Jim: I’m ready to ignite, let’s go!

John: Jim is the leader in subconscious selling influence and performance. Jim, take a minute, fill in some gaps from that intro and give us just a little glimpse of your personal life.

Jim: Personal life, I live here in Dallas, Texas, I’ve taught persuasion and influence, subconscious influence for 25 years, been in the same relationship for 16 years, I have two dogs. My hobbies are just working out; I don’t know how much more you want. Working out and time with family.

John: What I want right now, Jim, is your area of expertise. You are a self-proclaimed subconscious influence and performance expert. What’s the one thing that you think you excel at the most in this world?

Jim: Understanding what drives people.

John: What’s something that we don’t know, Jim, about driving people that you think as entrepreneurs we really should know?

Jim: That 95 percent, and this is scientifically proven, that up to 95 percent of all decisions are subconsciously made. People think that they think that they’re being analytical as they’re working through their decisions, and they’re not. Our brains, our unconscious mind, are making our decisions for us and most people don’t know that.

John: Give me some examples. What are some examples that you’re just like wow, this really jumps out at me as something as something I feel would be beneficial for other people to know?

Jim: The main thing is that when, especially entrepreneurs, I work with entrepreneurs and selling professionals, and when they wanna create change in their life, the first thing they try to do is change their behavior. They generally fail. This is why people set goals and New Year’s resolutions, and they fail. What happens is we respond to the world based upon our unconscious habits and our unconscious belief paradigms. No matter how much you may wanna be a millionaire or whatever it might be, if that’s not in your unconscious paradigm no matter what you try to do, you will fail every single time because it’s not consistent with your unconscious habits and your unconscious paradigms, mental paradigms.

John: What do we need to do to make that shift?

Jim: Stop trying to change the external world and change the internal world. I don’t mean shifting our mindset, people make a mistake there as well, and you see it on Facebook all the time. Change your mindset, change your mindset. Anytime somebody says they wanna change their mindset what they’re really saying is they wanna change a habit of some sort. What they don’t recognize is that habits are driven by the reptilian part of the brain, which is the oldest part of the brain. So, they’re trying to actually analytically will using the analytical prefrontal cortex, thinking part of the brain, to change the reptilian part of the brain. Then what they do is they get into a habit battle, do they have don’t, do they have it don’t. And they generally lose to the prefrontal cortex, meaning the old habits sustains itself. This is why people fail all day long with goals and habit change.

John: So interesting. I feel like, and I think a lot of the listeners will be like since Jim knows this he must never do anything wrong. He must just win all the time. He must always have successes and no failures. The reality is you’re still a human being and to be human is to err. Talk to us about not just a bad moment, not just a failure, but what you consider the worst entrepreneurial moment that you have ever experienced in your life, thus far. Jim, take us to that moment, tell us that story.

Jim: A lot of years ago, and a very quick story. Twenty-five years ago, to be exact, I used to trade currency in Forex, F-O-R-E-X, which is foreign exchange. Very greedy. I was young, I was 27, very, very greedy with my money, wanting to make more, make more. I took 30,000, turned it into 70, took 70,000 turned it into 250, and had everything that I had in the market. One night, the bottom fell out of the British Pound Sterling, and everything I had turned to ashes. It was bad. I had no money in the bank, no money set aside; I had everything in the market. I went to bed, adjusted for inflation with about a half a million bucks and cash to my name, and woke up with zero dollars to my name. That was a colossal mistake that changed my life.

John: What’s the next step? What was the next thing that you did that day?

Jim: The next thing, besides going to probably drink half the day at a bar.

John: With what money, on your credit card?

Jim: Somehow. We went drinking that day, a buddy of mine. But that lead me to where I am today because I said to myself how do people come back from something like this? That’s when I got involved in motivation and all that kind of stuff. Then I got involved in neuro-linguistics, NLP; then I got involved in hypnosis. Twenty-five years later it’s what I do for a living. But that is the moment that brought me here today.

