Welcome back to the show, my fellow extraordinary Americans. Today’s guest is Stephan Stavrakis. Stephan owns Perceptual Position Marketing Limited, focusing on strategic position consulting, including business and sales strategy development. Stephan’s specialty is advanced business training and mentorship for CEOs, consultants, and business coaches. 

As a business coach for over twenty years, he has mentored, coached, and consulted over 1,000 CEOs, businesses, coaches, and consultants on prioritizing, organizing, and systematizing their businesses to make tons of money and live life on their terms. His business philosophy is simple: Your business group is directly proportional to your emotional and perceptual evolution. 

In the early 2000s, he left his successful corporate career as a consultant systems analyst to pursue his personal and professional development passion. He started with modest beginnings, offering local lunch and learning to organizations from Cuba, but he soon decided to take things further by hosting his events.

At first, these events had only a few attendees, mainly his family and some prospects, but after 14 months, the number of attendees grew to over 400 as big business began to take. Over time, through years of experience and with the help of his clients, he has developed a unique system and code for doing business, which attracted some of the most highly regarded speakers, authors, and trainers in North America. As an established business artist, Stephan is an extraordinary individual. I’m glad and honored to have him on the show. Stephan, are you there?

I think I am.

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with me, and I’m grateful that you took the time to share, to come here, and to share your wisdom with all of us. So, I know you’ve been in you’ve been consulting with CEOs and business owners for more than 20 years now. 

Can you tell me in the audience a little bit more about your background, your story, and how you got started?

Sure. I’ll try to make it as quick as possible. I started as a systems analyst.

So, computer programming and systems analysis companies hired me to look at enterprise-level systems, see them even at a young age, and restructure them so that they got their results and outcomes faster and more efficiently. 

And so, I have this sort of uncanny, weird ability to see a multiple-step system and create the same accomplishment in very few steps, usually and hopefully more efficiently. Wordlessly, so I did that. 

So, I ended up working for a company. One of the companies I worked with, my last one, was with the Insurance Corporation of British Columbia. I helped them restructure one of their software programs, which had dumb terminals in 600 brokers’ offices across British Columbia. And I headed up the team to change that entire infrastructure, giving them just a little terminal on their window. They used a VPN to go directly to the mainframe. 

So, we saved them probably about $7 and a half, $1,000,000 a year in infrastructure costs that they just removed from the entire software I had put together about five years ago. 

So, if you start putting the numbers together, it was quite a significant savings over a long period. One of the sorts I kind of did is these pieces of work from when I was young. It was a very early 20s type of thing, but doing that after I was done, you know, alongside that was running something parallel to that whole thing was the fact that I was struggling with the idea. God, I’m Greek, so I was brought up Greek Orthodox, and one of the things I do as an analyst is analyze.

So, I analyzed my religion, and there were few answers—answers that too many of my questions could be satisfactorily answered. So, I kind of denounced their religion while all this was going on. I also started learning about how the mind works and how human behavior works. 

So, I studied neurolinguistic programming and hypnosis and became a master trainer. Then, I studied energy work and got into quantum physics and quantum mechanics. And next thing you know, Boom, right back to God again. 

So, I went this like really full circle along. You know, doing sort of like some personal, you know, personal sacred search, if you will, and then by doing that, I ended up leaving my computer type of work and stuff and moving into professional speaking. The day I just quit. I did my job by up and left, and I went home, and my wife was pregnant, pregnant with my kid, and I said, yeah, I don’t have a. job anymore? Well, she goes. What happened? Did you get fired? I’m like, no. And then she goes. And what are we going to do? I’d like anything about that. And so, immediately after a few arguments, how crazy I was. Not only from her but also from her dad and all that stuff.

Because that job that I had was a pretty well-sought-after job, and that was an 80 to $90,000 a year job back, you know, in the late 90s, early 2000, right? And you, you know. And so people thought I was crazy for leaving, but I just couldn’t do it anymore. And I’ll tell you what the moment that made the shift was the moment that made the shift was when I. When I looked after we finished the project and I looked at my manager, my manager was two cubicles over, and he’d been there for 25 years and being there for 25 years, I thought about it. I’m like, OK, so 25 years. I’m going to jump into two cubicles. Yeah. This is not for me. Out.

So, I left it. Everyone had a union job, too. Was it like they were to build the union position for me and all this other stuff? No, I just walked out, went home, jumped on the phone, and ended up calling. Somewhere around 50 to 100 of my closest friends, I said I needed to be on a stage as fast as possible. My very first stage was the Project Management Institute of British Columbia. 

I did a seminar, and it was what I thought about stress and how it affects people in the mind and all that other stuff. And that just kind of launched my career afterward. You know, for there, I parlayed a whole bunch of other stuff. Events from there, because project managers are part of companies, brought me into their companies, and I started doing lunch and learning and all this other stuff. Then, I started getting paid for the training. After that, I was doing well, doing some personal development, such as inter-interventions, performance coaching, and all that other stuff. After that I ended.

Saying, well, I want to be the next Tony Robbins. 

