0 (2s):
Boom, shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network with great shows like Social Let. Today, we'll be breaking down the surprising psychology behind risk taking to drop these value bombs. I brought Bobby DeMars into the EOFire Studios. Bobby is the founder of Blind Barrels, a blind whiskey tasting subscription, the first to create disruption of the industry's current distribution model by showcasing American craft distilleries in Fire Nation. We'll talk about how starting a business is stressful and the unseen stresses in both successes and failures. And we'll talk about how mindfulness plays a role in success and so much more.

0 (44s):
And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Bobby and today's sponsors. The best podcast listening app in the world is here, and it's called Podopolo visits Podopolo.com. Download the app, mention JLD or EOFire when you sign up for a free account and start listening now. That's P O D O P O L O.com. Success story hosted by Scott D. Clarey is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network. The audio destination for business professionals success story features Q and A, keynote presentations and convos on sales marketing in more. A recent episode on how to protect your business in times of crisis is a must.

0 (1m 28s):
Listen, listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts. Bobby, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with.

1 (1m 43s):
Hey, thank you so much for having, what's up, fire Nation. Boom, boom, shake the room. You know what, what A lot of people disagree with success. People think that success is about money. And you know, success really is a mindset. I always say success is a choice. And that doesn't mean that you just have to will it into reality. And you just gotta, you just gotta want it. And look, you, at the end of the day, you have to get lucky, right? And, and I define success as the happiness of the people that are in my life. So if my wife is happy, then I'm a successful husband. If my kids are happy, then I'm a successful father. If my investors are happy, if my employees are happy, then I feel like I am a successful business owner.

1 (2m 25s):
And so, yeah, the bottom line keeps you in business. But at the end of the day, you have to wake up motivated and you have to wake up happy and, and making sure everyone around you is happy and loved is an important part of it. So that's really how I define success.

0 (2m 37s):
I love that definition. And fire nation, that might not be the only thing that surprises you today because we're talking about the surprising psychology behind risk taking. And Bobby College prepares us for a lot of things. Parties, early morning classes, late night cram sessions. But what's something that college doesn't prepare us for when it comes to starting a business?

1 (3m 2s):
So I, I went to usc, I was in the business school, I was also there on a football scholarship and I was also in the film school. So I, I literally had, I got up at five and got home at 12 and I had one of those hard things and I thought every day was gonna be this inspiring thing that taught me about real life. And, and it really wasn't because starting the business is basically starting, you know, something with extreme uncertainty and it's stressful. And I never once had a professor that told me about the stresses that were gonna come with waking up at four in the morning where anxiety kicks you outta bed. What, what it's like to ask friends for money, what it's like to, there's no how to ask strangers for money 1 0 1, there's nothing related to that.

1 (3m 47s):
Or, you know, just what's gonna happen when you're gonna see get obstacles and hurdles and things that you can't see along the way. The sensation of having an important meeting with investors where you feel like your business plan and the budget and the lifeblood of actually starting the thing you wanna start is on the line. Business school gives you a pedigree to a certain degree of having accomplished a status, I guess you could say. And I'm not saying don't go to college. Yeah, you kind of want that pedigree. You want a little bit of credibility when you're talking to people. But you're gonna learn about finance, you're gonna learn about marketing, you're gonna learn about operational behavior, you're gonna learn about things that you may not even be doing in life, but they're not gonna tell you about that gut punch that you get sometimes in the morning.

1 (4m 27s):
And, you know, a lot of people think risk takers are all always intelligent people. And I think we, all these friends around us that are successful, we're like, how did, how did Randy do it? He's not that smart. Well, Randy took a risk. Randy actually got up and did something. There's something I call the 4% where if you look at a population, you might say, okay, about 20% of the people out there are risk takers. And if you look at the population again, you might say, okay, 20% of the people out there are creative or intelligent enough to, to be successful. They're not the same people. So if you're looking at 20 per at, at all the risk takers, the 20% of the risk takers out there, 80% of them really aren't that creative or intelligent.

1 (5m 12s):
It has everything to do with the fact that they took the risk. And yes, luck plays a role. You gotta put enough buckets out there to get them outta water that you need in case it rains. Okay? Like you can roll the dice and and, and not come up lucky at the end of the day. And you have to be emotionally prepared for that and be okay with that. And it's better to have tried and have failed and tried your best than to live with regrets later on.

0 (5m 36s):
A lot of value bombs already Fire nation, because this is the reality. There's a lot of things that college will not prepare you for when it comes to starting a business because starting a business is stressful. And we've been talking about this already, but I wanna get more specific Bobby, about some of those stressors.

