Life-Changing Challengers

Unlocking Success with Dan Story: Fitness, NLP, and Overcoming Challenges

• Brad A Minus • Season 2 • Episode 15

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Unlock the secrets to transforming your personal and professional life with our special guest, Dan Story. From his early days in Bristol, England, playing soccer and cricket, to discovering a love for American football and fitness, Dan’s journey is nothing short of inspiring. Learn how his family’s fitness-oriented lifestyle shaped his passions and led him to explore the intricate world of neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), which became a pivotal element in his career. Discover how Dan's academic background in sports and mathematics gelled perfectly with his newfound interest in the psychology of the mind.

Dan also shares his transition from learning to teaching NLP, particularly in the realm of sales. He candidly discusses the hurdles he faced and how he tailored his approach to make NLP concepts relatable and practical for sales professionals. Through captivating real-world examples, Dan illustrates how understanding psychological processes can drastically improve your sales techniques and personal interactions. Whether you're in the business world or simply looking to enhance your communication skills, Dan’s insights offer valuable takeaways.

But the conversation doesn’t stop there. We explore significant milestones and life changes, including how Dan balanced entrepreneurial dreams with full-time roles, navigated fatherhood, and faced the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Listen to his tales of overcoming imposter syndrome through visualization and his dedication to the rigorous discipline of bodybuilding. Dan’s stories of persistence, resilience, and the power of visualization offer practical advice and motivational anecdotes to help you push past your limits and achieve your goals. Join us for an episode filled with actionable insights and powerful stories that will leave you inspired and ready to take on your own challenges.

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Brad Minus:

And we're back with another episode of Life-Changing Challengers. Again, I'm your host, brad Minus, if you didn't already know that, I'm extremely lucky and privileged to have Dan Story on the show today. How are you doing, dan? I'm doing well.

Dan Storey:

Thanks, brad. It's a good day here in Prague. It's been a good day with the family, but excited to be having a conversation with you today.

Brad Minus:

Oh, and, as I so, dan is an author, three-time author, a motivational speaker and a sales trainer, and he's got some amazing science behind it that will help you with any kind of transformation journey that you might have. And he deals with more on the scientific mind side of it mindset side. But before we get into all that great stuff, dan, please let us know what was it like in your childhood, where did you grow up, what was the complement of your family and what was it like to be Dan as a kid?

Dan Storey:

I grew up in a city in England called Bristol it's about two hours west of London and I had a very good childhood, my parents growing up. Actually, they both divorced and went on to find partners that were far better suited for them, but luckily me and my brother came along before that point and then I spent actually my childhood growing up in the middle of the countryside, in fact on a hill. I can't write this. It was the countryside, in fact, on a hill. I can't write this. It's on a hill. I would do a very small school. There are 47 people in the school, including teachers. In my class there was three kids, and so you've got to imagine this hill and we'd have to walk to school. But this was back in the day, right when there weren't any crazy people around that there are today. So my parents just, yeah, just walked down this farm lane, say hello to the tractors, all those kind of things and actually growing up. And we're going to talk about fitness today.

Dan Storey:

I had quite a good fitness upbringing. My stepdad liked to run, he liked to play squash. He would run across the hills. I don't make it sound like you live on a prairie, I didn't. It was very close to the city but as kids we would cycle after him so we'd do that and as I grew up, that kind of fitness thing became part and part of growing up. I played soccer as a kid, I played cricket and learned all sorts of sports growing up, so fitness was a big part of it. But yeah, eventually we moved from Bristol to Gloucester. Then I won't go into it too much, but ended up just finding some passion for fitness and training in the gym from like 14, 15. This was back in the days before Instagram and all the kids who were in the gym Me and my brother thought we were trying to lift these things around and ended up going to university studying this idea of fitness.

Dan Storey:

I wasn't good enough at the fitness side at the point, so I had to back it up with some academics, so I weirdly got a sports and maths background. In theory I'm really good at counting press-ups, although I definitely, but that was it really. And then, I guess a few years later, I went back to study a little bit more about the science of sport and a friend of mine said hey, you should listen to this. At the time he gave me a CD and it was about neuro-linguistic programming, so I think you might like this. And that one moment was the start of my, I guess, love affair with psychology and the understanding of the brain, knowing that we're going to push ourselves physically but actually it's the brain and the mind and the wiring that we have internally that's going to define a lot of the success or non-success that we're going to get in life.

Brad Minus:

All right. Well, that's great, but we need to step back a little bit. You, like, ran through that. I'd never had anybody run through that fast. So you've got a brother, yep, older, younger, a year and a half. We were quite close, yeah, excellent. And when you so, you played, you had sports. You'd mentioned soccer, which we know you actually called football.

Dan Storey:

All right, yeah, no, we'll come to that because I played football as well. My main sport when I got to university was football. I was quarterback for the university team. I ended up playing for Great Britain. I played in the States against Menlo College in San Francisco, played in Finland and I played all the way up until about four or five years ago.

Brad Minus:

Wait, a second, wait. Yeah, I was always told. First of all, I was always told, if you're in Great Britain, soccer is football, football, football, right. So when did that change? Has that changed in your lifetime?

Dan Storey:

Yeah, there's still the community, right. So in England football is football, football's a round one. In fact, in about an hour's time we're going to be competing for the European Cup right, the England team. Okay, the european cup right, the england team okay.

Dan Storey:

But there's also a big passionate group of people that like gridiron or american football or I would call that football english people would call it american and I remember growing up actually watching it on tv. This was back in the days where budweiser sponsored kind of the ball and stuff like that, and I remember watching games. I loved the kind of excitement and the passion and speed of American football, watching it. As a kid I got the plastic balls. We'd throw them around with kids on the street and stuff. And actually there was a team in my hometown where I grew up and as a kid I think it was like 15, 16, I just started to go along and play with the ball and throw it around. And then when I got to university there was a team there and I was seeing captain football, cricket, rugby and stuff.

Dan Storey:

At school I did okay with sport and then I got to university I was like what sport am I going to play? And there was this team saying, oh, do you want to come play american football? I thought I've never tried it, let's jump into it. And I loved it. What can I say? It's it was. It was a sport I really enjoyed. I loved the, the psychology side of it. You're trying to outwit your opponent, but I love the physicality of it because it's high speed, it's high impact, unless you're me and you play quarterback, which I avoid all of that and you try and stay in the kind of cognitive and thinking space In the pocket.

Brad Minus:

Yeah, so that's it's God. That's really interesting because you know, I'm a little bit older than you and I had never thought that.

Dan Storey:

I had no clue that in England they were actually playing American football. That's's typically about three regular season games in the uk. I think they've got some in germany. They're trying to push them into mexico as well. So it's yeah, and every game sells out like. I've been to wembley, seen the twickenham is packed and I think the english crowd is starting to appreciate it more. I think in the back when I was playing it was oh, this is crazy. What do you just take the pads off? Now everyone sees the athleticism because these guys on the pitch professional footballers, american footballers. They're the best athletes in the world Strongest, fastest, and they're going against the other guy who's the second hardest and they're still rocking a hard pace. It's one of those kind of things. So I think it is growing in popularity. People, those kind of things. So I think it is growing in popularity. People love to see it. Will we ever get a franchise in uk? I don't think so, but it's nice to dream.

Brad Minus:

It's just so interesting that you say that, because we all think that in america we're like think no, football is actually slow because it's play, stop huddle, figure it out. Talk to the coach boba okay, now another, another 11 second play, okay, let's go, let's stop huddle again. So we all think it's slow and we think soccer is fast because it's 90 minutes of it doesn't stop, it's back and forth, except you only stop for timeouts and to throw in the ball.

Dan Storey:

Yeah, and it's a different type of scene, right? I mean, if you ask my wife which is better, she doesn't like soccer anyway, but she's come to watch me play games and it's boring, especially the amateur game in England. It is very slow, but it's. I think the moments of game, like when you're actually playing, it's that it's six seconds of just let's go as hard and as fast as we can. I love rugby. I think the rugby game is amazing, but rugby always looking there, right, it's always just in front of you. You can predict what's going to happen. If you see someone coming, you tend to slow down or do whatever you protect in football. It's this all angles. You've got to keep your head on the swivel sort of thing, and it's also. Here's one thing I do like this. It's a perfection. There's an element of perfection to it that you need to have.