So, I created my own. Sort of training company, and that’s the kind of story you heard that, you know, in general. Related to this, it went from three or four people coming to my events to 14 months. I had hundreds of people coming to my events, so many people after that asked me, well, how did that work? Like, how did you do it? I’m like, God, honestly, I don’t know. Just, you know, just some things that came naturally to me. But then my clients. The. 

So, people said, well, let me pay you to hear your thoughts. And that’s how it evolved into consulting afterward, right? And then they piled. They picked my brain and pulled out of my process, which became a perceptual position. Which perceptual positioning is all about? How do you set yourself up to become the one and only one in the marketplace? Then, people will choose you as the obvious choice to buy from.

Stephan, this is like an amazing arc. Like, you had a successful corporate career job, and you just left that, like, you know, like when your wife was pregnant, and then you made it work, like, you went to the seminar business, and you then succeeded. 

And then many people would not have even dared to do that because that’s so much financial risk at play. Like, what gave you like? What mindset and process during that time allowed you to take such a massive risk?

So, my entire study was on mindset. My entire study was on eliminating fear and decreasing negative emotional states that stop us from making powerful decisions for ourselves. 

So, in NLP and hypnosis and all this other stuff, it was more about the idea that you can be anything that you want to be. You just have to think about it, be clear about where you want to be, and then run for it. So, I just had the faith that that was the truth, and that’s what I went and did.

So, it was like jumping without a neck. Yeah, I was. It’s totally scary stuff like that. Hey, you know, necessity. I believe necessity is the mother of all invention. I had to do it. It was either do or die. And sometimes, when you set yourself up in this sort of do-or-die situation, magical stuff starts to happen, so thank God.

So, Stephen, that’s interesting. You said half of the situation because I’ve heard that before, right? Many people are doing great things when they’re in their half of the situation, and often, half of the situations are created by environmental circumstances. 

But let’s say you don’t have the environmental circumstances and are very comfortable. Your lifestyle, like how you are your Carpenter, is important because many people out there are comfortable in their jobs. How would they create that? They have two situations in their mind without having an environment with circumstantial pressure.

You’re saying someone comfortable, right? Comfort is the beginning of death in business because you start taking your foot off once you become comfortable. You stop looking at making a dream happen. You stop creating; you start. 

Right. It’s OK to be comfortable for a bit, but not for a long period because if you’re comfortable for a long period. I’ve seen this with my CEOs and stuff like that; what happens is to become comfortable, and also, by the way, it also happened to me where you become super comfortable financially and all that other stuff.

And then you’re like, oh, I’m good. Who cares about everybody else, you know, like that kind of a thing. Or yeah, you know, whatever. But what ends up happening is that all of a sudden, energy shifts, and things go away. 

So, it could be that your business starts to lose momentum. Your relationship starts to go down. Something happens because you’re not creating, and if you’re not creating powerfully for yourself, The chances of something bad showing up, in my opinion, and based on what I’ve seen happen, the probabilities go up significantly. 

So as long as you’re creating and magnifying, you know yourself and going to that next level and constantly challenging yourself cause you got to think about it. Imagine going and working out. Gym and doing the same workout every single day with the same amount of, you know, weights. You know, over and over and over again for, like, you know, five years the, the kinds of gains that that person is going to get are very little compared to the one that you know adds a little bit of more weight, adds a little bit more stress too. You know, it adds more tension and more of this, right?

So, I don’t believe that growth can happen in comfort. Comfort is the beginning of growth’s decline.

Wow. Like Stephen, I know it’s a simple concept, but it’s so profound and tough because many people tend to be comfortable. But they’re also afraid of putting themselves into that have-to situation because you’re right. When you put yourself in a situation where it’s like a do or die, you suddenly get like this -Super – Almost at a supernatural power, you buy like your mind unlocks things you normally wouldn’t do. 

The only question is, can you do that on a mental level without having to, like, let’s say, a lot of people, they just throw away their money or do something crazy where they just leave or like. Are you doing something else? The only question is, can it be done? Can it be artificially created, or do you have to be in a position where it’s a happy situation?

Well, you, I, I think it all depends on what you like. The half-to-situation could be a choice, right? I have to do this. Why? Because that’s what brings me alive. And here’s another indicator. If you’re not feeling alive, you’re in the process of dying—energetically, physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever it is. 

So what is life? Is it adrenaline and like crazy? No life means I feel good, and I’m building something, and I feel honored to do it and excited about it. And you know, you know, and that kind of thing. Now, if someone goes through their job and it’s the same thing, and you can close your eyes and get it done repeatedly, you’re not playing the game alive. You’re not playing the game of life as a life.

You’re playing the game of life as almost dead, right? You know, and the difference between you and the dirt, you know, you know you in death is the dirt in your face. That’s the only difference. I can tell you that so many people walk around in life. And they’re just whole humming life, right, you, you know. And those are the people that I see as comfortable. 

So, the comfortable person, they’re whole humming. And by the way, it’s not bad to be comfortable. It’s not good to be comfortable on a can on a consistent long-term basis. I think we need to be. Launched, I think we need to be, you know, animated. We need to give ourselves something to look forward to rather than just the same thing day in and day out.

