The Truth Behind Why You’ve Never Launched That Big Idea

Episode #366

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Episode Transcript

Doug Holt  0:00  

As men, we call them identity, especially when things aren’t going well. And a lot of times, we have created a fantasy of this vague idea. When this big idea launches, then the car, the house, we start to play and live into this fantasy of this big idea. And we like it. And that’s why guys when they go to the pub or the bars, they’ll talk to business. They’ll talk about other ideas, and I would say because it’s fun to talk about the idea that the scary part is what happens to our identity. If we do launch that business. That idea and it doesn’t work. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Powerful Man show. I’m your host, Doug Holt, with my co-host Tim The Powerful Man Matthews. What’s going down, brother?

Tim Matthews  0:42  

Yeah, I’m doing well, very well. Finally getting all the artwork up downstairs, which is my gods, I just love it. I’m feeling the pole lately to get out there and take some landscape photography. I’ve never taken any of my life apart from like a shot on the iPhone or whatever. The more I’m doing this mountain leader training, and the more I’ve joined a Facebook group for where we live, just images of Anglesey and some of the images in there. They’re just stunning. And I don’t know what it is, just something that pulls me to like the artwork is like the creative side of it. I don’t know what it is. But yeah, again, these pictures up downstairs and around the house are one that I just could look at all day. They’re just doing something, and I don’t know what it is. But to just fill them in energy. 

Doug Holt  1:32  

Awesome, man. Yeah, get those up right away. You find out what to make fun of you. But if we find anything that fills you up with energy, I say go to the well. Keep going back and back.

Tim Matthews  1:42  

Huh? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. A year ago, two years ago, I never would have thought I’d be leaning into landscape photography, like Chroma doing an event in The Alpha Reset in the French Alps years ago, rather than one of the guys there who was filming it for us. He was big into landscape photography. And I remember him setting up his cameras in the evening to capture the Milky Way. I was looking at it just like, like, Yeah, it looks great. But I couldn’t be bothered setting the cameras up and doing all that. And here I am a few years on.

Doug Holt  2:17  

I love backpacking and doing photography. At the same time, I go backpacking deep into the woods. Oh, yeah. Yeah. For a long time.

Tim Matthews  2:25  

Oh, wow.

Doug Holt  2:26  

Yeah. Not good at it by any means. But I’ve done underwater photography, scuba diving, and things like that, too. 

Tim Matthews  2:33  

Nice. 

Doug Holt  2:34  

Yeah. It Was very fun. Very fun. It’s been a rabbit hole; you can go down, which keeps it interesting. There’s just so much to it as well.

Tim Matthews  2:45  

And he can buy loads of cool kits.

Doug Holt  2:47  

Of course, I did. I got all kinds of lenses and cameras and all kinds of fun things. And it’s great when you go on backpacking because you get to places that other people never see. I’m not willing to adventure out there. And those that are willing to adventure. Very few of them want to carry any extra weight, let alone cameras and lenses.

Tim Matthews  3:08  

Nice. Yeah.

Doug Holt  3:10  

I’ll send you over a few 1000 pictures later.

Tim Matthews  3:14  

So how are you? 

Doug Holt  3:15  

Oh, thanks for asking. I’m unstoppable.

Tim Matthews  3:17  

Yeah, good.

Doug Holt  3:18  

It’s a great day. Here it is early. I’m on the west coast of the US. So for those guys that don’t know, I’m on the West Coast, United States. Tim is in the UK. So a big-time difference there when we get to fit where we get to record these for you guys. But I’ve been to the gym already and spent a lot of time with my kids playing cool wrestling with my little girl and my son at the same time. And then they both just wanted to snuggle. They wanted to lay on the ground. Daddy wants to snuggle. I was like, All, let’s do it. It’s just good stuff, man. So good stuff. But, Tim, what I want to talk about today and throw on the table is something that happens we see with a lot of men. And it’s guys that contact us that start talking to them. And we only work with business leaders right now, married business people who own businesses. And a lot of them have big ideas. This big idea they’ve had for years, but it never seems to launch. Right. So they’ve had this idea. And it’s been brewing in their head. And you and I have had big ideas in the past too. But it’s brewing in their head. And this is going to be the big one. If I had the time and the space, what I want to do, Doug is XYZ. Ah, I can’t wait to launch this idea. I have; it’s going to be a killer. Right? Do you want part of it? Right. That’s another thing we hear about all the time is because we do business consulting for companies, and sometimes we get offered equity into these companies. And sometimes, the equity we get offered is at the ideation phase. The idea is a big idea, but you and I have an advantage over most people. We get to see the inside of 1000s of men’s lives 1000s of men’s businesses, and we know the truth of why they never launched Big Idea, the real reason why they haven’t launched it. So that’s what I want to talk about today, Tim,

Tim Matthews  5:06  

let’s do it.

Doug Holt  5:07  

So why do you think, Mr. Matthews, these guys haven’t launched this big idea where it hasn’t gone off the ground?

Tim Matthews  5:16  

For me, I would say, the one that stands out, and I’m just going to go with my knee-jerk reaction here, my gut tied down to self-worth, for me right now. 

Doug Holt  5:27  

100% Yep, so they’re tied down to self-worth. And what I’m going to say is a little different is a self-image of who they believe themselves to be. And so the reason a lot of guys this, this will be a podcast, guys. Still, right away, that’s going to offend A lot of you, not from an offensive standpoint, by language that I’m going to use, but by the fact that you’re not going to like what I’m going to say because it’s going to be true for you, and aww it’s going to shake you up. Because I’ve had this conversation so many times, but it’s accurate. So what happens here, Tim, and I know this because we’ve taught this so many times that we come with an identity as men. And when this is, especially when things aren’t going well, in our world, we have an identity of who we are as a father, a vision about who we are as a husband, who we are as a businessman. And a lot of times, we have created a fantasy of this big idea. When this big idea launches, then I’m going to have the new car, the new house, the six-pack abs, whatever it is. And we start to play and live into this fantasy of this big idea of how much money we’re going to make, and everything else, it’s there. And we like it there. We like it in this fantasy world of this big idea we’re going to do, and that’s why guys when they go to the pub, or the bars, they often talk business. Guys will talk business, they’ll talk about other ideas. I have a buddy; we talked about a sandwich shop, like a specific niche sandwich shop in a specific area. We’ve been talking about it for years, and it’s fun. But why have we launched it? Right? I would say it’s because it’s fun to talk about the idea. The scary part of the identity part is what happens to our identity. If we do launch that business, that idea and it doesn’t work. It fails. So I’ll use the sandwich shop as just an example out there. And for everybody else, because the safety is me. So let’s say we have the sandwich shop, it’s going to make millions and millions of dollars in turnover, our nets are going to be huge, we have low margins, we start talking about it, we’ve been talking about how great it’s going to be. And we start to build ourselves up as these impressive restaurant tours, entrepreneurs. Imagine the people that are going to be coming in, and it’s going to be this type of person, this type of celebrity, etc. Because of this, this is a very specific niche that we’re going after. We know it’s going to be so successful that we’re going to franchise within the first year, easily no problem at all, we start building up that identity in ourselves. Now on the flip side, in our real life, money is doing okay, but maybe we’re having problems with the wife, maybe we’re having problems with our health. And we don’t want to focus on that because that’s not working for us. So it’s fun over here to go to Fantasyland. Fun to go over here and talk about this big idea that we’re going to launch; it’s just a few things. Tim has a few things I need to order before we launch, okay, just a few things. And that story becomes prevalent. Now the problem is, I launched that sandwich shop, and it doesn’t work; I lose the fantasy, I lose the vision of successful Doug, with all the celebrities coming into my shop with the franchise with how everybody’s going to tell me how successful I am. Because I’ve launched this, I lose that. So I’m scared of it. So it becomes self-worth but also a self-identity play. Why don’t people launch these?