Dan Storey:

The execution of football is different to every other sport. Like, as a quarterback, you throw the ball, it's got to be in exactly the right spot. Your wide receiver might make play, but it's got to be there. In football, you make a pass. Oh, it doesn't matter. Right, it's gone. Someone runs after it. I'll get another go in a second. It's not like that. It's that. So it's that pressure element with athleticism.

Brad Minus:

Plus the out-thinking the opponent. I don't know, there's a unique combination. I've never heard it explained that way and I think you're absolutely 100 correct. I love watching football just as much as the next guy. And oh yeah, just to give you this one. So I'm from chicago, right, and I live in tampa, not the last time, the time before that. We don't. We only get a match-up between chicago and tampa every four years, and I was. It was going to be here at Tampa, tampa was going to be the home team. I'm like, getting ready to, I'm going to buy tickets, I'm going to go, and that was the year they did it in England. Sorry about that.

Dan Storey:

Next time.

Brad Minus:

Because we only play every four years and then it's opposite. So I really preferred them to come to Tampa no-transcript. So where did you move to, when, or where did you end up residing when you got out of school?

Dan Storey:

I went home for a bit. I went to work at a gym, I got my degree and I went back into fitness and started. There's scientific knowledge about how the body works and so I'll go and work in the gym. First person I got to speak to with this little old lady. She was like 74 years old and wanted to know how to use the treadmill and, like you, don't want to know about muscle contraction and all the energetic pathways.

Dan Storey:

No, she did not and that's what inspired me to go back to school and like back to university did my master's in physiology was I wanted to work with athletes. Like I love competition, I like peak performance level, so I do love the gym. I think there was a lot of people go there and it's a great place for people to start the journey. I also like to challenge myself and see, okay, well, how can we push the top end the envelope as well? But I never made it. I never actually got to work with athletes because I fell into this psychology thing and then it turns out that a whole bunch of people in business need psychology as well. So that kicked off. You mentioned about the sales training going and teaching salespeople and sales leaders how to get in the right headspace to influence people and how other people think and how we can influence that thought as well.

Brad Minus:

Where was that? So tell me about that transition. So you went to school, you were doing physiology, someone gives you an nlp book and then how? So how did you? Where was the transition there to go into sales?

Dan Storey:

so I love the nlp and I thought, right, I'm gonna go and study this. And because I don't know, I haven't grown out of it yet. So if it's a phase, I don't know, but it's a long phase of being a student for life. So I I thought, right, here's a great idea, I want to go and study it some more. So I went to this school and enrolled in the NLP practitioner master practitioner course, got on with the guys there and they were teaching open courses. People go and learn this kind of more of a coachy type, therapeutic-y style NLP. And then they got this contract for teaching it to business people and the guys who I studied with is a genius, absolutely amazing guy, but you should not put him in a boardroom. And he knew that, he knew his limitation and so he said, dan, do you want to do? You want to go and teach this stuff to these people over there? They're graduates, they're coming into their first sales role. Let's go and teach them some nlp. And so I thought, why not? Let's try it, let's go do it.

Dan Storey:

So did it spent, I think it was, three days at his house getting downloaded. It's like the matrix basically. Probably it's like nlp when it's all these kids. I say kids. It was barely just in front of them and it was a two-week nl sales training course and I sucked. It was the worst training I've ever given. But you learn and you get better over time.

Dan Storey:

And what I quickly realized is that salespeople don't want to learn NLP, they don't want to learn neurolinguistic programming, they want to learn how to sell and the techniques from NLP are very helpful for salespeople. And so I guess over the next few years I was trying to say well, how can we teach sales? How do I learn the language of sales? How do I embed these ideas so I can talk to them in their language and not just sound like some kind of crazy advocate for some psychology thing at the front them? They hit me up on linkedin. They say some of them are running their own companies now. Some of them have been on the apprentice and they've done extremely well and won that and they, you know, grown their own companies, the heads of sales at companies now. So I've got some pretty good students in my alumni. I'm not going to take the credit, but at least I was part of the journey and gave them some like impetus or education that they appreciate, I think yeah, I think us as coaches and I always I get that too.

Brad Minus:

I'm like, hey, you know what? I got my PR because of you. And I'm like, no, you didn't get it because of me, you did it because of you. Let me ask you a question who did all the work? She goes well, you gave me, you guided me yeah, guided. You put in all the work. You ran all those miles, you swam all those miles, you biked all those miles. You're the one that did it all. I just gave you an idea of how to get there, so, and motivated you. That's it. So this is all on you. So I love the way you said that that was perfect. So you know what? I think this is a good segue. Let can you define nlp as well as roughly as you can. Let's say, 30 000 foot view, cool.

Dan Storey:

So nlp, I think, is a language to explain what's going on in people's heads as they do certain things. So it's actually it's a technology or a set of tools that were designed by a couple of guys one was a lingu linguist, one was a computer programmer and they said let's look at excellence in therapy and coaching in this kind of world of people manipulating people's brains, and let's see what we can figure out and let's give it some kind of structure. So they would look at hypnotists, and at the time you're a hypnotist and you could hypnotize people, but nobody really understood how. And so they looked at it and said, okay, well, we can break it down. It's these processes and we're going to give it a language so that we can teach other people. Or they would look at people building rapport.

Dan Storey:

Right, who's really good at building rapport? Okay, what is it they're doing? How are they using their body, how are they using language, how are they using tonality, all those kind of things? We know it, we can go and teach it, and so I guess it was an element of codifying or giving a language to something that was previously a bit fluffy and now could be replicated in multiple different contexts. So I think that's probably what NLP is. It's a language that you can use to explain psychological processes that are going on in a way that is fairly easy to understand.

Brad Minus:

Excellent NLP Neural Linguistic Programming.

Dan Storey:

Yep. So think about you're doing some programming and you've got two aspects You've got the brain and you've got your words and trying to figure out how people are wired and change your wiring as a result.

Brad Minus:

Yeah, that totally makes sense for sales. Neural Linguistic Programming in a way to speak to the person in order to entice. Well, for lack of a better term, manipulate I like that word, that's a good word. Yeah, well, I mean basically what it is. I'll give you an example. I'll give you a quick example. This is what I learned. So I did some sales training myself, so this is what I was always taught One of the greatest things they talk about leading questions, right? So if I ask you Dan, I'm like Dan, so right now you're in Prague, right? Yep, okay, great, where is some of the places that you love to vacation?

Dan Storey:

We just went to the Greek islands. Very nice. We're going to New York, or move to New York. Had a vacation in New York, anywhere with sunshine, yeah.

Brad Minus:

Okay, anywhere with sunshine, yeah, okay. So if I was standing next to you, I'd be telling you hey, I'm going to prove to you that you're not here. Okay, all right. So you love going to New York. It's one of the places you'd like to go to and you're going to move there, but you're not there right now. Right, no, not yet Right. And you like going to the Greek islands, but you're not there yet either. Correct, right. And then what was the third one? San Francisco.

Dan Storey:

Anywhere with sunshine. So yeah, we'll go anywhere.

Brad Minus:

I was in California last year, so let's go to California and you're not there, right, yep? So if you're not in New York, greece or California, then you got to be someplace else, right, yep? Well, if you're someplace someplace else, how?

Dan Storey:

can you be here?

Brad Minus:

oh, logic right, yeah, so there you go. I could prove people they aren't here.

Dan Storey:

So anyway, leading programming, but that kind of like almost dictates what you're talking about yeah, there's I mean, there's so many great applications of it, and the reason I like sales is because it's one of those ones you can apply pretty immediately. You can go into the next conversation you have and you can try a technique like that right, different types of questioning and get people to think differently. So I think it's really interesting. But I also like with salespeople. There's so many limitations to performance in sales and we'll come into this in terms of the side as well. But you know, if you're a sales, if you've been sales, let's say you've got to make a phone call, right, what happens as you're approaching the phone? I don't do. We still have physical phones. I don't endorse the thing so a lot.

