148: Vision Plus Emotion Equals Creation with Steve Gamlin

[00:00:15] Zach White: No doubt. So it’s hard to set the stage for everything that you’ve come through and become in your journey, but take me back if you’re willing to.

[00:00:26] Your radio days, I’d love to just kind of get a sense of you in the booth. What’s going on? What was it like to be on the air radio? Like, I don’t know nothing about the radio. What’s that like to be a radio 

[00:00:40] Steve Gamlin: guy? Well, it was a dream of mine since I was 11 years old and a friend of mine who believed in me when I didn’t, when I was 24, got me to take the steps to get into radio.

[00:00:50] Now, here’s the thing. I was on the radio for 10 years. I did not use my voice on a microphone as a regular DJ. until the eighth year because I didn’t have the confidence. I did not have this voice at the time. I tried, you know, faster, higher, lower. And I was so nervous and people kept telling me my voice sucked, but I was a really good off air rock morning show producer and comedy writer.

[00:01:10] So I did that for eight years until I had to get on the air. And then when I did, I did probably the worst four days you’ve ever heard on morning radio. My voice did not sound like this. And every day I’d get into the next song and I’d go, Oh my gosh, I’d hear footsteps. I go, and I’m going to get fired.

[00:01:27] Zach White: And this is 

[00:01:28] Steve Gamlin: it. It came over the fifth morning, knowing that the experiment was coming to an end. Five minutes to seven. I basically came out of a song and said, Hey everybody, Steve here. You know, I may suck as a DJ, but if you tolerate me reading the weather for the next 42 seconds, I’ll play a really good rock song.

[00:01:47] And I read the weather and I hit the song and I sat there going, here we go. The boss sticks his head in the door it laughing he goes brother. That was the funniest thing you said all week, dude Just be yourself more 

[00:01:58] Zach White: of 

[00:01:59] Steve Gamlin: that more of that exactly Mmm, and then from then on up until now into my speaking career I’ve just been myself and that was, I mean, we’re talking, that was 22 years ago when he said that to me.

[00:02:13] Zach White: Okay. This is true now. This is really cool. I want to sit on it maybe longer than I originally intended, because there’s something about that little journey you went through in radio that I’ve seen with engineering leaders all over the country and around the world, frankly, where you have a dream, a passion, a goal, a vision, this idea of who you want to become one day, who you want to grow up to be.

[00:02:38] But in spite of it being the most important thing in your life to go after. You lack the confidence to actually make it happen, and you can get shoulder to shoulder with the opportunity and sit for years right there, but not actually pouncing and not doing that hard thing or that courageous thing to make it happen.

[00:02:59] I’m really curious, looking back, Steve, do you think it really required eight years to get to that point that that was all learning and development and, and you weren’t ready and it was the right move or do you think, you know what? If I had just had this X factor of something different, I could have been on the air a whole lot sooner.

[00:03:19] What’s that experience like for you? And what would you offer somebody who might feel like their shoulders distance or arms reach from their dream, but they just don’t have the courage to go after it. 

[00:03:29] Steve Gamlin: I can tell you the exact reason I didn’t go after it. It happened when I was 13 years old, seventh grade, all my friends from up to sixth grade went to one junior high.

[00:03:38] I went to another where I only knew one other person. I was already uncomfortable. You know, I’d been a big fish at my earlier school, super popular with the teachers, great grades. I went to this other school and my self confidence started to fall, but in the spelling bee in English class that year, sister Helen, who was a Catholic junior high said, spell a wad.

[00:04:03] And I panicked at that because I couldn’t understand what she was saying, so I said A W A D. No! And I got laughed at. I mean, walk of shame all the way back to my chair. And the next student, my friend Dominique, she did the same thing, and everybody laughed at her. And the third kid finally says, Sister, could you use that word in the sentence?

[00:04:23] Like, oh my gosh. The student failed to win the Spelling Bee Award because he spelled the word incorrectly. You know, and when I’m on stage, I always say, and I said this once in front of a hundred teachers one time. I said, my luck, I get a 60 year old Catholic nun with a wicked hot Boston accent. With the 

[00:04:38] Zach White: wicked Boston.

[00:04:40] Steve Gamlin: That moment, I mean, I didn’t figure this out till my 30s. That moment stopped me from raising my hand in school. And my grades trailed from 7th grade, where I was all A’s, to graduating college by 62 one thousandths of a point because I withdrew any chance to be in the spotlight equated pain to me.

[00:04:59] That was my wiring. That was like how I engineered my brain. I was okay if I didn’t get into the spotlight until I had to. And then all of a sudden realized, what the heck 

[00:05:11] Zach White: was I thinking all these years? 

[00:05:13] Steve Gamlin: Why did I wait? 

[00:05:15] Zach White: Yeah. What a moment. That is insane. I, I’m like viscerally feeling the pain for you of that moment.