Tim Matthews  8:42  

Yeah, and the reason why I said self-worth, in the beginning, is I’m thinking about different guys we’ve worked with that have done this as well. For sure, self-image comes into it; what if I fail. And at first, when I said self-worth, what keeps them from launching the big idea they have is to distract themselves. They’ll make themselves busy. They’ll say yes to things that they don’t want to make self-sacrifice, or they’ll say no to things that they do want to do in the big idea. And the more they do this, the more they weaken their self-image, and they lose self-esteem, making it harder to do the big idea then. And if they are not, it’s like a muscle. Self-worth is, in my opinion, like a muscle. The more you work it even with the smallest things, the more you work it, the easier it becomes to flex it. Whereas if you don’t go to the gym and you start working out, it can start just to take a little bit of a slide and you don’t even notice it, and before a year down the line, you’ve not been working out your partner start and our two starts, and it’s kind of the same with self-worth. So I think anybody listening to this might have a big idea that they haven’t launched. Then the likelihood is the fact you haven’t launched, and the big idea is more of a symptom. And I’m sure you’re going to dive into this, but it’s more of the symptoms. If you try to overcome this and just launch the big idea and go for it, chances are, you could even upper limit and bottom out at some point of this journey anywhere. Everybody’s stem stays set to a different level. So if I were you, rather than just push through and launch a sandwich shop anywhere, if you feel in resistance, I lean into that, I’d maybe do both lean into it and launch it. But certainly, an entity can ignore it.

Doug Holt  10:39  

It is self-worth to Tim. Because if you’re self-worth, your self-image is directly tied. And because if your self-worth is high, then your identity is solid. But you don’t have to worry about hey, what other people think of me, or what I think of me because you’ve got that covered. So they play hand in hand with each other. A big issue for many men is what’s going on in the other areas of their life. Right. So we have five territories we focus on here at The Powerful Man. And then, as you go through the programs, we can expand upon them. But there are five key territories: health, wealth, relationships, and business. If one of those five is floundering or not working well, it takes a hit on all the other four, and all five go down. So as an example, if you’re doing well in business, but your self-image, self-worth, how much time you take off, play, enjoy life, or your relationships, or maybe your physical fitness. If one of those takes a dip, it plays over into the other areas, and the other areas wane, they’d go down a little bit. And that’s where these reputations and stories start to play in our heads a lot of times. What? Well, Geez, If I don’t win the sandwich shop, what’s going to happen if I fail? What’s going to happen? And you can go down these worst-case story scenarios and see what does happen. Well, if I fail, that means I’m not a good business owner. I thought it was everybody thinks I’m a great business person. So then, oh my gosh, well, also, what’s my wife going to think? She’s going to lose respect for me, and we’re going to lose some money. Maybe she’ll leave me, and we start going down this rabbit hole consciously or subconsciously, which then prevents us from taking action, which then keeps us in the fantasy? Such a lot like porn. In some ways. Some guys will have a fetish of some sort, some kind of porn, and they tend to like some guys who will talk about it. And even in our group, some guys discuss it and the serious topic, but maybe one guy likes a certain position missionary with glasses. That’s his thing. Right? But his wife doesn’t wear glasses. So instead of asking her to give her a pair of clear glasses and asking her to wear them and playing with her about his fantasy, he’s too scared that she’s going to reject him. He turns to porn and searches, and I don’t know, girls, glasses in the missionary position. I’m making this up on the fly. But you get the idea. Right? Because that’s safer. There’s no rejection on Pornhub or whatever these other sites might be. There could be rejections. The wife could say, why do you want me to wear glasses? Instead of saying, well, babe, I want to be with you. This is my fantasy. She has nothing to do with any other women. It’s just something I want to explore. Instead of making it playful and possibly getting rejected. He’s too embarrassed to be scared of getting rejected. So he turns to porn. It’s just easier. The fantasy of the idea is just easier. There’s no rejection in the fantasy. Right? Especially if you’re not sharing it with other people. 

Hey, sorry to interrupt the show. But I wanted to ask you a question. Do you ever feel like something’s just missing, like there’s something more out there, and you just can’t put your finger on it? I get it. Go over right now to ThePowerfulMan.com/Freedom to discover the system that other businessmen just like you are using. We’ve included 10 case studies, ten men just like you who have found the solution and found their way on their path. But we want to share that with you; go over to ThePowerfulMan.com/Freedom right away. Now let’s get back to the show. 