So, stuff like this is part of your business philosophy, right? In the buy right, we read the business philosophy, which is simple: Your growth is dependent on your emotional or perceptual evolution. Would you be able to elaborate on that philosophy so that the audience can better grasp it?

Sure. Before this call, I talked to a CEO /founder and owner. And one of the things he said is, you know, everything I made decisions on was due to a reaction. 

So, a reaction is: I got mad and made this decision. I got excited, so I made this decision. I got to like it. It’s reactive rather than responsive. Responsive is the idea of, you know, something happening in your life, good or bad or whatever, and having the ability to pause and check in to see how it aligns with who you are and what you do, what your intuition is, and all that kind of stuff. 

So, if you don’t have that capacity because you’re in energetic reaction mode, you get mad, and then you fly off the handle, you know, something happens in business, then you go and do something crazy like they those kinds of things. Then, that person is an immature person building a mature thing, and the mature thing.

I think business is an expression of self on the planet, and as a matter of fact, I now feel that business is an expression of. God’s work through. You are on the planet. That’s what I truly believe. And. And if you don’t take that. You know to think about something as important as you know to. Like kind of like that way like your business is. It is an expression of the best possible thing you can give the world, and then you’re a small person playing a big person’s game. And so on. 

So, I truly believe that it’s our honor. It’s a responsibility, you know, to build something from a place of maturity, right? Like, what’s the mature way to build my business? What’s the mature way? Right. So that’s moving from being reactive—in your life, too—to being responsible, responsible, and able to respond to things in your life. 

So, there’s that. So, the perceptual piece. So that’s the emotional piece. So that is your personal growth because I think your emotional quotient needs to be pretty high to play the business, the game of business, right? Otherwise, just go to a job and ensure they keep you secure with a fixed income for the rest of your life. And that’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. But you know, if you’re going to the next level and pushing yourself, you must learn how to manage your emotional states. To learn how to balance off, you need to know the cycles or the things that are open in your life. If so, how do those affect your business? There’s some seriousness to it, right?

That’s how I see it because you are responsible for serving at the highest business level. It’s not the responsibility to make money. It’s the responsibility to serve at the highest level if that makes sense. So, right. You have you, the emotional piece, and then the perceptual piece, which is that the decisions you may make are based on the story you tell yourself in your mind, and the story you tell yourself is your actual perception of reality. 

So, the reality—that is going on—is filtered by your perception. We don’t know, as you can look at a glass. Is it half empty, or is it half full? It depends on your perception. Right. So, everything is perception. 

So, the more you can work on your perception, the more you can start. You are seeing the world as if. The way you want it to be, rather than the way that you don’t want it to be, which is what most people do, see the word world as breaking apart or just enough or having to work hard or any of those kinds of things rather than moving into the perception of, you know what I create. 

And things come to me. Business is easy, friends, you know, people love to work with me. Like those kinds of perceptual understandings. That new story. Then your change of perception allows you to attract people at a higher level in terms of, you know, causing people that are emotionally more mature. The chances of them buying something from you if you’re emotionally or perceptually immature are probably slim. They’re just doing you a favor when you do. Right

Where if you can match your emotional quotient and your perceptual quotient, like you know the story that you tell yourself and the feelings that you have around those stories combined, then it’s much more effective of being able to create a network of people around you that will support you. To grow yourself to, to. Places that you never thought you could go.

You bring up an amazing point regarding emotional and perceptual growth. And, like I agree, the story you tell determines your perception of reality. One of the things that I’ve noticed is that many people have limiting mindsets and beliefs from when they were kids, and they do not realize it until much later in adulthood.

So let’s say you had somebody come up to you, like in business, and they were advice regarding how to uproot these subconscious limiting beliefs and get to that level of perceptual goal that you talk about. How would you advise such a person?

The first thing that you have to look at is… OK, many people throw around these limiting beliefs and all that stuff. I. Think more of it. What is the story we tell ourselves about the reality around us? 

So, if the story is that life is hard, business is hard, it isn’t easy, I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I’m not this, I’m not that, and all those kinds of things, that’s the story. Really. You want to write down the story and ask yourself, is this true? See, what we do is what we do, and when most people are.

They tell themselves a story and then take it. Please take it as fact instantly. And so, the thought process is like, well. This is what? I believe this is what is what. Was so you? Instead of saying. This is what I believe is what you say. What’s the story I’m telling myself about this situation?

And so, when you look at the story, and you say, well, it’s like this, it’s like this, it’s like this, it’s like this, it’s like this, and you start writing it down, let’s say or speak it or whatever and then go through every point and then say. On a scale of one to 10, from 0 being not true to 10 being true, I believe that 100% what? What is that right? Chances are most of your limiting beliefs will be less than A5. Suppose you’re true to yourself. So, it’s so funny. We run our lives on A5 or less.

Right when, in fact. If you get down and say, how true is it?

So, for example, someone says I can’t do this, whatever it is. Is it true that you can’t do that? Like forever. Never. You can’t do it. Or is it? I’m not. I don’t have the skill set. I have not done it yet.

