Charles Cormier - Why mindset is key to successful entrepreneurship

Welcome to the show, Charles. Very happy to have you with us today. Anything to add before we begin?

Charles Cormier: No, I'm glad to be here, Tim. I give props to anyone that runs a podcast. You must have learned tons. You must have connected with really interesting people. So congrats on running the podcast.

Tim Butara: Thanks, Charles. And yeah, those two are definitely two of the best things about running the podcast. And I'm sure that you'll, you'll tell us a little bit about your own podcasting experience in just a bit, but we'll leave that for the end of the, of the conversation. But first I'm interested, you know, we're going to be talking about why mindset is so important to successful entrepreneurship.

And I'm wondering, what kind of mindset are we talking about here?

Charles Cormier: Particular mindset. I don't need to look far in my past to see examples of this mindset, you know. So for example, I recently subscribed. Well, maybe a bit of intro before I get to that example here. But I've been a serial entrepreneur for the last 10 years, done ultra endurance events, traveled the globe, managed and fired more than a thousand employees.

Nowadays work with AI, quite the ambitious type, went on Dragon's Den the Quebec version of it for one of my first startup, which was a nootropic, you know, so a pill that you take for your brain, like this one, these guys, they sponsor my pod nowadays, call your mind had one of those right now. It's amazing.

Now the example and the mindset I wanted to put forward is, yeah, I bought this 100K ultra race not so long ago in Puerto Vallarta. It's basically gonna be, yeah, 100 kilometers of run in the mountain and it can reach 88 percent humidity. So for those that know that's like a sauna, you know, like running in an uphill sauna because it's mountains, you know.

So I need to start preparing for that So the first lesson here even before I get to what happened last weekend is commit to something before you get into, yeah, something quite ambitious. You need to commit to it 100%. You know, like burn the boats. There was this Spanish conquistador that went in Mexico to colonize the grounds, and won't talk about the ethics of that, but he literally burned his boats before he dropped a foot on the ground, you know, so he didn't have any option to return to Spain. And yeah, that guy ended up actually conquering Mexico and that, that is how modern Mexico happened today.

So in my case, yeah pulled the trigger on the event. It's 350 USD, it's a hundred K, and I didn't even look at the details of the race. It's then after that I watched a YouTube video and that I saw a lot of people suffering through that race because it's hella hot.

It's sunny, the full mountain, the UV index in Puerto Vallarta is one of the highest in the world, meaning that you get cooked alive, you know? But I, I didn't check that because my mind would be like, oh man, way too hard. Not going to subscribe to that. This is impossible. Right? So pull the triggers, the number one.

And then I started putting the action plan on how to prepare to that race. I think I have like 30 or 35 weeks remaining up until the race. So this weekend I went out and climbed the mountain, which is my backyard. And it's a pretty big climb. You know, it's like a two to three kilometer full uphill climb.

And as I was going up, talking about the mindset, well, first my calves were burning, right? And it was really hot. It was probably 35 degrees felt. I still kept going. And then I reached a section of the mountain, which there was flies, you know, a lot of flies. I hate insects and mosquitoes and flies. And they were like sort of attacking my face.

And at that point I didn't thought of bringing like insect repellent. So I was like, okay what do I do from now? Do I go back? Do I go back home and fail my goal of reaching the top of that mountain or did I continue? So at this point, guys, it's always a decision that you need to make.

If you need to pivot or if you need to keep going up. So what I did, I just focused on the music that I had in my earbud and I follow the rhythm. And yes, I had for literally 30 minutes flies attacking my face, but I understood that as long as they didn't got in my mouth or anything, or didn't, they didn't stung me, they didn't stung me by the way, because I was moving too fast.

Well, everything was okay. So sometimes you need to talk to yourself and be like, brain chill. I know, Charles, that you don't like insects, that you hate flies, but you need to keep on going. You need to to keep on walking, running. And even if it's slow, even if it's hot, you have one objective. It is to reach that top of the mountain.

And before I knew it, it was over. I was at the top of the mountain. I couldn't even enjoy the top of the mountain because the flies were still after me. So I had to go down. I sprained my ankle after that, still kept going.

But yeah, there's all kinds of challenges. So I guess the lessons from that one is, push yourself up. If you're an entrepreneur, if you're in tech, like go, go run. I mean, just go outside, take your shoes and run. And when the pain hits, that's when you know that you're in a good zone and that you have mental gains, because that's when you start struggling. That's when you need to start dealing with your mind.

What, like Goggins says. So that's a good example of mindset. And second, obviously mindset is crucial in the entrepreneurship game because it's hella hard. It's not something easy, right? To start a business and to scale it or to start a podcast. Most people that start a podcast will give up after 50 podcasts.

