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Secrets 2.5 What Goes in Determines What Comes Out

You are what you are and where you are because of what has gone into your mind. You can change
what you are and where you are by changing what goes into your mind. That’s how Zig Ziglar put it
and he was right on target. What you choose to put into your mind comes out in your daily life and
determines how you go about selling anything, including yourself. That’s why you need to carefully
choose what you put into your mind and, in the words of Henry Ford, whether you think you can or
you think you can’t, you’re right.

If you want to be successful, you must have the proper mental diet because what goes in determines
what comes out. I live my life according to this secret. I surround myself with new information every
day. I keep learning and improving my life. I minimize negative inputs that might hold me back from
being my best. I choose to surround myself with people who encourage me and move me closer
to my goals. And Zig did the same thing. Zig wasn’t just one of the top speakers in the world, he
was always an avid reader. He would spend three hours a day reading so he could better sell his
message of personal growth and sales success. The more he knew, the more he could help other
people get what they wanted. Let’s watch the following montage of Zig’s wisdom about the power
of giving of yourself a positive mental diet.

ZIG ZIGLAR: Now you see there’s the positive and the negative. You have a choice as to what
you want to feed in your mind. As you’ve heard me say several times already, you’re what you
are and where you are because of what’s gone into your mind. You can change what you are,
you can change where you are by changing what goes into your mind. Feed the positive and
you will be positive.

A number of years ago, I heard a philosopher say you are where you are because that’s exactly where you want
to be. Boy, that sounded so philosophical too, you know. I went all over the country saying you are where you are
because that’s exactly where you want to be. And the wise old owls in the audience would nod you know, and say,
“That’s right. That’s exactly right.” You know, isn’t it amazing the number of us that want to sound philosophical?

And then one night, I was in Birmingham, Alabama on my way to Meridian, Mississippi and the roads were under
repair, so I stopped at a service station to get directions and the young attendant not only gave me the directions
but he was kind enough to draw me a map. He said “Now sir, if you will follow these directions as I have laid them
out, I will guarantee you will get to Meridian with plenty of time to spare.” Well, I followed the directions exactly
as he had laid them out, but one hour later I was exactly 45 miles further from Meridian than I had been when I got
the directions.

Now folks, I wasn’t there because that’s where I wanted to be. Man, I was tired and sleepy. I wanted to be in bed.
I was there because some dude gave me the wrong directions. And I want to look you dead center and say this, if

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 Secret 2.5

you are broke, I don’t really believe that’s what you want. If you’re despondent, I can’t believe that that’s what you
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want. If you are down in the dumps, if you are negative, if you are miserable and all those things, I don’t believe
that’s what you really want. I believe that maybe, just maybe, you might be there because somebody has given
you some wrong directions.

We’re going to show you how to get these things and we’re going to start out simply by saying that we’ve got to
eliminate what we call garbage dump thinking. Now, let me tell you all about this. In a large southern city, there’s
a beautiful new shopping center, but 25 years ago this shopping center was the city dump. For over 100 years the
citizens had been dumping their garbage there. It was a mess, as you can well imagine. Then 25 years ago, they
quit dumping the garbage. The local builders started hauling their excavated dirt from their new buildings out
to the old garbage dump. Took them several years, but several thousand loads of dirt later, they had completely
submerged all of that old garbage and the builder looked at it and he said, “Hey, I believe the foundation is ready.
Let’s build a shopping center.” That’s exactly what he did. But if you think about it for a moment, that shopping
center is built, why it’s built on garbage, isn’t it?

I tell this story because you see, over a period of time there might have been a lot of negative garbage dumped
in your mind. There might have been a lot of people saying you can’t, you can’t, you can’t. I’m going to say to you
simply that is nothing in this world but garbage. We’re going to absolutely bury that old garbage so that you can
start from where you are right now today, with what you have and build on that foundation and get the things
that you want. Now I hope that you will be realistic enough to agree with me when I say that you can’t make an
overdraft on the bank of right mental attitude all of your life and then expect to bring the account up to date with
one simple deposit.

In the last 20 years, I have literally invested an average of over 3 hours a day in reading and research. Mostly about
human nature and human development and growth and improvement and how do you develop and use what is
inside of you? If there’s anything I would have been totally convinced of it is this, 98% of the people in our western
civilization have a picture of themselves, which is so narrow and so shallow that it literally bears no resemblance to
the real person who is there. So many people have been told so many times what they cannot do that, they have
no idea what they can do. They have no idea what they want in life because they have no idea what is available to
them. The picture they have of themselves will not permit themselves to see some of the magnificent things that
are available.