OK, well, I don’t have the skill set yet. That’s truer in a conversation, right? Then, you start to convince and talk to yourself in reality rather than a perceptual story. You tell, OK. And that’s what it is like, you know, everything that we have and that we live by is a story. And when you ask yourself, well, what’s the story? What’s the story that I have about relationships? What was the story I have about business? What is my story about my relationship with God, family, and friends? What? What is the story I have in my relationship with my money?

What’s the story and all those things once you start to recognize the story? Once you start to write it down, you go. Really. Is this true now, or right in the past, and I just bought it up until now, so you bring it to yourself? 

Jordan Peterson does this in his self-authoring suite, where you start to talk. You know, you kind of write up all this stuff. But there’s one thing I think is missing from that specific piece. Do I believe it, or am I acting as? If it’s true. And if you get real with yourself, you’re going to see, you know, chances are you don’t fully 100% believe it, right? There’s a graduation of belief around something.

And then, once there’s a graduation, there’s space to fill it with a new belief, a new story. No idea. Right. And then before you say, OK, I’m going to change this 100%, which is kind of hard to do; what you want to do is you want to say, can I put myself in the direction to start to see this differently? Look at it differently. Work with it differently. You know, like that kind of thing. 

And that’s how you start to start picking apart your reality. Cause what I do every day is I question myself whether or not what I’m saying is true or not to me. But if you get used to that. Then, you can start being real with yourself, and that reality allows you to change your story. Does that make sense?

No, I mean you use. It makes sense to me because it’s something that I’ve been thinking about as well. The narrative you tell yourself determines everything, like the story, but like someone like that. 

But some people just say that they’re just being real. They’re just a realist, you know, like. If I conversed with one person, there’s a sound about something similar. He was like, but how do you differentiate between delusional thinking and actual reality-based thinking? And that’s something that many people would ask regarding this.

Yeah, absolutely. I get that a lot. Come on, staff. Be real. OK, what’s real?

That. That. Yeah, like, what is what is real?

Like. Like really. If I ask myself what is real, you know what I’m saying? If I’m 100% about something, right? And I’m thinking about it rather than knowing it. There’s a difference between thinking something and knowing something. And if you can separate that and start to pay attention, you’ll know that most of the stuff you’re thinking is not necessarily real. So when someone says I’m a realist, I’m like, OK, tell me what that is.

If I ask that person that question and they don’t know how to answer it because most people don’t know how to answer that question, they say I’m a realist, so I should accept it for the word that it is. No, I want to know specifically what you mean about a real it’s this, right? 

So I’m being real. I don’t have any money in the bank. I got it. This problem I got this. I got cancer. I got whatever it is, OK. Great. So that’s this specific moment. 

So, in this specific moment, that is your perception. What’s another perception of that? That you could. Have that might be more useful. For you, because then the next question is. It is my level of reality. Useful for me. Because I don’t think people ask that question, they. Don’t ask well. I don’t believe in this. OK, great. Is that useful for you? And if it is? How is it useful? How’s it moving your life forward? We need to start questioning our thought process. We need to question our own beliefs. We need to question it like I’ve given free rein to all my friends, including my wife, my family, and stuff like that. Please tell me if you see me doing something out of alignment with who you know I am because I’m unaware. Right, 

Sometimes, you need to create an environment of people around you who support you to tell you what’s real and what’s not cause most of the time, if you ask yourself what you think about yourself, you’re thinking about yourself limitedly in a limited way. I don’t know if you’ve seen those studies where they, say, draw a picture of yourself, and people draw a picture, and it’s this ugly thing, and then you ask someone else to draw a picture of them. And it’s this beautiful thing. Let’s say right. 

So some people see you like people, in a different light than others. You see yourself well, so what’s real then? No.

Yeah, right. Is it?

So you could say it’s my reality. OK, great. That’s your reality. How’s that working for you? If it’s not working, change it. Start thinking about different, and so that’s being real, right? If I truly believe this. Oh, this is how it is. This is how it’s always been. This is true. Look at all the facts. Look at the articles written about it. There are business statistics about it or the statistics about it. OK, great. How’s that working for you? Even if it’s real. 

So, for example, I’ll give you something: everybody swears that the concept of competition is real. I don’t believe it. I believe it in some contexts, but I don’t believe in competition in business. I believe that we choose to buy—from the person or entity that makes us feel more in line with that entity. 

So, it’s not about whether or not. There is no competition. I’m buying from this person because I align with this person, brand, business, or whatever.

Is that person in competition with someone else? Not from the perspective of the fact that I’m only going for this person, right? I go to a restaurant here in the area I live in, which is in Chilac, just outside of Vancouver, and I drive past 25 restaurants to get to the restaurant I want. Why? Because that’s the restaurant that I want to. Be a part of it. Are the other restaurants competing with it? You know, for my dollar? No, they’re not. Because they’re not even in the same vicinity. 

So, like, in my mind, I’m not even looking at it right, so if I’m not looking for it, there’s no competition there because there’s only one for me. And if you pay attention to brands in, in, in business, like if you can get to. A place where. You construct your brand, business, model, offer, or whatever it is in a way that reflects who you are. Nobody. I can compete with you. Because they’re not competing with the features that manage the benefits you bring, they’re competing with your being. Good luck with that. 