So go long, you know, and when you go long, that's where the, the millions, the billions are because most people give up and you gain experience. You keep on getting better. So yeah, mindset is pretty much the basis of my full success.

Tim Butara: I love the tip that you said, like how you were able to calm yourself down just saying to yourself, brain, chill. I love that phrase, brain, chill. Love it. And I'm wondering, yeah, you said that the mindset is basically the most important thing, but I'm wondering besides the mindset, what else helps you deal with all of the challenges either of being an entrepreneur or just, you know, challenges of life basically?

Charles Cormier: Yeah. So IQ. So I'm, I was born smart. Like my dad, he's an entrepreneur. My mom, her dad was a dentist and on my dad's side, his dad was a salesman. And my grandmother, she's Irish. So that's where the grit comes from. That's where the salesmanship comes from. So, and I name another apart from IQ, sales is super important, right? We can get into that a tad later, but being smart is super important.

And there was a time in my life, which I. Could have been convinced. I wasn't smart. Basically, I was always causing trouble at school and they put it, they put me in the weakest program. So I could have been like, oh yeah, in the end, I'm, I'm, I'm an idiot, you know, but I've always been fascinated with reading and learning more, which is the point here. It's not genes. You always need to be reading upon something.

But before I get to that, the pretty obvious system here that I would recommend anyone to learn after you've maxed out books like I did and listened pretty much any business audible that exists or self help audible is to start a podcast, starting a podcast. Basically you can interview top CEOs. You can interview top founders and ask them the best questions that you can. Most of these folks are quite gracious with their time. They will answer the best that they can to the questions that you ask them. And you can take mental notes.

And when you do that with 10 CEOs per day or 15 or 20, like I did, I interviewed 2000 of them, you get really smart. You just understand the game at another level. You also do market research for your companies. You get like invaluable insights. So yeah, that's quite good. Then on a reading perspective, I don't read much books anymore. I read Wikipedia.

So and I don't read business stuff quite ever. I read business biographies of business magnets like Andrew Carnegie's, for example, but I'll read about anything like right now. I'm reading about the water bear, which is this small creature, microscopic creature that can survive under huge radiation, huge temperature changes, huge pressure changes.

And it's quite impressive. They can survive 30 years without being hydrated or eating. Imagine not eating or drinking for 30 years. So you, you learn from these things. You understand the laws of lives of physics, and you can bring that back to business, of course. And the more you read, the better you can write.

Now I synthesize this learning through writing, through speaking, through right now on the podcast and being asked questions and that's how you grow neuron cells. And if you're the smartest in the room, people always say nowadays, don't be the smartest in the room. Well, I say being the smartest in the room, you know, that's a challenge right there. It's a bit lazy not to be the smartest in the room.

And when you're the smartest in the room, while people trust you, people buy from you, you know, And yeah, it's a, it's a pretty fun life. So IQ would be, and intelligence and learning would be top of the list when it comes to business success, apart, apart from mindset.

Tim Butara: Yeah, learning definitely is one of the most important things for anybody in the current world. You know, things are moving at such a frantic pace and there's so much, so many possibilities, so much knowledge to acquire that, that you, you can't risk falling behind anywhere without learning.

Another thing that I'm really interested in, Charles, is. You know, we talked about the importance of keeping it real when we first talked. And I'm wondering why is keeping it real so important? Why is it more important than doing everything strictly by the book? And also how can we be more real with ourselves and with each other?

Charles Cormier: Yeah. I mean, I'm going to use a simple

and controversial analogy here, but Trump, you know, like Trump will make at most in his life, like millions, you know, he won't ever be able to go over a certain roof because he's not going for truth. He's going for lies. Lies will bring you millions. Truth will bring you billions, if not trillions.

Truth is hard to find. It's really hard to find because you need some kind of market research machine, like the one we described today. Yeah, that market machine, which could be podcasting, which could be reading Wikipedia article, which would mean firing your ideas at people and seeing if there's some truth in these ideas or not, you know, like improving that algorithm of yours.

So that's the first reason. Money. You'll be richer if you go for truth. Sam Altman goes for truth. Okay. Sam Altman goes for truth. Sam Altman is, yes. I mean, he'll, he'll crack capitalism straight up because he goes after truth. And I'm not even talking about EQ and heart here.

Now that part EQ and heart and happiness. If you're constantly lying, can you be happy with yourself? You know, I don't think you can. And you're also wronging a bunch of people. And then if you deal with smart people, like I deal with the finest people on this planet earth. I've been targeting people of really high caliber and I've stopped targeting realtors for that very reason. Realtors were living in second principles.

Nowadays I work with serial tech entrepreneurs that are living in the first principles world. So if you're targeting these people, they'll just understand that you're lying, so, and, and you won't be happy with that. That will be like multiple monkeys to carry on your back pretty much forever.

