Ep. #921 - Unconscious Habits of Successful Entrepreneurs

Matt Watson 00:01
And we’re back for another episode of the Startup Hustle. This is your host today, Matt Watson, and our guest today is Noah St. John. I’ll tell you more about him in a minute and introduce him. But, before we get to that, I do wanna remind everybody that today’s episode of Startup Hustle is powered by FullScale.io. Hiring software developers is difficult. Full Scale can help you build a software team quickly and affordably. And has the platform to help you manage that team. Visit FullScale.io to learn more. So, in today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about, you know, probably some of the bad habits that are keeping us from being successful entrepreneurs. Excited to have, I think, an expert on that topic with us today, Mr. Noah St. John. He is known worldwide as the father of afformations and the mental health coach to the stars. Noah, how are you doing today?

Noah St. John 00:48
I am doing great, Matt.

Matt Watson 00:50
Welcome to the show.

Noah St. John 00:51
Thank you. Great to be here.

Matt Watson 00:53
So I hear you’re famous. Are you famous?

Noah St. John 00:58
Internet famous? So there’s 7 billion people on the planet. I would say not all 7 billion have heard of me.

Matt Watson 01:07
You know, I like to think in certain niches, I’m really famous. Exactly. You know, we’re all famous in our own little circles. Actually, I got a weird, weird comment yesterday from one of our other executives. My company, one of our competitors, is scared to death of us because they hired me. Like, hey, I guess that’s good. I hadn’t. So, I guess to start off, for those who aren’t familiar with you that aren’t aware of your fame, tell us a little bit about your background.

Noah St. John 01:39
Well, you know, I started my company, Success Clinic, in 1997. So, 25 years ago, in a 300 square foot basement apartment in Hadley, Massachusetts, with $800 and a book on HTML. That’s all I had to my name. I had no experience in marketing or sales or online. You know, there were no tools back then. I had to teach myself HTML, the only funnels that we had were, you know, funnel cake, so there weren’t any. So, if you know, there’s, of course, no social media, no Facebook, no YouTube, any of that stuff. So it was basically just me and Al Gore back then. Anyway, that’s a joke anyway, but the point is that I really had nothing. So you’re like, well then, why do you start a business? Why did you do this? Well, what happened was, I had been on a long search for my purpose on the earth. What am I here for? And I’ve been reading lots of self-help books for many, many years. And they all said pretty much exactly the same thing. And I’ve been trying to use them. And I really never had much success, even after studying and paying all that money and following a lot of gurus. And so, at the age of 25, I actually decided to commit suicide because I was so depressed and frustrated after reading all these books, and really trying to succeed and not seeing really any success. So, in 1997, I had these two epiphanies that really changed my life, and made me get well and gave me my purpose here on the earth. And so really gave me my mission. And so I wrote a book called Permission to Succeed. And that was published by the Chicken Soup for the Soul publisher, back in 1999. And now, 17 books later, as you can see, these are some of the books that I published. These are some of my books and other languages were in 18 languages. Now, these are some books that I’ve helped my clients publish. So it’s really been an incredible 25-year journey that really started very organically, you could say, almost by accident. But basically, now I am known. And if, you know, you want to say famous, or at least known for helping my clients make more in just 12 weeks than they made in the past 12 months, while also at the same time winning back one to three hours per day, and four to eight weeks per year. So this isn’t about the hustle and the grind. Even though I know that this is the hustle, you know, Startup Hustle show, I get that. But I am actually, you know, one of those that says, there is a time, of course, for hustling and grinding naturally. But there’s also a time for not doing that, you know. So that’s one of the reasons why people hire me is because they are hustling and grinding and you’re not seeing any results. You know, they’re not seeing the money or, you know, having the impact on the income they want. And so that’s one of the reasons why and, you know, we’ve been able to help our clients at over $2 billion at this point at 6, 7, 8 figures. Well, you know, really working less than being able to spend more time with your family so really, that’s how it started. That’s what I do.

Matt Watson 04:34
So have you been a type of personal coach and consultant basically for the last 20 plus years?

Noah St. John 04:43
Yes, I have and and as I said, it started very organically, almost accidentally, when I realized what was missing literally what was missing in this industry, the personal development industry, and I it just really came about because of frustration, you know, because I’ve been studying all these books reading All these guys, you know, going all the Guru’s and, and I’m like, why am I still not seeing the success that I want? So when people hire me, and they say things like that, you know, I go, I’ve been there, I know exactly what you mean. And you know, these are distinctions, the small little distinctions that really make a big difference in people’s lives in their businesses, and, you know, in their, in their family lives as well. And so that’s really nice to be able to see people, yes, making more money, which is, of course, awesome and wonderful. But even better than that, is being able to use that money and use the time that they have to be able to do the things that they really want in life.

