From American Idol Fame To Centerstage Authority. How Justin Guarini did it.

When Fame Cracks Overnight

SPEAKER_00 0:00

That's how I found out I was dropped from a major, my major record label at the time. And in that moment, sitting in the lap of luxury with all the cars, the clothes, the money, the fame, the fortune, all the things that I thought I wanted. It was like I just remember feeling like I heard this glass shattering sound, like the baseball through a window sound.

SPEAKER_02 0:27

Welcome to Chasing the Extraordinary. I am Alexia Malocki, your host. We started with the Heart of Show business. Then we went beyond Hollywood. Here are conversations with trailblazers, game changers, and leaders who don't just pursue the extraordinary, they live it. Find your extraordinary here.

Fame Versus Being Taken Seriously

SPEAKER_03 0:54

Alright, here we go. So, what if the moment that makes you famous is not the moment that defines you? Life has a funny way of taking us down roads we never imagined. And sometimes what it looks like a destination is not actually that, but it's the starting line. So just look at Kelly Clarkson and also today's guest, who I am so excited to have on my show today, Justin Guarini. He captures America's heart on the very first season of American Idol. I still remember that finale. My father came from Italy and he likes, I'm gonna watch, we're gonna watch American Idol. He's like, What the hell is that? I'm like, you watch and see. So it was so interesting. Same stage, same spotlight, but it's two completely different journeys. And this is what fascinates me about fame. Fame can give you a platform, but what you do with it is what will give you a purpose. And Justin Guarini here has gone from being a pop sensation to actor to Broadway to television to entrepreneur, motivational speaker. And now he's the author of an awesome book that I just happened to read just a few days ago called Center Stage Confidence. And his story raises a powerful question. This is how you go from being someone everyone recognizes to someone people genuinely listens to. So today we're gonna be talking reinvention, resilience, and the courage to write your own chapter. Welcome to Chasing the Extraordinary, Justin.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Thank you so very much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here, and I can't wait to dig into all things confidence and transformation. I love that you put this podcast together and it's an honor to be on it with you. And hopefully I can be as extraordinary as your other guests have been.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

Oh, you already are, because I have to say, everybody needs to know about the power of presence on so many levels, on a spiritual level, on a level as a performance. And I actually was gonna ask you, because of course you became famous overnight. What was the difference between being recognized and being taken seriously? When did that moment shift for you?

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Well, I think it goes back to what you just said about the word presence. You can have stage presence, you can have a presence when you walk in the room. But what does that really mean? If we dig into that, when someone with a presence or who has presence walks into the room, they elicit a feeling from the people in that room. So presence is the feeling that you create for people when you walk into the room. And so that really answers the question that you just asked me. What's the difference between being famous and being taken seriously, being noticed and being taken seriously? And it's having that presence and creating the right feeling with the right people. That's what it is. The big challenge that far too many of us, whether it's in life or in business or anything in between, try and do is we try and make everybody happy. We try and please everyone with our product, our message, our service. And life doesn't work that way. That's a really great way to dilute your presence, to dilute your ability to make people feel something that you want them to feel. However, when we recognize that in order to be taken seriously, we have to walk into any room with a solid opinion. We have to walk into any room recognizing that polarity is our friend. There are people who are gonna like what we say, what we do, what we wear, how we think, how we act. And there are people who are gonna dislike what we do, what we wear, what we say, how we act. And so when you want to be taken seriously as opposed to just being noticed, walking into a room.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

What a great answer. This is so inspiring. And it really is aligned with something I just said in my one of my Instagram live download moments, which is personal brand is really not about how many followers you have and who likes you, who doesn't like you. Oh gosh, I took a selfie and all that. Well, oh no, Justin Guerini, American Idol. No, it's what you want people to remember about you. And I remember from the first moment that you were on that stage on American Idol, you obviously had the X factor. You wear somebody, it was a hair a little bit too, but didn't hurt, which is now gone. Which kind of what was the moment that you stopped protecting your sort of Justin Guarini brand, Justin Guarini from American Idol, and you leaned into Justin Guarini, the person.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