Brad Minus:

It doesn't matter whether you're using a cell phone or whether you're using that, but yeah there's that period of like I've got to make a call and what happens?

Dan Storey:

right, your heart rate starts going up, your mind starts talking to you and say, hey, what if they don't like you? Or what if they say something mean or something like that? And the impact on performance is crazy, right, and sometimes it completely stops performance, don't do anything. And this is that's just three seconds right Of looking at the phone and going. Imagine that over a career. Imagine, but imagine we could wipe that out. Imagine we get people to actually enjoy that part. So that I think there's loads of cool applications in sales and I've tried to escape. I've tried to go into the sports side, but you know, sales just keeps pulling me back and I like the challenges, though yeah, I can imagine so, how long so you're?

Dan Storey:

but you're still doing sales training right now, right still yeah, yeah, still spend a lot of time with sales people. I'm now moving into this whole mental toughness space as well. So I love the NLP. I love the persuasion side. It's become less overt and more just a complete part of what I do is I add aspects of psychology into training. So I did a master's degree in behavioral science and everything about all the thinking fast and slow books and all those kind of things. If you behavioral science and everything about all the thinking, fast and slow books and all those kind of things is how to, if you're trying to influence someone, you've got to understand how they make decisions right, because you put those two together it's it's pretty powerful. So I can just tell you that.

Dan Storey:

And then sales is tough. Sales is getting tougher and one of the things that I've seen over the last few years is just the corporate world just beating sales. It would be just beating everyone down, but it's beating salespeople a lot. It's the expectations going up, the pressure is coming down on them as well, and so there's a resilience piece in there. There's a stick-to-itiveness, there's a kind of grit and perseverance piece that I think salespeople need some support with. The money's great and it helps make things a little bit easier, but I think people need a little bit more of the money there. So helping them keep their head straight while they're under pressure is something I've been working on with them as well.

Brad Minus:

I can imagine that is a tool that most salespeople need right now, and I can understand it because you've got everything at your disposal. Back then, back in my day 80s, 90s, that area you walked into someone's house to try to sell them something. The information they got was from you, yeah, and if you can get them. Now it's like someone says, well, this will do this for you, and blah, blah, blah, and it's like let me one second, let's go to the Google box. Yeah, they literally have that. Hold on, what did you just say, won't you? Yeah, right, so you've got to take that into consideration, which I think is incredible. So when you were teaching sales using NLP this first time, you said that you didn't do well the first time, but you got better. Were you working for somebody? Were you working for a company that was having this program?

Dan Storey:

The school that I was studying the NLP with. They got a contract or referral and all those kind of things. It was their contract so I actually worked with them for a year delivering it. So it was two weeks on, two weeks off and I would literally go to south of England and I'd stay in a little B&B and just hang out there and teach for two weeks NLP and sales and these principles and then we'd have two weeks off and it was working. The contract was with a recruitment company so they'd have an intake. They'd start them there, train them for two weeks, then send them off into their first role in IT sales, go and sell IT solutions of all sorts of weird and wonderful contracts. I still don't understand what IT is, but I help people sell it.

Brad Minus:

Okay, well, that's my day job, so, and then, how long did you end up so? That was a contract, and how long did you end up doing?

Dan Storey:

that. That was, I think, about a year. The contract was and then I negotiated, we carried on the contract but they don't want to pay the company, so I worked with them directly. I maintained the relationship with the other company, so everything was fine. And then did that and then, yeah, I went into. I just I've stayed in sales training ever since. I've had my own business. I've worked in jobs. I've had my business, I've gone in, I've had a few very cool jobs over time where I've got to teach sales and that'd be like a full-time thing. And then, yeah, and they're like, but then I get itchy, I need to do something myself or something a bit bigger, and I get these entrepreneurial dreams. I do it for a bit and I'm like I'm get stuck in that whole owner operator mode to then take a role, but only if something cool comes up. I like to hang out with cool people. People don't challenge me, get to do some amazing things, change the world a little bit, disrupt stuff, that kind of thing I get it.

Brad Minus:

I get it. For 22 years I was an it contractor. So basically I either I would be on a contract anywhere from three months to three years and then I'd move, and something else all brand new technology, brand new ways of doing things, totally new project management software and things like that Cause that's what an IT project manager. So I get that, and that's the reason why I stayed. Everybody was like, well, I don't, you should like go do W2 stuff, which I am now. And that's the reason why I stayed. Everybody was like, well, I don't, you should like go do w2 stuff, which I am now. But that's a different story. But yeah, I get that, I totally get. Then you get itchy, you want to do something else, and so, yeah, I completely understand that you and I seem to be on the same wavelength there. As far as type a personality, it's like, okay, all right, now I'm bored time to move on. So but something happened, what in like turned 40, I guess something happened, what you want to tell us a little bit about that.

Dan Storey:

Yeah, so I guess COVID happened, but just before that we had a baby daughter. So I'm married. Now it's eight years from last week. So we had a little baby girl come around just before COVID. In fact, literally the day that COVID got announced we were just going to pay the years from last week. So we had a little baby girl come around just before covid. In fact, literally the day that covid got announced we were just gonna pay the nursery fees and then they went oh, we're closed. I was like I'll take that money back because they were doing refunds and yeah, and so life changed.

Dan Storey:

Like I said, I was playing football amateur football in the uk up until then. Oh, me and the guys with me every sunday we do a train session during the week and we played every Sunday and literally COVID hit. It's like wow, and games stopped. You couldn't play, you couldn't hang out In England. You weren't more than six people together at a particular time. I can't remember what the rules were, but they were elaborate and not conducive to sport, but also I had a little baby girl there, and so life changed and I love it.

Dan Storey:

There's something happened. I was 40 when we had lily and I still don't feel like I'm a grown-up. I don't know about you, but you know it's one of those things like what do you want to be when you grow up? I don't look like peter pan, but I still feel vastly inappropriately prepared for the rest of my life. But now you've got this kid and you're like, oh, my goodness, I've got to look after them. So I immediately fell in love with her and life changes. If you've had a kid, then I think you understand that kind of immediate shift. So I didn't.

Dan Storey:

Previously my life was very selfish. I would spend my entire weekends playing football, thinking about football, preparing for football, taking my wife along weekends playing football, thinking about football, preparing for football, taking the wife along. She would watch football and that was the kind of wives club on the sidelines like what are they doing out there, being idiots? And so lily came along. It was off season anyway, and so I was like, okay, well, what am I gonna do? What am I gonna challenge myself with? And because I needed to have the competition, like you said, there's, there's something you've got to do. For me, football was a. It was a really good fitness thing, but it it was the mental battle, it was the challenges, competitiveness, it was all those elements, the camaraderie. And with that gone, I needed something else to channel myself into COVID or the gym shut, so really all you could do is go outside when you're allowed and run. So I thought, hey, you know what? I'm going to be an Ironman athlete.

Dan Storey:

I tried to do it a few years back and I got injured so I 'd actually developed metatarsalgia so I bruised the bone on my foot there underneath the second toe I had to have. This was four weeks out from half ironman in austria and so I couldn't do it. I was so annoyed because I've been training, I've been running, I've been doing all this stuff. And then we actually had the holiday books and went to to Austria to see the course. I remember being at the course and going oh, just the ultimate disappointment of watching other people do the race that you're prepared for. That punched me in the face like real hard that. And I'd also invited my family and my wife's family to come and cheer me on. So we were all there and and it didn't happen. But we had a great time in austria, so that was fun. So I thought I'm gonna, I'm gonna get revenge like it's coming back vindication yeah, yeah, I've been there.

Brad Minus:

I've been there. Yeah, I I just a quick, just quick, just ran. I want you to stop. I quick I was, I was getting ready to do, it was going to be my I think my sixth time doing Ironman Chattanooga 70.3. Love, the course was so excited. And we're leaving on Friday. Thursday we go out and we're doing just a quick little tune-up bike and I crash, leaving on Friday. So of course, my training buddy, she says, well, you should just come out and we'll go and you can cheer us on and stuff. I'm like nope, that will hurt, that will hurt a lot harder. So I get it, I totally get it.

Dan Storey:

Yeah, I got a chance for revenge so I did. Yeah, so we did some running and then we actually, during COVID, we moved over here to Prague for a bit and over here is just living at the edge of the city so I've got woods and fields and stuff so I could go running and do that kind of thing and I've always had tight calf cramps. There's always been a thing, ever since I was playing the keyless, playing soccer I'll get calf cramp. And that's been the challenge I've had. It's even just stretching, all manipulation, all the fun stuff I always get calf cramp. And so actually endurance racing or endurance running I'm not going to say racing because I would imply competitiveness, which I'm definitely not, but competing and challenging yourself to go to distance, that's a big worry for me. For some reason it doesn't need to be anything, but it just goes. And then my calf goes and it could be after two minutes, it could be after two hours. So be careful, be careful, right. And we moved back both prior move back to england and got close.

Dan Storey:

I was living in cheltenham, actually just again west, and I was running for two, two and a half hours over the hills and have the packs every weekend and I loved it, right, I actually really enjoyed going for a run in the countryside and then had the race booked. It was this half iron man, ironman near Oxford, and two weeks out I pulled a calf and I'm like, don't do this to me, like literally, and I'm like hobbling, and you know that's going to get okay by the race, but you can't push on it like it. And so I ended up getting to the race and I learned a few things about myself at the race. Number one is I don't like cold water, but the good news was it was early in the season. They actually cancelled the swim because the Thames was too cold and it was like this is going to be crazy. I was like yes, but we're going to add on five extra K of running. I'm like no, because I'm going to cap them. So I actually got the race photo of me and I look like I'm exhausted. It's actually in the opening straight, so I look terrible on my face.

Dan Storey:

And then I did the bike and the bike had three loops of this course. There was a massive hill and I realized I do not like climbing hills. I managed to get to the top of it, coming down the other side. I was on the brakes and these people are going past me so fast. I like the skin on my body. I'm not brave enough to be on the bike. I'm also not good at refueling, which is one thing I noticed. I didn't drink very much or eat, so I got to the run. I'm like dead. Nothing left in my neck. Now I've got 20K with empty legs. The calf muscle is about that far away, and I just had legs. The calf muscles are about that far away and I just I have my phone with me and I just jogged, walk, jog, walk and I'll call people on the way. I'm like, hey, just keep company. For me it's the worst triathlete ever.

Dan Storey:

I, for a period of maybe a few k, I was running along with this 60 year old woman and we were just chatting. She's oh yeah, what are, yeah, what are you doing? Blah, blah, blah. And I said oh yeah, how long have you been training for this? She said oh, I'm not really trained, I just turned up and that's heartbreaking, right, you're like I've trained really hard for it. And this 60-year-old lady's coming in. She says see, it just runs off into the distance and I get to the in the loop. You can see the people that, the people helping out there, what they call the marshals. Here's this guy again. Have you not finished yet? I'm like, nope, one more lap. They're trying to figure out when they're going to go home. Anyway, I eventually pull into there.

Dan Storey:

The final of the race transition is down like there's a few fences and three bikes left and I pick your own medal up off the table. But I finished it. Right, it was that kind of thing. But I realized at the time I'm like this is I need something else. That is not endurance. It's not like I love it, but my body does not adapt well to it and I've always trained in the gym. I've always lifted to help me with sport. I really enjoyed throwing some heavy weights around and stuff that heavy, that heavy. But I could really enjoy the gym. And it got to this point where I'm like, okay, I need something to challenge me and maybe this is it. Maybe it's bodybuilding and my.

Dan Storey:

So my brother, who's also my coach there he'd been a bodybuilder younger and I said I'm here, I'm thinking about this thing, like I'm thinking that I might try bodybuilding as my next challenge. Like what do you think? And he said don't do it. Since it's been there. It's horrible. We just go through all this pain. It's just an absolute mental battlefield. It's self like flagellation, it's all those things you've got put in so much stuff. Don't do it. But if you want to do it, then here's how we're going to do it. And yeah, so I looked into it. Now I he's he wasn't natural. He's taken some kind of chemical enhancements in the past, but I wanted to do it naturally. Never taken any performance enhancing drugs or anything. So I wanted to do that challenge.

Dan Storey:

I'm masters, so I'm over 40, 44 now, which means there's not a huge amount of naturally available testosterone running around the body, so I'm never going to get massive and also bodybuilding's evolved now. So you don't just have these giant monsters. You have three classifications. You have open, you have classic physique, then you have this physique which is supposed to look natural and be like beach body fit. I can tell you from trying to pose like that, it's nothing natural about it, but I went for that classification. So I'm technically now a master's physique, athlete, bodybuilder.

Brad Minus:

Nice, and did you end up winning right? Didn't you end up winning that one?

Dan Storey:

I won one tournament, won one competition, a couple of second places I placed. I made it to the uk national finals or the international finals in my first year of competing. So I've done all right. I don't know. A couple of seconds, yeah all right.

Brad Minus:

So everybody, just so, and I'll, if I can think. Well, I'm definitely going to use this picture. But if you go onto Dan's website, danstorycom, and go to the about section, you'll see a picture of him in one of his, in one of his competitions. Yeah, and they get to pose in in board shorts. I get to wear board shorts. They don't have to.

Dan Storey:

They don't have to wear their little things, the little hammock yeah, that would not be pleasant for anyone if I was wearing, I don't know, some stories in a minute of all the kind of crazy stuff that goes on behind the scenes.

Brad Minus:

But yeah, I'll save it to shorts well, I know and I know no, I'm not even gonna say that but I don't know, I think you might be underestimating yourself, because I'm just looking at your legs and your arms. I mean, everything is. He's cut, it's so, it's symmetrical, he looks good. So you guys gotta see this. I will post this one out there just so in the show notes, just so you can see what he did, because it's pretty amazing and he was. You said we're 41 at the time 40 I think, I think that one.

Dan Storey:

I'm 42, maybe 43.

Brad Minus:

42. Yeah, you guys all got to see this so definitely. But that's amazing, that's amazing, so all right. So your coach brother said, okay, well, this is going to be a horrible, but if you want, to do it.

Dan Storey:

What did you learn about yourself while you were in the gym and you're going? I'm assume that you went a little bit harder, a little bit more strategic than you did when you were doing it for fitness and for football, yeah, so let's go back a little bit. The reason I set this goal for myself was, I guess, after the running and the kind of iron man, I lost a bit of challenge and you need a bit of focus. Right, there's nothing to train for. And we went down to the beach in england. It's not really a beach, it's like some fake sand that people have probably imported from somewhere nice, and but it was a hot day and we're there and it's with a family, and someone took a photo of my mom or something. It was just me. I just looked very I could I say average, like okay, some, some musculature, but there was no definition it was, and I looked it and I don't know for some reason it was that kind of tipped me off. I'm like that looks like a whole bunch of excuses and I don't know. It was just something that got to me. It's like you talk about challenging yourself, you talk about being at your best and yet this is what you look like and I know something just kicked in and that was what the kind of the challenge was.

Dan Storey:

So then I spoke to my brother thinking about being a bodybuilder and he said, all right, here's what you got to expect. And we talked a little bit about it and the gym that I was at, the the owner of the gym and the trainer there. He's a former mr olympia competitor from like the 90s, a guy called lee powell, very cool guy, but he competed back in the day, and so I had a couple of conversations on it. What's it going to be like? And he said there's two really hard points is the point where you start like the first three weeks of your competition prep and then there's the last three weeks. So the first three weeks is you've got to make that adjustment from hey, this is me as normal person to this is me as this crazy obsessed bodybuilder and I use the word obsessed because it looks like an obsession to our side like it can do, especially with the food and all of the kind of preparation aspects that go into it. Um, and then at the end it's just that's all you can think about, to the point where no holidays, no change of routine. It's just purely like don't do anything different because your body's just going to go.

Dan Storey:

So there was a question mark before I started because I we were talking about one of your clients about how she dropped like half her body weight. It's crazy. So for years I've had this goal of being under 10% body fat. I wrote it down I'd be at 20, 16, under 10% or 20, 17. It never happened. It never materialized. I could get close and then I'd not measure it and there wasn't really. There was no enjoyment factor to that. So this was a different goal. Right, it's going to be step on stage and challenge yourself to be a physique bodybuilder. You're going to have to below 10. You're gonna have to get way below 10. I don't know where I was at the end of it zero clue.

Dan Storey:

What did I learn about myself? So the first part was the question mark was around. Discipline is did I have the discipline? I knew I could train like? I knew I could lift weights, I could do all the kind of like the things I need to do in gym, but did I have the discipline? That was a good question was because I I hadn't done anything significant for, like I do things, I would show up and I'd do my best at that moment.

Dan Storey:

But discipline is different. Right, motivation is comes and goes. It's like in waves oh I feel great today, I'm gonna go to the gym. And discipline says I don't care if you motivate, you're going to the gym. And there's I remember seeing a kobe bryant video. He talks about discipline and he says my training routine was set at the beginning of the season. Like this is my training routine, this is what I've agreed to and I signed. It's like this is it? I'm not negotiating myself. Later on there's that kind of mindset. It's like do I want to go to the gym? And a lot of people go, well, you've had a long day and tired or this is happening. So many excuses come up and discipline says I don't care about your excuses, you're going to go and do it and if you need to move stuff around, find a way, then find a way. But that was the challenge.

Dan Storey:

So for me, discipline was a fun one and I think discipline applies in so many areas. It applied in the gym and I remember I even took little videos of this. This is weird thing. I used these one day. Never used it. I videoed my feet walking a lot the gym to the gym every morning, like I could walk to the gym. It was fairly close and I'd put videos of my feet on in. It was dark.

Dan Storey:

Because I train in the morning, I train at night. I'd wake up at five o'clock in the morning and I go to gym before like family and I, and I wake up at five o'clock in the morning and I'd go to the gym before family and then I'd wake up at four am because that's how our routine fits. I have to wake up at four If I want to do it, I have to sacrifice that sleep aspect. But discipline was one, discipline was a big one, it turns out. Discipline is actually quite easy to develop. You just go and do it. But getting over that excuse, mentality and stuff like that's the hard part. And I don't know for me, if I go in the evening, if I try and train in the evening, that voice gets seriously loud. Come home, you finish work. Hey, why don't you just have a coffee? Or hey, can I have a glass of wine? Like, how about? You know that?

Dan Storey:

that's what it's like it's there where's that voice come from all the time? So now I find, if I wake up in the morning, just get out of the way, I can go home and I can do all those kind of crazy.

Brad Minus:

Yep.

Dan Storey:

Can't get me. I'm untouchable.

Brad Minus:

So that was the thing. Still like that, still like that. I still wake up at 4 am and I get my workout out in the morning, out on in the morning. No matter what I've ridden, I've got lights on the bike. If I've got a bike workout, I'm on, I got lights. I'm like nope, you're, I gotta get it done in the morning because you're absolutely right after full days of work then you come home and you're like you just don't want to do it. But for me, the real piece, the gym's the easy part, the gym's the easy part.

Dan Storey:

Yeah, okay, the kitchen is where it all happens, and I love the kitchen, I love cooking, I love food, I love chocolate, I love so many foods. This is so bad. I obviously have a little girl and I have daddy duty, which is basically eat everything that's left on her plate. So just go away that kind of thing. Now, every friday, we go to the cake shop after school so we take it there and it's like cakes also so good.

Dan Storey:

So the question is discipline with food, because that's the biggest part. Right, and it's not difficult science. It's you need to have if you're going to lose weight is fewer calories in than go out, and you do that by either reducing calories or increasing output. There's only two ways, very simplistic, but that means you've got to cut back, and my wife would always look at me. She said, oh, you eat a lot. I'm like, do I? This is back beforehand and I got some scales and I started weighing food and for I dieted for my first shot about 14 months and I think every meal I weighed, almost every meal I weighed and I'd like 30 grams of oats. I was 32 grams. I'll put a few oats back.

Dan Storey:

It was like it was obsessed, again obsessive, my wife. We didn't eat the same food for most meals, but I learned what a portion was and that was really interesting is I was overeating on every meal and again, you only have to overeat a little bit and just gradually increase your weight. Then that was what was happening. And so actually changing the men, changing the discipline around food, was not necessarily about cooking a different eat. I turned to leaner foods, I introduced a few more vegetables and stuff wasn't the problem, but it was portion size. That was the really interesting thing. So measuring through cooking food and trying to be interesting in the way I cook food without trying to feel like I missed out too much, because family meal time is really interesting and like happy and it's a good place for us all to bond. So I try and cook two meals or something about the same time one for them, one for me and still eat at the same time. So that was the hard part. That was.

Brad Minus:

One of the hardest parts of discipline for me was the kitchen so you reminded me of a quote from none other than Mike Tyson Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. Yeah, so that's both things right? That's both things, is you All right? So you go to the gym and if you don't want to do it that day, you just go in there and you act like you want to do it that day. It's almost like fake it till you make it right. If you you you're cooking for your family and you got to cook something yourself to be that's leaner, less calories, you do it like you love it. No, I love cooking for you and I love cooking for me, no matter how bland or how much smaller it is than yours it's like here's your pizza and here's my boiled broccoli and some tuna which is dry as heck.

Dan Storey:

I'm all like no, you guys carry on oh no, I loved it.

Brad Minus:

This is great. This is fantastic. Did you, were you able to incorporate any nlp while you were like, did you go back into your nlp brain to like help you out with this challenge, and what did you do?

Dan Storey:

so I think the biggest one is for me as imagery and visualization. I had to see myself as something different to who I was. So anytime you set a big goal, like if I imagine myself as a bodybuilder, like, my immediate reaction is, yeah, but you're not either. You haven't even been on stage yet. Now I can relax and say a little bit more culturally. Before that first instance of stepping on stage, there was massive imposter syndrome and I had to keep visualizing this.

Dan Storey:

I had this metaphor in my head of I call myself a motivational athlete, and so I use the athleticism, I use the physical challenge of bodybuilding to motivate and help people understand their own mindset better. That's for me, and so one of the things I would do is hold that in my head. I was like what would a motivational athlete do? What would I do? And so I'd act as if or visualize that kind of call it an avatar or archetype. How would that person act? And many times when I didn't want to do things, I had to think about that and visualize that person and who that person was going to be. I did things like vision boarding at the beginning. I went onto the internet and I looked at all of these physiques that I admire, and I remember creating a little digital vision board and had that on my screen and I'd look at it a couple times a day and all those kind of nerdy things. But visualization works because you've got to close that gap between your old identity and your new identity.

Dan Storey:

And if you look at how we're wired and we talked a little bit about this is like mental shortcuts, right, mental shortcuts. So our brain is very good at becoming efficient. If you ask it to do something over and over again, it's like yep, and I'm going to find the easiest way to do this. We think about your cycle, right? So if you think about, it's like you have your cadence and you have your bike position and if you get into that position, that cadence, you can go forever. But if I drop the saddle by two inches or ask you to increase the cadence by 10 bpm, what happens? All of a sudden? It's like it doesn't feel right and I don't like it. And now I have to work harder. We have to work harder. We have to, because we lose efficiency, become very efficient, and this is the same with a brain. So if you think about how many years you've been doing something and then you try and set this goal to do something else. You're fighting against all of that wiring and so you've got to expect there's going to be some fight back. It's going to try and drag you down, excuses and worry and doubt and insecurity and all those kind of things.

Dan Storey:

And I remember actually I did a sales presentation. It was at a conference and this is before I'd done my first show. There's oh, my name is dan, here's this book that I've written and blah blah, and here's why I'm so great. You know it's weird by which we have to introduce yourself. It always feels weird. Thank you for introducing me so well is an sl and I'm a bodybuilder as well, and I put this training photo of it. I was like I was inside, I was cringing, my voice was like you're not a bodybuilder, you know. You got to go through it. You got to go through that whole imposter syndrome thing. If you're ever going to get to the other side, there's a million reasons why you should doubt yourself. Just kind of keep persisting through and to think that other people don't have that insecurity and diet is crazy yeah, I get it, I get it.