[00:05:23] Oh yeah. That is, that is. That one was not 

[00:05:25] Steve Gamlin: in pencil. That was a big ol fat sharpie in my wiring for a couple of decades 

[00:05:30] Zach White: actually. What was the moment you discovered that? Were you working with a coach or therapist or like, how did that come to the light for you about that 

[00:05:39] Steve Gamlin: moment? I was writing a blog one day, sitting at my desk.

[00:05:44] Just listening to some classic rock song and I’m just thinking I’m like, well, where did this come from? Why was I so child these years and it popped into my head and I just stopped and I go Really? Like, I let, I allowed that. I didn’t need therapy over anything. I allowed this thing to be the default go to whenever I thought, well, I should go for this.

[00:06:04] Well, wait a second. You got embarrassed when you were seven. I mean, it was subliminal, but there was always this thing in the back of my head, that wiring that kept coming up, no matter what I tried to plug myself into that old equation was running the old, programming was still there. Yeah.

[00:06:21] Running on its own. 

[00:06:23] Zach White: We talk a lot with our engineering leaders. We coach about this master internal operating system. And like, you got to realize some of that coding that you’re running off of, you didn’t put there and it’s not the truth or it’s not serving you. And you got to get really intentional about changing that.

[00:06:41] So let’s come back then that you finally break through. to being on the air after eight years of holding yourself back from the spotlight. At some point around mid thirties, some things in life came off the tracks. Tell me about this idea, I’d love to say, my life blew up, is what your bio said as I was reading through it.

[00:07:01] I just read through it and was like, oh wow, okay, that’s pretty serious. So, so what happened, set the stage to the mid thirties, what changed, where did it take you? I was on the 

[00:07:11] Steve Gamlin: radio for 10 years. And one thing you quickly learn about the radio industry, it doesn’t pay much. So in my second year of radio, I started DJing weddings on the weekend.

[00:07:19] And then I started my own business, DJing the weddings. So I was working 6 to 7 days a week for most of those 10 years. I worked about 15 years worth of hours in 10. Was not super communicative in my marriage. You know, our energies didn’t match. I was very positive. And our energies didn’t match. So I was very frustrated fighting with people at work we had three radio stations and by the 10th year I was doing this fighting head to head with the guy who ran one of the other stations.

[00:07:48] So I was frustrated. I was not sleeping well, was not eating well, was not communicating with my wife. The cracks were showing desperation. I didn’t just change my coding or programming, I unplugged the computer. I quit radio without a full time job to go to, went through a divorce, and at age 35, having not paid attention to financial things over the years, and had just taken out a 30, 000 business line of credit.

[00:08:17] to build my first recording studio. I basically put on the Acme Rocket Roller Skates and pulled a Wile E. Coyote off a cliff. And had to move in and live with family. And looking back now, actually it didn’t take that long to realize it was the greatest gift I could have given myself. As much as I punished myself for a decade.

[00:08:36] Brutally self deprecating. it was rough. Everybody but me forgave me for doing that. Well, and my ex wife. But everybody else forgave me and helped me get back up, but I punished myself for a good decade verbally and emotionally over having done 

[00:08:52] Zach White: that. Tell me about either the phone call or knocking on the door of family and saying, hey, I just did this.

[00:09:05] Can I sleep on your couch tonight? Like what happened there? 

[00:09:09] Steve Gamlin: It was actually a wide open door. That my dad’s we had already started building the recording studio in his home and an office in his basement. Okay. And he just said, you know what? We always called each other bud. He said, you know what, bud?

[00:09:22] He goes, we got a room down the hall. You’re here all the time working it out in your studio anyway. So why don’t you just crash in that room as long as you need to. Don’t go looking for another apartment. Just it’s cool. If you stay here, my step mom was, very cool with it too. And a matter of fact, she was here at our house last night, celebrating her 81st birthday for dinner with my wife and I, and, um, it turned out to be the greatest blessing.

[00:09:46] In unexpected ways, because my dad’s health started to show the earliest signs of when it was going to escalate downward or deescalate, I guess. And we lost him about five years ago, but me being there, my stepmom pulled me aside one day and said this, you don’t need to rush to leave. And we love having you here.

[00:10:08] I know. You beat yourself up pretty bad over having to come here. But if you leave no pressure, we’ll probably have to sell the house because your dad can’t take care of it anymore and it would break his heart. So I stayed there for 10 years as all the other parts of my life started to, I started to rebuild them and reprogram myself to the best version of myself, to be willing to see the opportunities of improvement in that.

[00:10:33] Falling into the ashes. That’s why I still say now, some days your phoenix rides a pogo stick, you know, rises and falls and a couple of tail feathers may get burned off, but when they grow back, they’re stronger and you can fly higher. So it was a rough decade in a lot of ways, but I wouldn’t trade one second of it for where I get to 

[00:10:54] Zach White: be now.

[00:10:55] Yeah, it’s powerful, man. Two things. I’m curious how you would. reflect back and take that experience and say, you know, here’s what I learned, or here’s how it shaped who I am today. The first is around that self deprecating experience. And to say, I get that. I relate to that so much because when I went through my burnout, and rock bottom experience in my career, in my marriage.

[00:11:19] I went through a divorce. And I remember my first phone call to my sister Lindsey. And I didn’t need a place to live, but it was going to be the first time I had told the truth to anybody in my family about how bad my situation really was and that I was getting divorced. And they, thought everything was fine.

[00:11:37] I had kept it completely secret from everyone. And I was beating myself up so much. And it’s exactly like you described for my sisters, for my mom, So loving, so welcoming, so forgiving, never a question of if I was fully accepted and loved, never once. But I was convinced that they were going to, you know, I told you so, or shame on you, or how could this happen?

[00:12:02] I had myself wound up in knots thinking that would happen. So the question is when you were beating yourself up, what allowed you to stop that pattern of. negative self talk or self deprecation and begin to turn that around. So how did you come out of it? And is there anything you would do or tell someone or coach someone now to help us from getting there in the first place?

[00:12:28] Can we avoid it? Or would you say it’s kind of like comes with the territory, you have to go through it? I know there’s a lot there, but take it and run. 

[00:12:36] Steve Gamlin: I wouldn’t want anybody to go through it like I did. Because it cost me a lot, but the turning point was about 10 years later, I believe it was June of 2012, a gentleman I just met.

[00:12:48] With whom I instantly became brothers. I mean, we were just, we were right there with each other. He was having a three day personal development of that. He says, man, we, we don’t, we haven’t known each other that long, but I’d love to have you on stage all three days. Cause I love your stuff and I love your energy.

[00:13:02] First two days went well. The third day woke up in a bad mood, was starting to run out of material and went on this self deprecating rant that got so many laughs, see that that was the thing when I became a speaker in 2004. I also became a standup comedian so I could trash myself and get laughs. So I didn’t see the damage that I was doing.

[00:13:24] I saw I’m getting laughter. I’m getting this. Well, I went at it pretty good on myself for about 20 minutes that day, talking about all the dumbest things I’d ever done in my life. And as soon as the event was over and the people left, he closed the door. Put a circle of chairs grabbed me sat me in the center one and how I now refer to it is He kicked me really hard in a place part of my body My doctor only gets to see once a year and told me if I ever hear you talk about yourself like that again a we’re No longer brothers and B.

[00:13:53] You’re not welcome on any stage of mine ever And he finally over the course of 20 minutes every single one of the speakers had been part of that event intervened upon me And beat me up pretty good for beating myself up pretty good. Wow. And that friend has actually since apologized. He goes, brother, we all did things in those three days that took away from the integrity or the value of the event.

[00:14:18] I don’t know why we picked on you. And I said, I don’t know either. I’m thankful that you did because it finally set my. My head on straight to realize what I was doing all those years. 

[00:14:31] Zach White: Hmm. Wow. kick graciously received. That’s yeah, that’s 

[00:14:38] Steve Gamlin: amazing. Yeah. It took a while to see the gift, but it didn’t take that long for me to realize that how I spoke to and about myself had a ton.

[00:14:48] Of impact on how the rest of the world saw me and my business started to climb after that. 

[00:14:54] Zach White: I really believe everybody in some way can relate to the part of you that you don’t love, the part of me that I really wish were different. And it’s easy to fall into that trap and that pattern. Maybe it’s, not leading to the kind of severe consequences you experienced, but we all have that place.

[00:15:14] And I think what you said that’s so insightful is you didn’t see the damage. And I think that’s true. Like a lot of times we just don’t realize the damage. That that’s causing so I want to get into your transformation and how your phoenix may be on a pogo stick, but it’s jumping pretty high right now, Steve, but real quick, there was one other moment.

[00:15:33] I really wanted to hear about was the golfing in the thunderstorm. what was going on with you and God and the thunderstorm that day? What’s what’s at the stage? What happened there? 

[00:15:44] Steve Gamlin: this was in the depths of the depths of the ashes that in that first year of just crash and burn, and it was a hot and humid Friday afternoon here in southern New Hampshire in August of 2003.

[00:15:58] And I had 3 left in my pocket and I was driving past this mini golf place that had a driving range and I’m a dangerous golfer. But I figured I could just take out my frustrations on it. there’s some things you can hit and get in trouble. Yeah, every swing had a name of something in my life I was mad at.

[00:16:14] And being a dangerous golfer, I went to the farthest tee box on the property, which is up against the netting that protected the trucking company next door. But I was also underneath these big steel towered power lines. And I thought, no big deal, because they make a really good sound when you hit them.

[00:16:29] It’s kind of cool. But being hot and humid Friday afternoon, a thunderstorm came through. major wind, thunder, lightning, pouring rain, everything, and everybody but me ran from the storm, and I just stood there, kept hittin kept hittin and the thunder and lightning had gone, and at one point I just held up the club, and I said, I dare you.

[00:16:49] Go ahead. I dare ya. And I wasn’t mad at God. This is my Lieutenant Dan moment from Forrest Gump. Yeah, when he’s in the storm in the crow’s nest of the shrimp boat in the hurricane and he’s going is that all you got? Come on blow. You’ll never sink this boat. That was my lieutenant Dan moment I was not mad at God and I just thought it was funny that I was doing that So I hit my bucket in the buckets of two guys who had run from the storm.

[00:17:14] It didn’t come back So after an hour, I can’t even lift my arms and I go to my car and I put in the key and I open the door And the sun comes out and the rain stops. And I just started laughing. It was the biggest laugh I’d had. Like a genuine, I just look up and I’m like, well played the next day. I’m on a phone call with my then brand new life coach who I wasn’t even paying because I had no money.

[00:17:40] And he asked, how was your week? And I said, put down your pen. Listen to this. And I told this funny as I could sound it and yes, very self deprecating the story of that hour. And when he finished laughing, which by the way, as a coach, you should never do when your clients are laying out how pathetic their life is.

[00:17:55] You really shouldn’t laugh. Just mute the phone. And he said, if you ever thought of being a motivational speaker or a standup comedian, I think you’d be really good at both. He didn’t know that when I was 11, I wanted to be a radio DJ, author of my own books, standup comedian, and a teacher of people. He didn’t know that and that day on his desk in the junk mail pile, local community college had a brochure two weeks later intro to stand up comedy class.

[00:18:24] He asked, will you go? Yeah. Have you ever heard of Toastmasters? I think so. They help you give speeches and stuff because you got the tools made. Just go sharpen them. And I wound up in Toastmasters for eight years and something I, uh, retrieved from the upstairs the other day. This is the actual golf club from that day.

[00:18:46] I brought it down here for, an interview the other night. The guy goes, I’d love to hear that golf story. I’m like, I’ll show you the club. Wow. So I keep it here in the recording studio. 

[00:18:58] Zach White: What a moment. And I love how sometimes the most important guiding. Events of life we could never plan and in many cases, the other person has no idea the role that they’re playing in our journey.

[00:19:14] happens all the time. It’s super powerful. And just a sense of openness to that. I think it’s important sometimes, especially as an engineer, I like to. Hold on and try to control all of the outcomes. And I know my clients relate to this too. we want to understand why equals F of X.

[00:19:30] You know, what’s the formula? What’s the transfer function? What’s the, the cause and effect of everything in life. And that way I can master all these dials and knobs and get it perfect. So often it’s that open hand that actually accelerates and leads us to the thing we really, really need. Yeah. Awesome.

[00:19:48] Awesome story. So then. The comment you just made, I think, is a useful place for us to build to the work you’re doing now. You have the tools. You just need to go sharpen them. So you’ve become known now as the motivational firewood guy. You’ve got this incredible program around vision board mastery, which is something I am super passionate about.

[00:20:12] And I love just vision as a entire body of work and vision boards are part of my, my practice, but tell us a little bit about that sharpening. Journey for you. you get told in that life coaching session, you’ve got the tools. What was that like for you personally? And what did you discover along the way that is now become your message and the things you’re sharing with others?

[00:20:36] walk the journey with us a bit. what happened from there? 

[00:20:39] Steve Gamlin: At first, absolutely nothing, because I had no idea what I would talk on or, or, or be an authority on, or maybe blowing up your life, but things started to happen. You know, my, my coach suggested watching the DVD version of The Secret that had just come out in the early 2000s.

[00:20:54] Okay, yep. Law of Attraction, which for many people is very woo woo. I get that. That’s why I refer to what I do now as blue collar woo, meaning I, schematic and the design and roll up my sleeves and help you to actually build it. And understand the plans in the results and all of that.that’s what I do.

[00:21:12] I don’t just say wishing a prayer. There you go. Hope you check caches. But out of the 98 minute DVD, there was this guy named John Asaraf who I’d never heard of prior to that. For three minutes, he talked about this concept of something called the vision board. Now I’ve always been a dreamer, a creative person, a visionary, and to understand that you could have this vision, but also put it in a schematic and create Background for it, like a wiring diagram that was scientifically proven that if this, then this, if you want this, then you take this action, you meet these people, you learn this skill, you do this, and then this, increases the opportunity that you get closer to whatever it is that you want.

[00:21:56] I’d never thought of it that way because you know, you have integrators and you have visionaries integrators. A lot of them are engineer type mindsets. I was never one of those, but I started to surround myself with those people and understand. What it takes, it took to construct things behind the scenes.

[00:22:14] So it wasn’t just this stunning visual of something. I had a scientific plan behind it of the actions I would have to take, the habits I would have to develop, becoming a better version of myself. To reach and attract all the opportunities and the people I wanted to have in my life It was the first time I’d ever thought of it like that not just a wish and a prayer and a hope for 

[00:22:34] Zach White: yeah When did you process build your first board then was it like immediate you and often did this and things start happening or was it?

[00:22:41] Later, when did you actually take action yourself pretty 

[00:22:44] Steve Gamlin: immediate actually made two boards Okay. Because I was so excited about this. So this is amazing. And I made two boards. And within three weeks, I realized these were the worst vision boards I could have ever made. How so? It was all material things because I was broke.

[00:22:59] course, you know, I follow all these other personal development people and successes. What I now refer to as the vision board starter kit, the Lamborghini, the yacht, the mansion, the private jet, the helicopter, the big honking gold watch and a bank vault full of gold bars. And when people come to me with that, I said, I’m going to make this easier for you.

[00:23:15] Get a pen and a paper. Get a pen. Good. Good. Good. Write these words. Dear Santa Claus. Figure out what you really want and let’s start to write the programming that you’re going to have to follow in your life. So I just threw all these material things on there except for one. I wanted to finish my recording studio and have it operable.

[00:23:37] And I did that. Everything else just was just fluff. So I took that and I made that the centerpiece of my next board, which didn’t have a lot of pictures or visuals on it, but I started to achieve more and more things with each board. And I started to learn and take notes of what worked and what didn’t.

[00:23:52] And eventually when people started to notice, I was creating success in my life at a pretty rapid rate in, in becoming the better version of myself. They started to ask. If I could teach them to do it, and that was the seeds, the very awkward, clumsy early steps of what I now teach that’s now a full blown program and a coaching program.

[00:24:12] Yeah, I love that. You know, speaking in working with company teams inside of corporations even. To do this, but those early clunky steps, I, I’m so thankful for them and I still have every single board I’ve ever made. 

[00:24:24] Zach White: Ooh, I love that. 

[00:24:25] Steve Gamlin: when you lay them out in order, it’s like, okay, that’s kindergarten.

[00:24:30] You know, and, and hey, we got to start somewhere, right? Yes, 

[00:24:34] Zach White: yes. Steve, you became aware of what you thought you wanted. That might’ve been driven from that pain and the scarcity of not having money at the time versus what you really wanted. What is the key for someone to find that truth of what you really want?

[00:24:55] Steve Gamlin: The first step is understanding how many parts of your life there actually are. And I work with a pretty standard tool in the personal development world. It’s called the Life Wheel, and I’ve tweaked it to the way that I teach things. But to understand, we’re all so blindly led to this thing called work life balance, where I teach that your life is made up of your physical health, your emotional well being.

[00:25:18] Imagine that, setting goals for the emotions that you want to feel on a regular basis. Your relationships, your core values that guide every thought, word, and action that you create in the world, your faith and spirituality, if that’s an important part of your life, which does very much the same, it just comes from a different direction, your actual connection with the world in a real way, it doesn’t mean you got to be out around people all the time, but when you are connecting with somebody, are you really having a real interaction of feeling and concern and connection?

[00:25:50] And then your work, And your money, and some people instantly say, Whoa, that’s a lot to think about. That’s too much. They’re all going on 24 seven, whether or not you’re paying attention. So what I suggest to people is as soon as they know and realize there’s those eight things go somewhere quiet, turn off all things electronic.

[00:26:10] Now this is one that I recommend people handwrite, get a pen or a pencil and a stack of papers. Look through each life wheel. Evaluate for yourself, whether it’s scale of one to 10, if you’re more numeric or some words, where’s your life right now? What are your honest feelings about your life in each of these categories?

[00:26:28] Please don’t be embarrassed. Be brutally honest with yourself. Yes. No one else needs to see it. That’s your point. A think one year into the future. Don’t do 20, do one. How would you like each one to be one year from now? And don’t just say 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, because that’s a lot. And it’s very overwhelming.

[00:26:49] Think of where you’d like them to be in one year and then start to understand why you want it. And think of the smallest steps that you could begin to take in those directions. That’s it’s the bottom of an old wooden roller coaster where you start to go click, click, click. You can’t start halfway up.

[00:27:06] You can’t skip any, but any one of your goals is the top of that first hill. You got to start slow. You got to start small. Nothing’s instant, because it’s not just what you get, it’s who you become in your internal coding, your wiring, your life’s schematic. It might be clunky at first. Think of an engineer, you know, any engineer, what did their first design look like versus what they’re capable of doing now?

[00:27:29] Yeah, exactly. And understand that time span and just start. 