The scary part is we start sharing it with other people, which with The Powerful Man, many men come to us because their relationships are not working. And as that’s progressing, as we fix the relationship, a lot of guys start working in the area of business in other areas. And then we start to get to play in that sandbox, which is a lot of fun. Right? And you start seeing okay, but I want to do this. This is where I’ve always wanted to do, and now that my relationship is solid. Now I feel like I can step into this. We see this a lot. Right now, you can kick the fantasy aside Or keep the fantasy, but now live it. Live the fantasy. And go after it. And the more grounded you are as a powerful man, the easier it is to go after the fantasy. And here’s the trick, here’s the rub to this whole thing. When you’re grounded as a powerful man, we call it grounded, standing your ground stepping into the line; when you’re grounded, that fantasy becomes attracted to you. That’s the crazy part. Right? So do you use the analogy again? Your wife buys the glasses and wants to know about your fantasies. As you become sexier, more attractive to that same thing in business, the opportunities start opening up, the retail spot opens up where you want the sandwich shop. Right? Your buddy approaches you and says, hey, it’s time; let’s do this. Here’s the business plan. The economy’s everything’s let’s go. Things just fall in order. We’ve all experienced this in life, where it’s like divine intervention. Everything just starts to fall into order. Now, we’ve experienced this in the good ways that I’m talking about now. But we’ve also experienced it in bad ways. What’s that saying? When it rains, it pours like follows like, so when you’re secure. You’re what we call activated. It’s why we have The Activation Method; we are an activated Man, these things start to attract you. And all the territory’s men start getting in better shape, sex starts happening a lot more and more intimacy and connection, the wife looks at him with admiration, their businesses go up, even though they’re working a lot less. But their dreams also increase. But it’s not only their dreams that they’re going after the right to Tim; it’s the actions they take towards their dreams. And it just falls into a river of flow. It’s a beautiful thing.

Tim Matthews  16:46  

Just imagine a triangle like a pyramid when you’ve got that big idea that you haven’t launched, like a lot of the men that come to us, because like you said, the five territories are connected. So all the guys may come to us because the marriage might be struggling, they might be on the verge of divorce, arguing more than having sex wife may have had an emotional affair or a physical affair, whatever it is, the man that they’re in the relationship that has contributed to that is also reflected in these other territories. Often they are either out of shape or in incredibly good shape because they’re almost beating themselves up in the gym. Same in business, they’re either kind of struggling a bit, are they hugely successful, because they’d beat themselves up in business and keep pushing and pushing and pushing because they’re trying to fill this void if you will, and when they’re in this position, and no matter what they achieve in business, no matter how they look in the body, or no matter what they’ve got going on. They never feel any better. We call this living from the outside in; if you imagine a pyramid and split it up into five different levels at the base of the pyramid, you’ve got business, the focus on business first, because now Hey, I’m going to get my significance. Go along the deal for 45 million, like what are the guys in the inner circle, just ask and that’s when I’ll get the significance that’s when I’ll get the sex. So it goes business, wealth above that money, then the third level is relationships. But usually, they don’t have anything left to give relationships. If you imagine this as a bar that’s rising through business rises to the top of wealth, then yeah, don’t get into relationships; I might do a little bit but come back down. The above relationships is health and then self to launch that big idea and have a strong self-image and habit so that things do open up for you like you’re describing Doug, you got to flip that pyramid on its head, and instead of living from the outside and start to live from the inside out where self becomes the base of the pyramid. And when you do that, by default, you start to look at Okay, well, what is the resistance I’m facing launching this big idea. How is this pain showing up in other areas of my life? Why am I a bit of a nice guy in my relationship, and you start to see the threat of you putting your needs last, the threat of people-pleasing, the threat of self-sacrificing, the threat of feeling empty and being rich on the outside? Still, poor on the inside will all likely filter back to the same place if you have a low self-image and this to me is wrong. I have a loss of image. I mean, look, we’re going to drive. Look at the house I live in, look at the wife I’ve got, look at the vacations going, yeah, cool. Get it logically, and you may not have a low self-image emotionally; you will. logic and emotion are two very different things. How you feel emotionally about yourself is very different from how you feel logically about yourself. And this is what causes a lot of confusion for a lot of men as well. Right? I’ve been going through a lot of the past couple of weeks I’ve been dealing with emotionally, lots of stories come up for me, I should know the answer to this, I shouldn’t deal with this stuff, I blah, blah, blah, that’s just a logical side, the reality is, um up-leveling, and some layers get peeled back and deep layers to the stories that go on. And it’s just part of the process. The point I’m making is that if I avoid that because of a logical argument I’m going to make, nothing will change. So when you live from the inside out, you put yourself at the bottom, and then you focus on health as well. So you have the energy, you have the capacity, that’s going to feed your image as well. And then it goes to relationships, and you start to have it mirrored back to you, by the people you love, that you are a certain way they’re you walk into the door. Instead of them turning away from you to turn towards you get her in bed instead of her turning away from you, she turns towards you, and you start to be okay. Okay, this isn’t because you’re people-pleasing; it’s not because you’re doing the dishes. It’s not because you are going out to work, coming home, cooking dinner, and doing the Italian house. And it’s not because you’re doing those things. She’s just trying to get respect for you because you respect yourself. Yep. And then it goes to wealth. And then it goes to business, which just makes launching the big idea, just the obvious next step isn’t a big idea anymore. It’s just an idea. Because you’ll lose the gravity around it feeling big or small. It just is. It just becomes the next logical step. And because you start to flex that muscle of self-worth, and you start to listen to yourself and trust yourself, your ideas flow, your creativity goes up, your energy is higher, because you’re living from the inside out, it becomes easier to then just act on these things. You don’t fear failure because you trust one. What if you felt called to go and what you are feeling called to Korea until you realize that there is no it’s not a reflection of you. And you realize that you’ll find a way, and you start to trust those hits of intuition and start to harness your instincts in a way that honestly, you might have thought you’ve been doing before because you’re succeeding in business, but nowhere near to the degree that you can. Most guys succeed in business by brute force and hustle, not by tapping into something incredible inside of themselves.