Matt Watson 05:38
Well, and we, I always refer to this as the startup hustle in your point, like, I hate people that think they need to work like 80 hours a week. But then, we’ve all had friends, business partners, everybody that’s like, you know, part of your problem is you work too much. You don’t work on the right things, but I feel like part of the hustle is just doing the shit that needs to be done. Like, whatever needs to be done. You gotta do it and you got to stop making excuses. Like, you know, whatever you need to do. You gotta just you gotta go do it. And it takes some hustle, right? But you’re right, it’s working. Grinding it forever is not good. So you, you know, I’ve watched some of your videos about you before we started the podcast. And we mentioned before about what afformations? Yeah, that was something that we mentioned. And so tell us more about what afformations are and maybe how that could relate to the people that are listening.

Noah St. John 06:30
Absolutely. So I just want everybody watching and listening to know that we’re saying a new word. It’s apt formations. So this is one of my new books. It’s called millionaire out formations. The magic formula that will make you rich. How’s that for a subtitle? Right? Anyway, so it’s at formations, eight. So this is one of those distinctions, epiphanies that I mentioned a moment ago, that I had 25 years ago when I discovered this methodology, this method that I call the afformations method. So everybody watching this program or listening knows what an afformation is, right? That’s what we’ve been taught for decades. That’s what the Guru’s say, use these afformations. So like, for example, as you know, as an executive coach, a business coach, I also am a keynote speaker. So I get to do keynote speeches for companies and organizations all around the world from small 100 person workshops all the way up to multi 1000 multinational events. And when I’m speaking and doing my events, one of the things I like to do is have my audience members stand up and I say, Okay, now we’re going to do the old afformation style that they taught us, right, we’re going to do that old afformation just like the Guru’s say. So I want everybody to say I am rich, and everybody goes, I am rich. You know what happens next? Everyone starts laughing. And I go, What are you laughing at? And they go, Well, I’m not rich. And I say, But you just said you were and they go, Yeah, but I don’t believe it. Haha. Now see, isn’t that the problem? Right? That’s the problem with the old way, the old afformation way, which the gurus have been teaching for decades. And they say, well, listen, you just say these positive statements. And of course, it’s going to change your life. Now, for some people that work just fine. But for millions of us, it actually didn’t work at all. In fact, scientific studies have shown that 75% of the people that use the old afformations method actually end up more frustrated than before, because it doesn’t work. So imagine if you had a phone, that didn’t work 75% of the time, right? What would you do? If you keep using Windows, you probably trade it in for a better one. So that’s what I invented, I invented a better phone, right, which is the formation. So an afformation is a statement of something you want to be true, but that we tend to not believe. So what I discovered back in 1997, in fact, was actually in the shower when I discovered this in my books, I call it the shower that changed everything, right? We all have. I’m sure everybody’s had those aha moments in the shower, right? And you have those epiphanies. And so this is what I call the shower that changed everything. Because I realized that rather than making these statements that we don’t believe, why don’t we do something even more powerful, that’s actually far easier, 10 times easier. And that is to ask an empowering question. Now, why do questions work? Because when you ask a question, your brain automatically searches for the answer. It’s called the embedded presupposition factor of the brain. That’s just a fancy way of saying when you ask a question, your brain searches for the answer. For example, if I say, Why is the sky blue? Your brain goes? I don’t know, why is the sky blue? See, but instantly your brain searches for the answer. In fact, you couldn’t not do it. So I said, rather than making these statements, we don’t believe why don’t we just cut out the middleman and go right to the question. And then I said, Well, what would that look like? Well, you got the statement or affirmation. You know, like that example I just gave, you know, I am rich. And your brain goes, Yeah, right. Right. So we tend to not believe it. And so I said, Well, if that’s the statement, then what would the question be? And then I said, Why am I so rich? Why am I so rich? Now when you ask that question, what immediately starts to happen in your brain? Well, you start to search for the answer. So this is all about the law of sowing and reaping as you sow so shall you reap. This is nothing new. It’s been taught for centuries. But what are we sewing? We’re sowing seeds of thought. And you yet what are most people doing? Sowing lousy thought seeds? Why am I so fat? Why am I so stupid? Why isn’t my business growing? Why can I get more customers? Or clients or patients? Why is there more month left at the end of the money? Right when you ask lousy questions, but uh, yeah, I got the answers. So that’s what my formation method is using the embedded presupposition factor of the brain, rather than trying to shove something down your throat that you don’t believe you’re actually using your brain, you’re leveraging what you’re already doing what you already have. And that’s one of the reasons why my clients get incredible results as a result of using my afformations method.

Matt Watson 10:35
So what are some good examples of this? What could our listeners use? Like, so when I’m done with this? So should I go downstairs and say, Why aren’t the dishes done yet?

Noah St. John 10:47
Well, no. No, it’s the exact opposite of that, actually. So, as an example, you asked about some exam like the millionaire app formations, but by the way, everybody listening can get $300 worth of bonus gifts, when they get this book, it’s getmillionairebook.com. Very easy to remember, getmillionairebook.com. And the book is again, millionaire out formations. Getmillionairebook.com. And because you’re listening or watching this program, you know, you get $300 in bonus gifts, but see in the book, I give you over, you know, 200 different Afformations on wealth, focus, self confidence, purpose, work life balance, millionaire habits. So you would have formed something like this. So you would say, Well, what do I want? Well, I want to let’s just use a simple example. I want to add an extra $10,000 a month to my business. Okay, great. So that’s your goal right? Now, the old way, what the gurus would say is say, I am making an extra $10,000 a month and your brain goes, No, you’re not. Now, so you instantly bashing into your own brain, you’re bashing into your own belief gap, alright, as I call it. And so, you know, again, they told you, we’ll just keep bashing your brain. And eventually you bash your brain into submissions now. Okay, for some people that work for 75% of us that did. So using my afformations method. Now you would have formed something like this? Why is it so easy for me to make an extra $10,000 a month in my business? Now, when you listen to that question, you’re going well, that’s stupid. That doesn’t make any sense. But the point is, it’s not magic, right? This is science. You’re all ready. This is what I want everybody to realize, everybody listening and watching, you’re already doing this, right, everybody on this planet, all 7 billion of us are already using my afformations method. There’s only two problems. Number one is most people don’t know that they’re doing this. And number two, they haven’t been taught how to do it properly, how to do it in an empowering versus a disempowering way. So most people are going around asking, as I stated earlier, lousy questions, why am I so stupid? Why? Why aren’t I making the money that I should be making? Well, guess what? You ask those questions, you’re gonna find the answers. So now using my app formations better you can afford better. Why is it so easy for me to find the right clients who pay me? I’ll give you a quick example. Just one from over 1000 client examples that we have. Sheila came to me, she’s a business owner entrepreneur, she was making about $5,000 a month in sales now 5000 A month pretty good, right? For most people, like, oh, wow, that’s awesome. But she knew she could do a lot better. And she’d spent tons of money on all the gurus and all this stuff. But she was still stuck at that plateau. I told her my app formations method, as well as the other, you know, habits and formulas that we teach. She went from making 5000 a month to 75,000 per month, that’s a 15 times increase in less than a year. One of the reasons is because she realized, as we were going through this process, she’s like, wow, I didn’t realize I was asking myself so many lousy questions I didn’t know. Right. So that’s the point when whether these are conscious or subconscious doesn’t matter. Because of the law of sowing and reaping, you’re going to reap as you sow. And that is what is causing your life, you’re what your life is right now. So by changing it using my afformations method, the results can come very quickly.

Matt Watson 13:56
Do you think most people get overwhelmed with the problems they have, and the excuses and the things are holding them back? And most humans are just not very good problem solvers. And when you ask the questions this way, it puts them into a different way of thinking of being more of a problem solver.

Noah St. John 14:13
That is one issue. And another is that you bring up a very good point, you know, people come to me, you know, when they hire me, or when they have me speak at their events or whatever it might be, whether it is one on one coaching or group coaching. And they say, No, I have so many problems. You know, I’m procrastinating. I can’t focus. I have too many distractions. I’m not getting the leads I want. I’m not getting customers. I want people to pay for me. To do many things for free. I’m doing too many free sessions and people aren’t upgrading. They’re not paying me. I’m doing all this on social media, you know, they say all these problems, right? And I say, okay, just hold on a second, I understand that you’re doing all these things. And you think that’s the problem. But the irony of all that is you don’t have 99 problems, you only have one problem. And they go well, what do you mean? I said, Well, the point is you just said all of these things, but these are symptoms. And you go, what are you talking about? I said Well, the point is that all of these things are behaviors that you just talked about, like procrastination, lack of focus, distractions, whatever, you’re doing all these behaviors, but that’s a symptom, what the actual problem is, is something that I identified again over 20 years ago, something that I call head trash. So head trash, the way that I teach it, you know, both in my books and my clients is that the head trash is the voice in your head that says, I can’t do it, because I can’t do it because dot dot dot, and then you’ve just fill in the blank, well, no, I want to grow my business, I want to make more money, I want to start scale, exit, whatever it might be, I want to get to 10,000 a month, 100,000 a month, a million a month, whatever level you’re at. But I don’t think I can do it. Because well, and then you know, you just fill in the blank, right? I can’t do it. Because I don’t have the money. I don’t have the time. My spouse doesn’t support me. My kids are too loud. I’m divorced, married, I’m a Martian, whatever it might be, you know, we have so many excuses. And what’s amazing about that, as human beings, is that we always make ourselves right. See whatever you say after the word, because it is what you believe and what you will defend to the death. So what’s so amazing is when I say to people, and I show them, I literally prove it to them, you don’t have 99 problems, you only have 10 problems, you only have one problem head trash. So guess what, why don’t we just take out your head trash. And then all of these symptoms actually go away. I don’t want to say magically, but almost in and of themselves. And that is something that people get very excited about when they see the results.

Matt Watson 16:32
So what I love about this conversation, and it applies to really all types of people, is that it doesn’t matter if you’re an entrepreneur or a business person, or my wife who has lots of head trash about various things in her life, right? It doesn’t matter. It seems like everybody has these problems. And they’re, you know, they relate to basic human psychology, right. And I love how you put this. And so I’d love to talk more about what makes people successful. And before we get to that real fast, I do want to remind everybody that finding expert software developers doesn’t have to be difficult, especially when you visit FullScale.io where you can build a software team quickly and affordably. Use the Full Scale platform to define your technical needs, and then see what available developers, testers, and leaders are ready to join your team today visit FullScale.io to learn more. So we’ve talked a lot about those psychological things that are going to hold people back. So I’d love to learn more about what you talked about in your books and your coaching about the unconscious habits that highly successful people have, and maybe how those are different.

Noah St. John 17:37
Exactly. Well, that goes to another one of my books, which is called Power Habits. Not to throw all these books at you. But I mean, that’s exactly my point, I did develop this system, which we call the power habit system, it’s right there in the book. So if you can see that, that’s like Da Vinci’s man, the point is that when I realized over 25 years of study and experience and you know, scraping my knees a lot, and getting a lot of arrows in my back, is that highly successful people, which I call unconsciously successful, people are actually doing these habits that are unconscious, meaning number one, they don’t even realize they’re doing them. And number two, that means they can’t teach them. This is one of the reasons why it’s one of the unspoken problems of this industry, which is that the Guru’s, the guys who were very, very successful, highly successful that we all see on social media or whatever, are actually doing these unconscious habits. And they are what I call unconsciously competent at allowing themselves to succeed. Now, that’s a mouthful, but all it means is very simple. They’re doing these things that they don’t even know they’re doing number one, and therefore, number two, they can’t teach it. So a lot of people hire me as an example, after they’ve gone to all the gurus. And they’ve said, I spent all this money I spent all this time I ran around every seminar, and I’m still stuck. And why? And I say, well, it’s very simple, because they didn’t tell you what was actually going on. They talked about the symptoms, but they never talked about the actual problem, let alone the solution to the problem. And so the point is that going back to my statement that I made a moment ago, you don’t have all these problems, you have a lot of symptoms that are caused by one problem, head trash. So what’s the solution for head trash? Well, it’s what I call the power habit system. The power habit system is what I discovered, invented, and, you know, identified and codified so that people can realize, wait a minute, I’ve been doing all of these things that they told me, but I’m still not successful. I’ll give you another quick example. I was speaking at a seminar in Los Angeles for 1000 entrepreneurs, right. These are high level people, 678 figure earners, and I was presenting and sharing pretty much what I’m sharing right now. So as I was walking off the stage after my presentation, a man came up to me and he said, Noah, I want to hire you as my coach. You are the coach that I’ve been looking for. Now. I didn’t know this man from Adam. Now, ironically, his name was Adam. And so I said okay, Adam, what’s what’s going on? goes, No, I’m totally stuck. I’m only making 4 million a year. Now, of course, I had to laugh, right? I mean, who wouldn’t want to be stuck right with quotes at 4 million a year? And I told him, I said, that doesn’t sound like much of a problem. He goes, No, no, I own a software company. And we grew to 4 million in revenues really fast. But you know what, we have been stuck and plateaued for the past four years, four years, we’ve been stuck at the same level. And he said, I tried all the Guru’s I paid all this money, all these marketing guys, all the gurus, he said, we’re still stuck. And he said, as soon as I heard you speak about head trash and afformations, and power habits, and everything you just said, he said, I knew right away that you’re the coach I’ve been looking for. So he literally hired me on the spot. I worked with Adam for about two years. In that two year period, his company went from 4 million in revenues to over 20 million in revenues, literally a six times increase. So what did we do? We installed these power habits. That’s how we did it. And so the point is that, because he had gone to all those guys, and paid all that money, just like so many other people, right? He thought, well, it must be me, I must be an idiot, I must be a loser. I must be incapable or incompetent or whatever that and see what’s that? More head trash. Right. So the sad part is that these gurus probably don’t mean to probably, but you know, they’re actually causing more people to not believe in themselves to beat themselves up to have more head trash. And so that’s why I’m on a mission to help people eliminate their head trash, because it’s not your fault if you find yourself in that situation. And so the point is that the power habits of unconsciously successful people, one of them as an example is F formations, right. That’s why we start with that. That’s a power habit. Number one, what I was just sharing with you and I just gave you, right, so anybody can start forming right now, you can literally start doing this in the next five minutes. And that’s the beauty of it. See, but these guys that are unconscious, they’re already asking themselves empowering questions, but they don’t know they’re doing it, therefore, they can’t teach it. So it took a you know, a nerd like me to actually break down what they were doing, unconsciously, so that the rest of us can do it consciously, and thereby build a bridge between where you are and where you want to be.