So. People should go for truth. Listen to people like Naval for sure. Naval's after truth. In terms of authors, Naval's Almanack's a good book. Nassim Taleb's as a good one as well, although he's a bit too much contrarian to my opinion, looking a bit for drama, but he's after truth and anyone after truth, namely scientists. Most of them are after truth.

There are bias for sure, but truth is scale. Okay. Truth, you can build upon facts that I uncovered six years ago. I was still kidding myself a little bit six years ago. I was brought up in the world of cells, you know, it was a bad start. It was a, you know, like a screeching tire start because cells teach you to lie initially, but I've been more an entrepreneur than a sales person.

And I think the facts that I've uncovered years ago, I can, I have built upon them and now I have a mountain of scalable knowledge instead of being built on grand card owned falsehoods that cannot scale and will bring me to ruins.

Tim Butara: Yeah, definitely authenticity and sincerity are two of the most important traits to have in the current society. It's similar to learning before right? It doesn't really matter if you're an entrepreneur or just somebody trying to get by, you know, it'll be that much easier and that much more valuable for you If you're authentic if you're sincere with yourself and with others.

And you mentioned, you're predicting my questions almost perfectly because you mentioned eq and happiness. And I the next thing that I wanted to talk about is actually mental health and how important a good mindset is to anybody's mental health, basically.

Charles Cormier: Mental health is really hard nowadays. I do inquiries on LinkedIn almost on a daily basis. And the mental health one I've done a couple of times just to validate my numbers. I think there's been around 100 votes to each. And it was like, it was saying, are you struggling with mental health nowadays, at least 56 percent said yes.

My audience, which is interesting, it's not like woke people or people stuck in the rat race, you know, it's like founders and CEOs, most of them going for truth. So when I quiz them, it's an interesting loop of the world, you know, it's because if I'm asking that question to normal people. I don't think a lot would answer that question first. And I think most of them would lie. Oh, everything's okay.

You know, like the curse of the nine to fiver is that they've convinced themselves that they cannot be worth more than this job. And they, they sort of gave, gave up on life, you know, they gave up on progress. They gave up on thinking that they, they could achieve more. And yeah, that's, that's like, not knowing that you have a struggle. They're in the phase of not even knowing that they might have this mental struggle.

That's most people, they don't have sufficient consciousness. I don't blame them for that. The consciousness might come, you know, most of them, it's a midlife crisis. It's like, oh, I'm 40 and I'm struggling or, hey, I'm 50 kids are out now. And I'm not even happy with this wife of mine, with this life of mine. Let's just break shit up, you know? Instead of going through that, go for truth.

It is harder. Especially when you're smart, it's a curse, right? It's a poison curse because you, you learn more every day about the world. And sometimes you learn about atrocities. Like the other day, my bank robbery studying on Wikipedia got me to prisons. And then prisons got me to study like horrible people that committed murders and rapes and just like, yeah, very psychotic people, psychopaths.

And when you learn about the world that affects your mental health too. Like I remember when I read about that, the next couple of days, like, man. Yeah. First I need to invest in house security because there are cycles out there. And second, it's like, oh, this is the world I live in.

And granted to that point, with COVID, with the current economic state, you know, it's just It's getting harder and harder. So if you're not improving, like most people, if you're not like getting better, 1 percent on a daily basis, it becomes a struggle because it's like, first, I live in this capitalist world. I didn't choose to live in this capitalist world, you know?

And second, yeah, I didn't choose to play that game, but if you're not playing the capitalist game, you know, you go in burnout because you're not generating money. And then you're all over yourself. Your wife is like, yo, you're not bringing money anymore. And your life goes to shit. And what is your option?

You know, if you're like if you're not capitalist, well, you go live out in the streets, you know, that's, that's like reaching the bottom of the barrel. Now that's an extreme version of reaching the bottom of the barrel. The other is just like, we're just stressed. We have constant stimuli attacking us.

We're constantly on TikToK and constantly seeking dopamine, right? And then most of us are coffee addicted. My linkedin poll yesterday revealed that 60 percent of my CEOs and founders are addicted on caffeine. Then there's porn. How can you even have a nice relationship with porn? You know, you can't. How can you even look at yourself and so forth?

So there's, the odds are stacked against us. Me, I'm a self improvement freak, which is why I can survive in that realm. I can thrive in that jungle. I'm, I'm a panther in that jungle, but most people, I think they struggle. So a couple of tips for mental health.

And I struggle, I have bouts with mental health as well. You know, it's not like if I'm Mr. Perfect and thriving all the time. Recently I found my bouts. I have probably at least four struggles per year in which I'm like, yo, I need to pick myself up, you know? And recently I've just picked back on meditation. I bought this meditation cushion and every time I pass in front of that cushion, which is in my stairs, I need to sit down and meditate.