Brad Minus:

My before I started coaching I had done one olympic, I had done one half ironman and I was getting ready to do my first Ironman, and in between was a Chicago marathon and I had a team and we were all raising money for the polycystic kidney disease foundation. So I had 20 people that were going with me and there's this one woman who was 53 and she had just done the France marathon or Nice or something, and she did it in four hours, five hours and 25 minutes. But I wasn't going to be racing this marathon because three weeks later I'm doing Ironman. So I already decided that no, I'm going to take it easy, I'm just going to let my legs do what they're going to do, and blah, blah, blah. So I took this woman her name was Karen, she's 53 years old and I said, karen, I says you're with me, we're going to, we're going to have a strategy and we're going to get through it together, because I think you've got more than what you know you've got or what you think you have. So we ran the whole thing and she had a little bit of the discomfort, comfort, but I'll never forget it was 23, 24 miles, she goes. Okay.

Brad Minus:

Now my knees are starting to feel bad and I'm like, yeah, you're at 24 miles, but you can do anything for 2.2 miles. And she goes, hell yeah. And I'm like that's what I want to hear. So we crossed arm and arm at 432. That's awesome 50 minutes. So she's all crazy. And she's going crazy. And her friend comes up to me and she goes. You know what? She's on cloud nine. I think you should coach. And I'm like, but I don't have any credits. I got a couple of marathons and a couple of this and that, and he goes, she goes, but next month you will, and yeah, and that was the starting of it, but it was the same thing. But that and that's the first thing that I thought of, I don't have any credits. What could I possibly give to people? And that was imposter syndrome. It's the absolute epitome of imposter syndrome.

Brad Minus:

And so right after I got done with the Ironman, I got through the. I got through the Ironman blues. We can talk about that. I just started talking to people about coaching. I'd never like put any. I didn't put a website up, I just said, hey, you know what, if you want me to help, I can help.

Brad Minus:

Before you knew it, I had two running stores that I was running clinics out of, and then those would then came into. Oh, I love what you're doing. Do you do private? Can you help me train for this race? And then it's just from there. It just came out. But, yeah, absolute epitome of imposter syndrome. But if you can, if you've gone out and you've done the research, you've experienced it at least a half a dozen times something and you've got something to show for it and you've got you feel like you've got a good amount of knowledge. You're going to continue to grow, right, but you can't let that imposter syndrome keep you from something that you really want to do. If you really want to coach, if you really want to write a book, if you really want to do something, you can't let that, that imposter syndrome, that feeling like you're inadequate, keep you from doing it. So yeah, I admire you on that point.

Dan Storey:

That was great I've looked into imposter syndrome quite a lot since um and the science says there's about 70 percent of people will experience imposter syndrome, especially in a kind of business space or something like that, where you don't work. It's the biggest base for imposter syndrome at all. I think we're going to get found out or something along those lines, but it's interesting. It's like it's a really interesting topic and for me it was. It was one of those moments. Actually, I remember it was one I think it was most of it a morning, but I was in the bathroom when I got stepping on the scales and all this thing you have to do, the daily weigh-in stuff. What daily way is horrible, like I'd like to do a weekly one, but then he's scared to get on me, like I don't remember doing my way.

Dan Storey:

And just I caught a glimpse of myself, because you try and take as many clothes off as possible to influence the scales, yeah, and I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I remember it's the first time I saw myself as a bodyguard I'm a holy two sack like and there was a visual recognition of the work that I put in. That was a cool. That was a cool reinforcement moment is that one point where you're like, oh okay, oh, maybe this is going the way it wants to go and there are going to be moments along the journey like that remind you that it's going to be okay. But there's going to be a lot of times when it feels like a long way away and you just got to keep putting in the work. Or keep putting in the work like right now, what?

Dan Storey:

It's mid-july, my next show is end of september. That's a tentative right, that's what that's. Nine weeks away, I'm like I'm a long way away from where I want to be, but in nine weeks I can do a whole bunch of stuff in terms of diet, so that's interesting yeah, and that's what a lot of people try and do is they try and do everything immediately and they don't spread it out over time?

Brad Minus:

right, we have, yeah, we have this, we have the entitlement, yeah, kind of this Gratification, this gratification that we want. And so there's a lot of people out there yeah, if they don't see results right away, they're like good Is it? Yeah, I see that bit.

Dan Storey:

But the idea of child genius is flawed. So we all think child genius, think people like mozart, picasso and those kind of people who, just you know, picasso was born with a paintbrush and was able to paint these amazing things, or mozart fell out and just was able to play the harpsichord or whatever it was, and actually, what you look at the their history is from a very early age. Like, mozart was a kid, he was like two years and he had a sister who was a couple of years older than him. She had harpsichord lessons that she was learning and his dad was a musician, right, and so he grew up in his musical family watching his sister have these lessons and so very naturally grew into it and then had access to all these amazing teachers and trainers and, like the dad was a little bit like pushing on him. Same with picasso you're going to learn to paint. You can learn all these times anyway. So you think child genius is the same, that's genetically gifted.

Dan Storey:

There's a guy called lazlo polgar and this is one of the things that I love and a number of years ago he's had this idea. It's like can we raise a genius? Is there such a thing as child genius or can we raise a genius? And so it's just before the internet, in skype, when I said, hey, I've got this theory, like I want to have a. Find a wife who wants to raise some kids and see if we could turn them into geniuses. Anyway, find some wife from miller which says, yes, I would like to be involved in this science experiment. And they have three girls, right, three girls. And he says, right, from a very early age we're going to teach them math, science, language, all of these things that they're kind of academic side. We're going to push it very early on them and then later on, we're going to teach them chess. Okay, and chess apparently, is something that you can quantify and measure very accurately in terms of world rankings and stuff like that, even from a very early age. And so these girls had access to best teaching, best training, with this idea that we're going to try to raise some geniuses. So he gives them amazing teachers.

Dan Storey:

And here again, laszlo pogod had written some books on chess and maths and stuff like this, so he's a very smart guy himself. Anyway, let's cut to the end of the story. What happened? Well, three daughters the first one, judith polk, are not in age order, but she is the acknowledged as the best female chess player to ever existed. One of the sisters, the other sister, second best female chess player to ever existed and the third one only ever really represented hungary at the olympics. Oh my god, this again. So come back to your point.

Dan Storey:

A lot of people, they have this entitlement thing that I'll try a couple of times and if I'm not good at it, that means I'm probably good at something else, so I should go and do that, whereas actually it's persistence and it's the 10 000 hours. Idea is that we need to stick at something. And seth godin wrote a book called the dip. I love seth godin for so many reasons. He he says that the dip is this point where, like it starts off nice and easy, right, everything's good, and like go for a bike ride, I love riding, it's amazing. And then it's I'm going the same speed and I don't like the cold, and now it's getting harder and I want to do a race, but I'm not getting any further, and then I have a fall and everything gets really horrible and you end up in this dip where everything sucks and that's the point where people quit. A lot of people are don't like it. And what Seth Godin says, actually, what's on the other side of the dip? Is it something that's worth having like? Is that where everything is? And so he says don't, don't avoid the dip. The dip is natural, the dip is something that everyone's going to come up with. Don't quit in the dip, go past the dip or quit before the dip. Just don't even get to the dip. There's no point. You're not going to carry on. Just don't do it. And I think that's what a lot of people face is they get to that point where it's going to be hard for everyone. Like in every journey of challenge and success and anything along those lines, there's going to be a point where it sucks. This sucks, and I remember one conversation this happened.

Dan Storey:

It was at my mom's house. I was tired, it was the afternoon, it was like five, six o'clock. I'd done a workout in the morning, I was on two a days, and so I had to go back to the gym in the evening and I was there at home and my wife was there. My mom was probably cooking some food which I wasn't going to be able to eat and I was just sat on a chair and I was exhausted I was, I couldn't move, I could barely speak. And my wife said to me she said why don't you just not go to the gym tonight?

Dan Storey:

And my wife has been very supportive. She doesn't quite understand it still, she thinks I'm a little bit mad, um, but you know that's, that's a line you play with. And she said that. She said why don't you just not go tonight? And I looked to her and I didn't have the energy to reply and luckily my brother was there and he stepped in, said something probably profaned, I'll try to remember it and he said something.

Dan Storey:

He says something along the lines of sometimes it's not about going to make yourself better, sometimes it's about going so you don't go backwards yeah, keeping a promise to yourself and like that. That. It was that mentality. I knew the workout that I did was going to be terrible. It doesn't matter how much pre-workout or anything. If you are that tired. It's not about maximizing performance, it's just about that commitment. And this is the one thing of competitions when you step on stage, confidence comes from knowing you've kept all those commitments and doubt comes from, hey, what have I done that? And that is nice to be able to step on stage and feel confident.

Brad Minus:

I get that. I get that. I get that. I can't remember the first. I don't know the first one-y triathlons I did.

Brad Minus:

I cause I'm not a great swimmer either. I can get there, I'm not fast and then I just make it up on the bike and run and I just don't like it. And there's so many times you're halfway through the swim and you're like going. What the heck am I doing here? Why am I here? I says everybody's passing me. I don't even know what makes me think that I'm good enough to be in this water. You know what I mean and you're just like. But then my other head kicks in and goes minus. You haven't quit a goddamn thing in your whole life. Why do you think you're gonna quit now? And then it just keeps going and then that's a nanosecond. Literally it's a nanosecond. It's like this but yeah, I get it, and so you. It's the same thing yesterday I did. It was four hours and 45 minutes on the bike, so hot, and then we started at six. So here it it is. It's going to be like 1030 and it's 97 degrees outside.

Brad Minus:

Yeah, and I was no, it was about four hours in. We had 10 miles left and it was the longest 10 miles. But my buddy is more practical than me and he's like no, if it's getting hotter, just like anything else, you slow down, so you're not exerting yourself, and and you just, you'll get there when you get there, and if you have to take a little bit of time, that's fine. I'm the other way, I'm the other way. I'm just like no, I can't stand, I'm being tortured, I'm out of here.

Brad Minus:

And so I got there, I was changed, I had my running shoes on, I was getting ready to go, I had you know what I mean? I everything done and he just pulling up, and I'm just like I'm sorry, man, I just had to go, he goes, don't be sorry, I understand. But yeah, it's an opposite relation. But yeah, so, yeah, I absolutely get it at that time. And then you're just like and then today, so now it's like all right, I just like yesterday, just absolutely was dead, and get up this morning to know that I got another two hours on the bike and then I got 4,000 meters in the open water and I'm like but same thing, it's like no, if I'm going to do this. Well, you've got to do those things, whether you're tired or you're not. And right, do it like you love it, even if you hate it.

Dan Storey:

And I heard someone say it's like rule of thirds. Third of your workouts you love, you're gonna hate. Third are gonna be in middle.

Brad Minus:

Yeah, like you can't expect every workout to kill it it's gonna be something about that and I said that to my, I said that to my buddy the other day. I had done a two hour and 30 minute run and I'm like it was the worst. It was hot, I had to walk, which I don't. I'm not a fan of walking when I'm on a run and I had to walk, I had do this. And he goes and he said he spit it right back in my face. He goes. Yeah, a very wise coach once told me, but you got it done.

Dan Storey:

It's amazing.

Brad Minus:

So you know what we didn't talk about, why you wrote the Neuro Linguistic Blueprint. So I know this was pre-COVID and you had written this book. What was the motivation to write the book?

Dan Storey:

There's two. The first book was Neuro Linguistic Programming, or the Next Level Persuasion, which is my NLC book for sales people. The second one is the Personal Transformation Blueprint, and that's right. I always wanted to write a goal setting book and I've read a lot about the science of goal setting and how effective it is and never wrote it. So I probably still will write one one day, but I think this is better.

Dan Storey:

And I knew I set out for bodybuilding to learn more about myself and actually to use it as a teaching moment, and so as I went through it, I thought, okay, let's figure out what this looks like. When you set yourself a big challenge, what happens? And I literally documented the mentality stages of what happened for me going through it, and it was that it was. Then I was like, okay, well, does everybody go through this? Is this a thing? And it turns out it is. So I thought, okay, well, how can I take my experience? How can I add some of the science to it and then write it in a way that changes the way some people perceive it? So there's no unique messages, only unique messengers and, like you said, the imposter syndrome kicks in. Yeah, but then why should you write a book on this. You've only just been doing this for five minutes. I've been studying this for years. Yeah, it's still this, that kind of idea.

Dan Storey:

But I wanted to write this book and I thought, okay, my experiences I've gone through and the different transformations I've had to go through to create this transformation of me as a bodybuilder these are other things that other people go through, whether it's in career or business or relationship or something along those lines. I've interviewed some other people and look to their experiences, so I'll go. This is similar, and so it was. That it was. How can I document the challenge that I've gone through from a mental perspective? There's literally no talk about fitness or bodybuilding in there, maybe a couple of stories, but it's not about that. It's about every time you challenge yourself to get bigger and better and do something like a life changing challenge, you're going to go through a standard set of responses mentally that you've got to overcome, and if you, if you resist them and say this shouldn't happen, then you're going to fall short. But if you embrace them and say, okay, well, it sucks, let's go anyway, then you'll be okay, and I guess the main idea is this kind of three main ideas in the book, which first one is you've got to level up your expectations. You've got to expect more. We all get stuck. I guess this one came from sales is the biggest competitor in any sales organization. Like, it doesn't matter who you're selling for and what you're selling. The biggest competitor is status quo.

Dan Storey:

Is people just staying the same and doing the exact same thing and that's the same in our lives, right? We do the same thing every day. We have the same routine, get up at the same time, do the same thing, and for most people, if they look at their lives, they rate it on a scale of 1 to 10. They'll say, well, 6, 7. And that's pretty meh. Like if you look at the NPS, like if you do a business, it's like 1 to 10. They say that up until 6, they're a detractor.

Dan Storey:

You're not going to say anything good about a business. You're probably going to talk rubbish about it. Seven or eight is a meh. I'm not going to say anything good, but I'm not going to say anything bad. And nine or 10, they call promoters. This is the NPS or Net Promoter Score.

Dan Storey:

So imagine this. Imagine if you're like a six or seven At worst, you're probably going to talk rubbish about it. You're like, oh, my life sucks, it's not very good, and, at best, stressed. You're like, it's okay. Imagine like going through life like that. Imagine if your life was this man, that's okay.

Dan Storey:

People really try and challenge themselves to go for 10. But what could 10 look like? Or 9 or 10 or something that's just outside of our comfort zone, outside of our usual thing. For me, I was like, okay, well, I want to challenge myself from a fitness perspective, or some people will be. I want to write a book or I want to make some art or I want to start a band or I want to start a business I don't know what it is, but a lot of people, they don't ever get to that point because they can use excuses. Oh yeah, but not enough time. Kids, responsibilities, people look at me weird, but I always come. Whatever it's doesn't matter. You come up with an excuse, it's easy.

Dan Storey:

And so the first day is okay. Well, let's choose something. Let. And again, I'm going to come back to Seth Godin. I should probably send him some royalties for all the quotes. There's a great quote, I think. Jim Rohn said what would you dare to do if you knew you could not fail. Every coach says this. I like Seth Godin's twist, which is what would you dare to do if you knew you would fail, but you would do it anyway? That it anyway. That's the thing right. That's the passion, that's something that is inside of you that you feel compelled to do, and so, for me, fitness is one of those things. I'm going to do it regardless. So, like that, that was okay.

