OSR 002: What Fear is holding you back from Success?

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In this episode we will talk about:

What is fear is holding you back from success?  I bet it’s something as small as not having the information, ideas, or  connections to succeed.   I personally knew the fear that was keeping me from success.  It was my fear of putting myself and my ideas out into the world.

In this podcast I want to talk about my first real breakthrough when it came to making my ideas come to life. I also figured out the fear holding me back.

That my breakthrough idea was called the Tailgate Spotter.  Tailgate Spotter is a device that allows the driver to view the location of his tailgate on a pickup truck.  A quick background story: I had a cabinet fall out of the back of my truck because the tailgate was in the down position, and I did not realize it.  I had a problem, and I made and invention to solve it.  Please visit www.tailgatespotter.com for details.  I loved the idea, the application, and the design; but when I finalized the design, logo, and website, and it was time to present it to the public,  I froze in my tracks.  I didn’t want to friends, co-workers, or family to see this thing.  I was scared to put my “baby” out there on the market. I thought to myself, “What’s going to happen if they see this?  Will they laugh, make fun of me, or not want to be associated with me?”  I know this sounds crazy, but it was the truth.  I had a fear of putting myself out there.

Once I identified my fear, it made it a littler easier to get over the fear. When I gained the courage to put the Tailgate Spotter on the market, everyone’s response was so positive I could not believe I was ever worried in the first place.

I want to help you face your FEAR!  Whether you know it already or not, you need to find it, understand it, and find ways to overcome it.

Your fear might be holding you back from a new job, finding new friends, changing locations, experiencing adventure, discovering inventions, and expanding your world.

Please share with the community your #1 Fear.  Post it below and or leave me a voice message.  I hope to compile all the fears people have and share ways that they can be overcome.

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In this session you’ll discover:

• My Fear
• Tailgate Spotter
• How I overcame my fear
• Understanding the importance of believing in yourserlf
• Once you put yourself out there others will want to listen.

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Links

•  www.Tailgatespotter.com
• 4 Hour Work Week

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[spoiler]You’re listening to Operation Self Reset with Jake Nawrocki. Now where did I put that reset button?

Hello and welcome back to Operation Self Reset: the one and only place where you can change the way you think, act, and believe in yourself. Again, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to what I have to say and thank you for the responses that I have already received online, the comments, the questions, and concerns that you guys have offered to me. I appreciate the feedback and I love the communication so far. Keep it up, and this should grow into a huge community. And maybe, depending on how big it will get maybe we’ll all go to Florida and have a big party or something to celebrate this great success. I don’t know.

But today I want to talk about something that is very near and dear to myself, something that I had to get over to become successful. Well, not really successful, but I will explain more in a minute, and I want to talk to you guys today about fear. What do you fear? Now, I’m not talking about the things that scare you like getting in an elevator packed with people. You know, funny quick story about any elevator. When I went to college, I stayed in the dorms and there were about 13 floors I remember in one of the complexes and I was not on this elevator, but it was a rumor that got spread around and it was in the local paper and everything like that. Some kids were traveling up and down the elevator one night and decided to get as many people as they could into the elevator. Guess how many kids that they jammed in a standard elevator? Not ten, not 15—22. There were 22 kids in the elevator and because there was so much weight it actually fell all the way into the emergency shaft below ground where the springs are housed, and the kids were sitting in there for about two to three hours before the fire department could really start pulling them out one at a time. There were so many kids in there that they were standing on each other’s shoulders, and then a couple of the kids were freaking out, and then the lights were flickering on and off, and it was getting hot down there. So, luckily, I was not in that elevator because that would’ve been a nightmare.

So, that’s not the fear I’m talking about today though. Could you imagine yourself in an elevator with 22 other people? Just random people. It’s getting hot. The lights are flickering. People are starting to freak out, and you knew you were gonna stay in there for about one to two hours. Oh my gosh. Good Lord. That, that’s fear. I don’t want that. No way. So I want to talk to you guys about what do you guys fear? Obviously, with Operation Self Reset we’re talking about changing yourself, right? And the only way to really change yourself is to get over certain events, certain things that are holding you back. And that’s what I mean by fear. What are the events, the things, the emotions, the ideas that are holding you back from success, from achieving your goals? But I’m also talking about the fears that just make our gut turn in knots. The fear that makes your voice quiver. The fear that just makes your whole body kind of go limp—what is that fear for you?