1 (5m 53s):
You know, at the end of the day, innovation is hard. Change is difficult. You know, know whether you're growing as a company, you're growing as a person. Hey, look, if if it was easy, everybody would do it right? You know, and I remind myself of that all the time. Raising money, asking people for money is not a fun thing when you're looking at, wow, these people are determining my long-term success. But when you're meeting with people, they're not investing in products or ideas, they're, they're usually investing in people. So if you go into a meeting and you're desperate, I'm telling you, people can smell desperation. You're not gonna get that money. When I was starting Blind Barrels, one of the things that I did is just, I flew, I floated the idea out with friends and family to just be like, Hey, what do you think of this idea?

1 (6m 36s):
Am I crazy? And out of the 15 people that I asked, 14 said, man, if there's a chance for me to invest, I'd love to invest. And that was great validity to the idea. But then it also created this whole, oh my God, I know these people. I gotta talk to these people for the rest of my life. You know, my neighbor across the street who invested quite a bit of money, I tried to talk 'em out of it. I spent several weeks trying to talk him out of it cuz I'm like, dude, I gotta look at you every day. And I gotta have that accountability. And there's so many ways for anything to fail, whether it's competitors, it's technology, it could be a product defect, it could be bad marketing, it could be something that's completely out of your control. I mean, look at all the things that we're off the port of la, we get products and stuff waiting.

1 (7m 20s):
But at the end of the day, overcoming obstacles is always gonna be difficult. But it's managing it with, especially with your mindset before you take the risk, is what's gonna allow you to deal with these anxieties and deal with these obstacles and deal with all the stresses that are automatically gonna come with starting any business.

0 (7m 36s):
So Fire Nation, again, we're talking about the surprising psychology behind risk taking. And I wanna move into Bobby Unseen stresses. You've experienced some unseen stresses in both your successes and your failures. Let's talk about those Now,

1 (7m 53s):
You know how, how can you really see the unseen? The reality is that you can't, but you can be less surprised when they happen cuz they are going to happen. There's gonna be curve balls, you just don't know when they're gonna come. You know, before I started Blind Barrels, I was a filmmaker. I still am. I made a documentary called The Business of Amateurs and I did a Kickstarter and raised some money. And I just remember the excitement of having raised the money. And then three minutes later, like the pain hit me, like where I'm like, oh my God, I gotta go make a film about college athletes. That's a really big topic about money and academic integrity and, and all these different and the, you know, CTE and all these different things.

1 (8m 33s):
And I'm like, wow, I have to go make this film. And a good friend of mine totally gave me perspective and a mindset on that. And he's like, look on your most difficult days, remember to enjoy it. And I remember there was a day I was talking to a widow of a guy who, who basically died of ALS from cte and I was gonna have to talk to this widow in her living room. And I didn't, I didn't account for taking on a journalist role within that world, but I had to take this on. And I just remember my buddy's words that I don't have to do this, you know, I get to do this. And now with blind barrels, I mean I'm taking on a, a completely different industry. I wasn't in the alcohol industry, you know, I'm creating a model that didn't exist.

1 (9m 16s):
It's blind tastings, you know, has our label has other people's liquor in it. I wish I could say the, the liquor industry is easy to navigate. Prohibition never really ended. Okay? And I mean it took six months for me to figure it out and I just kept pushing, you know, with the obstacle. I called up, just so you know, here's the Life Pro tip. You can usually call any attorney and get a free one hour long consultation. Oh, so I called up an abc, an alcohol beverage control attorney who told me that you can't do any of this stuff. And then I proceeded to do 16 more of these conversations until I gleaned enough information to where I figured out a way to do it.

1 (9m 56s):
But with blind Barrels, we are dealing with importing shipping vessels, liquor laws and licenses, customization. I mean custom anything is a nightmare. Our packaging, the shipper that it goes in our bottles, the caps that fit the bottles, I mean we went through nine molds just to create a real custom glass. Well, they kept breaking because of the ship we wanted them in cuz we wanted 'em to be heavy, wanted them to be cool. We had to make the neck of the bottle fit the cap to have this T evident cap that would work so we wouldn't have to deal with certain obstacles with other distillers and how we were gonna get the whiskey in these bottles. And we got the caps and we put them on and they fit perfect and we rejoiced.