[00:27:35] Zach White: Hmm. What I love about that journey, that process of discovery. Is in a way it takes away the pressure that I need to have this magical download from the universe of what I actually want or that God needs to put it in Ten Commandments on stone tablets for me of my destiny.

[00:27:57] And it just says, look, every one of us has these eight spokes around your wheel of life. Let’s just take a look, self assess, get clear on where you’re at today and imagine, let’s see something better. In those areas. And then the law of smallest action is super important. I teach the same thing. I, it’s really easy to stall progress by dropping your vehicle from neutral into third gear, fourth gear, fifth gear.

[00:28:25] That’s not how you drive. You got to go into first gear first, you know, to get off, to get off the starting line. we go from, I’ve never worked out. Or I haven’t worked out in a decade. I want to get in better shape. So I’m going to go to the gym for an hour every morning before work. It’s like, no, you’re not, that’s not going to happen.

[00:28:42] It’s not going to happen. You know, that’s crazy. Let’s start with what if you just did five minutes of movement a day and maybe go to the gym once, you know, like, let’s start with the small thing. I really love that. And then let that start to inform. The full picture, beautiful way to walk through that.

[00:28:59] And so how does that then translate to. the vision board and this idea of taking the wheel and especially as an engineer for me, it is, it’s very numeric. It’s very I’m seeing a diagram in my head and we use a similar tool in our coaching program. It’s very, it’s not pretty, it’s just numbers, right?

[00:29:16] So. How does it become the image? what happens there? How do you coach people to actually turn this into something I can see? 

[00:29:25] Steve Gamlin: I encourage people to connect with their senses. So it’s not just a C thing. There, there’s actually a brain condition out there where people cannot even visualize things. And I had somebody at one of my events come up to me with that.

[00:29:37] So we had to shift gears a little bit. So my first question to people is what do your goals look like? And then they go, okay. I go. What do they feel like? What do they sound like? What do they taste like? What do they smell like? And that’s when people go, uh, might go, smell like something? And I had a gentleman recently, he found a picture of this brand new, huge GMC pickup.

[00:30:02] He said, this is going on my vision board. He just found it online. And he reached out to me because he was so proud and so happy. And I was so proud of him for, for identifying that. I said, all right. Do you know the dealership that has one and goes, Oh yeah, it’s cross town. I said, okay, good. I want you to bring a buddy of yours and she goes, sit in there, inhale truck smell and take off one of your shoes and scrunch your toes in the floor mats.

[00:30:29] Feel the leather of the dashboard. I want you to feel the seat. I want you to feel the door. I want you to feel the wheel with both your hands and close your eyes. If you’re allowed to take it for a test drive. Have your buddy sit right behind you because it’s an extended cab. And I said, have nobody talk, but have him videotape over your shoulder, your hands on the wheel, your view out the windshield.

[00:30:51] Rev the engine, record the audio from that, truncate it, and make it an alert on your phone that you can have go off at an alarm every morning when you wake up, you’re hearing your truck. So what we’re doing is we’re just making it as real as possible. We’re putting as many Legos into this. Yes, yes. This vision.

[00:31:09] As possible attaching every single sense. And he says, I know you’re going to ask me about taste. He goes, no, one’s allowed to eat in this truck. I said, okay, fair enough. what’s the first meal you’re going to go enjoy the day you drive your truck off the lot and you’re underway home, he goes.

[00:31:25] Oh, it’s a barbecue place. Me and my wife love to go to for our date nights. Now date nights as part of one of their relationship goals that we talked about and he’s going to the barbecue place. I’m like, all right. And I said, you’re going to park it way out back. So nobody else dings it, right? I get, he goes, you know, it I’m walking.

[00:31:40] I’m like, you’re walking. That’s part of your physical health goal. And he’s like, dude, you got an answer for everything. It’s all wired together. And he is so excited now. I can’t wait to get the MP3 of the actual sound of the exhaust. he’s going to send 

[00:31:55] Zach White: it to me. This is so good. And I really agree that the more real each sense becomes, it’s a multiplication.

[00:32:08] Of all the things that it ultimately takes to bring it into our reality. And I like kind of your blue collar woo comment. We’ll come back, maybe talk about some of the science of what’s actually happening here and like, why does this matter? But I’ll tell you, one of my coaches said to me, this was years ago on my vision board, I had a picture of a motorcycle that I wanted, it was a picture from a long distance off with a lot of scenery around it.

[00:32:32] The motorcycle was just, Sitting there, kickstand down. And he said, that’s a cool picture because what I really want you to do is get a picture. Of that bike from the perspective of you sitting on the seat and actually looking ahead and imagining what you’re actually doing. And we did a visualization exercise that day where I imagined taking that bike out and then, you know, go, what’s it, what’s it sound like, how loud are those pipes?