Well, I’m gonna tell you my fear, and why is that? Because I’m the only one talking to you right now. And hopefully at the end of this episode you guys can identify your own fears and then post them on the comments on the website or leave me a voice message on the website, and I will go over everybody’s fears—not everybody. I’m gonna go over a couple, and we’ll talk them through. How can we improve on our fears and get over them. So the reason why I really wanted to bring this subject up is because I was thinking to myself, “What was my first step when I realized that I wanted to change who I was?” When I went through all the processes of exploring myself and traveling and talking to different people and stuff like that, what was the one fear that I was freaking out about? Well, my one fear that I identified was putting myself out there. That was my fear—of getting over the tactic of thinking to myself, “My gosh, other people might find out what I’m doing, and they might start making fun of me.” That was my biggest fear which is really weird. I didn’t mind meeting new people. I didn’t do any public speaking, but I didn’t mind getting in front of groups and telling them my story and all that stuff. It was more of the people surrounding me finding out what made me happy, what was my passion.

And so the reason why I bring this up again is because it relates to a story that I’m gonna share with you, and it has to do with my first invention and it was called the TailgateSpotter. You guys can go check it out: TailgateSpotter.com. And the way that I thought of this invention was because I read a book called The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss, and that inspired me to have a passive income and he talked about a lot of people how they created businesses, had ideas, inventions, kind of knick-knack kind of things, and they created great wealth because of that. So as I’m reading the book, I’m always thinking of different products and business ideas and stuff like that. Well, when I was traveling to the east side of Milwaukee, I stopped at Home Depot to pick up cabinets. I was rehabbing one of my real estate properties on the east side of Milwaukee there, and I went to Home Depot and they delivered 16 cabinets of all different sizes and they put it in the back of my pickup truck, right? When they put it in the back of my pickup truck, I literally thought I closed the tailgate, right? Well, I’m not gonna ruin the end for you.
So I’m driving to my properties. I’m jamming out to the radio. It’s a beautiful day. I’m on the expressway. Now, this expressway goes through the heart of Milwaukee which is a very popular expressway. So as I’m traveling, literally there was nobody in front of me, and there was nobody behind me. Of course, there were more people coming, but it just felt really eerie. I was just jamming out to the radio, hanging out. I had my arm outside. I was living that Bon Jovi song—living on the edge, take my hand. Yeah, that song, but I didn’t realize that my cabinet was also living on the edge because it was getting ready to fall off of my truck. And sure enough as I was proceeding up kind of a little hill in the road, my kitchen sink base cabinet fell out of the back of my pickup truck and landed in the third lane of the expressway. Now, I don’t know if you guys know what a sink base is, but it’s 36 inches long by 24 inches deep and it’s solid wood. I mean that thing is a very large cabinet. So, obviously, if somebody is proceeding on the expressway, they should see it hopefully, right?

So as that thing hit, it was like a big smack! And I look in my side mirror and I see that thing spinning, and I’m freaking out. I instantly get that gut feeling in the pit of my stomach, and I’m like, “Oh my gosh!” Well, there’s no way I’m gonna slam on my brakes and go and get it because I’m going like 65 miles an hour—because that was the speed limit and I don’t speed. And so I immediately pulled over in the right hand lane, in the emergency lane, and I got on my cell phone. I’m calling 911. Well, like I stated before, there’s nobody around me, and as I’m sitting there I’m on the phone with 911. I’m looking in the side mirror and I’m staring at the cabinet, just sitting there, and I’m thinking, “My god, somebody’s gonna hit this. My gosh, somebody’s gonna hit this.” And you ever hear that, “Oh, you know, if you believe it, you can achieve it.” Well, I believed, and I knew somebody was gonna hit that cabinet, and well, guess what, somebody did hit that cabinet.

There was a white sedan that proceeded up that little incline. He saw the kitchen cabinet. He locked up his brakes and dashed, dove into the emergency lane, the left-hand emergency lane. Right behind that white sedan was a Jeep Wrangler, and that thing had no time to stop and it plowed right into it. I mean, it was like the 4th of July. That thing blew up like an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. [08:06]. That was my very high tech crashing sound. And I had my hands in my face. I thought, “This is ridiculous.” Well, I hung up from 911 because, of course, what’s the point now? I mean, the cabinet is in a million pieces. That guy pulls up right behind me. We get out and he was actually—I mean, not cool about it but he was okay. I mean, he was nice about it. He understood it was an accident and stuff like that. We exchanged information and proceeded on our way. Well, I obviously felt so bad. I was so embarrassed. I thought, “My god, what the heck was I thinking? I didn’t even know my tailgate was down. Whatever.” Well, the reason I couldn’t see if my tailgate was in the up or down position is because I had kitchen cabinets blocking my view from my rearview mirror. And I don’t know if you guys have a pickup truck, but in your side mirrors you cannot see the location of your tailgate, right?