So, is it real to talk about competition and business? In my opinion, no. But some people would fight me over it, right? But it’s not. It’s not a reality for me cause the idea of competition is not useful. It might be useful for others to push them and try to do better than others, but then they take their focus off their client and put it on the person to try to make them. They’re trying to be better. Then, right and then and then, the relationship with the client suffers.

So, for me, it’s like working in a vacuum from the concept of competition work in a vacuum; you serve the person that’s buying from you at the highest, highest level you possibly can, like you’re making the most loving meal for them in the product or service that you’re offering, and then don’t worry about the people in the competition and all that other kind of stuff. You can look at it to see what they’re doing that you might want to copy. But that’s it, you know. You know, 

But I’m bringing that concept up because it’s real to me. Does it mean it’s real? Oh, you know, it depends on where I look, what statistics I look at, and how I measure it. Quantum physics is about the idea. It is being measured by looking and observing changes by the thing that is observing it. 

So, if that’s the case. Right then, what is real? Everything I see with my eyes and construct in the reality I’m building in my real perception. So, right, I mean you, you can talk to Doctor Larry, even if something physical is not real like that’s in front of us, right? It’s just. The way that we interact with it is energetic. When you start talking, when I started talking to people like that, they talk to me. Well, this is real. This is the real thing, along with all that other stuff. And this is realistic. I kind of go well. I feel sorry for this. Person because they’re never going to be able to move forward.

I wanted to add something like what you’re saying. It’s profound. But many people have these. If they start questioning, what do you suggest? They start having people give feedback questions; at least, it attacks their ego. Their emotional attachments are to the belief system, and they identify with that belief system. And that’s one of the reasons why they fight so hard to preserve that. 

But to reach the next level and succeed, they must break it down. And then we measure up. But that uncertainty creates that thing where they’re like, I cannot go through this. There was a period of uncertainty in all of that, and that’s something that I realized.

Yeah. Well, uncertainty is a fact of life. And if people can’t live in uncertainty, they’re never going. To be able to create anything. They just won’t. How do you create something when you’re afraid of uncertainty? How do you even start it? Right. 

So, do you know what I’m saying? Thinking that we must create with certainty is the most immature way of thinking because it’s like going into emotional quotient pieces once again. Uncertainty is part of life. Uncertainty is part of the build. Right. Our job is to build through uncertainty. The uncertainty is not despite it.

Yeah. The other part you mentioned about competition arises from scarcity thinking, and then creation comes from thriving and abundance: value but a lot. Most people come from scarcity thinking because they have not shown anything different. Because that’s the ideology. For example, you must compete when they talk about Adam Smith, capitalism, or the BBC saying there are finite resources.

But in reality, there’s a higher level of thinking about that. Most people are not Privy to you. Like, yeah, like capitalism, entrepreneurship is a part of how you create economies. But there’s a higher level of thinking regarding that. But I know what. What’s your opinion?

The higher level of thinking of like expands the question for me.

In terms of private abundance versus scarcity and competition, the current form of capitalism that everybody’s preaching is scarcity and competition.

Yeah, yeah.

Then, there is co-creation, like manifesting and a private abundance mentality. And that determines the thinking you told me when you gave me that restaurant thing, like where you went and your thought process. That’s tribe and abundance.

Yeah. A person’s thinking and being scarcity goes back to the idea; how is this thought process? Helping me. And if it’s not helping you, you must start making a change, right? You have to get real with yourself. There’s nothing I can tell someone to say. Don’t think scarce. It’s just like you must ask yourself. Does this process work for me? And it might work. You know, once in a while, right? And then that’s what people sort of blame. And they say, yeah. But even a broken clock works. Twice out of. You know, 24 hours. Even if the thing doesn’t. Move. It’s right twice out of the 24. 

So, they take that twice or whatever, then focus on the idea that scarcity is what got me. I’ll give you an example. My father-in-law operates in scarcity. He believes that if he speaks. Scarcity. That scarcity won’t come to. That’s just a stupid belief. But that’s what it is. And he constantly thinks I, so for him. And here’s what ends up happening with scarcity; by the way, scarcity means I want to do enough to get motivated to get past the scarcity.

Right now, when I’m past scarcity, what motivates me to go beyond it? Nothing, because I’ve been motivated away from scarcity to reach a certain point. But now, when it’s good, what? Do I coast? Then what do I do? I do this because humans always want to be active and motivated when feeling good.

So then, what happens? Well, if the only thing that makes me motivated and feel good is for bad things to happen, then I create self-sabotage, and I start creating bad things to happen. And then I get motivated again. And then I go past the scarcity again. 

So then, what ends up happening? Suppose you want to know whether or not scarcity works for you. In that case, it’s simple if you see your life as success, failure, success, failure, success, failure, success, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure, failure and it’s not like this, but it needs to be going upwards as it’s going like that. Not down, all the way up, all the way down. Way up so. Scarcity. 

