Tony Blauer [00:00:00]:

A few hours later, I got a text message from the guy's executive assistant. And as it popped up, I couldn't see the message. I was I said to myself, I hope they're cancelling. Why would I say that? A fear management expert.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:11]:

Welcome to the creator's adventure, where we interview creators from around the world hearing their stories about growing a business. Today, I'm going to talk with a self defense expert who will teach you how to manage fear. Hey, everyone. I'm Brian McAnulty, the founder of Heights Platform. Let's get into it. Hey Hey, everyone. We're here today with coach Tony Blauer. He is a world renowned self defense and fear management expert who has been a visible force in the martial art, self defense, defense tactics, and combatives industry for over 4 decades.

Bryan McAnulty [00:00:49]:

As the CEO of Blauer Tactical Systems, his organization has grown into one of the world's leading consulting companies specializing in the research and development of performance psychology, personal safety, and close quarter tactics and scenario based training for defensive tactics, combatives, and professional self defense instructors. Tony, welcome to the show.

Tony Blauer [00:01:13]:

It was a bit of a bunch of your audiences going, what what are we talking about today here? Knowing knowing, you know, your audience are are, you know, coaches and entrepreneurs and stuff like that. But but, yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Brian.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:25]:

Yeah. Well, I think everyone will will see as you're listening to this, there's a lot of ways that this can relate to business as well.

Tony Blauer [00:01:33]:

100%.

Bryan McAnulty [00:01:34]:

So, Tony, my first question for you is, what would you say is the biggest thing either that you did or you are doing that has helped you to achieve the freedom to do what you enjoy?

Tony Blauer [00:01:46]:

That's that's a tricky question for me because, it starts with me being, 12 years old walking home from, a pickup game of baseball and 2 kids from the nearby high school, they're about 15, 16, I was about 12, gestured over, hey. Come here. And I was like, oh my god. These older kids wanna talk to me. And I ran over right into the ambush. They grabbed me, they spun me, guy held my hands behind his his his held my hands behind his back and did a bolo punch and hit me to the body. And as a 12 year old, the the size disparity between a 15, 16 year old, and 12 year old was quite big. I was scared shitless, man, and I screamed, you know, in anticipation of, like, I thought my ribs were gonna break.

Tony Blauer [00:02:29]:

I was gonna die. I'd never really been in a fight before. And as I anticipated Impact, Brian, I screamed. And I was in good shape, I was wrestling, I was skiing, I I was, you know, an all around athlete. And so if you can imagine, you know, I'm in I'm being held from behind struggling to get out. This boulder punch comes in. I don't even feel it when it makes contact, But I screamed and I sensed the guy behind these grip change on me. And my intuition said, yell again.

Tony Blauer [00:02:58]:

He thinks you're hurt. And I yelled again, and he dropped me and they ran because their intention wasn't to hurt me. I went home. It was a Sunday and I, and my dad said, how was the game? And I said, dad, 2 guys just beat the shitter to me. And he looked at me, I don't have a mark on my face. My shirt's not torn. And he said something like, was it a pillow fight? Like, what do you mean what do you mean you got beaten up? Right? And he immediately said, you need to go learn to defend yourself. So I was immediately scared to go to school.

Tony Blauer [00:03:37]:

I didn't wanna go to high school. And that made me recognize something and then and hopefully, our people are tracking the story and everyone has had a bully experience. But I started martial arts because I realized I was afraid of bullies, and there's bullies everywhere in the world. In business, in relationships, of course, literal bullies when it comes to, you know, violent encounters. But it in it introduced me to the world of martial arts where I hoped, all of my fears would disappear. In that journey, I discovered Bruce Lee, like many of us, fell in love with his mission and everything. And I remember this, my mom, I'm 15 years old. I'm infatuated with with Bruce Lee.

Tony Blauer [00:04:21]:

And she says to me, hey, are you gonna go into the family business? We were a generational entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs, family business. She said it can be it was 1975. She says, you know, go into the family business, you wanna be a lawyer, a doctor, what do you what do you wanna be? You're a lawyer, a doctor, like, a veterinarian, a police officer, firefighter. And I looked at her, Brian, I said, Mom, school's not gonna be that important to me. I'm gonna teach self defense like Bruce Lee. And that's all. And I ended up going to school. I went to school in the states.

Tony Blauer [00:05:13]:

I came home. Ironically, I went to my father's business, But in the back of my mind, this is all I wanted to do. It wasn't passion. It was obsession. And so this is a kind of a maybe a little bit more colorful story as to what what am I doing now is somehow I had the fortitude despite the fear because I was afraid would I make it? Is this gonna make enough money to have a family? Is this like a real job? Like, you know, you don't know back then, you didn't know a lot of people that were living happily ever after as self defense instructors. And, but I completely leaned into it, which is the common, you know, languaging for that. I wasn't, passionate. I was obsessed with it.

Tony Blauer [00:05:57]:

It's all I thought about. But I was a shipper in my dad's company making $4 an hour in 1980 when, lightning struck. You know, The the, his best client and also good friend of the family's son was getting bullied in school. Here we go with bullies again. And this guy, Joey, it was, you know, Rocky had been released in 1976. It's 1980. We get these big boxes, in from overseas, and when we'd unpack them, that was my meat. Remember when Rocky would hit sides of beef? Well, I didn't have a heavy bag, so I'd use these boxes that were so big you could actually walk into them.

Tony Blauer [00:06:37]:

And I'd beat the crap out of them, you know, when, you know, before we throw them out. And I turn around one day and and this guy, Joey, is looking at me. He says, hey. You've gotten pretty good at the martial arts because now I've been a fanatic since 12 years old. I'm now it's 8 years later. He says, I want you to teach my son Mitchell. He's getting bullied in school. I said, no problem.

Tony Blauer [00:06:58]:

He says, how much do you charge? I said, I I'm not gonna charge you, your friend of the families, and I hate bullies. Happy to do it. He says, no. I'm gonna pay you. How much do you want? And I'm making $4 an hour. And I said, Joy, I can't I can't charge you. And as I say that, he says, how's 20? So in my mind, Brian, I do the math. I'm pretty good at math.

Tony Blauer [00:07:18]:

Well, that's 5 lessons at $4. I said, that's fine. He says, okay. I'll pay you $20 a class. Don't be late. Make my son safe. And he said, I my brain went, did he say $20 a class? Literally within 6 weeks, I had 30 students. I was still working for my father 5 days a week, but every night and every weekend for 5 years, I taught 30 to 40 privates a week.

Tony Blauer [00:07:45]:

And it was my it was my lifeblood. It was my canvas. It was like, this is this is what I wanna do. And so this is a quite a long answer, but it might it might be very meaningful to your younger entrepreneurs and people wondering if they should keep going because they're facing obstacles. There's a a famous motivational speaker who asked, Dwayne Wayne Dwyer. He's he had these three questions that I repeat anytime I can. I'm gonna share it with you and your audience. He he first question is if you didn't know where you lived and you could looked at all the places you could possibly live in the world, where would you wanna live and why aren't you living there?

Bryan McAnulty [00:08:23]:

Mhmm.

Tony Blauer [00:08:23]:

2nd question, if you didn't know what you did and you looked at all the jobs in the world, what would you wanna do, and why aren't you doing that? And the third question I get goosebumps anytime I do this, man. The third question is if you didn't know how old you were and you looked in the mirror, how old would you think you were? And, like, those are those are those if you think about that, those 3 questions should stop everybody. Because, you know, when I was 13 years old, my parents got divorced. We came to California. I grew up in the sixties watching all the TV shows, You know, black and white TV was becoming color. And every every movie and every TV show was shot out in Hollywood. So I'd been to Hollywood a 1000000 times watching TV and movies. And when we came out here and I got off the airplane and I smelled the air, I said to myself, I wanna live here one day.

Tony Blauer [00:09:18]:

And when I discovered Bruce Lee and I and I knew what bullying was like, and I said, I don't want I don't want any other human to feel that fear or have that danger without an option. I wanna do something about it. And I knew there's a Latin expression, those who teach, learn. And I knew that anytime I could have a student, I could get better. In fact, here I am at 63 years old, been teaching now for 43 years, been a martial artist for 50 years. Every time I start a seminar class, I thank the people in the class. I go, if it weren't for you, I wouldn't be here. I'm getting better every time I teach.

Tony Blauer [00:09:56]:

So thank you. And, and I think if if people if entrepreneurs kind of adopted a whole bunch of that stuff, lean into what you love, in in in today's era, you can actually live anywhere and do almost any job. Right? Pretty much. So you could go, and you're living where you wanna live, that you're not gonna look your age. And that was that was, the message in the three questions, right? So, you know, somehow, and there was a lot of fear. A lot of people think I'm without fear and that's my it's one of the brands and one of the verticals in my companies. You know, we've got 4 different divisions, but one of them is this mindset fear management performance psychology. And it's no fear spelled k n o w, not n o.

Tony Blauer [00:10:49]:

And and, you know, there's, you know, there's a famous t shirt adrenaline company, you know, that had the no has the no fear brand. And, And, I loved all that shit. I bought every one of their shirts, but it didn't change my fear. Right? So it didn't matter that if I was wearing a no fear shirt under shirt and I still had to go talk, I still had stage fright. What was that? Like, these shirts are defective, right? So I created, so I had to create a system that helped people manage fear. And it's a joke I make. In life, in life, we are all fear managers. If we had a, you know, a, like a Best Buy shirt on, like, that's our job during the day.

Tony Blauer [00:11:27]:

And it was like, oh, what do you do? I'm looking for the fear manager. Because in life, that's what we do. We have, you know, your tooth starts to hurt. Do you call the dentist right away or do you try to manage your fear? You know, your stomach hurts. You call the doctor, determines the next step. So our mantra is that, you know, if you change your relationship with fear, you can change your mind. If you change your mind, you can change your life.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:06]:

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. There's so much there. I wanna point out a couple things I think were really interesting to me. One is the framing there of the experience that you get from teaching. And so many people I see make the mistake of saying, I have to perfect this this training idea that I have for a course for coaching program, whatever it is, and they don't actually do it. They're just create they think they're creating it, but they're not interacting or getting feedback.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:36]:

But the the feedback that you get, the questions that you get from everybody, that's really practicing what it is that you're doing, and that's how you get better at it. That's how your product gets better

Tony Blauer [00:12:48]:

100 percent.

Bryan McAnulty [00:12:48]:

From actually going through that.

Tony Blauer [00:12:50]:

Yeah. There's you you reminded me of an old expression. I read it somewhere maybe 20, 30 years ago and memorized it. And, if you're if you truly are, an artist and that's that I think that's one of the problems I heard the the founder of Everbull talk this weekend. I think it's Jeff Fettner. I hope I'm not screwing up his last name. But, you know, he talked about the reason most restaurants go out of business is because they're started by the cook, by the chef. Right? And and and so I've I've got a a side to my business where I mentor people in in business and I explained to them the art and science of teaching self defense is not the same as the art and science of running your business.

Tony Blauer [00:13:38]:

And and, if to to your point, if you want to master your domain, if you wanna really if you if you're the voice of your business and you're gonna teach this this this gig and you're waiting for the perfect time to launch it, you missed it. Because business loves speed just like violence loves speed. You're never gonna be ready for sudden sudden violence and you're never gonna be ready for when the market opens and goes like, when you have that idea, you need to start doing something. And Yeah. Yeah. So the slogan or the the maxim that I I read years ago was art is never done. Art is never done. And so if if if you were more about pros you being the generic person that was more about iterations and refinement, then you know you can't get to, you know, 2.0, 6.0, you know, Tony b 2.0 if if if if day 0 doesn't even start.

Tony Blauer [00:14:36]:

So you're 100% right. Get out there. And some of the great Hormozie and and Vaynerchuk and they're like they're just go and document. You're gonna you will get better, but you won't get better if you do 0 reps. Wingra Ringuretsky, great quote. Most people have heard this. You miss a 100% of the shots you never take. You know? Start taking shots.

Bryan McAnulty [00:14:58]:

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And start taking the shots and and doing putting those things out there in public because no matter how hard you try to get good at it and not be embarrassed by it a year from now, you probably will be anyway.

Tony Blauer [00:15:11]:

Well

Bryan McAnulty [00:15:11]:

especially if you practice it by actually doing it because you'll get so much better that you'll realize, like, wow. Look look how much I've improved over that time.

Tony Blauer [00:15:19]:

Here's another thing to think about. If you do it where you're doing it out of drive and passion and desire to serve and and do something, it's way more authentic. And if you look at the stuff that goes viral online, it's when it's truly authentic or we believe it to be authentic. So there's and it's like, you know, watching like, driving by a car accident, how some people have to slow down. The just go do it and and be yourself because, you know, is it Oscar Wilde who said, you know, be yourself, everyone else is taken. I don't know if he said that, but, like like, that's what but it's ironic that we're talking and I'm wearing the shirt, the no fear shirt. Because at the end of the day and and obviously, this was deliberate that I wore it. But but at the end of the day, what holds everyone listening to this back, whether it's you're at a bar and you see the person that you want to be the next missus or mister in your relationship and you go, should I go ask him or her to dance? Should I have another drink? Should I? All doubt and all hesitation is is is inspired by fear.

Tony Blauer [00:16:39]:

If you had no fear, you wouldn't you wouldn't hesitate. And so we always tell people when you get any type of fear spike, whether it's danger in the literal physical sense again, which is obviously, you know, my specialty. But danger could be, hey, we need to we're outgrowing our building. We need to expand. We need to fire this guy. We need to hire 5 more people. You like, we can't take a salary for 2 years. We're like, all these are all fear based decisions.