Dan Storey:

The second part, once you set yourself the goal, is like I said, immediately, if that goal is big enough, you're going to feel some form of imposter syndrome or fraud or die because it's a big gap, like I've had. Up until that point, I'd had 40 something years of experience saying, dan, you're never going to get below 10 body fat, like maybe once or a year, but moving forward, it's not going to happen. And so we have all these doubts and insecure. Oh well, other people can do it, maybe I can't do it, maybe I can, maybe I can't. And we've got to overcome that. We've got to overcome that mental gap.

Dan Storey:

And you do it, like I said, through a bit of visualization. You do it just by showing up. Yeah, that's the big part. Is you like say, fake it until you make it that you mentioned. But it's just doing the things that those people will, because I know if I do those workouts and I change my diet, that result. Result is not, it's inevitable, it's going to happen. How good I look is limited and stuff by genetics and some other factors. But, like you know, hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard. So people rarely get anywhere near their genetic capacity. So I figured I'd just work harder and everyone else would be all right. So doing the things until you feel like you are like actually living in alignment with that, that's a. It's maxwell malts in psychos.

Dan Storey:

Cybernetics talks about how we live in accordance with our identity or self-image, how we see ourself. So you've got to rewire that. And then the last part then is work great. So again we come back to this Expedia, amazon Prime, immediate C culture is we're not willing to trade something for something and so we expect stuff. We're like, oh, I'm going to change from real milk to almond milk and I'll be ripped. Sorry, dude, it's going to take a little bit more than that. So we have to work hard. There's no escaping work hard. But then we have to work. Smart People tend little bit more than that. So we have to work hard. There's no escaping work hard. But then we have to work smart.

Dan Storey:

People tend to try and do it the other way around, try and hack it. You know, you don't know what you gotta do, and that kind of thing. But then we also got to realize that whatever we say yes to, we have to say no to something else, and so there's an element of sacrifice. When I talk about sacrifice yeah, I like to make the joke we're not talking about goats and virgins that we're throwing into volcanoes anymore, but we are talking about a strategic sacrifice which, like in chess, is okay. Well, if I give up this pawn, does it give me an advantage on the board? I don't play chess but I know if I move that there and somebody moves there, then I can do that and that's cool, right. So I give up certain things in order to get other things. I give up sleeping until six or seven o'clock in the morning so that I can get extra time here and actually pays off over here.

Dan Storey:

So I make these aspects of sacrifice to try and weigh things up, and the important thing to do that and again we come back to the psychology is we are mentally wired to go for the short-term quick fix like immediate satisfaction thing. We are mentally wired that way. It's a thing called temporal discounting. If it's going to come tomorrow versus today, I'll take the today thing. Forget that, and actually in most cases if we turn it around, that's probably the best decision. So that kind of mentality thing where we're weighing up our decisions again coming back to the decision-making master's degree, it all kind of fits together. And so if we do those things, we raise our expectation, if we understand there's going to be a gap of mentality that we need to cross, and if we put some work in, I think we can pretty much achieve everything that is the perfect way to end this segment.

Brad Minus:

I think that is absolutely god's, your well. I think it's Dan's advice and that, funneled through a higher power, is we can't be thinking like that anymore. We need to be thinking more that the amount of time that you spend is going to get you to the best way of success, whatever you do. So that is absolutely. It's crucial right now, especially in our Amazon environment right now, where I mean we even got it out here. You might have it some, maybe not in Prague, probably more in England, I'm not sure, but I mean there's even things I can get today. Yeah, and it's, yeah, it's nuts. But as far as things that we want for ourselves, the things that we need to work on, the new challenges that we've put ourselves through, it's a challenge for a reason. You're not going to make it through this challenge tomorrow. The idea is that you challenge yourself to get better, to be better, to hit that next level in your life, so that you can then find another level and challenge yourself again. Yeah.

Dan Storey:

So we're constantly leveling up and I love playing computer games. I still do it, occasionally get the Xbox out, but I always play roleplay games and there's this idea that you reach a certain level of experience and you level up and I suddenly get all these cool, wonderful weapons and skills. Actually I play. Remember I was saying by my football buddies we all got old and we went into hibernation One of them. Now I play Dungeons and Dragons with. That's our evolution we went from football to climbing to Dungeons and Dragons. So we're always going to be competitive in some way, shape or form, and now I'm trying to.

Brad Minus:

I'm right there with you. We're just a couple of nerds, it's fine. So Dan's book is called Personal Transformation Blueprint Yep, that's correct. Okay, so that you're going to be able to get that in Amazon. I will link that in the show notes and I'm picking it up as well, and I feel bad that I didn't read it to start with. But that's his latest book. He has a couple other books. You said Neuro Linguistic Persuasion.

Dan Storey:

Next Level. Persuasion Next Level.

Brad Minus:

Persuasion.

Dan Storey:

For anybody in the sales space who is looking for some support and kind of ideas around how do we use persuasion and psychology to get people to do things. And the third one is in draft, so it's called Bulletproof Salesperson. So again we're coming into this bulletproof space which is this whole idea of mental toughness and application. So I don't know if you like the movie matrix, but there's a great quote in it. It says neo says to morpheus he says what are you telling me I can dodge bullets? He says no, no, neo, I'm telling you it's when the time comes you won't need to. And it's that idea that we're under a ton of pressure. But you know we've got to have some skills that we can avoid bullets or at least take them a little bit more. Uh, effective.

Brad Minus:

And that's one of my favorite quotes, actually, in the original daniel aruso version of the karate kid, where where ralph machio looks at pat marita and and he said and he says so when you were. So when you're a kid you're getting a lot of fights. And he's like no, and it says why not? And he says well, when we fought, it wasn't for points, it was for life. And I'm like oh, but you knew karate. And he says so. And it says well, you knew karate, so you like to fight. And he says is that what you think? He says but that's why we do this. We know karate, so we train to fight. He says that's really what you think. He says why, then? Why do we train? He goes so we don't have to fight nice yeah, right there with you.

Brad Minus:

It's a very great thing, but that's the original one from 1984. Yeah, so not the will Will Smith kids version. Yeah, the Jaden Smith version, but it was great. It was a one of my all-time favorite movies Still one of my all-time favorite movies. So happy that they brought that back. Anyway, I gotta stop this. We could go on like this forever. Anyway.

Brad Minus:

So think about personal transformation blueprint. You'll find that on Amazon. I will have that link. Also, danstorycom it's got some great stuff in here where you can also learn about his speaking and training. He's got a personal one-on-one coaching thing. He's also got a mental toughness assessment which I need to take and since Dan's been going into more of this mental toughness space, which we might actually have to get you back on and just literally go about that, because I think that's not that we didn't kind of cover it a little bit here, but I think it's definitely something that we all need to be learning and, yeah, so check that all out. I'll have everything in the show notes and I think, as far as social media, you're primarily a LinkedIn guy, right?

Dan Storey:

Mostly on LinkedIn, just from the business space. I do the occasional posts on Instagram and I will do more so, but if people are going to find me on LinkedIn and I tend to post stuff about psychology, decision-making, mental toughness and imposter syndrome and bashing the status quo bias as much as we possibly- can Excellent.

Brad Minus:

Yeah, that's in that. We need that, so I'll have those links in the show notes for you as well. So, dan, listen. This has been amazing, thank you. Thank you so much. I think you have brought a lot of value to the table and I think that people will be able to learn a lot.

Dan Storey:

Thanks, brad. I think if we come back to it, I'll leave you with a quick lesson that one of my students had with me. It I'll leave you with a quick lesson that one of my students had with me. She's loved learning, she was studying all this stuff and she said I'm going to go do this other course. I said, okay, well, learning is great and there's a massive dopamine here and we enjoy learning and, like I said, I'm a student for life. But there's levels of learning and student is the first level.

Dan Storey:

And I said to her it for a moment and she, I think she said I said practitioner. I was like, right, go and do this stuff. So if you are listening and you're still listening to us at this point, this is not about learning, this is about doing. Let this be the kick in the butt, the instigation, the kind of thing that tips you over the edge to go and do some stuff because you've got it in. You Go and embrace the suck, find your own version of imposter syndrome. Hopefully, this has been a good nudge in order.

Brad Minus:

Thank you so much for that and thank you for listening, and we will see you in the next one.

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