At least I’ve seen that because I’ve had CEOs coming to me; please help me keep the lights on. I’m like, I won’t help you keep the lights on. I’m going to, I’m. I will help you do those times 10, but I won’t even focus on the lights. We’re going to be focusing on the times ten thing. Not on lights. And that’s what makes a person move on more. Active motivation strategy is where you get motivated by the creation, not the avoidance of bad things happening.

So, imagine that our brain gets trained on what we teach and what we teach through repetition. So, for everything I decide on, if I’m making it in a place of scarcity, which is. Ensuring bad things don’t happen means motivation is equal to only when bad things happen.

And that’s sad. Right. Because what ends up happening is you see these yoyo results with. People and they go. Why? I get so successful when I lose it all. It’s because it’s. The success. The push that happened to get to the success. They are no longer there because there’s nothing to fear anymore, so they only get to operate. They only operate to prevent bad things from happening, right? I believe that’s an immature, like an emotional immaturity.

Red Flag, where it’s a person that says, well, this is practical. This is real. You know, there’s only limited resources. If you pay attention to many of the political narratives we have playing out right now, they are because of the idea that the world is scarce. You know, we have to. We don’t have enough resources. So therefore, we have to build a whole bunch of stuff to avoid the lack of resources; well, the universe, at least how it’s worked in my life, all my life, is that stuff just shows up. Right

So, you know there’s an unlimited amount of water, a limited amount of air, a limited amount of unlimited amount of coal, and limited. We think there are limitations, but there aren’t any, and we need to live with them. The world that. There are no limitations, and the cool thing is if you live in that world, that world finds you. If you live in a world of limitations, that world finds you.

So, you manifest. The perception of the world around you. And the results come from that perception, that story you tell them. 

So, I don’t know if that helps, but that’s how I deal with it. We can do other stuff, you know, through hypnosis and all that stuff. It isn’t good, but just understanding the fact that. I mean, here’s the question. Does it work better to think in scarcity? Like in terms of your life? Or does it work better to think in abundance, and if people sit down and get true, going back to within themselves, like really get true with themselves and say, well, what works better for me, they’ll always see abundance working better for them? 

And so practically. It’s been proven. Imagine you’re shooting basketball hoops, right? And before every hoop, you’re going to go. Oh, that’s never going to get in. That’s not going to get in. No way’s going to get in. I hope this one gets in. You know, all that kind of stuff. What would the Hoops’ results be for the person who will be the piece of cake? All right, All in all the time. Swish, swish, swish. 

So, you have one person now. You might think that’s thinking positively, but it’s not. It’s giving yourself the opportunity and the probability to succeed more likely. Are you repeating in your brain what you want to have happen, not what you don’t want to have?

I like what you’re saying. It is so profound. I hope the audience understands this because it will radically transform their lives if they apply it. But I guess, like, from a devil’s advocate, some part would be somebody could come up to you and me. 

And they’d be like, Stephan, that cause was what we agreed with. I agree with what you’re saying. The environment around me is so powerful and scarcity-based that it eventually dips into these things. 

So, if somebody is like my close friends and they are scarcely thinking, I cannot always. I cannot necessarily distance myself. So how would you advise someone who wants to think the way you think but the environment around them is self-sabotaging?

I don’t ask for advice from people I don’t think have the life I want. Right. And then, if someone comes up and tells me right, I respect it. Thank you very much. But it’s like goes in one ear and out the other because the, the, the, the, the, the whole thing is like I can love my family, and this happens like even currently in my family, right there’s certain people like my dad to this day doesn’t know what I do for work. He doesn’t even want to.

No, you know, he sees the fancy houses and cars and all this stuff and thinks I’m, you know, you know because I don’t “work.” I guess I sat before the Zoom, so it did not work. I suppose you know. That. I must be cheating someone, or I must be, you know, doing some sort of like I was in the hospital. And, you know, we had a conversation. If he thought I was doing some kind of credit card fraud stuff for the kind of money. For the money. That we make. Yeah. Right. So now what? What ends up happening? Do I fight that, or do I let the immaturity?

In that statement, dot. So, right, and that’s what it is. 

So, when you have many people around you caught on naysaying and all that stuff, you need to be—filling your brain with the opposite information. No, I’m not going to distance myself from people. If I do distance myself from people, it will be in a respectful manner, especially if it’s family and stuff like that. And what I’m going to do is I’m going to have surface-level conversations with them, but I’m not going to go deep because they’re not mature enough to have a deep. Conversation with 

If I know algebraic math, I’m not going to go to an element elementary school student and talk to him about algebra. I’m going to talk to him about it. Elementary school stuff. And that’s how I see people’s sort of. You know it’s it. I mean, the intent is good, and that’s fine. But it’s sophomoric, and it’s delivered, right? You look at it, and you kind of go well. No, right. But I don’t have to fight that, see. What most people don’t understand is. There’s no benefit in being right. You know, in a conversation, there’s just like. You know, you just are right. 