Matt Watson 22:05
So what else goes along with the power of habits, you mentioned afformations, what other what other habits go along with that?

Noah St. John 22:11
Well, here’s a quick example. And it’s a very powerful example. So I realized something, you know, in developing the power habit system that goes counter to really, so many things that are out there. And just as a quick story, you know, growing up, my father was a very, very hard worker, very dedicated, still in his 80s, still working hard. And so what I learned growing up was a very, very strong work ethic, but in a specific way, which is you never don’t work, you never stop working. Right. You’re never not working. And in fact, if you’re not working, that means, you know, you’re lazy. And you know, you’re worthless, basically. Now, he didn’t say that, but I’m just, you know, I got the message, basically. Right. And I’m sure a lot of people can relate to something like that, right? Just work, work, work, work work all the time. Well, what I realized is that that’s not what Highly successful people do, even though sometimes they say it, right? We talked about the hustle and grind and all that stuff. But the irony of that is that they’re actually not doing that. Yes, they’re working hard, I get that. But they’re also giving themselves permission to stop. So I discovered in the name something that I call goal free zones. Every one of us we have to create and embody and install these, as I call it goal free zones. What’s a goal free zone? Well, it’s just what it sounds like, it’s a time and place in your life, when you give yourself permission is that to stop setting goals all the time and not be working, working, working all the time, I work with my private clients, you know, my $100,000 clients, my $10,000 clients on this very thing all the time. And what so many people say to me is, oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize that I have been subconsciously beating myself up. Every time I stopped working. I didn’t know I was doing that. See, this is a great example of the difference between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. It’s like the iceberg principle. I call it the iceberg principle of the human brain, we have about 5%. It’s visible above the conscious area above the line of consciousness, which means our conscious mind, but 5%, but the vast 95% is below the surface of consciousness. That’s the subconscious mind. And as I always say to my clients, and at my seminars, it wasn’t the tip of the iceberg that they could see that sunk the Titanic. It’s the part that they didn’t see that sank the Titanic and that’s what sank most of us as well.

Matt Watson 24:36
So you say that you can change someone’s financial life in five minutes a day? Yep. How do you do that?

