of deprogramming that needs to take place when talking about beliefs in God, Money, Abundance, Scarcity, Competition and Value Creation. So don’t just read or listen about these topics, have conversations and ask questions. A great place to do that is on our Heroik Insider Group, where you can interact with me and my team as well as other like minded people who have gone on or are going on a similar journey. So be sure to check that out at www.getheroik.com

The big picture here is, if you’ve got a smartphone, a computer and a broadband Internet connection, in terms of opportunity to build wealth, and live large you have more going for you than King Louis XIV.

You have 2 eyes but one neck, so instead of looking at the past, look to the present for opportunities that are right in front of you. Make a few changes to your environment, make a little more room for growth in your life. Bring your own bravery, be your own X factor, and walk with a little bit more faith in yourself and the world’s abundant supply of means to build live and enjoy The Great Life.

You have a choice, you can focus on all the things holding you back, and make your story all about being a victim of circumstance, or you can accept the call to Get Heroik, look to the path in front of you and look for opportunities and make your story about how you built, lived and enjoyed The Great Life..

I hope this helps you cultivate an abundant mindset, become more open to opportunities and to take advantage of them by taking action. I know these and other skills will help you get Mission Ready for Life.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Heroik Hour – now it’s time for our jam session – enjoy!