[00:32:57] And then what’s the road you’re on. And I’ve described the scene of me in the fall driving on M 22 for anybody from Michigan, you know, there’s a famous road in the north. Part of Michigan. That’s absolutely gorgeous in, in the fall to drive on winding road. So the leaves are blowing up behind me. It’s a gorgeous scene, colorful trees.

[00:33:16] And, you know, you look down at that beautiful display there of the motorcycle and you see those RPMs, it’s just, that’s what needs to be on the vision board. And if it’s the first time anybody had ever really helped me understand the importance of the emotion and the senses. When it comes to visioning and as an engineer that rocked my world, obviously as a coach, now I use that with my clients, but I think this is for whatever reason, it’s, it’s uncommon, Steve, why don’t people.

[00:33:45] Know this why isn’t it talked about more? Do you have a perspective on that? Why is this so rare that people coach it and do it in their own life this way? 

[00:33:55] Steve Gamlin: I know exactly why it’s rare because most people go to vision board parties at the beginning of the year for 25 bucks and the Marketing says hey, we’re gonna have wine cheese crackers scissors glitter acoustics magazines poster boards, and they think it’s an arts and crafts project Some people, when I try to talk to, I’ve actually, I have a t shirt line and on the back it says friends don’t let friends attend vision board parties.

[00:34:16] My clients love that shirt. Like sometimes I have to wear it on the zoom call with that. That’s so beautiful. But see, that’s the depth. it’s perceived as an arts and crafts project. And I told someone the other day, I said, look, if you spend more time at Hobby Lobby figuring out what color glitter you want versus doing that life wheel and putting pen to paper and thinking what you really want, we are going to have a very uncomfortable relationship.

[00:34:38] They went, okay. then they went and did the work, but they were so concerned about the prettiness of it. Some of my best boards just, they went together ugly when I was putting them together. Cause I was in such a state of flux with everything. I just, I knew what I wanted, but I was trying to make it all pretty.

[00:34:57] It’s kind of like the sword that comes out of the forge, and it’s kind of ugly, and it’s not super straight, but it’ll cut through anything, and then the real super pretty one, they’re afraid for it to get scratched or dented, and it won’t hold up. Give me ugly and strong any day, and I will just keep plowing through towards my dream 

[00:35:17] Zach White: future.

[00:35:17] That’s good. Give me ugly and strong. Twitterable moment from this conversation. Ugly and strong. All right, so Steve, now let me be a skeptic for a second. I’m going to put my engineer hat back on, be a realist. I’m going to talk about the real world, living in the now, Steve, all this nonsense about visioning and vision boards and Blue collar woo, like what the hell this, I don’t want to do this.

[00:35:39] You know, what would you say to me if that was my perspective? If I was coming, like, I don’t believe in any of those. This is pointless. What’s the reason to believe that doing this kind of work and visioning and goal setting and connecting to emotion and senses actually 

[00:35:56] Steve Gamlin: works. You know, I get asked every once in a while, a version of that, and also with a very snotty attitude a lot of the times.

[00:36:04] What qualifies you to teach this? Ooh. Because I have zero certifications. And I get asked that, and I don’t get mad about it anymore. On the other wall of my recording studio, there’s a small chalkboard. And one day, after about the tenth time being asked that, I just grabbed a piece of chalk and I wrote, This.

[00:36:22] Guy. Lived. It. And I drew an arrow, and I put my head in front of the arrow, took a selfie, and I send it to every single person who questions my authority. I said, look, I’m not saying it’s the answer to any of your problems. All I can say is where my life was 20 years ago to where it is right now, what I teach and how I teach it is based solely upon the notes I took in that first very formative decade.

[00:36:49] And What I’ve been able to create since then, and even more important, the person I’ve become, that’s what qualifies it. Now, I sometimes need to explain it in a different way to somebody who is of an engineering mind, an integrator, versus a visionary. There are days I have to pull the visionaries out of the clouds, and I have to be the integrator, which I, God laughs when I say, I’m the one in charge of the coding here, and then I just laugh.

[00:37:14] Oh my gosh, did I just say that? That’s what I have people at the extremes both ways. People who are super skeptic, who are then have conversations with and say, well, there’s just no logical explanation for it other than go back to science, the reticular activating system. When you start to say something, identify something, your senses start to notice it more.

[00:37:35] That’s at play all the time. When we’re not staring at our shoes or our phone, we become very acutely aware of opportunities to get closer to what we say we want. If we truly want it in our hearts. That’s where I go. And then other people, I’ve got to get them out of the craft store and yeah. Back to actually doing the work.

[00:37:54] Zach White: This guy lived it. You know, what’s cool about that answer, Steve? of course we could geek out all day about more of what’s going on in our nervous system and why it matters. But even as an engineer. It’s easy for me to forget that what I take as truth and things that are the laws of physics how electricity works, it’s like, wait a minute, what just happened there?