And that good one is this app called Othership. Othership is also a spot chain if you want in Canada and U. S. It's the biggest and most interesting one. They have huge saunas and so forth. They also have this app here, this breathing app. So I just start the app, you know, and I start breathing and you hear that guy with the music and he's like, read one two three. It's like Wim Hof breathing.

Another good one is nature, you know, fortunately me I have views everywhere in this house. So that's very appeasing but just going walking with my dogs on a daily basis. And most importantly, of course, physical activity that will change your biochemistry faster than a coffee cup will, you know, plus a coffee cup will give you cortisol.

This physical activity, if you do it right, I use Apple Fit for that. I mean, it's, it's super simple. It's 10 minutes workouts, really scientist, scientific workouts as well. You will go from, yeah, depressed to like, hey, I've done something.

And then guess what? That will lead to another chain of habit. Once you do the workout, then you might eat clean. If you might eat clean, then you do a meditation. Then you might go with a tea. Then you might go with a walk. So habit stacking is super powerful for mental health.

Tim Butara: Wow, yeah, a lot of really awesome points here, Charles, I wish we had time to discuss all of, all of what you just said right now more in depth, but unfortunately we only have time for a final question. I'm really interested in, maybe, you talked before about how beneficial podcasting could be, but I'm wondering if you had a particular experience with podcasting that maybe wasn't so positive and how you dealt with it.

Charles Cormier: Yeah, talking about mental health, so. Yeah, I'll try to be nice because the other day there was this guy interviewing me and he stopped the interview and was like, yo, my audience is not gonna resonate for that.

And I said it in a nice way. I mean, his vibe was just terrible. You know his questions were terrible from the start of the interview. And I felt he had a cloud in his mind, you know, when you talk to someone and they're not really there. They're not really in the moment, which is a good tip in the, in the podcasting world, they're not curious, they're closed, they're distracted.

You know, I could feel that in this human being and yeah, at the end, so like pretty much everything he would say, I would question, you know, like a skeptic and as a guide of first principle. Including his questions. Questioning question is a good thing. If I have someone asking me the wrong questions, I knew he didn't prepare.

I know that we're not living in the same world. We're just not a fit, you know, and then I can't add value to your audience because most humans are saying this guy wasn't, but yeah, like he decided to cut the podcast, which is also a bull's errand to do because. If you cut the podcast, well, first I'm huge in my world.

This guy was in the sales world. He did the mistake to, to cut that up. So what does that mean for his future? It's a really bad investment basically, because I know pretty much everyone in that world. And then I could have shared a pod. Of course. Then I asked the guy for the recording, like, yo, I'll just do my own shorts and my recording, he refused that.

It's like, okay, then it's war. I'm not perfect as well. Talking about mental health, you know, like me, I'm testosterone filled and I love microwires sometimes if, and I love playing with my food, like a lion, you know, so I challenged this guy to a boxing match. I don't think I told you that, but I did because I think that that's one of my business ideas. Boxing matches.

Like we've seen Jake Paul and Mike Tyson. We've seen Tyson Fury and then Ganu, there's all these big time boxing matches and I've had various folks on my pod. I want to start a bunch of sports business like John Franklin, he's the XCO of Golden Gloves and so forth. So I want to start a business in that.

And I guess I ended up this bad bout. I like, I love judokaing negative stuff into positive stuff. So this one, yeah, I ended up like being, A, B testing this boxing match offer. Because yes, I think I'll, I'll step up in the ring to raise money for charities in the future. Plus I think it's a huge business idea. Imagine making 5 percent off a 200 million promotion. It's big money.

So anyway, I challenged this guy to boxing match. The lesson here is that yeah, reverse the negative and positive. And also if you're a podcast host, of course, like, yeah, clear your mind. I've had various guests on my pod that I didn't agree with.I even thought there were asses, but I gave them the time, you know, and some of these opportunities, because I let go of my ego, they turned into a couple of thousands dollars of contracts, for example. So it pays off to. Put your ego aside, put your, your clouds and thunderstorm aside and truly listen to someone and what they have to say.

And now if you give them a platform, sure. But I think there's much more value in saying yes to saying no. A lot of people, they say no without nowadays. I'm sort of opposed against that. I think people should say yes, experiment more, filter more and make more mental conclusions, which is a really long and hard thing to do. So, yeah.

Tim Butara: Some great notes to finish this great conversation on Charles. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks for joining us. If anybody would like to connect with you or reach out to you, what's the best way to reach you?

Charles Cormier: Yeah, Charles Cormier on Google. They'll find me there.

Tim Butara: Okay. Awesome. Thanks again, Charles, for the great insights, the great discussion and yeah, to our listeners. That's all for this episode. Have a great day everyone and stay safe.

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