Words Matter: Reprogramming Your Mind for Business Mastery | Leo Pareja Live

I'm gonna paint you guys a picture. It was October 30th, 1974. It was hot. The reporters were ruthless. 'You're too old. You almost got killed in the last fight. What are you possibly going to do?' There were 60,000 people in attendance and maybe a billion watching on television. As he sat on stage, he uttered words that became immortal: 'I've done something new for this fight. I've done rass with an alligator. I've done tussle with a whale. I'm so quick I threw thunder in jail. But that's not the immortal part. It's what he said at the end: I'll show you how great I am' — which became a prophecy. 'I have a dream.' Four words that changed a nation. 'Government of the people, by the people, for the people' — still considered the framework of free society. 'We shall never surrender' — pure defiance that led this country to greatness. 'I believe this nation shall commit itself to achieving the goal before a decade is out of landing a man on the moon and returning them safely home.' All of our stories are constructed in language. It's how we create our own reality. I started in real estate at 19 years old while a sophomore in college in the US. I was probably the age of most of the agents' grandchildren. But it's the words we choose that design our entire world. I often tell agents at home, you are never actually ready. So many people tell me, 'When I'm ready, I'll do this.' But you're actually never ready. Raise your hand if you're a parent. That to me is the most visceral form of not being ready. When they hand you the child and say, 'Go home.' And I'm like, is someone going to help me keep this thing alive? And how much easier is the second one? We were actually never quite ready. I convinced somebody to let me sell them real estate when I looked like this. [laughter] It's that little voice inside your head that talks [expletive] all day long. 'I'm not good enough. I'm too short. I'm too tall. I'm too young. I'm too old. I'm too skinny. I'm too fat.' It's all a construct of words. And what most of us fail to realize, it's the little voice inside our head that creates our own reality. I wasn't ready at 19 years old to let someone buy real estate with me. I wasn't ready to become a team leader. I wasn't ready to start a franchise. I wasn't ready to start a software company. I wasn't ready to start a lending platform. I wasn't ready to be the CEO of a public company — until you just decide. Everything is born in decision. While I was in college, when I was about 21 or 22, I took a personal development course and came home fired up. My roommate was watching a football game and drinking a beer. He looked up and said, 'You are so full of [expletive]. Can you just shut up?' I sat with that for a couple minutes and responded, 'You're absolutely correct. But so are you. And I think I like my stuff better than yours because we can actually choose how we interact with reality with our words.' His father was the CEO of a publicly traded company at the time in the United States called Gannett, which owned like 200 newspapers. He said, 'You are wasting your time with this real estate stuff. Just go get a job and if you do really well for the next 15, 20 years, you might have a chance at running a publicly traded company one day.' I looked at him and said, 'I will probably have that opportunity if I build a business and sell it and then get recruited to run a company 20 years ahead of you.' I didn't realize what I created when I said that statement. The words we use start to create the reality of what you think you're capable of doing. That's because language is not descriptive; it's actually generative. It's how we create everything. Think about the most important decisions you've ever made: 'Will you marry me?' 'I'm going to start a company in the cloud with no physical office space.' 'I'm going to bring the self-employed model to the UK and actually become bigger than everybody else.' We don't wait to believe; we speak it into existence. And it works with everything. A really personal story: when I was building my last software company, I spent 200 days a year on the road visiting MLSs throughout the United States, mostly having steak and whiskey for dinner. During a physical, my doctor told me I had a 25% chance of dying of a heart attack before turning 40. My LDLs were really high, my HDLs really low. He sat me down and said, 'You are that guy that's in decent shape that drops dead of a heart attack. If you don't change everything about your lifestyle right now, you will not walk your little girl down the aisle.' In an instant, I changed my behavior. In 90 days, I dropped 30 pounds. Till this day, even telling that story, my voice cracks. I later attended a seminar where a doctor told a story that the American Heart Association did tests on people who survive heart attacks. In the US, there is a 90% recidivism rate after surviving a triple bypass; within five years, people have the same level of blockage because they don't change anything. They tried A/B testing and telling people 'if you don't change you're going to die' — nothing happened until a psychologist started bringing the children and grandchildren to the hospital bed and saying, 'If you don't change your behavior, you're going to die.' Then I realized my doctor used a script on me to change my behavior with words. Most people confuse facts. Here's one of my favorite stories: did you know that somewhere close to 70% of all world leaders, independent of time, country, form of government, all have something in common? They lost one or both parents prior to turning 15 years old. Isn't that fascinating? I know how many of you are parents. It makes sense: prior to 15, you are the center of that child's universe. If you can survive losing the person who provides everything to you, those humans decided they could overcome anything, including running the country they were born in. Did you know there's another population with similar statistics? Prisoners serving life sentences. A horrible thing happens to you and you decide what that means to you in the world: 'I'm not good enough. Nobody cares about me. I'm an afterthought.' [snorts] And the distinction is what actually happened and the story you tell yourself. Maybe the seller didn't call you back and you choose to tell yourself 'maybe I need more practice' or you say 'I'm not good enough. The market's terrible.' Every sentence repeated becomes reality. One of my least favorite sentences I grew up hearing: 'How are you doing today?' and someone would say a variation of 'Same [expletive] different day.' The words we use program your subconscious. They program your belief. They program how big of a world and dream you can build for yourself and your family. Every sentence we utter when no one is listening is what creates your reality. These are the four language levers I've come to use to build my reality. The first one is a declaration — the line in the sand we draw. Example: 'I'm going to change my diet immediately so I can walk my little girl down the aisle. While I'm CEO of this company, we will build together the single largest brokerage that has ever existed.' It is the statements you make that define who you are, both in private and in public. Distinctions: the meaning we assign to something. The reality of an event is completely neutral; it's how we choose to react. During the 2008 financial crisis, one of the worst times to be in real estate, me and my team decided we were not going to participate in the recession and turned it into the greatest buying opportunity I had seen in my lifetime. While many of my peers quit and took a job. Promises: your life is the sum total of the promises you keep or break. Do you close loops? Do you forgive yourself for your own promises? That shapes how people perceive you and how you perceive yourself. Do you hold yourself accountable to what you say publicly? That's why public statements are so important. It's much harder to back out when you've told the world what you're going to do. And requests: they must be specific and time-bound. 'I'm going to lose weight' is very different than 'I will lose x amount of weight by this date.' 'I will sell x amount of transactions or sides within the next 12 months.' You have to be super specific because your subconscious then holds you accountable. The most important conversation we have is with ourselves. As a closing thought, I want you to remember this: words are magical. You walk around casting spells that create your reality. Why do you think it's called spelling? Thank you. [applause]