Doug Holt  22:22  

So true. So true. Love it. So Tim, what are a couple of things about these guys? If you find yourself in a situation like crap, I keep talking about having this idea, this business idea, or whatever it may be. I haven’t talked about it yet. I haven’t done anything. I think I might be in this situation. What can they do?

Tim Matthews  22:42  

I just need to stop talking about what you’re going to do. First of all, because that’s just going to make you feel worse, it will create more disconnect between what you say and who you are. The more you do that, the worse you’re going to feel because Am I going to back yourself into a corner? You don’t live up to it, and you feel worse. It’s a cycle like you said earlier. So, first of all, stop. The second thing is to look at whether you live from the outside in or the inside out. Right? Chances are you’re living from the outside in, and we’ve all been there. Nothing wrong with that, although you probably don’t want to stay there. Once you realize it, if you are, I think it’s a change out to the inside out. Okay, turn that pyramid on its head; what would that look like? Well, I recommend you get some coaching, whether from us or whoever, not, whoever it’s from, I don’t care. The point I’m making is you cannot see your blind spots. You just can’t, and I can’t do can’t, we can’t. So if you recognize that you’re in that place, we call the place of living from the outside in no man’s land, by the way. So if you’re in no man’s land, and you realize you’re there and you want to go live from the inside out and put yourself at the bottom, so you can break this pattern, get some help and hire a coach. So you can get to the root cause of the pattern and break it if you’re not ready for coaching, which if you’re not, then I’d invite you to look at why not because it’s the same story. Then you gotta start getting your routines in place, Alpha Rise & Shine alpha decompression, and they’ll help but honestly, the guys that get the best results that work with us like this guy that’s just landed this $45 million contract. He was proud of his esteem so grounded throughout it; not only is he just landed a $45 million contract is also just completed a triathlon, alongside it is a virtual triathlon where he’s not even got the energy of the rest of the competitors. He’s been able to get that done and be in the best shape he has been in alongside London his contract. The reason for that is his foundation is strong. So get your routines and rituals in place. They’ll help you honestly, and they’re not going to be the magic bullet if you’re in this place. He gets to the root. The routines won’t get to the root, but they will help you live from the inside out.

Doug Holt  24:56  

So true. So true. So gentlemen, as always, If you see any moments of insight, take action take massive action right now don’t go on to the next show, play, YouTube video, podcast, whatever it is just write some notes down and take immediate action, whether that means getting on a call with one of our advisors, or looking at something else or just taking notes and insights. Why am I waiting? Why am I waiting? What’s going on is a pattern. And guys, I’d love to see you over in our Facebook group. The community is growing. He’s an amazing man just like you. So I invite you to come over and join us on Facebook. I just searched for The Powerful Man. You’ll find that Facebook group. Gentlemen, as always, have an amazing week. Take action. We’ll see you next time at The Powerful Man show.