Noah St. John 24:45
Well, I definitely talk about that in the millionaire hour formations book in fact, I exactly share that with you. So again, get millionaire book.com and get all those bonuses. So in five minutes a day. In the book, I teach you my core four formulas. Now my core formula is actually very simple. And it comes down to the fact that we humans have four modes of communication, reading, writing, speaking and listening. That’s how we humans communicate, we read, we write, we speak, and we listen. Okay? So that’s what I encourage you to do. Using my millionaire, our formation method. By the way, we also have the companion journal. So you can actually write this all down, we have given you a whole year where you can do this, my core four formula and keep track of it for a whole year. So the first minute you read, so you go, you know, just pick out a passage here in the book, and you read an afformation, as I mentioned, I give you over 250 afformations in the book. So you can read about focus or health, or wealth or habits or whatever it might be. So that’s one minute. The second minute is writing, right? That’s where you want to write in your millionaire app formations journal and you just form, you’re just writing your app formations and make sure they are empowering out formation. So that’s the second minute. Then the third one, you got reading, writing and speaking, you say it out loud, and people go, Oh, man, I feel kind of embarrassed. Well, who cares? It doesn’t matter. You know, you can say it to your spouse, you can say it to your partner, you can say it to the dog, the cat, the fish, it doesn’t matter. You just say it out loud. Because when you speak words, you’re actually sowing new seeds, you’re sowing better seeds, empowering seeds rather than disempowering seeds, reading, writing, speaking, and then finally listening. So when you go to our website, you go to our main website, Noah St. john.com. And you can get a free 62nd stress buster. We call it the I have form audios like iTunes form, and you get a free 62nd stress buster, so you can listen and literally reprogram and change your subconscious thought patterns while you’re not even paying attention. So if you’ve ever used hypnosis CDs, or something like that, this is like that. But better because we put it on steroids because we’re using instead of the old afformation way that is trying to bash your brain into submission. Now we’re using the formations method. So we have formed audios on Ultimate Health, ultimate wealth, ultimate love relationships, whatever you want. And you can literally change your life while you’re not even paying attention. So that is literally how I can change someone’s financial life in less than five minutes a day. So I’ll take it.

Matt Watson 27:04
So the interesting note here I have about willpower is one of the worst ways to change a habit. So you know, one thing we always always tell people like, Oh, you want to quit smoking or lose weight or whatever. It’s like you need the willpower to just do it. Like I always always joke with my dad, I was trying to get him to quit smoking, I just told him, it’s really easy. You just stopped buying cigarettes. But he didn’t believe me, and he didn’t have the willpower to do it. So why do you say that willpower alone is not one of the best ways to change your habit?

Noah St. John 27:35
Well, it’s actually the worst way to change your habit. And so the reason is, like you just gave a great example, because he’s not going to do that. So what it really comes down to is what a habit actually is. Okay, which I talked about in my books and in my programs, but I’ll go real quick. But my point is to think about what willpower actually is. So what’s willpower, give me an example. Imagine you’re in your kitchen right now. And somebody brings in a freshly baked bowl or dish of chocolate chip cookies, right? They have a dish of chocolate chip cookies that just came out of the oven, right? And you’re looking at them and you can smell them and it smells great and your mouths are watering and you’re like, Wow, man, boy, does that look good. And that smells great. Right? And then here’s what they say they say to you. Okay, now listen, I’m going to leave the room. Now. Don’t eat one of those chocolate chip cookies, whatever you do, do not eat a chocolate chip cookie, you know, those are for later. Don’t Don’t eat them. Now I’m leaving. Okay, but don’t eat a cookie. And they leave. What are you gonna do? You’re gonna eat the cookies, right? You’re gonna write or you might eat 510? Whatever you feel like the Cookie Monster. Right? And why? Because that’s what we humans are like, right? We don’t like to deprive ourselves of anything, right? And we certainly don’t like it when other people try to deprive them. But we don’t do it to ourselves either. So that goes back to what a habit actually is. So, again, I teach this in the book, but very quickly, it’s five stages, the cue routine, reward craving and belief. That’s what a habit. So the cue is the trigger that happens in your life. The routine is what you actually do, that we reward, excuse me, the reward is what actually happens in the brain, you actually get a reward for doing a habit. That’s why you do it, or you wouldn’t do it, then you have a craving, a craving for what actually happens when you don’t have it. And then finally, the fifth stage is a belief. So you have to develop, over time, a belief about your ability to know what happens when you do that habit. So let’s take a classic example of procrastination. That’s the number one habit that people tell me. Certainly entrepreneurs tell me that they want a break. Oh, no, I wish I could stop procrastinating. That’s my worst habit. Okay, great. So let’s look at what procrastination is. First, procrastination has the Q, the Q, what’s the Q? In this case? Well, the Q is you think about doing something that would actually help your business. Isn’t that amazing about procrastination? Procrastination isn’t just not doing something. It’s not doing something that you know would be good for you. That’s pretty funny. All right. And so procrastination is you think about doing something you know, oh, I should make that phone call. I should write that blog post. I should do that video. I should write that email, whatever it might be. I know this would help me. So that’s the cue then you have a routine. What’s your routine? Do you do something else? You go watch Netflix, right? You what you’re scrolling on social Media, you’re going on Instagram, Facebook and like, right? And guess what those platforms, all those social media, all those media platforms, they want you to be addicted to. That’s their job so they can sell you more stuff. That is their job to addict the human brain. And they do it very well. Alright, but so anyway, you do something else, then you have the reward, what’s the reward? And you’re like, well, that doesn’t make any sense. What work can I get for procrastinating? You get the reward in your brain, not in your bank account, you get a reward in your brain, because your brain wants to be safe. And that goes back to the craving. That’s the fourth stage, you have a craving for safety, right? So when you don’t do that thing, because guess what doing that thing scares you? And you’re like, oh, I don’t want to be scared. I don’t want to go towards my fear. I want to go away from my fear. So then you don’t do it. And then you have a belief that says, Oh, I’m a procrastinator, I can’t do it. This will never work for me, head trash head, trash head trash. Do you see how this all comes together? So that’s why I tell you and I tell all my clients, I say guess what the beauty of this is we only have to change two things. But I’ve changed everything. Just two things. Number one, you change the routine. Number two, you change the belief, I already taught you how you can change the belief. You just started using my afformations method. Instead of saying, you know, I’m such a procrastinator, say, Why do I get things done when I need to get it done? Wow. And that’s like, but Oh, no, I don’t that’s a light. Okay, again, this isn’t magic. It’s science, you have to do the steps. It’s not going to just magically happen. But for some people, it is actually, I wouldn’t say magical. But I would say miraculous. In many cases, we’ve had some miraculous stories, which I’ve already shared a couple of with you. But you know, there’s tons more on our website. My point is that you change that belief, and then you change the routine. So all you’re doing is you do one thing, you do that one thing that scares you. All right, oh, I’m scared to write a blog post, write the blog post, I’m scared to do an email, do the email, I’m scared to do a video, do a video. By the way, for all of you watching and listening. I want to say this to you. If you want to have a good laugh at my expense, go to my YouTube channel, watch no tv.com Watch no tv.com Subscribe my channel. And then when you go to the listing of videos, just select the oldest videos on there, you can do it by date, instead of selecting newest you select oldest, and then just watch my old videos and have a good laugh at my expense. I look so dumb and stupid. And I look, I mean, I just look terrible. But I did it on purpose. I’ve been on YouTube since 2007. Right? So that’s what’s been happening for over 15 years now. And the point is, I sucked it to the beginning. And that’s what I tell people, you have to suck at the beginning of anything, what most people are doing is waiting for everything to be perfect, that they will never come. So you have to get through the sucky part to get to the good part. Most people aren’t willing to do that. And if you are, you could be in the top 1% Literally in probably one to two years in your business.