1 (10m 39s):
And then two weeks later we realized that about 10% of them were leaking. Oh. And I'm like, oh my god. And this was, I'll tell you, you wanna talk about waking up at 4:00 AM That's all I did for two weeks where I was just like, oh my God. Like, like literally this defect is gonna prevent everything I've done for 18 months. And we, one of the things that we wanted, we wanted everything to be nice. We got color lit though awesome boxes. And the caps, we went and had a metal finished done on them just so they look cooler than the plastic. And we get the caps back and plastic is malleable, glass is not, so what happened with the bottles? You'd put 'em on there, you put the tension on there and create a seal. But then that seal would slowly loosen over time with tension and a little bit of whiskey would leak out.

1 (11m 22s):
And then the stickiness, the whiskey would recreate the seal. So our insert says you smell that, that's the smell of American craft whiskey. We sprinkled a little in the box for you. So we were trying to, I was trying to get, the only way I knew how to solve the problem was, well maybe if people think we sprinkled whiskey in the box, cuz it's not a lot that's leaking out, we'll be fine. But what happened was the metal finish that we did on the cap actually solved the problem. It kept the plastic from actually removing the tension that was put in place. So it was one of these unforeseen successes that solved an unforeseen problem. And I still know that there's, there's obstacles down the road, there's hurdles, liquor laws are always changing and we're always constantly trying to look ahead and see where can we pivot if we have to

0 (12m 8s):
In Fire Nation, that's why you hear so many entrepreneurs say, Hey, if I knew what I was in for, I never would've started. But of course once you've started, you start to just figure things out. And we have a lot of great stuff coming when we get back from thanking our sponsors. When it comes to crushing my health and fitness goals, I have a lot of people to thank, yes, I have to commit. But there are other people who help make it possible. Like my wife Kate and my personal trainer Jeff, we can also be grateful for those who make our work lives easier. That's why it's important to have the right people on your team. And if you wanna hire these people for your business, you need ZipRecruiter. And now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com/fire.

0 (12m 48s):
What's to appreciate about ZipRecruiter? Well first, it uses powerful technology to find and match the right candidates up with your job. Then you can easily review these recommended candidates and invite your top choices to apply. You'll love ZipRecruiters complete suite of tools. They make it so easy to filter, review, and rate your candidates. So if you want a stress free hiring process, trust me, you'll be so thankful you tried ZipRecruiter, just go to our special URL to try it for free. ziprecruiter.com/fire. Once again, that's ziprecruiter.com/fire. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire, ready to ditch your subpar podcast listening app and download an app that has every feature you want and need with more great features being added all the time.

0 (13m 34s):
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0 (14m 15s):
Visit Podopolo.com, download the app for free from either App store, mention JLD or EOFire when you sign up for an account and start listening now. That's P O D O P O L O.com. Are you looking for a place where you can exchange ideas, shared knowledge, and find invaluable mentors, co-founders and investors? Sounds too good to be true, right? Thanks to HubSpot, it exists and right now you can get instant access to a community of 16,000 plus business builders at trends.co/mfm. Trends is a HubSpot community for founders and entrepreneurs that tells you what, what the next big thing is gonna be months before everyone else and delivers access to analysts, vetted business ideas and market signals straight to your inbox every single week.

0 (14m 59s):
Inside trends, you also have access to live virtual business training and Q and A sessions that feel like MBA lectures where you can learn everything from advanced marketing techniques to how to get fundraising from venture capitalists. A seven day trial of trends is yours for only $1 in a yearly subscription. Plus access to the community is $299 per year. Get a seven day trial of trends for only $1. At trends.co/mfm, that's trends.co/m fm. Bob, we were back and let's be honest, the mental hurdles that come with starting a business can be exhausting. I mean, think about your 4:00 AM mornings, what are the best ways that we can navigate these hurdles?

1 (15m 42s):
We all get overwhelmed at times and I think procrastination. We get that what's called that analysis paralysis where we just, we wanna sit there and worry about everything and try to trying to solve everything. And I always say the first thing to do is make a plan to plan. Okay, instead of just sitting down, like actually put something in the calendar and mark this down and said, this is gonna be the day and time that I actually sit there and plan and stick to it. Yes, you're gonna be overwhelmed at times. Many times planning makes it manageable and it's not just about setting long term and short term goals for the company. You set smaller goals to achieve those goals. Weekly goals, daily goals, hourly goals. So it that makes you accountable to yourself. The other thing is to make sure that you're accountable to your investors.

1 (16m 25s):
One of the things that I kind of solve, the anxiety of bringing in people that I love and care about as investors into the company was a, I was, I'm still the biggest investor in the company, not just from a money standpoint, a time standpoint. So I have to create account accountability to myself. I don't like to lose in anything but communication. You know, I send them monthly updates of everything that's gone on and where we are. Did we get over that hurdle? What's the new hurdle? And that accountability at the end of the day, and I've talked to investors and the friends of the family, they really appreciate that honesty and that transparency because they know if look down the line, this doesn't work out for whatever reason, it doesn't achieve the big dream that we want to achieve.