So I don’t have to fight to be right. Therefore, I don’t have to fight to tell the other person what they need to know. They’re not mature enough to get it. My dad is not mature enough to get what I mean. I’ve told him 100 times what I do for work, and he can’t even contemplate because he came from the restaurant industry working 18 hours a day, and he doesn’t understand that you can make. Money serves people through advising, right? He thought. You, you could only. Make it through food. Well, no matter how I explain it, Him. He’s not going to get it. 

So, am I supposed to get mad and ruin my relationship with my father because of that? No, I did in the past. We had arguments and stuff like that, but now I’ve recognized it. He’s just not. He’s not emotionally mature enough in that context to understand what I’m doing, how I’m doing it, and all that kind of stuff, so I can’t fault him for it. He just didn’t choose to grow up in that fashion.

So, you start to look at the environment of people around you, and you start to say, OK, well, who has a liveness? Who do I want to be more like? And those are the people you hang out with more and have conversations and deeper conversations with everybody else. Surface conversations: I have surface conversations with many people because of the level of depth that I think most people can’t handle. And they can’t handle it because I asked questions that hurt if you’re not ready to answer them. But they don’t hurt from the intent to hurt. They hurt because these are the questions people avoid asking themselves. 

So, yeah. You have to look at it like just because someone’s mature around you; this is another thing that you have to understand. Does your family member just because they’re older than you? It doesn’t mean they’re older than you. It means they’re more mature than you and that they should know, right? 

So, a person understands that a mature conversation is worth more than an immature conversation. And to me, scarcity is an immature conversation.

More mature people live in creation and faith—faith in themselves, God, and others, right? Because faith is what puts us in order. And if anybody disagrees with that, it’s really simple. You drive down the street. You go 100 miles this way, and another person goes 100 miles this way, and then there’s a yellow line protecting both of you. That’s faith. My, my friend. 

So, order, in reality, comes from the fact that I believe I have faith that that person is not going to come over that yellow line and kill me. So, faith as a just as a concept of belief. This is what drives ordering and moves us forward.

You have faith in yourself, right? But if you don’t, seek other people who have more faith in you than you do. Even if it’s a lie, it’ll make your life 1000 times more successful.

Stephan, you’re right. Faith is so important. You have to have faith, either in yourself or in a higher power. When adversity hits, that’s when you require it. Another thing that came to mind was when you’re talking about different people, right? 

Humanity can be, as one person once told me, and humanity can be divided into two groups. Sand and fertile soil are important for cell development and growth. No matter what you put in the sand, nothing will grow, but infertile soil will. So, you have to find out which is the fertile soil and which is the sand.

That’s what God said in the book: don’t cast. Pearls before swing, pearls could be your gift to the world. It could be your business. Pearls could be, you know, things that enliven you. Pearls can be all that kind of stuff. Well, if someone is not. Going to accept it, why would I give it to him? Right. You know, you know there’s no point. I mean, I can’t. I can’t do it. I don’t have to be mad about it. Right. I just, you know, they’re not going to get it. They’re sand. You like what you’re saying, right? They’re operating. In that context, it is sand. 

Yeah, I mean, it’s true. So, Stephan, can you tell the audience a little bit more about your company, perceptual position, marketing, and more about what it does and what it does? You do and all of that.

Well, Perceptual Positioning is a consulting and advisory firm, right? We advise CEOs and leadership teams on how to restructure their businesses, model the systems and organization, and align more with the organization’s intent and vision, which I call the RF factor, the reason for existence. 

So, what’s the reason for existence? And then we pull out of the CEO the true meaning of why they built what they’re building. And usually, we find a lot of emotion and power behind that. We package that we help them package that in their delivery to the market. Also, in their delivery of the communication, Their Culture 

You do that. That’s one company. The other company that I run is. The Guild of Honor, which is. A society or a group of people who have come together and want to do business on a handset. And that’s why it’s called the Guild. Of honor, we. We follow the principles of honor sovereignty. And gracious and generous soul, and then create this networking community around people who want to be more of a service to others than just a self-service. Now, we’re not saying don’t serve self, but we’re not saying serve self at the cost of others, and we’re not saying serve others at the cost itself. So there needs to be this sort of balance.

And so, I’ve created this kind of community and think about it as a combination of business, networking, and international like B and I, right? There might be a little bit of Freemasons in there. There might be a little bit of, you know, different things, but around—the concept of. I just. I truly believe that you can get five or six people that you can resonate with and then energetically just jive with the combination in a non-competitive manner. You know, it creates this synergy that creates amazing outcomes. 

So, one of the groups I built in Greece has six of us. And now we’ve been working together for a while, from where I was working with these CEOs to work with their companies and stuff. I’m still doing that. But on now what’s kind of. I spawned off of. That is, the group of us are going. We combine our resources, money, time, energy, skill sets, and all that stuff, and then focus on a specific area of grease, like a small town or whatever, and revitalize that town.

So imagine if we had. And. Thousands of groups of people did that. The vision for the Guild of Honor is to create these sorts of power teams that group and create impact projects. All over the. World while in the process, instead of going out like, let’s say, you go to a training program or something like that, you get trained by one person.

The guild is about setting up an environment where people support each other and train each other along the way. I might say something to your cosmos that you don’t get right, but someone else might say this same thing differently. And then you get it. So then, suddenly, you have doubled your chances of the message landing and taking off. 