I think one of my favorite things to do, and I do it all throughout center stage confidence in the book, is to take complicated ideas, make them very simple, and then not just give information, because we have so much information. We have AI, we have the internet, we can ask and have answered any single question we want. But what I think is powerful and is at the root of not just what I think we all are desiring, but the answer to your question is not more information, it's transformation. We want transformation, whether it's in our body, our spiritual connection, our relationships, or our business. Transformation is the thing that makes us feel like we are moving forward, feel like we have purpose. And so when we look then at the concept of transformation, when we look at the concept of brand, which, as you so eloquently put it, is that thing that people remember, I would even take it a step further and say your brand is the thing that people remember, but they remember it based on the story that you tell them. So that to me is even deeper meaning of the word brand. It's the story. And why is story so important? Well, story is something, and stories are something that are older than written language. So, to answer your question directly, when I had the hair and I was on American Idol and I was singing really amazing music, that was one really beautiful story that showed a facet of my personality. But here's the thing about fame: it is a double-edged sword. Fame is this beautiful thing that, like you said, gives people a platform, but it is this thing where people take their story or the need and the gaps in their story and they put it on you. So you, as the famous person, must satisfy a requirement. Your story must satisfy a requirement for the person who is the fan, who sees you as famous. You give them something they feel like they don't have, you complete them in a way that yada, yada, yada. But here's the thing, and the problem with fame, as soon as you stop telling the story that satisfies someone else's need, they go on and they find someone else. That's why we see these people who get addicted to fame, the vanity metrics of followers, the vanity metrics of how many people show up to my events, all of those vanity metrics that if you were to go down to the grocery store and buy with Instagram followers, they would kick you out, right? They would kick you out with all that. However, people who understand and recognize brand, who understand their story matters in terms of how we can make other people feel with our authentic story, that's when we then move away from fame and into celebrity. And one of the root of celebrities to be celebrated, right? You want to be celebrated, not for who you're pretending to be, but for who you are. For again, it goes, I love your line of questioning because it all is linked when we talk about that polarity, when we walk in a room with presence, we have a strong opinion, we have a strong way of thinking, and we are unapologetic about it. That is that thing that leads to celebrity, that leads to people feeling strongly about you, that leads to a story that you can live as your truth that makes certain people feel one way and certain people feel another way. And no matter how they feel, it's like P.T. Barnum said, I don't care how you spell it, I don't care how you say about me, just as long as you spell my name right. Because he understood the power of polarity and being able to leverage your brand and your story to make people feel a certain way and to celebrate you for it.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Oh my God. And it's here's the thing: I think people confuse visibility with expertise and they confuse, like I said, being popular with authority. And authority is not about this is my way or the other way. Authority is, and we goes back to the presence thing, is being able to bring something to the table that connects with an emotion. And I always say to people, and I'd love to hear that because I'm sure you had your own set of challenges making this transition from obviously being seen as Justin Guerini of American Idol, Justin Garini of the movies, Justin Garini to transitioning that. I always say to people, your wounds are your most powerful way of storytelling, and it's up to you to choose how to tell that story. You can do the wounds boom-y, or you can do the wounds as the way to grow, the way to connect with others. Tell me about your wounds.

Value, Authority, And True Confidence

SPEAKER_00 10:19

Sure. Well, you know, something that I think is really important, and you unpacked a couple of things. There's the idea of value and authority. The line that will help you, dear watcher or listener, really truly help other people to understand your expertise and your authority is to focus on the word value. Value. And what my business partner and love in my life, Kim Walsh Phillips and I like to say as we coach CEOs, as we coach seven, eight, nine-figure founders and empower them to create masterminds and advisory groups. We love to share this concept. You have value and you deserve to be paid for it. Now, why is that so important? What is value? Value in this context is the solution to someone else's problem. It is that simple. And when we simplify the understanding of value like that and apply it to ourselves, we say, hmm, how can I take all of those solutions and package them in a way that helps other people solve the problems I already know how to solve. That is expertise. That then, when you put story into it and you can make people see themselves in your journey from the bad days to the good days, when you can make people feel like they know and trust you, that is how you create authority in the minds of your people.