[00:38:18] Well, electrons move from over there to over there. Really? How do you know that? Did you see it happen? I didn’t. a lot of this stuff, all it is is observable that if we do this over and over, it always seems to work and we create. These laws off of things that frankly, nobody can explain. It’s just energy.

[00:38:36] It’s just consistent. It proves itself every single time. And so it becomes a law and science. You know, the scientific method has helped us get there. A lot of these kinds of things. It’s like, you know what? thing moved from my vision board to my garage. How exactly that happened? I don’t know, man, but it just keeps on happening.

[00:38:55] And so I’m going to keep putting it on the vision board. think there’s some. Aspect of maybe you’d call it faith, but it’s no different to me than faith that the electrons are going to move from high voltage to low voltage. it’s going to move from my vision board to real life when I pursue this.

[00:39:10] I think it’s okay sometimes to just accept that. Yeah. 

[00:39:14] Steve Gamlin: Well, it’s faith and awareness in people look at me and I still get this all the time and I put it in my social media posts all the time. I’ll talk about a phase of my life and then explain the lessons. And I always remind people, don’t call me lucky.

[00:39:28] Because I was the one who kept his eyes, ears, heart, everything, body, heart and soul aware of that I was looking for. Whether I was in pain or I was at the top of the mountain that day and I was looking for the next peak. I mean, we lost our dog about three and a half years ago. And one of his favorite toys was a baby stuffed giraffe.

[00:39:49] The day after he died, we saw the Virginia Zoo on Facebook said, Oh, we just had a baby giraffe born. We need to name it. We’re going to have a contest. Make a donation and suggest a name. So I paid 5 and suggested the name Teddy because that was the name of our little dude and they said, Okay, just get as many votes as you can.

[00:40:07] If you make the top five, then we’ll have a competition where the daddy giraffe is going to walk into the area and five volunteers are going to hold up a branch of his favorite snack tree called the acacia tree and whoever’s branch he eats is going to be the name of his son. So we told as many people as we could.

[00:40:24] We made the top five. They Facebook lived the dad giraffe coming in. And he went to Teddy, he went to the second one and went to Teddy and took a bite and our little dude gave a baby giraffe his name. That’s so cool. That was in a matter of about nine, 10 days after he died. It wasn’t luck. It was saying, I’m going to do this, doing it, sharing it with as many people as I could because we needed to get some support.

[00:40:54] And it wound up getting me on our local news program a couple of weeks later, which helped my career. So wouldn’t you know? Mmm. Not luck. Blue collar woo all the way, just played through the wiring and the schematic of how you make this happen. If this, then this, and you just keep going on faith that the next level could get you somewhere.

[00:41:21] Zach White: So good. Steve, if someone wants to get your help in pursuing this schematic and moving their life forward toward a vision, learning these processes and getting the support they need, then. What should they do? Where can they find you? How can we learn more? They 

[00:41:39] Steve Gamlin: can find everything I do is right there at stevegamlin.

[00:41:42] com. And that’s G A M L I N. The coaching is there. The speaking is there. The vision board mastery is there as well. 

[00:41:49] Zach White: Awesome. I cannot recommend highly enough. If you need someone like Steve to come in and speak, motivate, bring some laughs. He’s incredible at that. What’s the title again of your book?

[00:41:59] Steve Gamlin: several books. We have the one written by super Teddy. That’s called bust out of your crate. Super Teddy’s top 20 tips for people to be as happy as dogs and a couple others called, uh, 20 to life in a good way. And Oh, yay. Another quote book. 

[00:42:13] Zach White: Yes. Yes. So go grab copies and then his vision board mastery program, which we’ve talked about a lot.

[00:42:19] Go to the website. We’ll link all that up in the show notes. Please take action. You won’t regret it. Steve, this has been amazing. Went a little longer than I planned, but it’s been such an awesome conversation. And I’m excited to land the plane with you here. I mean, you know, this, you live this, as a coach yourself, as a speaker, the work that you do now and engineering, we know it to be true as well.

[00:42:40] That questions lead. Answers follow, and we’re all looking for better answers in our careers and our lives to experience more, to have more, to love more. So what would be the question that you would lead the happy engineer with today? 

[00:42:56] Steve Gamlin: As somebody who actually envies those with an engineering mind, how would you design the ultimate version of yourself?

[00:43:05] And your life going around the spokes of the life wheel, or just in your own formatting. How would you design the ultimate version of your life? And then how would you then build it?

[00:43:20] Zach White: So good. Steve, thank you so much for making time to be with us today. That’s been tremendous. We’ll have to do it again sometime, man. 

[00:43:26] Steve Gamlin: I would love that. Thank you so much. I would give you my favorite word in the world to use. This was effortless and it was awesome. Thank 

[00:43:33] Zach White: you.