Matt Watson 32:35
Well, and that’s with anything with business, or any kind of goal you have in life, right? Like everybody’s so focused on the end goal. But you know, most of the time, it’s just taking the first step of the journey. And then you figure out what the next steps are. But people get psyched themselves out from even just taking those first couple steps.

Noah St. John 32:49
And even that is head trash. Do. You see? Yeah, you don’t have intent. You know, what am I no problems? You just have that one?

Matt Watson 32:54
Yeah. Yeah. And you’re absolutely right. So I mean, I love what we’ve been talking about today. And I’ve you know, there’s got to be a small percentage of people, let’s call them the outliers that think differently that don’t have a lot of the problems that that you described, you know, they just think they naturally think a little differently. Like I’m actually a problem solver. So I feel like I naturally think a little differently, and I can still be a procrastinator, and I can still have some of these problems. But I get up every day and I’m a pro. I’m a problem solver. So I’m always trying to figure out how to accomplish things. But it definitely seems like 99% of people have their whole life full of head trash. I think it’s absolutely right. And you know that the other thing that’s hard is you mentioned this earlier, and I feel like for myself and certain other people that are really successful, it we can’t even explain why or how it’s like somebody that can can go hit a 99 mile an hour fastball and hit a home run but they can’t necessarily tell someone else how to do it just like I just do it. I don’t know how to do it. But in some ways I feel like you’ve deciphered some of the most common reasons of what are the things that people are missing, right that’s holding them back like and they’re all common mental psychology things that most humans struggle with that I think most people have.