SPEAKER_03 11:45

So I love this.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

This is so So there's a reason why I put on the front of the book how to walk in any room and own it, how to command any room. And as authorities, as expert experts, when you want to command a room, it is very important. And I'm a bit of a word nerd, so I love studying the real meanings of words. When you understand command and leadership, but specifically the word command is not walking into a room and telling people what to do and moving pieces, people around like they're on a chessboard. If we look at the word command, the root of that is actually to entrust. So when you walk into a room and you command a room, or better yet, if you are a leader and you're asked to command a set of people, you're actually entrusting them with the ability to do the things that you desire based on their skill sets as best as they possibly can. And here's why it's so important to walk into a room or into a leadership situation with confidence. When we look at confidence, what is that? The root of that is confide, to trust. So when we have self-confidence, in other words, self-confidence, it means we trust in ourselves. When we can walk into a room and trust that as a leader, if we lead, we're not going to die, get arrested, the sky's not going to crack and crumble, and the world's not going to end. If we can walk into a room with that kind of trust and we desire to command the room, we're actually entrusting our audience with that confidence that we have. Anyone who's ever been on a stage or like you here on a podcast or on camera or in front of a room has seen someone who walks in and they're nervous on the stage and they're like, Oh my goodness, I'm so sorry. But there's a secret hidden in that. Whatever you allow yourself to feel as that leader on stage, on camera, in that position where the spotlight is on you, whatever you allow yourself to feel, you give the audience permission to feel as well. So that's why someone can feel extremely nervous, but walk on the stage and say, you know what? I'm just gonna come out, I'm gonna, I'm gonna deliver my value, I'm gonna tell my story. I'm gonna walk out with the presence that I want to imbue my audience with, and trust my audience with. And then we walk up there and then we feel excited when we see them. We feel confident, we feel like things are unlocked in our minds because they are giving us the permission to do that. So that is a really long way to answer your question of authority, of leadership, and how we, if we do the work, and that's why I didn't make this a memoir in Center Stage Confidence, I made it a actual transformational experience. When you do the work inside this book, when you uncover the things that exercises ask you to uncover, that's when we have that transformational experience.

SPEAKER_03 14:50

Boom. And you know what? Here, people who are watching this how you can tell when somebody has imposter syndrome and one who doesn't. Justin clearly does not have imposter syndrome, but he made that knowledge his and he applied it for him first. He says, This is what worked for me. These are the nuggets that I extracted from my growth journey. I made them mine, and here I am talking about them, not like a parrot, but from a lived personal experience, and I think it's fabulous. That's why I like your book so much.

SPEAKER_00 15:26

Yeah, I do want to do something because I realize I didn't actually answer the question

Speak From The Scar Not Wound

SPEAKER_00 15:30

that you just asked me. There's something really powerful about speaking about the challenges that have befallen us. You've heard phrases like your mess is your message, right? And like all that, and that's so true. However, I would caution people watching and listening to this, really put a helpful frame around that. It is one thing to speak from the wound, and we've all seen it. Someone who gets up on the stage or on the camera in front of the audience and they are so overcome with the emotion of the thing that they are talking about. They are raw, they are vulnerable, it is open, it is a beautiful thing. However, it might be a little uncomfortable. People are crying so hard they can't get through the actual speech, right? But that is not the job of the audience to save the person who is up on stage, the person who is the leader. When we speak from the wound, there's something very powerful about that. However, there's something transformative about when we speak from the scar, not the wound. So if you have a place in your life where you talk about something and it is so raw and you're crying or you're angry or whatever your thing is, and it blocks you from really truly getting through it, I would encourage you to talk to as many people who are not an audience, right? Maybe it's family members, maybe it's a therapist, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's your spell, and continue to tell that story over and over and go through it and live it and be there to the point where you're able to make it through without breaking down, to the point where you're able to feel the emotion, shed a tear. I love it. But you continue on the through line. That is when you're speaking from the scar. And when you can get in front of an audience and feel all of the emotion, all of the story, all of the highs and the lows of the wound, but speak from the scar and show the audience the bridge, bridge the gap between the wound and the healing. That is the transformational experience where you give the audience the ability to feel and to be with you and to see themselves in that story that is so profound. However, they get to also see you as the leader who made it through. They also see that if that person, you up on the stage with the camera or wherever you are, can make it through. Maybe I can make it through as well. So that's why it's so powerful to speak from the scar and not the wound. And one of the wounds that I speak from, or scars that I speak from, and I talk about it in the book, is the moment when I realized that everything I thought I ever wanted didn't matter at all. I was in living in Bel Air in Beverly Hills, probably one of the most expensive zip codes.