So as I’m driving down to the east side, I feel like crap. I’m embarrassed. I’m hating myself. I’m thinking to myself, “Huh, there must be other people out there like myself. There has to be a better way, right?” So I start thinking, “Huh, I wonder if there’s like a device you can put on your tailgate to let you know if it’s in the up or down position without getting out of your truck and all that stuff, right?” So I go home that night and I start browsing online. Google searching and everything—any keyword known to man that has to do with a spotter or a location device on the tailgate. You know, a sensor or something like that. There was nothing out there. I’m thinking, “Oh my gosh, this could be my moment, right?”

So I start fiddling with stuff, like prototypes, and I have blocks of wood and Velcro and magnets and wire and pieces of steel and glue and tape and all this crazy stuff, right? So it took me literally about five generations to narrow this bad boy down into a simple device that attaches to the back of your tailgate to let you know if your tailgate’s in the up or down position. What it is is it’s a magnet that adheres to your tailgate and there’s a little pole with a little flag, or my logo, on the end, and when you’re sitting in the driver’s seat of the truck, you look in your side mirror and you can know if the tailgate is up or down depending on the location of that flag, right? Brilliant idea, you know? It didn’t scratch the car. It was cheap to make. It was, I feel, and I still believe a really good design. It was one of those things I’m just so proud of this thing, right?

Of course, I told my family, and I didn’t tell my friends because I was embarrassed. I didn’t want to tell them that I’m working on my invention in my basement because they’ll say, “Invention? Why don’t you just go drink with us?” So, as the prototypes continued, I finalized my last one. I got it down perfect. It looked good. It functioned well. It kind of made sense and everything.

Now, before I say it looks professional and looks really good, now, again, this is me making this in my basement, so this isn’t a piece of molded plastic that looks like you could go buy this at Walmart. Of course, it looked a little bit handmade, but still very impressive—what I feel. If you guys have a chance, go to the website: TailgateSpotter.com. When I finally finalized that last prototype and I knew that this was my invention, this was my moment to release this to the world and let the world buy Tailgate Spotters and make me filthy rich. Ha, ha, ha! I realized I felt an internal gut-turning, nauseating feeling, and I knew what it was as soon as I finished the prototype or the finalization of the TailgateSpotter. It was releasing it to the public.

Now, it might not sound like that big of a deal. You’re probably thinking, “Come on, Jake. Toughen up.” Right? But it was one of those things, mentally I was thinking, “Oh my gosh, now I’m gonna have to start a Twitter account. I’m gonna have to maybe start a Facebook account. I’m gonna have to produce YouTube videos. I’m gonna have to put this out there. I’m gonna have to start telling my friends and family and coworkers and relatives and all this stuff.” And I just felt embarrassed which was really weird because why should I feel embarrassed? This is something I’m proud of, you know? I had a situation that did not turn out well for myself, and I made a product to solve the problem, right? But for some odd reason, I just couldn’t get over that. So I knew mentally, “Okay, well, I obviously have to still create the website, make some videos and stuff like that before I even start pushing this out there.” So I was thinking, “Alright, so I got some time.” So I was still motivated. I was still feeling good about the whole situation, and when it came time to finally push that publish button, I again had that nauseating feeling. But I thought, “You know what? There’s so many people out there that have these brilliant ideas and they do nothing with them.” You might be listening right now and you have an idea that is just in the back of your head and you’re thinking, “I don’t want to tell anybody about this because this is so good. I mean, this is revolutionary. This could change everything.” But yet, what have you done to bring that to life? Nothing! You need to! If you’re listening and you have that idea, please, take the first step and do something about it. Get it out of your brain and put it on paper. When you put it on paper, then start your prototyping. Okay, that’s a whole another podcast. This is about fears.

So anyway, so I finally press that publish button and on the website I had my videos; I had pictures; I had testimonials; I had the Buy It Now button; I had the free shipping, question and answer page. All this stuff. It looked good. I was so freaking proud of it, and to this day I’m so proud of it because I’m able to share with you guys my process of getting over my own fear. And at first when I launched it, I thought, “Okay, cool. I don’t really have to tell anybody about this because there’s gonna be people online that are just gonna find it and buy it, right?” Well, 24 hours, 48 hours, 72 hours pass. Nobody bought one. Then weeks go by and a couple of weeks go by. Nobody continued to buy any. Now, of course during the process I started handing out some to my friends and family. And my coworkers as soon as they started finding out, they were laughing their butts off at it. And, you know what? It was all in good fun. By no means were any of them very harsh or said, “That was a waste of time. You’re so stupid.” They weren’t very negative. No, none of them were. It was all in good fun, but it was embarrassing for me because they were just relentless, you know? It was as if somebody broke a cup and then they say, “Hey, if there was only a simple-to-use device that could attach to this cup so I wouldn’t have to drop it.” It was just every single day, and I laugh about it because it was pretty funny. But once I started getting over that fear, after my coworkers found out, it started to lessen the load on me. You know, I started believing, “Okay, not bad.” I got over that initial fear of putting myself out there.