1 (17m 7s):
It won't be for lack of effort. And, you know, and as much foresight as we can possibly plan. I do think meditation is really helpful. You know, I think a lot of people overlook that. And look, I have a d d okay, so it's really difficult for me to meditate. People think meditation is like not thinking about anything. And it's training your brain to observe thoughts, to observe emotion and negativity, to assess what's going on. It's not stopping thinking at all. Blind barrels has all these moving pieces and I, I wish I could tell you about all of them. And I, I have to schedule meditation in my day. I use a device called the used device.

1 (17m 47s):
They do not pay me to say this. It's, it's a really cool device. It measures the P waves in your brain. I don't know how they do, how they do it, but there's a Pavlovian thing where you will hear sounds of nature and bird tweets when you're actually being mindful. But when your mind goes in disarray and and disorder, you actually start hearing the, the weather starts to get bad and rainy and then there's thunder and it gets really bad. And it's the only way that I've been able to actually meditate. And meditation is a way to rewire the brain. You know, they've done brain imaging research and it strengthens your ability to regulate your emotions and observe it. So it, it hasn't just helped me as a business owner, it's helped me as a father, it's helped me as a husband.

1 (18m 33s):
It reminds me to be present in moments that are precious because a lot of times what do we do when we're starting any business is we want to think about it constantly and, and worrying doesn't really solve anything, but being able to assess it with present clarity, really can't.

0 (18m 50s):
We were actually able to interview Ariel Garton, who is the founder of Muse and like really get into the details about why they created that and why it works and the psychology behind that. So Fire Nation definitely checked that episode. It was a fascinating one. And listen, we're talking about mindfulness, we're talking about meditation, we're talking about the role that can play in success. Let's go even deeper. What specifically is mindfulness in your definition, Bobby? And how does it play a role in your success?

1 (19m 21s):
So mindfulness is really the, the active state of of being present. Okay? A lot of times we worry, we stress, okay, so we, we ruminate, we, we like to play what I call the low light reel. It's not the highlight reel, it's the low light reel. You know when you go back and you're driving in your car and you miss that exit cuz you're thinking about that thing you should have said to the person, or you're replaying that shot, you missed in the game. We, we like to replay bad memories and torture ourselves and we like to stress about what hasn't happened yet. And the reality is, look, no one else is replaying those bad memories. Okay? You're the only one doing it. No one cares about the mistakes you've made as much as you think they do. I have a couple mantras that I remind myself of on a daily basis.

1 (20m 1s):
One actually came from the Spike. Spike Jones movie Her where, you know, it's about an AI that becomes self-aware. And at some point she evolves into where she's really thinking critically about just existentialism. And she says, what is the past? But a story we tell ourselves. We like to torture ourselves with these stories. And yeah, nobody's replaying your bad memories. The others that worry is the misuse of imagination. We have these creative, thoughtful brains and we, what do we do? We utilize it to stress about something that hasn't happened yet. And what you can do through mindfulness is to retrain your brain. I mean, even blind barrels itself is really about mindfulness.

1 (20m 41s):
You know, when you're tasting a whiskey, when you're ta, when you're smelling it, you're using your sense of smell. When you're looking at the, the color and the appearance, even the, the mouth feel that you're getting, even the fact that when you're doing it with someone else, it allows you to connect to somebody else in that moment. You know, great whiskey at the end of the day is meant to be shared, but you can be present in everything that you do when you hug your kids, right? When you're drinking your coffee, you know, some, you ever just drink your coffee cuz you're like, I'm drinking my coffee, I'm gonna, I need to wake up a little bit more. But, but put the coffee in your mouth and really taste it. Really think about it when you're doing, like, like I said, with our whiskey tasting, really take a moment to be present. You know, reminding yourself to do that will allow you to gain objectivity, self-control, mental clarity.

1 (21m 27s):
I mean, what, what happens is, is we have distractions throughout the day. You know, we're, we're distracted 50% of the time. We get text messages, we get the social media thing that pops up on our phone and, and some distractions are good, you know, in, in that we're meant to kind of get off track sometimes. In fact, divergent thinking is a good thing in terms of being creative. But mindfulness and meditation is actually a way to train your brain to do those at moments when it's opportune, when they actually benefit you, you know, anxiety and stresses are gonna come up. You know, acknowledge them, observe them. You don't feed them. The panic is gonna perpetuate panic. So if you master this, yes, you can get personal success in your life, regardless of whether your venture succeeds or whether it fails.