John: After this day of drinking, I wanna get a little more specific here, how did you finally start to rub two nickels together again? What was the first way you started making money again? Was it back in Forex? Don’t lie. Or was it something else? What did you do to get money again?

Jim: No. it was a moment of clarity for me. I did what I tell a lot of people to do, I see so many people reaching for the stars as entrepreneurs, and they don’t have two nickels to rub together, and they struggle forever and ever and ever. What I did, I said I’ve got no money, I can’t pay my rent, my car’s gonna be repossessed, I have no money to eat and buy beer on. I started waiting tables. I waited tables in a nice restaurant; I said if I’m gonna make some money doing it. Then I started my NLP training during the day, which went on for a couple of years. I had extensive NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming Training, but I built a foundation under myself. Then I discovered and heard that I was really good at the NLP and all this kinda stuff and personal change. That’s the industry that I’ve evolved into in the past two decades.

John: Was it a little tough for somebody that may be made what was it? Ten thousand in a day? Maybe 50,000 in a week, whatever you did to double your money to get up to 250 and then 500,000, to then get your first paycheck after working hard waiting tables, and say this is for $124, what am I doing? How did you mentally get past that?

Jim: You know what’s interesting, is no one’s ever asked me that question, and I never thought about it. No, it was zero problem for because I was so enamored and engrossed and impassioned with my training in NLP, which I worked with an NLP trainer that actually studied with Bandler and Grinder, the co-developers. She became my coach and a trainer. Even when she was working with me was coaching an American president. She was pretty high up the ladder. I loved what I was learning so much every single day and what I was becoming that I never thought about the money, never entered my mind until just now.

John: You’ve had a lot of great ideas over the years, Jim, a lot of great ideas. Ah-ha moments, you name it. Let’s just talk about one. Take us to one of those great ideas that you’ve had. Tell us that story. Really walk us through how you took that ah-ha moment and then turned it into success.

Jim: I used to a hypnotist. Most people do not know that hypnosis has been in the works by Harvard and Stanford and Yale and Columbia and the Mayo Clinic. I used to be a hypnotist in New York City, one day a client of mine was a high network manager at Goldman Sachs. He said, hey Jim, how is it that I’ve been trying to stop smoking for years, I come to you, I listen to you for an hour, and I stopped smoking because he came back a week later. I told him that as a hypnotist we use hypnotic language, we use unconscious tools and triggers and anchors, we use trance, and we use language. He said to me, can you teach me some of the stuff that you used to get me to stop smoking, can you teach me how to use that to be more influential with my high net worth clients. I said absolutely. That’s where my entire career path today was born from, taking all the tools, change tools that I’d use as a hypnotist and mapping them over to business. That was a huge ah-ha for me.

John: Fire Nation, so many people just sit on their hands, and they say, you know what? I’m gonna sit here and I’m gonna meditate, or I’m gonna journal until that ah-ha moment happens. Guess what? Sometimes that works. But guess what? Sometimes your ah-ha moment happens when you’re actually doing that thing when you’re putting in the work, engaging with your clients, with customers, with your listeners, whoever that might be. You’ve gotta get out there Fire Nation, swing the bat take action take that first step, that ten-step, you don’t know what one comment, one word, one phrase by one person might change everything. Is it from a book, is it from a movie, is it from a podcast interview, is it from a conversation with a client? Who knows? But you have to start doing the things. That’s my biggest takeaway Jim from that story. What’s yours? What do you wanna make sure Fire Nation gets the lesson learned.

Jim: The most important thing they could take away from this entire time together is that if you wanna change your world, you need to change your internal paradigms. For example, let’s say, that, to give you the best example, a real-life story. My dad was an alcoholic. We learned in our very formative years from the ages when we pop out of the womb we’re already learning about the world. I learned from my dad that it wasn’t important to stay committed to things. I went on to college, paid my way through college and all that kind of stuff. But at a very early age by watching him, I learned it’s okay to start projects and not finish them because that’s what he did. For many years I tried to get things done in the world to grow my business, but I recognized that if I couldn’t stay committed internally because I had learned commitment wasn’t important, then no mater what I tried to do externally in my behavior it would not work. The biggest take away for people is they’ve gotta recognize, stop trying to do things in the world and look at the characteristics and ways of being. Who you’re being will effect what you do and the outcomes that you get.