SPEAKER_01 18:24

My code, yes. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 18:25

One of the most expensive zip codes. There you go. So you know it's one of the most expensive zip codes in the US. And I was in a beautiful room driving all the cars I wanted to drive. My room was all white, like all the clothes, all the money, all the fame that I could possibly want. And I was miserable. I didn't want to go out. I didn't want to be a part of the Hollywood mess. And so it was a Saturday night. I turned on the TV and NBC was on. And of course, Saturday Night Live was playing. And Tina Faye was reading weekend update, and she was going through a monologue, and it was really funny. And I was like, oh, this is exactly what I needed, right? Just a little bit of an escape from everything that's going on right now. And then all of a sudden, my face popped up next to her head. And I sat up in my bed with my 1600 Egyptian count sheets, and I was like, what is she gonna say about me? And look, at the time, I don't know if it was my hair or whatever. I was just the brunt of a lot of jokes. And on late night, especially. So I thought she was just gonna make a silly joke about me. What I didn't know is that she was going to tell me and the millions of other people watching that I was dropped from my record label. That's how I found out I was dropped from a major, my major record label at the time. And in that moment, sitting in the lap of luxury with all the cars, the clothes, the money, the fame, the fortune, all the things that I thought I wanted, it was like I just remember feeling like I heard this glass shattering sound, like a baseball through a window sound. And the idea of fame and fortune and all the things that I had been chasing after and being on TV and magazines and blah, it disintegrated. And in that moment, looking back on it, I realized that felt, and it was to me at the time a huge failure. I had failed. All the things that I had done, all the times my parents had taken to me to rehearsals, all the plays, all the showcases, all the work that I had put in during American Idol, I had failed. I'd failed myself, I'd failed the people who had voted for me, I'd failed my family. And I took that failure on as an identity. I am not enough. I wasn't talented enough. I, and the most three most powerful and dangerous words in the English language are me, my, and I. Because they are so rooted on identity. And we can unwittingly create an identity based on whatever comes before or after those words. And so for I don't even know how long I felt so depressed, I wouldn't get out of bed. Whenever I went to the bathroom, I wouldn't look myself in the mirror. And very much like Aria Stark from Game of Thrones, I had this list of people who had wronged me and now I wasn't going to kill them like she does. But I was upset at them and I was the victim. And I stayed the victim for a really long time. And because I had made failure a part of my identity, it colored everything that I did. It colored my relationships, it colored how I ate and I fueled my body. It colored how my business, how I showed up on sick, because I still had to go out, and there were jobs that I had booked, and I it colored every single facet of my life. And I don't know when it happened, but eventually I hit a threshold. I got sick and tired of being sick and tired. And that's when I started asking myself better questions. Questions instead of why did this happen to me? Why did they do that to me?

SPEAKER_03 22:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:22

And instead, I started saying and asking, did this happen for me? Why did these people did these people do this for me? And as I began to remove my identity from this failure, as I began to remove my identity from these vanity metrics that we're talking about, right? People saying nice things about me online or followers that I had or whatever, as I began to remove my identity from it, I began to see that failure as not an identity, but an event. And an event is void of emotion. Events either happen or they don't, right? An event is something that you can look at and say, okay, this thing happened. And when you ask yourself, why did it happen for me? That's when you changed that identity into an event. And that was how I began to rebuild my career as someone who was on American Idol and whose first album flopped and whose movie flopped and all these identities of flopping and failing. And then began to say, okay, how can I take this gift, this opportunity of not just eyeballs, but experience and all the talent that I have and begin to put it out in the marketplace and tell the story that I want to tell, which is when I found myself on TV Guide, which is when I found myself on Broadway and seven Broadway shows, which is when then I found myself after that as playing Lil Sweet for Dr. Pepper and Disney and all these other things that I do now. But it was because I was willing to sit in the failure and begin to ask better questions and stop seeing that failure as an identity and start to see it as an event.