1 (22m 13s):
You're gonna grow from the hurdle with every painstaking step. And I like to believe that the risk is the reward because you're gonna learn, forget about what the result is. You're gonna learn so much about yourself when you're challenged. That's really ultimately how we grow.

0 (22m 27s):
Bob, you've shared a lot of very interesting things today. I mean, as I said with the title, the Surprising Psychology behind a Risk Taking. These are some things that you probably have not thought about Fire Nation and this quality or depth. So Bobby, really take this home for us. What's the one key takeaway you really want to make sure Fire Nation gets from our entire conversation today?

1 (22m 48s):
I think the main thing today, besides just being present is find a place to park your problems. Okay, I use a think box. They're like nine bucks on Amazon. It's a place to park your worries. You know, when you go to bed thinking about things, it's not gonna help you. When you wake up at 4:00 AM don't trust your brain. At 4:00 AM there's actually a thing called the Mind After Midnight hypothesis. And the hypothesis is that when you're awake outside of the circadian night, when you're awake up after midnight, your brain doesn't perceive things the way that they're supposed to. It alters the way that we interact with the world. You're gonna see the world with the blurred vision when you wake up.

1 (23m 28s):
So understand that objectively now. So when you wake up at 4:00 AM you're not solving anything at 4:00 AM and find a place to park your problems and really address your stress. Ask yourself why are you stressed? Are you chasing what others wanna see in you or what you wanna see in yourself? Are you forcing a comparison? You know, I had a friend once tell me, look, comparison's the thief of joy. You're robbing your, your life of these precious happy moments of these little accomplishments that are really meant for your joy. Your losses are your losses. It's nobody else's. Own it and move it on. If you fail at something, nobody cares. Okay? And it's important that you care because you wanna be a better person and not that you're worried about what other people think about you.

1 (24m 11s):
And just redefine success. Change the way that you look at success. Check in on how you feel and the people around you feel. That should be your benchmark for success. And is the happiness that you're creating for others and the happiness that you're creating for success and for yourself. And if you do that, the success in your company's gonna follow

0 (24m 30s):
Fire Nation. No more low light reel. Let's focus on your highlight reel. And Bobby, how can Fire Nation connect with you? What call to action do you have for us?

1 (24m 40s):
You can check us out at blindbarrels.com. You know, hey, connect with friends and family over some whiskey every month. These are samples that you literally can't get in stores. We're supporting small American craft distillers. So this is whiskey that usually the rock stars at 50 miles, but they can't get the shelf space. There's 3000 whiskey brands you haven't heard of that are crushing it. So we're a small American business supporting small American businesses. You can email the lines supported blind barrels. You can get in touch with us, you can follow us at Blind Barrels on Instagram and check in. And if you have any questions, I'm always accessible. And if you have any good whiskey recommendations, we're always open mind.

1 (25m 22s):
Probably the coolest thing about this job is we get to try all sorts of great whiskeys. And not everybody in the craft industry is making killer stuff, but the ones that are, man, these are ones that you're gonna wanna put on yourself and these are ones that you're gonna wanna share with your friends and make those connections.

0 (25m 35s):
Fire Nation, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. You've been hanging out with BD and JLD today, so keep up that heat. Head over to EOFire.com, type Bobby in the search bar. His show us page will pop right up. Bobby, thank you for sharing your truth to your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today. For that we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side.

1 (25m 58s):
Thank you so much for having me.

0 (26m 0s):
Hey, fire Nation, a huge thank you to Bobby for dropping value bombs and sponsoring today's episode, fire Nation. Over the last decade, I've interviewed more than 3000 of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, and I've created a revolutionary 17 step roadmap to your financial freedom and fulfillment. I put it all into my first traditionally published book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, personally endorsed by Seth Godin and Gary Vaynerchuck. The Common Path to Uncommon Success is the step by step guidance that you need to achieve the lifestyle of your dreams. Visits UncommonSuccessBook.com, and I'll catch you there. Or on the flip side, the best podcast listening app in the world is here and it's called, called Podopolo.

0 (26m 44s):
Visit Podopolo.com. Download the app, mention JLD or EOFire when you sign up for a free account and start listening now. That's P O D O P O L O.com. Success story hosted by Scott D. Clarey is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals success story features, Q and A, keynote presentations and convos on sales marketing and more. A recent episode on how to protect your business in times of crisis is a must. Listen, listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts.