Transcript of Shawn French: Conquer Fear and Self-Doubt to Build an Unstoppable Mindset | Human Behavior | E382

People think sales is selling something. It's solving a problem. If there's a pain point and you can respectfully solve it, and they like you, they're going to buy.

Sean French is a high-performance coach, keynote speaker, and host of the top-rated podcast, The Determined Society.

I remember people saying, Why are you starting a show? What have you ever built? What have you ever done? I wasn't treated very kindly about it. I was dismissed a lot.

What was the mental shift that you had to go through to double, triple your sales and become a top 1% salesperson.

What story did I want to tell my son? There's no way am I ever going to tell my children that I quit doing something because it was hard.

You say people buy people, not products. Talk to us why authenticity in sales really matters.

I think people need to like you. In sales, it's really big. When people make emotional buys, they buy the person that they're working with because they feel comfortable, they like them, or they can trust them.

What are the different things that you're running in terms of revenue streams, and how are you bringing in revenue with your personal brand as a creator entrepreneur?

Yeah, so right now, we are obviously What's up, YAP fam?

Have you ever been so terrified of failure that you physically couldn't That's where Sean French found himself, sitting in his truck on a rainy day, unable to walk through another door. The anxiety was so crushing, he was ready to quit sales and return to teaching. But then his boss asked him a question that changed everything. What are you going to tell your son about why you quit? Today, Sean French is a high-performance coach, keynote speaker, and host of the top-rated podcast, The Determined Society. In this episode, he shares how he went from that breakdown to becoming a top 1% salesperson, how he then went on to a thriving personal brand in his 40s, and why your struggle is truly somebody else's survival guide. Together, we'll talk about pushing past fear, leading with authenticity, and turning pain into purpose. Yeah, fam, I know you're going to love this one, so sit back and Enjoy this conversation. Sean, welcome to Young and Profiting podcast.

So excited to be here. Good to see you.

Yeah, I'm excited. I'm excited to speak with you today, get all of your wisdom. When I was doing research about you this morning, I found out that you had a breaking point in your truck one day, and that was the pivotal moment in your life where you transformed your life and went in a new direction. Talk to us about what happened that day in the truck, what was going through your mind, and how it led to the Unstoppable process.

I think you're referring to the day where I broke down in tears. Yeah. I had left teaching and went into payroll sales. I have my first child, and I wanted to be able to provide a better life for him. More money, more opportunities to do things and provide experiences. In the first 90 days, it was just so bad. I was so terrible at it. It was like walking in from door to door. Sometimes I was just stuck. I couldn't get a word out, and I was just embarrassed. I started getting this type of anxiety to where I would pull up to an office or a place of business, and I literally could not get out of the I was so terrified of something that wasn't going to even kill me, but how I was defining it, it was so big and large. And so I found myself driving around my territory, and then I parked at a grocery store. And it was pouring down rain in Marco Island, Florida, and I literally broke down. I was like, I can't do this anymore, and I just need to quit this, and I need to go back to doing what I was really good at, which was coaching baseball.

And the only way to to teach baseball was to teach school. So it was the vehicle to get to do what I wanted to do. And so I went into my good friend, Dan Tufferello, who was my boss at the time. It's funny enough, I just hired him to work for us. He starts Monday.

Funny as the table stern.

Yeah, it's great, isn't it? And I just said to him, Hey, this isn't for me. I'm going to go back to do what I know best. I just can't do this anymore. I'm terrible. I'm sorry. He looked at me and he said, You know what? I told you I was going to give you a year and you're going to do the same thing me. I was like, Buddy, I can't do this. I can't live a year like this. He's like, Well, you have a decision to make, man, because one day your son's going to ask you, Why did you stop working at Paychecks? What are you going to do? Tell him you quit? I was like, Wait a second. You're on to something here. So that evening, I decided to really get introspective and understand why I wasn't doing well. And the overarching theme was I wasn't prepared enough. I didn't have a plan. I didn't have a strategy. I was just getting in my truck and just bopping around the community trying to get business. And so I just literally started taking notes every single day, and I made commitments of what zip codes I was going to be in every single day.

And I predetermined where I was going to stop, thought of some things that I was going to bring up and talk about. Even if it was just going to say, Hey, I'm Sean French. I'm your rep. I just wanted to say hello. I don't know if there's a need here, but I'd love to explore if there is. And from that day on, I caught fire. I just exploded that month, and the month after, and the month after, and the month after, and It was five years of that, literally five years. Then I went into the medical industry and did the same thing until I was tired of it, until where this came up, the podcast came up, and I'm like, I've got to go all in on this. I took the principles that I use here from my early days at Paycheck. That day literally built me in that career, and then in my next venture into medical, and it's when I apply here every single day.

I love how you explained being tactical. A lot of sales is bottoms up strategy. The more emails that you send, the more opportunities that you get, the more likely that things will close. But what was going on mentally for you at that time? What was the mental shift that you had to go through to double, triple your sales and become a top 1% salesperson?

What story did I want to tell my son? How did I want to lead? For me, it was that he dingled the carrot because he knew how much I love being a father. He knew how much I love my son. He was, I think, about a year at the time. He was like, What are you going to tell your kid or your future kids that you quit something? For me, that mindset shift, it was immediate. It's like, There's no way on God's green earth Am I ever going to tell my children that I quit doing something because it was hard?

You have a quote that you say, People buy people, not products. Talk to us why authenticity in sales really matters.

I think people need to like you. They got to understand that they can be comfortable around you, that you're not going to judge them for certain things that they say. In sales, it's really big because let's face it, paychecks may not have been the best product out there all the time. It may not have been the cheapest. But when people make emotional buys. They buy the person that they're working with because they feel comfortable, they like them, or they can trust them. And so I've taken those same principles into the podcasting career, is what I do now 100% of the time. And it's just really what it People listen to the show because they either like me or they stumbled into me, and they stay or leave for either not liking me or really liking the authenticity piece of it, which is the latter part of your question. In a world where everybody he's talking about being authentic, I pride myself on actually being authentic. And I'm going to show up how I show up, and I'm going to say what I feel, but I'm also going to do it with empathy. And I think that is the main difference.

How can you show up like this every day? And then I just realized, I'm just going to be me. I'm not going to try to be somebody else. I'm not going to try to be you. I'm going to be how I feel I am. And of course, there's different growth patterns and stages of every individual. But for me, it's just about living your truth. And I think that shines through with everything that I do.

When you say living for me, how do you define what that is? Do you have core values that you stick by? How do you make sure that you always act how you want to act and represent yourself?

First and foremost, family. Family is at the forefront of my mind, my wife and my three children. I always want to represent them well. For me, that is my initial temperature gage. Am I representing my wife and my children well right now? If I am, okay, I'm going to keep doing that. That's really my only gage. It's pretty simple, but I like to keep things simple because if I start getting complicated with things, I can get lost. My ADHD kicks in and I'm gone. I really focus on what can I control? I can control how I show up, I control my attitude, and I control my effort, and that's it.

You had this awesome sales career, and then you pivoted into creating your personal brand with this podcast, with writing a book. Why did you make that change? What made you want to become a creator, entrepreneur, and put your face out there?

I didn't. Seriously, I did not want to. It was about 2020, I think, 2021. I think it was about 2020. My wife and I got approached by a good friend of to go to this direct sales company called Melaluca. And they said, Well, if you're going to sell this stuff, you'd be really good at it, but you need to have a personal brand. And I go, Well, I'm not an inventor. I don't have a product. What are you talking about? I didn't even know what it was. She was Well, no. What do people say about you? What's your brand? I go, I don't know. I have no idea. So it was a hard case study for her. And she goes, Well, look, this is what we're going to do. You post a picture of yourself on your stories and then make a question box. It says, What's the What first word do you think of when you see me? And that scared me. First of all, I only had 700 followers at the time. I didn't know what a question box was. That was a heavy lift for me, and it was scary. And so my friends had some choice funny words, like you have a stupid hat on or some other derogatory comments.

But the main theme was leader, coach, determined, determined, determination. So there's this massive response of some derivative of the word determined. And so I I went back to her with that information and she said, Okay, great. Now make a Facebook group. I called, What? Just call it determined? Who's going to want to go to that? She goes, No. You find ways to create the name of the Facebook group based on your personal brand. I'm like, So you're telling me my brand is Determined? And she goes, Yes, that's what people say about you. That's what your brand is. How people view you is who you are to an extent. So I said, Okay, I don't get it. I don't understand it. She got frustrated and She said, Sean, what in the world do you want out of life? I go, Honestly, you know what? I want to wake up in a society where people wake up determined to chase their dreams no matter how they feel emotionally at that time. She goes, Determine society. I go, I don't like it. She said, It's missing something. I said, It's missing the word the. So let's go with the Determine Society.

She was, Great. Make your Facebook page. Tease it, launch it, whatever. It was a Facebook page for about three, four months. People were coming on there, joining and interacting and posting and talking about their wins, talking struggles. And I had a really good case study of what people were actually struggling with. It was getting out of their own way, believing in themselves, doing things when they didn't want to emotionally at that time. One day I'm driving to work. I was going to a hospital. I was on I-75 about Sarasota, Florida. I remember this. Exactly, it was the Clark Road exit, and my brain just exploded. Whoa. I started seeing things. I was like, Listen, this is not just a a Facebook page. I could really help people. I'm going to start a podcast called the Determined Society. I'm going to talk to local people and talk about their success so that way they can help give other people a roadmap to get out of their own way or to Excel in a current industry that they're struggling with. That's how it started. I started recording... My first shows were in my car, just on my iPhone talking.

I love that. Yeah, I eventually moved into my den, and then I had three iterations of a logo behind me. And then all of a sudden, I don't want to say all of a sudden, but now we're here in a studio, and I'm not talking to local people so much. I'm talking to names like Jay Leno. You know how it is. You have amazing people on your show. Matthew McConaher, Jim and John, just You're amazing. But that's how it started. It was an accident. Now, deep down, I always wanted to have a show. I was listening to the MF CEO Project way back in the day with Andy Fursella. I was like, Man, if I could have a podcast that pours into people and helps them and I could be unapologetically me, dude, I'm all in. I'll double down on that thing. It just went out of my mind. Then one day, it just all came back, and I never looked back.

How old were you when you started building your personal brand? I because I'm wondering how everybody else around you treated you when you started trying to have influence online. If there was any doubters or if you had any doubts or felt embarrassed posting online, especially starting your stuff a little bit older than other creators out there.

Yeah. I'm almost 47. I turned 47 at the end of this month, and the show launched in 2021. I'll give myself 42. I was 42 years old. Successful salesperson, posting things online now. The moment I flipped that camera thing around, I hit that reverse and I talked into it, it was scary. What was even scary is when I posted it because then people are like, Who do you think you are? What are you doing? What are you trying to be? Tony Robbins. I'm like, No, I'm just getting some things out. And so the way I was treated, at the very beginning, it was ignored. And then you put things out that someone doesn't like. I talked about mental health in my Facebook group one day, and this guy that I used to coach with got belligerent with me, sending me DMs, wanting to meet up with me and fight it out. I'm like, Talk about mental health here. Good Lord, man. What's I went on with this guy. I used to sit in a dugout with this man and go on road trips with this guy and just be friends with him. And then all of a sudden, I post one little thing that's just trying to help people.

It was a live video, and he just torched me. And so there was a lot of hate. There was a lot of naysayers. There was a lot of people that didn't believe in me. My friends would make fun of me, and I don't think they're doing that much now, but I wasn't treated very kindly about it. I was dismissed a lot.

I can totally relate I mean, I started my podcast just when I turned 30. Even though I started my career in radio, I had a blog, I've had multiple shows, I took a five-year break. When I went back to podcasting, I remember my friends were like, You're too old to start a podcast. Or, What are you doing? You're ruining your life. You're throwing away your career. You look stupid. They were really, really negative. Now I have the same friends or some of the same friends who now want to start a podcast after they see everything that I've done with it. People always ask you why you're doing it, and then they ask you how, how to do it. Everything that you want is on the other side of cringe when it comes to this creator entrepreneurship game.

It really is. I remember people saying, Why are you starting a show? What have you ever built? What have you ever done? I believe that story for such a long time. I was like, Wait a second. I've overcome a blood clot. I almost lost my life. I went and played Division One baseball at LSU in the College World Series. I overcame my grandmother's death. I overcome not having a father figure until I was nine years old. I've overcome a lot, and I've been relatively successful. I'm a well-adjusted man. Are there any other well-adjusted men and women out there that do have some struggle? Why can't I talk to them? I just said, You know what? People on the sidelines, people in the stands are always going to say something. But I get the opportunity just to show up and fulfill what I believe my purpose is. And that's what I did.

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Really examine why they're doing it. Here's why I say that, because a lot of people see what's exploded since COVID, right? Let's just call spade a spade. They saw Barstool blow up during COVID. They saw creators blow up and make money online by doing funny videos or just talking into the camera. And then everybody is like, Well, okay, well, then I'm going to do that. But If you're doing it just for that, that's a long road. For me is understanding why you are doing it. Are you doing it because you feel you have value to give? Or do you really feel you want to do this just because of the vanity part of it? And if it's the latter, then you probably shouldn't do it because it took me years to make money. Years. It was a money pit. So that's the first thing. And then I go back to, who are you helping? Who are you talking to? Who's your audience? And then it's very easy to figure out then once somebody realizes, who was I before? How did I operate in my life before? That's who you talk to. That's who you help.

Those two things right there will do a lot for you at the very beginning because it gives you perspective and it gives you a roadmap because you can literally write everything down that you struggled with or still struggle with at times, whether it's body image issues, whether it's anxiety, whether it's rejection, dysphoria, whatever that is. You can literally dive into those things and then talk, and you're going to inspire somebody. You're going to have somebody come into your page and says, Wow, thank you. I really needed that. They're like, Wait a second. I'm on to something. Then you just keep doing that.

To your point, you don't need to be super successful or super rich or have all these accolades or credentials in order to start speaking online, you could just literally talk about a problem that you had solved yourself. I love this quote from you. You say, Your struggle is somebody else's survival guide.

I said that one a while back. I mean, it was probably three, four years ago. But listen, that just goes on to what I'm saying. Help the person you used to be. For me, I lack discipline in a lot of areas. And so now, if I could be super disciplined and look the picture of discipline, then I can help somebody else find theirs. And so your struggle, your failures, and I think failure is great. I don't subscribe to failure is bad. I think it's a good thing. It helps you grow, obviously. But when you take your own struggle and turn it into a map for somebody else, that's where the results are. And that's why people keep tuning in. That's why new people come in all the time because it's relatable.

You wrote a book a while ago called Unstoppable, and you had this Unstoppable Process where you talk about five habits. They mindset, mental toughness, discipline, intention, and transformation. At a high level, can you just break down these habits? And has anything changed since you wrote this book in terms of the habits, or are those still the five habits that you believe are a strong foundation for success?

Those are the five habits that I double down every single day. You got to be clear in what you want to do. You got to have a roadmap, which is a strategy. You have to have the strategic activity. You have to have all those things. You have to have mental toughness. You have to have grit, all those different types of things. So for me, that book is way old, right? But at the same time, I live that every day. If I say I'm going to do something, I'm going to do it. And if I don't do it, then you know what that does? It chips away at my confidence. And if it It's the way I have my confidence, my interviews aren't as good. I don't show up well for my wife. I don't show up for my children the way that I know I want to show up. So for me, those habits are everything.

I'm going to play a game with you called Fix the Foundation, okay? Uh-oh. I'm going to give you a scenario now that we know a little bit about the five habits, everyday scenarios that a lot of us probably can relate to. Then I want you to tell me what habit it is and how we can fix this foundational element. Okay?

Okay.

Scenario one. I keep setting huge goals at the start of every month, but by week two, I've already fallen off the wagon. What is the habit and how do we fix it?

It could be a couple of things. It could be clarity or it could be strategic activity. The clarity is the reason why you're doing it. You better be clear. If you want to get in great shape and you want to be shredded, are you doing it for vanity or are you doing it because you want to stay alive longer? If you want to be alive longer, who is it for? Is it for your spouse, your children? What is it? And then from that point on, you go to the strategic activity. What can I do little by little every single day to build those wins and not go from zero to 60 right away because you're going to fall off. That's why people fall off after the two weeks. They're not clear and they don't have the right strategy.

Okay, next one. I get easily discouraged one small setback, and I'm convinced I'm just not good enough.

That's mental toughness. You got to be open to the fact that you're going to fail a little bit. If you can be open to that and just know that not everything is going to work and that not good enough, complex, that comes from somewhere. It could come from a child. It could come from somebody you know, love, and trust so much. It could come from a mom. It could come from a dad. But you have to dive into those things in order to fix that. So being mentally tough and understanding like, Hey, look, that's not my story. That's the story someone told me and I chose to subscribe to and believe and make it about me. That might It would have been about them. So I'm going to leave that there. What can I do every single day to fix that? It's really operate out of love for yourself. Everybody talks about you got to love yourself no matter what. I honestly, I don't believe that. I don't love every version of myself. But I can have love for them, but I don't love the undisciplined Sean. I don't love the Sean that decides to sleep in and then eat like crap.

I don't like that version of me. But I can try to rectify that and transform that individual to who I am now out of a place of love. It's so funny. This is a side note, but my alarm clock used to say something aggressive. Wake up, whatever. Now it says, I love you, Sean. I love you. When my wife first saw the alarm clock. She goes, Who wrote that? I go, I did. She goes, That doesn't sound like something you would say about yourself. I was like, Well, see, that's the problem. Because if I don't get here and see that every morning when I wake up and understand I'm operating and I'm getting up at 4: 00 AM to go to the gym out of the fact that I love myself, then what am I ever going to become?

It's like telling yourself a different story. But talking about that failure piece, a lot of people are just really stuck on just being so afraid of failure that they don't just start. How can we reframe failure?

Forget everything everybody's told you. My wife did something very special for me back in 2000, probably '17. I was having a very hard month at work, and I was failing everywhere. I was still a top performer, but from my standards, I was just getting my butt kicked and my teeth kicked in every day. She sent me this YouTube video, and it was Will Smith, Justin Timberlake, and it was just this montage. You know what I'm talking about, those motivational montages. And the first voice says, fail early, fail often, fail forward. That was Will Smith's voice. And so for me, I reframed my belief system on failure based on what that video was. I still have it saved. I still listen to it. It's like you have to reframe what failure means. And sometimes you have to go outside because you're not going to have the answer yourself. You got to hear something or see something from people that everybody knows and that you respect because they've done so well and they're so successful. For me, that's what it was. It's just reframing by listening to that video and watching it over and over and over again until I believed it for myself.

Okay, next one. I've achieved so much on paper, but I still feel empty inside, like I'm the same person just with better results.

That one's hard to define. That's hard to define the habit because I think that's all the habits mixed together. I believe that if you focus on the wrong thing, whether it's monetary or vanity, you're always going to feel empty no matter how much you accomplish. You could say, Okay, by this date, I want to make this much money. And then you get there and you still feel empty. Retract it. It's process. The process, if you really submit to a standard of what you need to do every single day and make the journey the goal and the win, then when you get to that goal, you realize, I'm empty because I didn't enjoy all this. This is where I live right now. The journey of building this, that's what I geek out on. Whatever goal I achieve, I remember when getting a million listens in a year was this monumental thing. And then when I got there, I was like, Oh, shoot, what now? It's because I didn't enjoy all this. Now we do that plus 500,000 in a month. But I'm enjoying the struggle, I'm enjoying the process of building this show. So I think it's process.

I love it. You got to enjoy the journey, not just the destination, because then the goalpost just keep moving and moving and moving and moving and you're never happy and it's never enough. So I totally agree with that. Okay, last one here. I know what I want, but I keep procrastinating and waiting until I feel totally ready.

When are you ever really ready? I'm not the question, but it's something that people need to really ask themselves. You're never going to be ready. I was never ready to leave corporate America and give up benefits and that big W, too. So that's clarity, in my opinion. Just being clear on what you want out of your life and what you want to give the world. If you feel you have a purpose, so I feel like my purpose is this, and it was given to me by God. I know how upset parents get when When their kids don't use their gift, well, I'm truly not going to squander the gift he gave me. That's the ultimate act of disrespect. So for me, it's just understanding the clarity of what is your purpose? If it's your purpose and it's burning you, then you have to move forward. And again, you don't have to go zero to 60 and quit everything and burn the bridges right away because that would be your responsible. Because sometimes you got to do what you don't want to do to do what you want to do full-time. So being clear on what it is that you are meant for and believing it and operating out of that belief no matter what everybody else thinks.

So for your listeners, you might not ever be ready. You might not ever think it's the perfect time because the perfect time doesn't exist. There's always going to be challenges. But you got to be able to move forward and get the most out of your life.

What's your advice for people who feel like they can never get motivated and they don't know how to motivate themselves?

Oh, motivation is a fickle mistress, isn't it? She's there one day and she's gone the next. I think motivation is essential to kickstart some things. It's the kindle, it's the pilot. But what you have to understand is the discipline and understanding what you need to do every day. That's the real thing. I'm not motivated. That's the thing. This morning, alarm clock goes off at 4: 00 AM. And that's just the time I choose to do it because if I don't do it then, I won't get in the gym later because my life is busy. I'm never motivated to wake up at 4: 00 AM and go to the gym when my body hurts and exhausted. I'm never motivated to do that. But I said I was going to do it. So I have to. I have to because the easiest word to break is to yourself. No one can see it. No one knows if you're lying to yourself. You can have this whole conversation going on in your mind right now of why it's okay that you didn't get up and read or send your emails or go for the walk. It doesn't matter if it's walk your dog.

I don't care what it is. The moment you say you're going to do something, you don't do it, you chip away at your confidence. So that's how I feel. And again, you don't want to think of it as, Oh, my God, I'm a bad person because I didn't wake up today and go to the gym or do whatever. There's going to be those days. But to sit there and go, You know what? The mere fact that I'm not going to do something because I'm not motivated gives me zero joy. Why are we waiting on the motivation? Because nothing will ever get done. The only thing I'm really motivated to do every day is hug my children, tell my wife I love her, and record shows. Everything else I have to force myself to do.

Speaking of that, this is an entrepreneurship show. A lot of my listeners are really interested in creator entrepreneurship. I think we have the dream job for a lot of people out there. What are the different things that you're running in terms of revenue streams and how are you bringing in revenue with your personal brand as a creator entrepreneur?

Right now, we are obviously with a network, so we're running ads. We'll start to do some 360 social campaigns. I help young podcasters in the new in the business want to launch their show. And I take that as a very case-by-case basis, because honestly, the last thing I want to do is be on coaching calls all day. I really don't. But for those people that are truly driven to grow their show, we do build some good revenue with that because we give the actual value. It's not a cookie cutter thing. I'm the one doing the calls. I'm the one helping them set up their accounts. I'm the one teaching them what an RSS feed is. I'm the one teaching them what a good microphone is. I'm the one teaching them what a good direction of the show based on their belief system and based on what they want to give the world is. And speaking engagements, obviously, too. I do go do speaking engagements for hire, and then I do get asked to go speak to medical sales teams and teach them the things that we talked about today so they can perform better.

For all the entrepreneurs tuning in, I know that you're also a sales expert. What's your best advice sales-wise? Some pointers that you want to give them or things that they should remember the next time they're going on a sales call.

This is going to sound silly because everybody wants to teach features and benefits. Look at my pamphlet, look at my brochure. This is what this is. This is what it means to you. No one cares about how much you know until they know how much you care. If you can show up as yourself because that company hired you for a reason. They liked your personality, and they liked your skills, and they liked your ability to communicate. But a lot of times when people come into organizations, they go to the trainings, and they hear everything that the lead trainers are talking about, and they feel like they have to have that same verbiage, that same energy, and they change everything about them, and they fall flat on their face. So that's what was happening to me. So show up as you and show them how much you care. Find the problem. People think sales is selling something. It's solving a problem. And if you can solve a problem for somebody, whether it's payroll, whether it's medical, whether it's podcasting, whether it's a roofing company, it doesn't matter. If there's a pain point and you respectfully solve it, and they like you, they're going to buy.

I don't know about you, but for me, the most important thing for me to make sure that I have good interviews is making sure I get good sleep. That is definitely the most important thing. I make sure that I never do anything crazy the night before an interview and that I'm in routine. And anytime I've ever tried and I end up not having good sleep, it's like something that I totally regret. So what are What are some of the things that you do to ensure that you're at peak performance when it comes to your interviews?

I eat Whole Foods. I get good sleep, decent sleep, 6, 7 hours a night, and I work out. Then all the decisions leading up to the actual interviews, I'm preparing, obviously, for my guests. I have a good idea of what they do. My show is very open format. We just have great conversation, and it's very natural. For me, as long as I'm sharp, I don't drink alcohol very often. I mean, probably twice a year. It's not because I'm this guy that doesn't believe in alcohol. It just doesn't work for me. I don't metabolize it well. So I'll wake up, if I have two beers, I'll wake up groggy the next day, and I'm not having this great conversation like I'm having with you. So I try to keep my mind as clear as possible. I do have a great team. So when I record something, my team does the clips, they post it for me. I have people do my engagement. So I'm not tied to my screen. I'm not tied to a bunch of other things that are filling my mind with clutter, and I feel energized. That's just how I operate.

Speaking of some of these mental patterns, you said in the past, thoughts are random, but thinking is not. How can we make sure that we control our mental patterns? That's also about showing up as your best self, because if I'm here and I'm thinking about some client or something and not present, it's going to mess the interview.

I think the context around that quote was, you mentioned earlier, people that think I'm not good enough, or I'm ugly, or that person hates me. That's a random thought. Everybody's going to have these random negative thoughts. But true thinking is how you respond afterwards. Is it actually true? If you feel it is true, okay, what's the evidence? What are the examples of why I'm not good enough? Explain that, right? Then you have this dialog with yourself, and after a while, you go, wait a second. I've done this, I've done I've done this, I've done this. I've done the other thing. I am good enough, right? You just have to work yourself through those moments. Random thought, it's okay. Negative thinking is believing that random thought and let it perpetuate the rest of your day and your life. There's a big difference there. There's a big gap.

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I have secret weapons.

What's that?

No, I have a great publicist, Val Zucker.

Oh, nice.

See, that's the authenticity part of it, right? A lot of people say, Well, I don't just send DMs. I just show up. I'm like, No, no, no, no, no. I built a whole team to support me, to to help me grow my brand, improve my image. And it's everybody in the background doing amazing work, even down to my production team that creates amazing visuals and clips and gets everything out on time, spends time on... My partner does the show notes and he does the graphics for the YouTube thumbnail and the cover. All these things are working and these people are helping me grow this thing. So everything put together. But really, it was about me trusting somebody and knowing that I needed publicity, knowing that I needed news media, knowing that I needed all these things. And there was a time where I was just wearing a hat on my show and I was wondering why it wasn't going anywhere, right? And there was no brand. It was a cool podcast. It was neat. It was a hobby. But the moment that I changed my image and changed how I operated in my discipline day to day.

Investors came, partners came, and it all started to work together. And then it gave me the opportunity to go, Okay, now I can go find a great publicist.

You mentioned earlier how you started with really low-level equipment. I know Jenna Kutcher. I have a podcast network. I don't know if you know that. Jenna Kutcher is in my podcast network. She started recording in her car with no microphone. I, two years into podcasting, interviewed Matthew McConaher in my mother's basement. Everybody thinks this is some overnight success that you need to have all this money to pump into equipment. But you have a really great origin story where you weren't even entrepreneur or anything when you started. You quit corporate, you were in your 40s, you got started and just built brick by brick to become where you are today. Just walk us through what were some of the big milestones in terms of How you started. For me, I had a volunteer team of 20 people. I just kept leveling up. What was your journey like?

Yeah, so thank you for that. Yeah, the origin story of the Determined Society also started like Jenna Kutcher's. It was in my car. I had an iPhone, I was talking into it. Some of the milestones, well, the first milestone was recording that show. It went something like this, Hi, this is Sean, the Determined Society. I don't know if anybody's going to listen. I hope you do. If you do, I hope you like it. I just went through it. I just had no plan. Then the next day, I was coming through an Apple podcast, and I noticed that my show was on Apple. I was like, wow. That for me was a big moment, right? It wasn't burning the world down, but I'm like, Oh, my gosh, how do I have an Apple podcast? I didn't even know how it So that was a big milestone for me. And then when I learned that I could upload video to Anchor, I started doing Zoom interviews, and they were terrible. Why would I ever hit record before someone came in? Why would I ever do it? But I did. And so it was clunky. And then I had Andy Furcella's co-host, DJ on.

Then I had Larry Hagner on from the Data Edge podcast. And then it started giving me this belief system that I could get cool people on and have good interviews. Another small milestone was when I... You're going to laugh. I printed off the original logo of the Determine Society, which was a word cluster for crying out loud, Hala. A word cluster, so bad. I put it in a frame from CVS or Walgreens. I can't remember which one. Then I got the 3M tape, the double-sided tape.

I just popped it on the wall.

This is dope. Look at this thing, man. I look back at it and I just want to throw up. But that was a milestone for me. There's many milestones that I look back on that mortified me then, but now I'm very proud of because the audience has been able to see my growth, my stages. Starting off having everything, it's not necessarily a good thing. I think you need to want a little bit. I think you need to get your butt kicked a little bit because then you can really appreciate this industry as you know that it's very hard.

Well, talk just about the team you built over this journey. What was the first thing you outsourced? What was the first thing you invested in?

Well, the first thing I outsourced was editing. I would pay somebody like a hundred bucks an episode, and then I was like, Wow, this is expensive. My wife's like, Hey, wait a second here. You're spending 400, 500 bucks on editing. This is at the very beginning. I outsourced it. And then before it was monetizing, I was taking the family income in doing that. I'm like, wait a second. I need to learn how to edit myself so I can get my show out and not take away from my kids. I didn't want to do that. I didn't want to be selfish with it. That was the first thing I outsourced. And then I started outsourcing things like graphic design, distribution. And then I went back to editing. And then finally, production. And production was... My first go around wasn't the greatest, but my team now, they kill it for me. They move mountains for me. And then it was PR and then some social media engagement, not engagement, but more social media Management, right? That's something I want to talk to you about, actually. It's something that I don't want to do, right? And so those are all little things that I've outsourced and pretty much everything, I would say, mostly other than the back-end conversations with Valerie, my partners.

That was another big thing. Reina and Brad Miller, Pat Sickenz, Roman Gehly, my wife's involved. Without my partners, I would be a hot mess. I truly would. Instead of being prived from like, I own this 100%, because 100% of zero is still zero. Those are all the things that we've outsourced. It's a point now where, you know how it works, I don't even hunt for my own campaigns anymore. We have people doing that, and it's great because then I can focus on this.

But to your point, it's important. I feel that you are probably a better podcaster because you were hands-on in the beginning. You did edit your own stuff in the beginning. You probably have a lot more empathy with your team and understand what they're doing and also can help direct them better because you were hands-on from the start. I think there's an advantage with that.

It's tactical. It's a tactical business. I think doing all those things to your point at the very beginning made me better. It helped me grow exponentially because if you look at it, four years in and we're doing the numbers that we're doing with no marketing, I still haven't pushed the button on marketing. We got I know, right? I know. She's like, Dang, is she... See Danny? See Danny's washing? He's like, You're in a sales pitch right now, and I'm here for it. I love it because the bottom line is without a real integrated marketing plan or any type of get the word out, it's hard to grow. So I've been blessed. I'm fortunate.

Sean, I end my interview with two questions that I ask all of my guests. The first one is, what is one piece of actionable advice our young improvisers can take today to be more profitable tomorrow?

I would say know the thing that you want to do and why. I think it's very basic. It's so basic, and it's just like the people are probably listening like, Is he really just saying that? But they're saying it, and it triggers them because they're not doing it. Why do you really want to do the social media business? Why do you want to do podcasting? Why do you want to go sell cars? You have to have some type of passion around why you're doing it because it's going to be hard. You're going to get your teeth kicked in a little bit. I said that a few times today, but it's true. You're not going to always be successful in every single moment. So you have to understand that this is going to be difficult and is the struggle worth it for me? And if you don't want to go through that struggle, you probably shouldn't be going to do that thing. So find what you want to do and know the reason why you want to do it and be clear on it and then make a plan. Don't listen to anybody that hasn't done what you're trying to do or been very successful at it.

It's true. People could love you so much and give you terrible advice because they're speaking from their own insecurities.

Absolutely.

The last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life? This can go beyond business and financial. Just what do you feel like is the recipe for success?

The recipe is just staying in my process. It was just what I wrote in the book. If I can stick to that, I know I'm in a good spot. You have to be a lifelong learner as well. By no means do I think I have it it out. Trust me, there's many shows of mine that I listen back to. I'm like, Dude, you could have done better there. There was a question you could have gone deeper with. You can be better, Sean. So I'm always open for feedback. And I think people should always be open for feedback, especially successful people. Because there's always somebody more successful than you. But for me, when I look at the total enrichment of life, I look at, Am I a success? Does my wife and my children feel safe? Tell me their feelings. That has to be an astounding yes. And it's not always a yes, because we're human beings. We mess up a little bit at times. We don't have the right reactions to things. But as long as I handle my process, handle the things that I need to, and that my family feels safe in expressing to me, that is everything to me.

Why is it so important that your family feels like they can express to you and your family feels safe? Why is that so important to you?

Because I didn't have it. I had parents that loved me, my mom. I have a great relationship with my mom. But you know, hey, some people have more emotional Capabilities to be there for people. I grew up, like I said, the first eight, nine years without a father figure. For me, it was just there was times where I wasn't feeling seen and heard and understood. I just always told myself, I'm going to be the exact opposite. I'm not slamming my mom. I'm not. I love that woman. Love you, mom. It's not that. It's just the reality of it. She had her own childhood that she's still healing from. She never got through it because the family sheltered her from the reality and they didn't allow her to grow. They masked it. And so how could she ever have the tools to be there for me in those certain moments that I needed? Because I didn't even know what I needed. So that's the reason why I just didn't have that.

Any last words for the 60 to 80,000 young entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs that are going to listen to this episode?

Enjoy the ride. Literally enjoy the ride because there's not too many people that are going to do do what you are trying to do. All these entrepreneurs, the 80,000 of them listening right now, they think their reality is everybody else's reality. The reality truly is, is what you're doing is scary. What you're doing is hard. And there's not a whole lot of people that are sitting there banking on your success. They're waiting for the phone call for you to fail. So don't ever give them the opportunity to receive that phone call. Dig in hard, understand why you're doing it, and never come off of it. Because at the end of the day, my The biggest fear, and I would hope that most people fear this, is being on my deathbed, wishing I would have done more, wishing I would have chased my dream, wishing I would have enacted a little bit more strategy. You're not going to be worried like, Well, I had this car, had this amazing house. You're going to be like, Did I do everything? Did I do everything that I wanted to? And so as long as you stay true to that and keep that at the forefront of your mind every day, how the hell are you going to lose?

I love that. Sean, this is such a great conversation. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

Well, thank you for that. I had a blast. You can go to thedeterminedsociety. Com, right? That's the website. We're on Spotify at the Determined Society. Same with Apple. Instagram is at the Sean French, and I'm pretty easy to get to know. I'm pretty approachable.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us on Young and Profiting podcast.

Thanks for having me.

All right, yeah, fam, I hope you got a lot out of my conversation with Sean French. He is yet another Another example of somebody who turned deep adversity into unstoppable drive. Sean went from breaking down in his truck, paralyzed by fear and self-doubt, to then becoming a top 1% salesperson, a keynote speaker, and a creator who built the determined society from the ground up. What I love about Sean's story is how simple yet profound his turnaround really was. He didn't find success through luck or magic. He found it through clarity, preparation, and discipline. When he realized he was failing because he wasn't prepared, he didn't make excuses. He started planning his days down to the zip code, logging every single action and executing with intention. That structure became the blueprint for his Unstoppable process and the foundation for everything that he's built since. Sean also reminded us that authenticity is everything. People don't buy products, they buy people. Whether you're in sales, leadership, or building a personal brand, showing up as your true self with empathy and consistency is what earns trust and drives connection. Motivation. The moment Sean stopped trying to sound like everyone else and just showed up as his true self, his career absolutely exploded.

One of my favorite takeaways was his idea that discipline beats motivation every single time. Motivation fades, but keeping your promises to yourself, that's what builds your confidence. And that confidence compounds into success. Every rep you do at 4: 00 AM, every time you follow through when nobody else is watching, you're proving to yourself that you can be trusted. So if you're waiting for that perfect moment to start that project, pivot your career or share your story, remember Sean's words, you'll never feel ready. Move anyway. The process itself is where the growth and motivation happens. Yeah, fam, if you listened, learned, and profited from this episode with Sean, share it with a friend who's ready to become Unstoppable, too. If you haven't already, I'd really appreciate if you took a quick second to drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or Castbox. Wherever you tune in, I love to read your reviews. They're really important for social proof. And if you'd rather watch your podcast as videos, you can always come and hang out with us on YouTube. All of our episodes are uploaded there. We've got 60,000 plus subscribers and growing, so make sure you hit that subscribe button on YouTube for us.

And as always, you can connect with me on Instagram at @Yahwithhala or LinkedIn by searching my name. It's Hala Taha. Thank you guys so much for tuning in. This is your host, Hala Taha, aka the Podcast Princess, signing off.