Now let me tell you something folks, you’re what you are and you’re where you are because of what’s gone
into your mind. Now you can change what you are, you can change where you are by changing what goes into
your mind.

Q&A
Michelle: Welcome back, as we prepare to talk more about the importance of the right mental diet
to your sales success. Let’s go ahead and start with a fun question. Kevin, what is your daily mental
diet?

Kevin: I like fun questions okay, so thank you. First of all, I love reading and I think having a great
mental diet is vital to enrich your mind, right? I know Zig Ziglar read about three hours a day. I’m
between two and three hours a day.

Michelle: Wow.

Kevin: It depends on the day because if I finish at 11:00 at night, I only get two hours in, but if I
finish at 9:00, I’ll get three hours in. I read five newspapers every day and I love you know, I have
business papers like the Wall Street Journal and I have the local business paper in the local market

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 Secret 2.5

that I’m in because I want to see what’s going on there but I also have the New York Times, which is
kind of all the news fit to print. www.getwsodo.com
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I also recommend some, I call it junk food for the brain. I love kind of some of the zany stuff. I tune
into the worlds of celebrities. Sometimes it’s People and US magazine and the New York Post. It has
a lot of funny stuff, crazy stuff. Page six is a fun thing for me. Newspapers, magazines, trade journals,
publications, all these kinds of things and this is reading material. I get you know, houseware
magazines and electronic news magazine, you know all these different magazines and trade journals
that I subscribe to.

Michelle: Right.

Kevin: That’s reading that I do lots of. I consume a lot of TV still. I know a lot of millennials don’t
watch a lot of TV, but I still love CNN and news shows and as I travel, I tune right into the, you know,
Fox News or CNN to get kind of the latest of what’s going on. I also love to watch the shopping
channels.

Michelle: Oh, yes. I wonder why.

Kevin: People think, what are you ... I watch QVC and HSN. I’m seeing what products are moving.
I’m now then so now we talked about you know, reading. Now we’re talking about watching. Now
let’s go to the internet. I’m on Amazon and all the kind of you know, there’s one called Alibaba out of
China, right? So I’m looking at what are the hot selling products on the hottest of the day, right? The
trends. I’m also tuning in because the internet is where all the news ultimately you can get it, right?

Michelle: Yes.

Kevin: As you just keep going down the path here from reading to watching TV to now the internet.
Now, you can start doing podcasts and there’s some amazing guys like, there’s a guy his name is
Joe Polish and he has you know, he does I Love Marketing, right? John Lee Dumas and John Lee
puts out Entrepreneur on Fire. I love listening to all of those kinds of things so on a daily basis, I’m
definitely consuming you know more than three hours worth of content and exploring. I call it put
your mind on a curiosity overload or you know a curiosity diet okay, because at the end of the day,
I deal in a lot of industries because I’m the product guy. We deal in housewares, hardware, fitness,
beauty, golf, fishing, you know every category ultimately you can think of.

It’s important I’m getting all those trade journals. I’m going to those trade shows. I’m focused on
keeping up to speed on as many industries as I can on a day to day basis. My wife looks at me
sometimes and says, you know we will go to the beach or hang out at the pool and I got a stack like
this and she says, “I thought we were having fun today.” I said, “Well, actually this is fun for me.”

Michelle: This is fun. Right, right.

Kevin: And then sometimes I got to just put it aside and go hang out.

Michelle: Sure.

Kevin: There is a time and place for it and I just, I love it. It’s important that people focus on putting
that some kind of a ... start small. Don’t do three hours a day if you’re not used to it, but do a half
hour a day.

Michelle: Right.
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 Secret 2.5

Kevin: An hour a day and as you start becoming more knowledgeable about the different things
that you’re focused on it can be, as you said, you had a fun question. It’s a lot of fun for me.
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Michelle: Absolutely, well I can tell. You’re a learner. It is so important that good mental diet. Let’s
talk about technology though because you know Zig, he didn’t have the technological advances
that we do today.

Kevin: Right.

Michelle: What are some ways that technology can help with creating that good mental diet?

Kevin: If you take the various things that I was just talking about, there are you know, I subscribe to
these news aggregators on the internet, right?

Michelle: Okay.

Kevin: What they do is you can go in and aggregate all the information that’s all over the internet in
certain categories and they will search all the internet sources you know, the Yahoo’s and AOL’s and
everything’s that out there and they’ll spit back to you all the information that comes out on a daily
basis on those topics. Now, you got to be careful not to pick too many topics or you’re going to
have hours and hours to read.
Michelle: Too much.

Kevin: I did a test on this once in the franchising industry and I said I want you to scour the entire
internet of anything that revolves around franchising and I started getting this really cool daily
report on the latest and the greatest trends and things happening and new announcements and
publicity in the franchising world. Aggregators like this.

You know, I also I travel a lot so if I go out of town, these five newspapers that come to my house
what do I do them, right? Well, I have somebody that makes sure he picks them up because in three
or four days I got you know, 20 or 30 magazines and newspapers and trade journals laying all over
the lawn. I’ve got a guy that picks them up, but what he does is he actually takes certain sections
because when I come back I still like to read what was going on, especially the local stuff. I can get
some of the national news obviously on the road and I do have subscriptions to New York Times and
Wall Street Journal both in person you know, in print in my hand, but we’re talking about the inter-
net here, technology. If I travel 20 days a month, I get those in an electronic form on the internet so
sometimes you have to pay a little extra to do that.

Michelle: Well worth it.

Kevin: I like to see you know, it’s crazy because one of my neighbor’s got arrested recently and I
wouldn’t have known it if I hadn’t kept all the newspapers.

Michelle: Oh, wow.

Kevin: I’m like, let’s see what was he doing? I like to keep up with ...

Michelle: Keep you up to date with the Jones’s.

Kevin: Keep up on what’s going on in the neighborhood, right? Technology’s amazing and this is
also why in the old days you couldn’t go to Amazon and find the top 25 products of the day.

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 Secret 2.5

Michelle: So true.
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Kevin: Today, you can go and you can check all the stuff out and you get ... what’s really cool about
that is you just see what’s trending, what’s hot, what are the color schemes, what are the price
points, all of that kind of stuff and as a marketer, I want to be on top of that, right?

Michelle: Right.

Kevin: From a technology standpoint, I love exploring and aggregating as much as I can.

Michelle: Yes and I know several of you who are watching can relate to this. Not everybody has
this great daily mental diet that you have. The three hours, but they want to and Zig used to always
say you know, “Nobody wants to be in a bad place, but maybe somebody gave you some bad
directions along the way.”

Kevin: Hey, yeah.

Michelle: What advice would you give to people that are trying to find their way back to having that
positive mental diet?

Kevin: I think it starts on a daily basis where do you go? I mean kind of, you know, what are your
thoughts? Think positive. Go to positive places, right? I don’t mean necessarily you got to start
by going to church every morning or something like that. I just mean you know, maybe go to net-
working events you know, go to places where positive people are hanging out. Certainly, church is
a great place to go to also, but you know, my mom went to church six days a week and I couldn’t
make it quite every day with her, but that was a very positive place to be.

In my world, I go to chamber of commerce meetings, networking events, local, national. I go to a lot

of trade shows. I go to the new product showcases. When you go to ... just think about this. If you
go ... I’ve been to Chicago houseware show 30 out of 31 years in the last in Chicago, right.

Michelle: Oh, my goodness. Wow.

Kevin: Do you think I’m going to meet some positive people there that are launching their new
products for me?

Michelle: Yes.

Kevin: I mean, when you’re walking booth to booth, they’re like, “Come in the booth. Let me tell
you about how great my product is.” I love being around the smiles and the, you know.

Michelle: You can’t help but get that energy.

Kevin: Yeah. I mean if you have negative things happening in your life, you can change it up.
You have to expose yourself to positive content, positive people, positive places, networking
opportunities, and it’ll change your mind. The other thing is like when I go to these places, I’ll go
you know, to the new product showcases inside the houseware show or the hardware show or the
fitness show, wherever it might be. These are entrepreneur’s launching new products. They’re the
most kind of like rabidly passionate about their products.

Michelle: Of course.

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 Secret 2.5

Kevin: You know and that’s the business I’m in. Shark Tank, what was it all about? Talking pitches
from inventor’s, right? www.getwsodo.com
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Michelle: Right.

Kevin: They’re like, “Kevin, can I show you my new idea?” Sometimes you know, they even go over
the top, but you know, I don’t hold that against them. This is their life, their passion, their desire.

Michelle: It’s a passion. Yeah.

Kevin: I just love being part of that. You’ve got two ways to wake up in the morning. One is you
can just be thinking life’s tough and you’re negative and you’re going down the wrong path, or you
can expose yourself to positive people, positive things, positive places, opportunities, and it’s just a
mindset shift is all you need.

Michelle: It is and it’s just filling your mind with the good, the pure, positive, and it is all a choice.

Kevin: Absolutely.

Michelle: Thanks, Kevin.

Now that you know the secret. What goes in determines what comes out. It’s time to take action.
Go on a mental diet. Replace the negative that comes into your mind with positive. If you haven’t
already, open your guidebook and complete your exercises and record your key takeaway for this
secret. Also, make sure you complete your mental diet plan worksheet so you can start enjoying
your sales success, now.

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