Tony Blauer [00:17:07]:

And you'll be looking at a house and you're you're ruminating, you're deliberating, and then you wait 2 days and you finally go, let's do it. Let's go for it. And you come you call the guy up and he goes, oh, sorry. We just got a bid this morning. You're a minute late. So remember this, any type of fear will create doubt. Doubt will always create hesitation. This is right out of

Tony Blauer [00:17:28]:

our no fear program. This is right out of our no fear program. This is right out of our no fear program. This is right out of our no fear program. This is right

Tony Blauer [00:17:28]:

out of our no fear program. This is right out of our no fear program. Fear program. Doubt creates hesitation. Hesitation always creates procrastination. There's no way that you can have a fear spike, doubt, hesitation, and procrastination. You can't that's even if you're highly trained, So so, like, the most successful business entrepreneur you know who's got tons of monies and savings and a team around him. If you run and you go, you're not gonna believe this.

Tony Blauer [00:17:56]:

The market just did this. We just lost x gazillion dollars. This property is done. Even the person who knows how to pivot on a dime, it still took him a dime to pivot. Where you and I are in the corner. You remember Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber in the bathroom floor with his thumb in his mouth? I don't know if you remember the scene, right? Sick of this like going, Mommy, mommy. Some people are like, look, look, look at this what happened 3 years ago. I almost lost everything.

Tony Blauer [00:18:23]:

Almost all of my business, all of my business was live in person training. Most most all of it was law enforcement and military. Well, as soon as we thought the world was gonna end, all of my clients were deployed to make sure that the zombie apocalypse wasn't gonna happen. So I went from 2 weeks to flatten the curve to looking at my bank and my spreadsheets and my, my, my, courses. We can't, and my my my, courses, we canceled 35 courses in a month. That was 100 and 100 of 1,000 of dollars of receivables. And one day I'm sitting there, Brian, and all of a sudden it felt like someone stuck a vacuum up my ass and started to suck up my insides because I went, Oh, my God, I'm gonna lose everything I ever built. Well, I was 60 years old at the time.

Tony Blauer [00:19:14]:

I got a nice house. I got all the toys. I've been, you know, I've made millions. I've lost millions. I've made like, I've been in business for decades. Yeah. And I gave myself 24 hours to go, like, and really feel sorry for myself. And then the next day I got to work.

Tony Blauer [00:19:31]:

Within 2 months, we had 4 new websites. We were contacting all all all the people because we had a a lot of, information knowledge related to PTSD and and mental health and resilience. And we started we completely ironically, I said to my team, all of these things that we built to make it through the craziness that was the last 3 years could have and should have been there before. Right? There's no reason they weren't. But I'm I mean, you all know of or know people that committed suicide, lost their businesses, completely lost everything. So it's how you handle the fear is huge, especially for an entrepreneur, especially for an entrepreneur. So any of you that are like, just remember remember this domino effect. A fear spike, regardless of what it is, that's a fear spike is a fancy terminology for something outside our comfort zone.

Tony Blauer [00:20:29]:

And that could be higher, fire, expand, cut back, move, pivot in the marketplace. All of that is outside our initial comfort zone. And that will always create doubt, hesitation, and procrastination. Part of our program is getting people to recognize that the only way to get out of the fear loop in a dynamic and expedient way is to create better self awareness where you go, what the hell am I waiting for? What am I hesitating on? And then to murder board, white board, or get with your consultants or confidants or whatever mind map and go and go, that's the answer. That's what I gotta do. But but movement is life. You gotta move. So this is all fear management.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:13]:

Yeah. I like that. Yeah. A couple other points. I think if you're listening to this and you're more early on in your journey, some some really good things to to pull out from what you said back in the beginning that that moment of realizing that, like, wow, you're gonna get $20 a lesson here and that that opening up all these possibilities for you. Sometimes it it's just that one moment that helps you to really realize, like, wow. Actually, like, I was wondering, like, can I really do this to now? Like, wow. This is a way I can build a business or make money.

Bryan McAnulty [00:21:45]:

And I love the the questions as well that you mentioned. And I've always said, like, I'm a big fan of traveling. I think everybody should should travel because my outlook on that is, like, what are the chances that the place that you're born is your favorite place in the world? And, like, maybe it is for for familiarity, family, certain things like that. But, like, it's my analogy is that would you wanna play, like, a video game with all these different levels to explore, but never leave the first level? And to me, that's what it is to to not go and travel somewhere. And so there's there's so many things. Even if you realize, like, oh, I really do love where I grew up. That's where I wanna live a 100%. There's so many things that you can discover about yourself, about the world from going out there and seeing things.

Bryan McAnulty [00:22:36]:

So I really like that. But sticking on this this topic of the fear, people experience fear and in a lot of ways, and we're talking real quick in the kind of preshow here that I think something that's really interesting is people sometimes in business are afraid of, I guess, maybe being aggressive is, like, the wrong way to put it, but they're afraid to play by the rules that everybody else has already agreed to. And my comparison for this is, like, if you got and, like, stepped into a ring and, like, we're going to fight somebody, like, that person who's going to fight you, they would never want you to go easy on them or to hold back or be afraid of of punching them because that would be disrespectful. Like, they signed up for this fight. They agreed to the rules, and they know what they're doing. And so they want you to give it your all, and you should do that without without this fear. And I feel that in business, people make that that same hesitation and mistake, and they they don't give their all for whatever reason of how they might be perceived by their customers, by their family, by other random people, or even competitors.

Tony Blauer [00:23:55]:

Yeah. I mean, all of this comes back to like, if if you said to me, if you said to me diagnose that, I go, well, it's just psychological fear. Well, what about this? Psychological fear. What about this example? Psychological fear. If if I if I see you, I notice a guitar in the background. Okay?

Tony Blauer [00:24:21]:

I

Tony Blauer [00:24:21]:

I I used to play guitar. I say used to, but I mean, I have guitars and I could still pick it up and and play certain things, but I stopped playing, I stopped playing in bands and I just got busy with stuff. When I used to live in Montreal, I was friends with, one of the best guitarists in the world who was a session player, had played on, you know, he might have played with with with with Sting and Bryan Adams and stuff, like, way back in the days in the in the eighties nineties. And I would go to his house and sometimes, like, I'd pay him for a private lesson. And I would just say, I just want you to play for a little, like a half an hour. Let me just watch, just to be that close to some, to a virtuoso. And I even though I supposed to be learning, I just wanted to watch him play. And I I said to him, I said, Brian, you are so amazing.

Tony Blauer [00:25:09]:

You just hear something and you could play it better than the guy that wrote it. And I said, he was a stay at home dad. His his wife worked. He had a cute little kid. Can't believe I just remembered his name because this is like a 100 years ago. But the, I said to him, why why aren't you a rock star? And he said, he says, I don't I don't like crowds. I don't like drugs. I don't I don't play the game.

Tony Blauer [00:25:36]:

I'd rather just play in the studio and do my thing. And I accepted that back then. And as I got more and more influence, cloud became a minor celebrity in my community. And and I saw people become assholes and I never did. Although that might be an asshole y thing to say, right? Where we and I'll give you an example, like like after an event, if someone wanna take my picture or someone in an autograph, I was shaking their hand before they reached out to me. I was thanking them for their attention before, and it was totally sincere because the kid that got beaten up wanted to be a famous martial artist like Bruce Lee and help people. So I know that like my life wouldn't happen if I didn't have an audience. As As an entrepreneur, your vision, what you wanna bring to the world can't happen if you don't have an audience.

Tony Blauer [00:26:34]:

No one's buying your stuff, even if it's bartering. Like, you you you need an audience. And so there's a part of you that has to connect to that. Well, why did I tell the story with Mark, my guitar instructor? Because years later, I realized that Mark was just afraid because I've been around drugs and and and stuff, and I I never did it. And I've been around big crowds and, you know, every time I gotta talk, I just got asked to go do a 30 minute talk on fear in front of 2,000 people on a stage with Ben Greenfield and other people. And I said yes. And, Brian, I'll tell you this. It's it's so funny because they hired me as a fear management expert.

Tony Blauer [00:27:19]:

Like my, when I work with a company or an entrepreneur, it might be a half day, a full day. It might be a multiple sessions because we had a lot to unpack and to create the in input the system so so that they can run it without me in terms of how how to organize it. So when I got asked to do this, I said yes, because I'm an entrepreneur. And then I went, what did I just say yes to? How am I gonna do a 30 minute talk? And, a few hours later, I got a text message from the guy's executive assistant. And as it popped up, I couldn't see the message. I was I said to myself, I hope they're canceling. Why would I say that? A fear management expert. Because I was afraid.

Tony Blauer [00:28:00]:

And it was like, hey, get me your your full name because we're booking your flight. Shit. Right? Then a couple days later, I got a message. I hope they're canceling. I wanted something to happen because I was afraid to go outside my comfort zone even though I am a world renowned subject matter expert on this. There's a lot there of people who are listening. There's your arena can shift and change and you still need to go all in. You will not grow.

Tony Blauer [00:28:28]:

You and there's a a a great quote I love. I share it all the time to my clients. You gotta be willing to give up who you are today for who you could become tomorrow. And the only way to do that is to develop yourself awareness and go, I'm afraid. And if what I'm about to do isn't physically or psychologically really dangerous, like I'm gonna be, like, messed up from that, then go do it because it will create, but I realized, you know, coming back to the guitarist thing real quick is that Mark was afraid of some stuff and he rationalized. You ever see the the, the, the, the plan words, rational lie with a hyphen, like a rash. So, you know, Richard Wyman, you know, he said that the first principle is never fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool. So when you get scared as an entrepreneur, it's easy to go, you know what? I wasn't cut out for this, Or I guess this is the universe saying, no, it's the universe saying you need to do something different, keep going.

Tony Blauer [00:29:37]:

Right? That you you just don't quit. But the the way you make that happen is by changing a relationship with fear. It all comes back to that.

Bryan McAnulty [00:29:45]:

So so so how can we do that then? So let's say, like, we understand that there in some way in our life, in our business, fear is holding us back. We understand that we can't just pause and do nothing. We have to find a way to address it and then take action. How how can we become better at doing that?

Tony Blauer [00:30:05]:

Not enough time on the show to go through to go through the whole I'm sure. But but but realize, like, there is so so what we did through studying violence, fear, and aggression is we we realized that there was a big distinction between the physiology of fear and the psychology of fear. So we were the company that drew a line in the sand that said, I don't care that your heart's pounding or you're breathing vertically or your palms are sweating. And and we were the first that said there are things in life you need to do afraid. And now they're like, wow. Because the the illusion of n o fear is this, that if I say, Brian, you're ready to go. I got you worked in. You're dialed in, and then you go in there.

Tony Blauer [00:30:52]:

And have you ever gone to do a presentation and your computer screws up and the power node or the PowerPoint or the keynote screws up? What immediately happens when you're here and you're looking over the tech guy going, hey, this won't work? Your heart starts to pound. You start to sweat. You're like, holy shit. You're still the subject matter expert. You're still the authority. But we forget, we get sucked into what's called the fear loop. So the the first thing you need to do is create the self awareness, get control of your breathing, but you need to identify exactly what you're thinking about. If I said to you, why were you freaking out when your keynote or PowerPoint went down? And you went, I don't know.

Tony Blauer [00:31:31]:

I just didn't wanna, you know, because I was, I was angry that I didn't have a backup. Okay. So you don't have a backup? Like, could you do this on a napkin or a whiteboard? Could you get the group to gather around? Do you think every single one of them in the audience hasn't gone through the exact same thing? Right? Now you're suddenly, and I'll give you an example. 1 of my guys in the Netherlands was gonna give a course in the UK. This was through a bunch of high end law enforcement guys. And he I I I I talked to all my trainers before each event, and I said to him, his name is Arjan, a r j a n. I said, Arjan, how are you feeling? He says I'm so nervous about this course, coach. Blah blah blah.

Tony Blauer [00:32:15]:

I said why? He said because I got guys in there that have been in gunfights, have been in SWAT teams, and and who am I to see likes like that impostor syndrome. And I said, I said, yeah. That's a real fear, I guess. And he looks at me on Zoom. I said, here's what I want you to do. Okay? I want you to go into class. I want you to open up the presentation. I want you to put it on slide number 1, and then I want you to ask the group, who here has the most experience in the room? They're all gonna point to 1 guy.

Tony Blauer [00:32:42]:

There's always one guy. Right? If I went to your company and there's like 10 people in it, I go, who's got the most experience at this company? They're gonna point to you, Brian. So I said, find out who that guy is, and then I want you to say you're the most experienced. I want you to look at him and say, come on up here. And since you have the most experience, I want you to teach this Blauer tactical course on control and arrest through the spear system, which is our intellectual property. And then just walk down and sit in his seat. Move away. What's he gonna do, Ariane? And he smiles on the Zoom call.

Tony Blauer [00:33:16]:

He says, he's not gonna know where to start. He's not gonna know how to teach, right? Because he's a beginner in our stuff. So a lot of the stuff I work on is creating this self awareness that you are the subject matter expert that belongs to be there. Now, there are little things like contingency. Did you have a backup on a thumb drive? Do you have a the guy traveled with 2 phones and I got redundant backups and stuff because I've had that happen to me. So it's like if you got a gun how much ammo do I need? And then can I have something redundant? So there's a there's a I know I'm dancing around. How do we fix this? The primary ingredient of courage is fear. Now that has to do with managing fear in your life, not like public speaking fear or you know, pivots in business, stuff like that, but it might.