SPEAKER_03 24:18

Wow. Okay. I love first of all, yeah, the question part. I remember that in your chapter. I always say there's a lot of power in the questions you ask and how you ask them. And I love the sort of breakdown breakthrough moment in true Jerry McGuire fashion because I think we all have to go through our breakdown in order to break through. And it's very true. What makes me curious, you're involving into speaker, coach, giving master classes on confidence and being center stage. I would love to know, and I guess that applies for me too, because I've been an accomplished film financier, I'm a PGA producer, done 35 movies, and then I obviously pivoted into oh, I love podcasting. I'm kind of taking my gifts and putting them out into the world.

Bridging Your Past Into Your Next

SPEAKER_03 25:05

My question to you is when someone identifies you with someone, whether it was a failure or it was a success, it doesn't matter. How do you walk into a room now, say, like you are coaching CEOs, you're going into companies and you're teaching people about center stage? How do you get them to stop thinking about who you used to be and start believing who you are now?

SPEAKER_00 25:33

That is an awesome question. I love that. And I'll tell you this: you don't get them to stop. You don't get them to stop. Don't fight that. You and I both are so fortunate to be linked to successful projects. I will be forever linked to American Idol. American Idol has been around for like season 26 or 27. Now it's insane how long that show has been around. And yet, when you have a strong brand, even if it's a failure or what, it doesn't matter. You never ever want to stop people thinking. Because one of my best friends and my publicist for 20 years, he was a publicist for Johnny Depp and Charlie Sheen and all, he knows where all the bodies are buried. He's like, you'll always be known for the last biggest thing you did. That's just the way human brains work and human beings work. You're always going to be known for that last big thing you did. But recognizing something that was hidden in what you were saying and sharing it with people is really powerful. What you just said was uh PGA producer, film financier, and then I just wanted to get into podcasts, and now I've spoken with some really amazing people, Dr. Michael Beckwith. What you recognize, and what I recognize in that statement is that you might have been in different quote unquote rooms, but you were doing the same thing in each room. You were taking the power of your presence, the power of your story, your ability to communicate a message, and you were delivering that for the pitch. You were delivering that as a film financier to help move the pieces where they needed to go. You were delivering that as a podcast producer and a podcast host. You were delivering your ability to tell a story and to not just tell a story, but to make a story so compelling that people would trade value with you, aka for you, right? They're really, they see your story as so valuable solving a problem that they have that they're willing to exchange the money in their pocket for it. And so for someone walking into a room who is associated with something so strongly in the past, but they're doing something new now or they want to evolve, do not fight that. Use the power of story as the bridge between where you are and where you are now, where you rather, where you were and where you want to are now. That was the main thing. And that's what I love to do. And that's what I love to work with six, seven, eight, nine figure founders on doing is how can you tell a story and uncover your value so clearly that the value of that in this case is worth more than the money in someone else's pocket. And they will gladly give it to you. People are gonna think what they're gonna think, and that is that. However, you can play into that with your story, with your understanding of, oh, you know what? That thing that I was doing, I'm just doing the same thing with a new rapper on it right now. And if I can bridge the story, for example, I stood in front of 30 million live television viewers, and I completely blanked on the lyrics live on TV. So the story that I tell at the beginning of my keynote speech is I raise my hand and say, uh, have you ever made a life and career-altering mistake live in front of 30 million television viewers? And people will laugh at that because obviously nobody raises their hand because nobody but me has done that. And say, Well, I did. And then I tell them the story about how I completely messed up on American Idol live in front of 30 million television viewers. I think I talk about it in the book. I won't spoil it for you so you can get it. And at the end and throughout it, I weave in the ideas and concepts of confidence. And by the end of that story, I have bridged the gap between being live in front of 30 million television viewers with a massive amount of hair in 2002 with the person I am today in 2026 with a beard and much shorter hair, who is not just the singer and the performer, but also the confidence coach. So that's it. You just find that common thread, you pull on it, and I'm really proud of the exercises in the book that will really allow you to do that and to do that quickly.

SPEAKER_03 29:50

I love what you just said, Justin, because it is true. You have to stop identifying yourself with that one thing, with that label. You have to know that if you have a story to tell, if you are solving someone else's problem right now, you and I, we could be solving hundreds of people's problems just by having this discussion. I could be solving a problem by making a movie and I'm doing another one now because someone is gonna feel good when they walk out of that theater. We are problem solvers, and we can do that with the presence and the confidence. And I feel that with you, as you have experience, fame, reinvention, success, setbacks. I'm gonna ask you something because there is never there's always a next thing, right? I think I don't think we're always gonna stop at one thing. So for you, Justin, this is my chasing the extraordinary question.