John: So well said. Jim, obviously there’s a lot of things going on in your life right now that you’re pretty darn excited about. What’s the one thing you’re most fired up about today?

Jim: This is gonna be a little esoteric. People always say I’m excited about my book, or this project, or whatever. I’m gonna make it very tangible, and intangible. I’m very excited about an identity program I’m gonna be launching in the next couple of months showing people how to reprogram their subconscious identity. What I’m most excited about, this is real exciting to me, is that every single day is an opportunity in front of me. I’m excited that I live in a world where I have an opportunity in front of me. People live in parts of the world where they have none, and I’ve got this at my disposal and my fingertips that excites me because any day I can turn it into what I want to.

John: Fire Nation, do you think Jim’s been dropping value bombs? Just wait until the lightning round comes. When we get back from thanking our sponsors.

Jim, are you ready to rock the lightning round?

Jim: I’m ready to rock, let’s go.

John: What was holding you back from becoming an entrepreneur?

Jim: Nothing. Once I graduated from college, I got a job with a U.S. senator who was running for the vice presidency of the United States. I quit that job, and I’ve been an entrepreneur ever since, and that’s been since 1988.

John: What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Jim: From my brother-in-law who is a shaman, his life story’s been written. People like Wayne Dyer quote my brother-in-law’s work incessantly. My brother-in-law is my mentor. The best advice, I can’t even qualify, but I’ll give you one here. People might get it today; they might get it ten years from now, I don’t know, they may never get it. The advice is this; you are where your attention is.

John: Fire Nation you are where your attention is. Recommend one Internet resource.

Jim: Internet resource would be actually a link that I’ve got going up which will be on habits and unconscious habits, which would be salespsychologyacademy.com/firenation. It’s free training. Actually, I dig deeper into habits, because everyone is listening you’ve got to master your unconscious habits. Otherwise, other things are not gonna work for you.

John: Recommend one book and share why.

Jim: The reason why I’m gonna recommend the book, it’s called The Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neill, N-E-I-L-L. The reason why I’m recommending this, this is something taught to me years ago by my brother-in-law, and I found it in this book as well, is that most people live backward. The life from the outside in instead of the inside out. Most people live from their circumstances; I don’t have any money, I’m single, I don’t have a place to live, I don’t have a car, I don’t have this, I don’t have that. Their external circumstances drive their internal state. Then what happens because they’re in a bad state they perpetuate their circumstances. We all need to work from the internal state outward, as opposed from outside in. This will change people’s lives when they start working this way. We are not our circumstances. Our circumstances are not tied to our internal thinking. Most people make them dependent upon each other, and they are independent.

John: And who’s the author on that?

Jim: Michael Neill. N-E-I-L-L.

John: Jim, let’s end today on fire with a parting piece of guidance, the best way that we can connect with you and then we’ll say goodbye.

Jim: The best place to connect with me would be salespsychologyacademy.com/firenation. I do have a new website going up by the time this is out, it’ll be jimfortin.com. jimfortin.com, and then one more is I’ve got a Facebook group. Obviously, it’s free; it’s HPSPGroup.com, High-Performance Sales Professional is what it stands for, HPSPGroup.com.

John: Fire Nation, you’re the average of the five people you spend the most time with, and you’ve been hanging out with JF and JLD today. So keep up the heat and head over to eofire.com, just type Jim in the search bar, his show, and his page will pop up with everything that we’ve been talking about today. Best show notes in the biz, timestamps, links galore, and of course, you can head directly to his new site, jimfortin.com, that’s F-O-R-T-I-N. Jim, one more time, what was your offer that giveaway.

Jim: It would be salespsychologyacademy.com/firenation.

John: Jim, I wanna thank you for sharing your journey today. For that, brother, we salute you, and we’ll catch you on the flipside.

Jim: Thank you, John, take care.