Noah St. John 34:10
I agree with you. I have done that. Yes, I mean and it’s proven with over you know how many 1000s of success stories and case studies that we have by the way I do want to mention in addition to get millionaire book.com I talked about head trash and you know you just mentioned that you know think it’s very powerful. We do have this book called Get rid of your head trash about money for free. It’s a very easy one to remember send me a book nola.com That is very easy to remember send me a book nola.com And the book is free we just ask you to cover the shipping but because you’re watching listening this program go to excuse me go to send me a book noah.com And I will send you the book free it’s called Get rid of your head trash about money. And again I want to reiterate that for everybody watching the program. You don’t have all these problems, you have symptoms, but yeah, only one problem which is head trash. I will show you how to cure it. Think about this, if you mentioned you’ve got pain in your body, right, let’s say you have pain in your knee, or your shoulder, or even your teeth or whatever it might be. And you know, you keep taking all these pain pills, trying to get, you know, dull the pain, but you didn’t fix the actual problem, right? If it’s a tooth, you, maybe you need to have a root canal, or maybe you need a tooth extracted. If there is a pain in your knee, maybe you need to get physical therapy, or maybe you need to have a knee replacement, or whatever it might be. Sometimes it’s more serious than others. But the point is that if you just keep taking the pills, the symptoms are going to keep coming back because you didn’t take care of the one problem that’s causing your pain. So we encourage you, we urge you to take care of the one problem that’s causing all your other problems. In fact, it’s funny, many, many years ago, when I first started coaching people, one of my very earliest coaching clients said to me, no, uh, do you realize that your coaching is the only coaching that fixes every other coaching? And I said, No, that is true. That is actually our work. So, you know, again, like from Shilla, 5000 to 75,000 a month, you know, Adam 4 million to 20 million. I mean, the stories just go on and on and on. And that’s, I think, a result, I think it is a result of the fact that we fix the one problem that causes all the other problems.

Matt Watson 36:10
Well, as we start to wrap up the show, I do want to remind everybody that if you need to hire software engineers, testers or leaders Full Scale can help. We have the people on the platform to help you build and manage a team of experts. When you visit FullScale.io. All you need to do is answer a few questions and let your pup let the platform match you up with our fully vetted, highly experienced team of software engineers, testers and leaders at Full Scale. We specialize in building long term teams that work only for you to learn more when you visit FullScale.io. So no, I love what we’ve been talking about today. And you’ve obviously written a lot of books, and a lot of things have a lot of resources. It’s hard to keep track of all of them. Is there. Is there a good place to go to, to learn about all of this stuff? And where should we start? If we’re like, man, we’ve covered a lot of stuff today, where do I start?

Noah St. John 36:54
Yeah, very easy to remember just my name, noahstjohn.com. And we have a lot of free resources we’ve got you can see my most popular books, my online courses, for those of you that want to do group coaching, or one on one coaching, all of that is available on our shop page shop, Noah St. john.com. But just start at Noah St. john.com. And that’s like the hub that brings you to all the different spokes that we have, we use the Hub and Spoke method. So we bring it to the hub, Noah St. john.com. Again, also definitely subscribe to my YouTube channel, watch Noah tv.com. But it’s really, you know, like I said, I’ve been doing this a long time we’ve seen over you know, just 1000s of success stories and case studies. And that’s what’s really amazing, is to see people just the light bulb go on. And you’re like, wow, and especially for people that have been trying and trying for so long, and not seeing the results that they want. And then when they finally just explode, and we see these hockey sticks. It’s very, very exciting.

Matt Watson 37:55
Well, I think most people know, it’s like, Oh, you just need to change your state of mind. Like you need to think about things differently. But they don’t know how to do that. Right. And so that’s I think the key here is this is a way to do that that has been proven to be successful. Correct. So as we end the show here, do you have any other final suggestions or anything else you want to leave everybody with?

Noah St. John 38:16
Well, my mission is to raise the consciousness of humanity one question at a time. That’s my mission. And so you know, using my app formations method, getting rid of your head trash, using power habits, all of these are methodologies, their methods or strategies, right, it’s what to do. So what we give you, you know, when you work with us, whether it’s our books, or online programs or coaching, we give you three things, we give you the right plan, the right tools and the right support, meaning we give you the right plan, which is what to do the right tools, which is how to do it. And then we give you the support that you need to succeed. Most people are especially entrepreneurs, you know, they’re maybe working on their own. Maybe people don’t understand them, maybe their friends or family. They’re like, boy, they’re so weird, why don’t they just get a job and things like that. I mean, we’ve all heard those things, right. And so it can be tough, and it can be lonely sometimes. And so that’s why we want people to realize there is help available to you know, getting the right plan, getting the right tools, and then enlisting and getting the right support so that you don’t have to feel alone, you don’t have to feel like you have to reinvent the wheel. We’ve done this 1000s and 1000s of times. And you know, we would really love to help you as well, so that you can reach your goals literally up to 10 times faster, and in many cases make more in 12 weeks than he made in the last 12 months while getting your life back.

Matt Watson 39:29
Well, awesome. Thank you so much for being on the show today. And reminder, everybody go to Noah St. john.com. And find links to all your different resources and all the things we’re talking about. And thank you so much for being on the show today. My pleasure. All right. Take care.