Reinvention Through Discomfort And Faith

SPEAKER_03 30:49

Are you still chasing something extraordinary or absolutely finish line?

SPEAKER_00 30:55

I don't understand the concept of people who want to retire and do nothing. Yeah, I understand if you want to retire and go sail on a boat, that's still active, right? There for me are a couple of extraordinary things that I'm chasing after. I love having these conversations. I want to have more of these conversations with people that I love, people who are I call my shiny people. Like in the book, I talked to in the book, I talked and interviewed my friend Michael Bublet, who is a world-famous musician and artist. And I just know him as Mike, he's my buddy. And we've had off the record conversations that are just so human. And I love him for everything that he is and everything that he's not. And it's those kinds of conversations that I want to bring to the fore. That's something for me that's extraordinary that I chase after. So I like the idea of reinvention, and even in the sense of I recognize, and this may be a little severe, but I think of it this way. I think of dying to my old self as much as I can do that, right? And obviously, not the physical, literal death, but it's that final to me. There are things and facets of my life and my body where I have to die to the old way of thinking, the old way of fueling my body, the old way of sleeping, the old way of working out. I have to die to that in order to be reborn as something that is in my vision that I've always wanted. Same thing in my relationships. I have to die to the old way of seeing how I love and how I show up in my children's lives in order to go to the next place. Because I can't, it's Einstein said, you can't solve the problem from the same level of thinking that the problem was created with, right? So it's like I have to die to that old. So for me, that is the extraordinary chase. And I'm going to keep doing it. It's part of the reason why I've been as successful as I have and reinvented over the past 25 years, is because I am willing to step into that uncomfortable place. And anybody, you people watching and listening who have had success in anything, you recognize that you're in one place and you have a vision of where you want to go. And then in order to do that, you have to step into this place of uncertainty, of fear, of rawness. And that is a place that's very uncomfortable. Most people will step into that, stay there for a couple of days, maybe a month, and then they'll leave. And here's the challenge: the people around us who aren't on the same page with us have been taught, trained, and educated to see us as the old thing.

SPEAKER_03 33:53

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:54

And what do they do? Mostly out of love, they say, You've changed. I don't even know who you are. What's going on? This is different. And when we're sitting in that place and space of discomfort, of newness and rawness, not only is it just hard to do that because you're fighting against that thing and all of us that says, this is safe, it's comfortable, let's just stay here, but you're also fighting the people around you who are triggered by that new space and thing and place that you're going to. And it has nothing to do with you. It becomes this really wild challenge to move from where you are to the vision of where you want to be. However, if you are willing to sit in that space, in that place, in that discomfort and employ confidence, which is the trust in yourself, the fact that you can feel the fear, you can feel the uncertainty. And yet, if you keep moving forward, you are going to prove because love's evidence, the people who love you will stay in your life, the people who are not meant to be there will leave. And it will all be in the service of you growing. And because I'm a believer, doing what God has called us to do, each individually here on this place, that when you get to that place of vision, not only will you look back and say, oh my goodness, I am a completely different person, or I'm a new person. I've achieved things that I didn't think that I could achieve. But the real cool part is that when you get to that new place and of your vision, you're going to see possibilities, relationships, connections, and opportunities that you could have never seen from the place you first started. And that is that growth. And that cycle happens over and over again. We just, Kim and I, my business partner, Kim Walsh Phillips and I have a nine-figure founder. They sold their company over 150 locations here in the US for $275 million. And even they, when they were moving into this new space that we've worked with in this mastermind, they were like, is anybody gonna care about what we have to say? Is anybody so it happens? It happens at every mountaintop and every new peak. It happens. But the people who are successful are the ones who are willing to tolerate that discomfort and continue to move forward, even though they have the fear and the uncertainty, thereby proving to themselves that they have the confidence and what it takes to obtain and achieve that vision.

SPEAKER_03 36:24

Those are such fantastic sayings, Justin, not even saying the really powerful statement. And you know what? In line with what you said, because artists tend to be very vulnerable. A lot of my audience are artists, creatives, solopreneurs, and they're always afraid. Am I gonna lose my friends? Am I gonna lose the acceptance of people who are used to the old paradigm of me? And I know you spoke earlier about your wife. I do need to ask because obviously you adore her, which I love hearing

Who Motivates The Motivator

SPEAKER_03 36:56

that. And I so my last question is who motivates the motivator when you're having a difficult day?