So, imagine you have five or six people or even more. You know, supporting you, you know, whether it be, you know, with best practices, emotional support, resources like finances, or whatever it is to achieve your goal. And you have a whole bunch of people. Tap into to be able to make that happen. That’s the. Vision of the. Guild of Honor. So that’s the other thing. I would. I would like to steer people toward the Guild because that’s more of where I’m moving towards my consulting, and stuff like that means people want to discuss it on stuff and syracuse.com. But, I mean, my focus is the Guild of Honor. Theskillofhonor.com and honor, spelled in English—way with HONOUR rather OR so Gilbar.

I would recommend that anybody listening check that out. Yes, one of the things that accelerates business is having a community of like-minded people and mentorship, which compresses time. So, joining organizations like this accelerates that, and I get it.

It’s part of it, especially if the people within the group are mandated to serve each other. It’s part of that, right? It’s calling people who want to serve each other and feel energy from serving each other. Imagine having thousands of people like that, you know, you know. And so. Yeah. So, not only that, but I’m also pulling out all the stops. I’m making it so that they can market them like we do. The Guild of Honor will market them when they’re ready and all that other kind of stuff. 

So, a lot of this happens in business for people just trying to make it to seven figures, like six figures, 77 figures. We kind of pull out all the stops and help them support themselves to get there through the Guild.

So, because I think the more I can make the whole money thing, the more it’s not a problem, the real true person shows up, which is either, or this is what money does. It either accentuates your weaknesses or accentuates your strengths. Right. And so, hopefully, what we will do is we’ll get them to accentuate their strengths by helping them make more money and then serving other people at the highest levels around it.

That is amazing, Stephan and Stephan. Are there any other projects or something you’re releasing that you’d want the audience to like on the web?

Yeah, it’s my podcast. It’s me; my podcast is called The Honor Code. So, the Honor Code podcast is coming out next week. 

So, the information about the podcast will be coming out both on my website and on Guild of our website, as I think, just like what you’re doing, I have. I have these fascinating conversations with cool people like yourself and me; I wanted to be recorded and share them with the world. Right, because I do. I have about 3 to 5 new amazing conversations every day. And I’m like, sometimes I’m. And I’m sitting beside going, wow. Like, this was awesome. People need to hear this information. 

So yeah, it’s like the Honor Code podcast. I have honorcodepodcast.com, but the Guild is not guilty, like guildofhonor.com or Stephens direct.com. Either way, you know, the info is going to be.

And several more: how can people connect with you? They want to get to know you better, and I know you told them about these websites, but what would they do if they wanted to do so?

Connect with me. I have my schedulers meetwithStephan.com, and yeah, just have him talk. I’m not a guy that sells things, right? I’m a serve guy. 

So that means I wait, have a conversation, and say, how can I best serve this person? And if I can direct them somewhere, whether it’s even” my competition,” whatever that is, or, you know, one of my staff or like one of my coaches. My team, or whatever it is, you know, all I care about is this. Then. Gets served in a way that they’ve never gotten served before because it’s more customized to exactly what they want, not what I want for them or what I want for my pocket type of thing,

right, you know, and I, and I know not everybody does that. But for me, it’s more like jumping on a phone call. Let’s have a conversation, and let’s get to know each other, and just see why God put us together. That’s the way I look at it.

That is amazing, Stephan. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this podcast with me and share your invaluable wisdom. What you told me in the audience blew my mind because the more I think about it, the more I need to question things and my beliefs. And it’s so relevant, and I would. Yeah. And I would want you to return to the show later, you know, since then.

Absolutely. Anytime this is awesome, as I said, I will do as much as I can to help and serve. You know, God’s been good to me. The universe has been good to me, you know. And I want to, you know, give people the opportunity to see if they can tap into that magic of themselves and that they can create. Look at how amazing the outcomes are in their lives. Right. And the lives of others. Right, you know, because that’s ultimately what we want to do. We, I think the. The ultimate goal of humanity is to serve other people once they’ve served themselves right, usually right.

How are you? You are going to help others if you haven’t helped yourself first.

Yeah, that’s why rich people become philanthropists, right? You know, well, some people do. But let’s just say most people hold that they’re getting into philanthropy because they want to, you know, give back, right? And for me, I’m, you know, I’m building the Guild of Honor to transfer to my kids. I want them to be something I’ve always believed in. It’s not what you know. It’s who you know. 

So, create a Society of people around them who will support them, and then they can support themselves. I’m excited about creating multigenerational business models. I’m not thinking about making money right now; I’m thinking about creating generational income and generational outcomes for my family.

And people around us, right? You know, like that kind. So, anybody that comes in place, we’re all going to play together at a high level, right? That’s how I see it. Yeah. So, hopefully, that was helpful for you and valuable to your people. And I’m sorry I was late. I apologize for that.

Oh no, no problem. Thank you so much, Jeff. I want to conclude this episode by letting my fellow extraordinary Americans know that, hey, look, there’s an extraordinary within every one of us, and we must awaken it and unleash it until next time. Bye for now.