Tony Blauer [00:34:19]:

This idea that when you're scared, if you can take this organic reaction to a stimulus, which is the sensation of fear, how what is it teaching me? Because fear is is it's if you if you think about it, it's it's telling you something. Because if I say to a dentist, oh, my God, I don't know what to do. Is it root canal? Is it this? I don't know. He's gonna go, oh, yeah. You need to floss more. You got a pop a popcorn kernel stuck in your teeth. Did you go to a movie recently? Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Blauer [00:34:49]:

Take these antibiotics. You don't need your tooth pill. Right? Like, the the car mechanic, the dentist, the doctor, the self defense expert can diagnose and treat stuff quickly because they're subject matter experts. So as entrepreneurs, we need to either through through mentors and coaches, learn these learn these things. But if you peel the onion, it's as I don't know if you ever heard of this, like, 7 question rule. Right? Where you you go, you know, you say to me, yeah, I don't take this gig. It's not gonna go, why aren't you taking it? You got it. It's bullshit.

Tony Blauer [00:35:23]:

It's not gonna No, seriously, why aren't you taking it? Seems like a good opportunity. Tell me the truth. Well, yeah, I'm just worried that, you know, you know, the ROI and the demographics are another layer. Okay. I'm afraid that I'm gonna be, blah, blah, another layer. And what it comes down to at the end of them is there's a sentence where you say, I'm afraid this. And then you you need to look at that. That's why I don't know if you guys can see this in the in the background.

Tony Blauer [00:35:52]:

The, on my wall under the flag there, it says, fuck fear. I know we don't wanna swear, but that's not me being an obnoxious American. That's actually an acronym for face it, understand it, control it, know it. It's an acronym that when you get a fear spike and you're you're you're kind of like immobilized by, your your, like, your your ram, your your metaphoric ram in your brain is locked up. And you're like, oh, you're biting your nails. You're sitting there. You don't know what to do. The acronym, fuck fear.

Tony Blauer [00:36:22]:

Face it. Don't turn away from it. Understand it. Do some research. Is that call a mentor? Is that Siri? What should I do now? Whatever it is, start to study it. And then remember the most important one is the see, the control it. There are things you need to do while you're afraid. I I I, it might have been the last talk where I got out there in front of 2,000 people, and I said, hey, who here is not afraid of public speaking? And nobody had I go, I'm here to talk about it like and I go, I'd like you to come up here and and talk with me because I'm scared shitless up here.

Tony Blauer [00:36:58]:

And people started laughing at that. Right? But, like, that's like a psychological trick where now I'm creating rapport and I realize, oh, I'm breathing. I'm in a bit of a flow. Tell another joke or get into a story. So there's all these like tricks you can do, but you never get to them. If you're locked up in the fear loop, you gotta save yourself and extract yourself from that fear loop.

Bryan McAnulty [00:37:21]:

Yeah. Yeah. And, I mean, you describing it, I can picture a lot of moments in my life when I was afraid of something and I had to make that realization. And it's almost like you're you're stepping stepping to the side of yourself to see, like, alright, what's really going on here? Whereas if you stay afraid, you're you're blind to everything that's actually happening.

Tony Blauer [00:37:41]:

Yeah. There's something that that I wanna share here that you just reminded me. I was a high level competitive skier growing up, and no one ever talked to me. No mentor, no coach. My parents, no one ever said when you're really afraid of something, and it could just be you just wanna do well. A lot of so a lot of people don't realize that their fear is because they want to do well. Or let's say your fear is I wanna be liked, I wanna be rewarded, or and they're all different. Like, when I consult with people, it's like, this deal means so much.

Tony Blauer [00:38:11]:

If I don't get this deal, I'm not gonna make my quarter, I'm gonna get fired. And so you peel that onion is now the pressure is I'm gonna get fired if I don't do this deal. And that can maybe change your delivery. You know, Iggy Pop, I don't know if you remember the name Iggy Pop. Iggy Pop said, imagine if desperation were attractive. So like, imagine like you're so desperate for a girlfriend or a boyfriend and you walk up to someone and you go, hey, would you wanna you wanna go out with me? And you're like, woah, get away from me. So I know we just met, but how many kids would you like to have? Right? Like, desperation is not attractive. So if you bring your fear onto stage or into a meeting, you might have great product or great service, but there's there's a, like a, like an energetic vibe of, like, I'm repelling people and they don't know what it is because that energy is real.

Tony Blauer [00:39:02]:

But, I mean, it's it's a fascinating thing, and I forgot what I was gonna say before, but, you'd reminded me of something what I I wanted to show. The skiing thing, no one ever told me about the physiology changes in the body. So I'd be in the race getting ready to go. I wanted to projectile vomit. I'm sweating even though it's like freezing outside. And all I could think about was this. Everyone tells me I'm really good, but if I were this good, I could not possibly feel this way. Maybe they're maybe they're just like bullshitting me.

Tony Blauer [00:39:35]:

I'm not this good. And the statement was, if I'm so good, why am I so scared? No one told me lots of people are scared, but they're managing their fear. Mike Tyson used to throw up before fights. Nobody knew that because he only started talking about it a few years ago. George St Pierre, one of the greatest MMA fighters from Montreal, my hometown. He was a I knew George before he was rushed Saint Pierre. He used to bow to me in the in the school. He'd be in his his karate gi and see me, and he goes sensei power.

Tony Blauer [00:40:04]:

It was like a training center with multiple martial arts. But I knew him before he was one of the most famous, MMA superstars in the UFC. He's recently in the last year or 2 came out and said he hated fighting so much. The scariest day of his life was every fight day, but nobody knew that except for him and the people near him. Almost every entrepreneur, and this is a fun one. If, if I'm talking to you and I say, everyone's scared, Brian, but we don't share it because fear management is not something that type A personalities go around yet. Hey, who I'm scared. I'm scared.

Tony Blauer [00:40:40]:

We don't talk about it. And then we all know somebody who's a unicorn, who's never afraid. He's skydiving, he's doing this, he's he runs into the burning building, he he drops the bully. But I was telling people that people always go, I wanna know how he thinks. And I remind them, and this might be the most powerful thing I could tell you, you can't learn anything from a unicorn. Because if you were a unicorn, that wouldn't impress you. You would just know. And the idea that you wanna be like the unicorn, that's that's the paradox.

Tony Blauer [00:41:17]:

You can't. If I'm gonna learn how to skydive, I don't wanna learn how to skydive from a 22 year old red bull sponsored adrenaline junkie. I'm afraid of heights. I wanna learn how to skydive from a 60 year old jump master who's been in 3 wars, and he loves skydiving so much. He goes, okay, you fought through 3 wars, You've you've parachuted into different countries. You're still alive. Teach me. Right? So it's it's it's a different way to look at it.

Bryan McAnulty [00:41:46]:

Yeah. Yeah. I like that. That's really interesting. So I've got one more question for you.

Tony Blauer [00:41:51]:

Yes, sir.

Bryan McAnulty [00:41:51]:

And that is on the show, we like to have every guest ask a question to the audience. So if you could ask our audience anything, whether something you're curious about, something you wanna get everybody thinking about, what would that be?

Tony Blauer [00:42:04]:

It's it's the slam dunk of everything we've been talking about. If you didn't fear fear, what would you do? If you didn't fear fear, what would you try? Just think about that. Think about every time you hesitated in life, whether it was a hard conversation, we gotta get divorced, we gotta get married. I gotta let you go. I gotta hire you. I gotta move you. The the you think about as how many entrepreneurs do you know, Brian, that it took them 7 years to quit the good job because they had security? And then even though they might have been making less money when they they left there, they went, oh my god. Like, this is the best thing I ever did.

Tony Blauer [00:42:50]:

But nobody wakes up and goes, I hate my job, and then goes in and puts in their notice. It I've never seen it. It's always 5, 6, 7 years or more where somebody had an idea to do something on their own or to do something as an entrepreneur, as a coach. And it always takes years years. But think about what it is, that's years of procrastinating. So the question I always leave with people is if you didn't fear fear, what would you be doing right now?

Bryan McAnulty [00:43:20]:

Yeah. That's great. Alright, Tony. Well, thanks so much. Before we get going, where can people find you online?

Tony Blauer [00:43:25]:

Well, I'm severely shadow banned on a bunch of platforms, but if you type in my name if you type in my name, Tony Blauer, I'm on Instagram, I'm on Twitter, I'm on Facebook, LinkedIn. The I know my team should have sent you some links for people. I don't know if you release them or or share them. But if you go to my main website blauer training systems dot com, that shows all 4 of our verticals from my coaching business to our our online education, to our equipment division, to our training division. And, if I can help any of you, you know, we've got stuff from, like, do it yourself, the d y DIY, you know, you know, study stuff to, you know, I can come and, you know, talk to you, your company, your family, or whatever. We we do everything, and I got a team around the world that helps out too. So we're here to help if you need us.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:20]:

Awesome. Yeah. And we'll put those in the show notes for anyone who wants to check them out.

Tony Blauer [00:44:25]:

Excellent.

Bryan McAnulty [00:44:25]:

Alright. Thanks, Tony.

Tony Blauer [00:44:26]:

Thank you. Take care, Brian.