Now, what did I learn about that and what do I want to tell you guys that you guys can implement in your own lives? There are going to be things that you are interested in. There are going to be things that you want. There are going to be things that you just have the passion and desire for that other people don’t. Whatever it may be: your hobbies, your book readings, whatever. There are people that you know that just don’t care about that, and that’s okay. And that is literally A-Okay. Because you know why? They don’t care. As much as you think that they care and they’re gonna bring the pain on you and they’re going to rip on you and they’re gonna make you feel lousy and you’re gonna feel like you wasted their time. No! That’s not their time to waste. It’s your time. Whatever makes you happy you have to do for yourself. That’s why I said a couple of minutes ago about the whole invention thing. If you have this idea and you feel it’s so good, you need to get it out of your head and start acting on it. That’s the number one thing a lot of people do when they have these ideas for a business invention, the way to change the things surrounding them, is that they always want to do it but they never take action.

So bringing it back to my fear of putting myself out there. After I got over that hump of letting my coworkers know and the people surrounding me know, the response was funny and they’re ripping on me at first. But over time, you wouldn’t believe how many people came up to me and said, “Hey, Jake, how is that TailgateSpotter thing going?” And I started laughing, “Ha ha, yeah, I haven’t sold any. Yeah, whatever. Blah, blah, blah. Sure, what are you gonna do? Rip on me?” And they said, “No, no, no. I think it’s a great idea.” And then they would start pouring out their heart and soul to me. They’d say, “You know what? I really have this deep down invention. You want to hear what it is?” I’d say, “Sure.” And they would pour out these inventions to me, and they’d say, “Oh, this would help so many people and this would help that guy” and so on and so forth.
And I realized that by putting myself out there I started letting other people take action in their own lives. It was so weird! The number one guy that was ripping on me the most, pulled me aside and was asked, “Hey, how did you do this? How did you file that patent? How did you find a logo? How did you design this and how did you make the website?” and all that stuff. And I’d say, “Yeah, I did A, B, C, and D, and I went here and there.” And I felt appreciated. I felt like, “Wow, you know what? When I put myself out there, the people that are surrounding me will feed off of that. They’ll want to improve themselves. They’ll want to get better themselves and realize that they have it within them to make inventions and products and stuff like that.” So don’t feel that your fear is limiting only to yourself. Your fear is scary only to you, but the possibilities of improving the people around you once you get over your fear is amazing. The feelings that will surround you and your closest relatives and coworkers will just be amazing.

So my question to you is what’s your fear? Your number one fear. I was just talking and interviewing a public speaker, and he said the two fears that freak everybody out are number one: public speaking; number two is death. So what are the fears that freak you out? And I’m not talking about a physical fear like a knife in your face or the dentist or something like that. I agree with you: that stuff is pretty crazy. No, but I’m talking internal fears. Is it rejection? Is it just not feeling appreciated? Is it not feeling loved? What is your fear? And I want you to go to the website: OperationSelfReset.com. Write that in the comments or feel free to leave me a voice message. I have a voice message mailbox on the left side of the page. Record your fear and I’ll compile all the fears and stuff like that and we’ll go over them together, because the only way to improve yourself is to get over your main fear.

Now, of course, there are other fears that affect us, but there is always that one fear that freaks you out and what is yours? Mine was embarrassment from coworkers and putting myself out there, and I realized once I got over that life is amazing. I feel more confident. I feel that I can open up and tell people what I’m doing and not feel ashamed. So tell me yours. We’ll get through this. Again, thank you so much for taking the time. Go to OperationSelfReset.com. Also, to check out my invention: TailgateSpotter.com. www.TailgateSpotter.com. Check out the videos. They’re pretty funny, I think. And let me know your thoughts on that. So, again, I’m not selling this product. You don’t even need to buy it. I’m not even making it anymore, but it’s something I want to keep around for my kids and let them know that they have the ability within them to achieve whatever they want. And that’s, again, what life is all about. Don’t hold things in. take action and do it. Now that’s a whole another podcast about taking action. Again, thank you so much. Go to the website. Go to TailgateSpotter.com. Tell me your thoughts. Tell me your fears. Make it a great day. Enjoy life. And we will catch you on the next episode. See ya!

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Leave Me a Voice Message with your Questions or Feedback…!

If you have a question you’d potentially like answered no matter if its constructive criticism, praise, or just feedback in general, feel free to visit my voice mail page to quickly and easily leave me a message.  You can also always send me an email at jake@operationselfrest.com; I will get back to you as soon as possible.

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