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Oh man, she's not my wife yet, but I believe she will be someday.

SPEAKER_03 37:09

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

I yeah, that the there's a reason why in my book the dedication is to Kim Walsh Phillips, who makes dreams things you can hold. And it's so true on so many different levels. And I wouldn't, I legitimately, there's no words that can express my gratitude for what she has been as a partner, as a friend, as a lover in my life. And the confidence that I feel, the trust that I feel in myself is not just born from the failures that I have experienced in my life, but it's born from the success and the support that I feel from the people I surround myself with, especially with Kim. Get yourself a partner who gives you the space to fail, the space to feel and the space to create the foundation for yourself that you need to stand solidly and move forward. She is the most patient, the most kind, the most wonderful person I've ever been in a relationship with. And I find myself being motivated on the days I'm unmotivated by watching her example. I've never met anyone who works harder. I've never met anyone who works smarter, I've never met anyone who is more committed to the calling that God has placed on her in her life. And going back to what we were saying before, when you show up as someone who is committed to whatever that thing is you want to be committed to, you give the people around you permission to do the same. You provide the example, the proof that it's possible. And even if it's been done before, it can be done again, and by you. For many, many decades. Scientists, the world believed that you could not run a four-minute mile. Your heart would explode, your lungs didn't have the capacity. It was not humanly possible to run a four-minute mile or sub-four-minute mile. And yet, this Englishman came along, it was a runner, Roger Bannister. He did it. It was fuck page news, the most miraculous thing that ever happened. Nobody had ever done it before in the history of humanity and recorded history anyway. And they said, well, but what's very interesting is that a few weeks later, two people did it. A few weeks after that, three, four, five people did it. And now it's a thing that just people do. It's not easy, but it's doable. And so when you, even if it hasn't been done before, show up rooted in your truth, rooted in your commitment to whatever it is you're committed to, you're giving people permission to do the same exact thing for themselves with their own stories and in their own way. And Kim does that for me every single day. And when she is feeling down and not motivated, I come in and I step in. And that's the beauty of our partnership and why we've been able to create the not just success in business, but the success in life and why our children get to see us. We're showing them what a relationship can be. It's not perfect, but the highs and the lows, how it can be healthy and happy and harmonious no matter what's going on. And so in the book Center Stage Confidence, I talk a little bit about that. But ultimately, again, it comes back to information versus transformation. If you are ready for a transformation, if you are feeling like you are called, whether that's by God or by nature or by circumstances, to a place in a space that excites you, but you don't necessarily know how to get there. You have that voice in your head that says, I can't, I won't, I shouldn't, or someone else's voice that says, You can't, you won't, you shouldn't.

SPEAKER_03 41:28

Wow,

Final Takeaways And Listener Challenge

SPEAKER_03 41:29

Justin. And everyone rush to get this book. But not only that, follow Justin, follow his. I'll put on the links on my show notes of every website link that is possible. Be lucky enough to be in his masterminds. Invite him to speak in your company. It's such a great conversation. And I have to say, your journey reminds us that fame may introduce us to the world, but it's really our character, our choices, and the way that we show up for others that ultimately define our impact. And you certainly made an impact in this little 50 minutes that we spent together, which I love because we went over time, but every minute counted. It's just been so wonderful. And for everyone, you do not need to do and have followers. You just need to have the courage to own your story and have the integrity to stand behind it. So for everyone listening, Justin chase the extraordinary. He's still chasing it. And I hope you do too. Thank you, Justin, for being on my show.

SPEAKER_00 42:33

Thank you so much. It was a pleasure and an honor.

SPEAKER_03 42:36

Ciao a tutti. And for everyone over there, over and out. And thank you for listening. Please subscribe, rate and review if you enjoy this episode. And get Justin's book. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

Thank you for joining me. Remember, extraordinary is not reserved for a chosen few. It begins with the courage to follow what calls you. I'm Alexia Melocki. If you've enjoyed this episode, please do subscribe, rate, and review. I'd love to hear from you.