From humble beginnings to Certified NLP Practitioner, self-made millionaire, bestselling author and world-renowned speaker Rock Thomas skyrocketed to success, earning awards, shattering records, and becoming one of the top 50 realtors in the world. Searching for more meaning in a life filled with achievements, Rock traveled the world, studying one-on-one with the world’s best teachers, including masterminds of growth like Tony Robbins, Jack Canfield, and Wayne Dyer.

With a mission to give back to the community and support the collective, Rock Thomas now spends his time helping others achieve whole-life wealth and massive success through his events, programs, books, and coaching.

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This is the Practice of the Practice podcast with Joe Sanok, session number 374.
I’m Joe Sanok, your host and welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast. Hey, if you’re new here, I’m really glad you’re here, but if you have been listening for a while, I’m really glad you stayed. Oftentimes I give shout outs to the new people, but hey, if you’ve been listening for more than two years, oh my gosh, I want to meet you. So, often I’ll talk to people and they’re like, “Oh, I listened to you for years.” I’m like, “Why didn’t you ever reach out to me? Send me an email, say hi, lave a voicemail. Do any of those things.”
I love hearing how you’re kind of learning and implementing and taking action. It’s just so much fun. It makes me realize, especially when we get some online hate or just people that are just not nice to us, to hear from you and what we’re doing right to help you. That’s really nice to hear. Yes. Believe it or not, we got some haters out there and, I really try to learn to just say any energy I put into them is distracting me from all of you who really enjoy the show. They’re just not my people. Like go find some other podcasts to harass.
So, today on the show we have Rock Thomas. And in this interview, oh my gosh, he’s done so many different things. He’s launched million-dollar companies but what I really like about him beyond just his business sense is his commitment to ongoing learning. I mean, he’s studied one-on-one with people like Tony Robbins and other great leaders that will really just kind of help you see a different way of life. And his whole thing is helping people redefine their priorities and figure out their direction in life. So, I love it because for a long time I thought I knew my direction. You know, I went to the Lee Honors college at Western Michigan University, was a high achiever there, top of my class in the honors college and then double master’s degree.
And it’s like, I knew the ladder I wanted to climb and that was nonprofit and then going into kind of maybe a university setting and then private practice and then just do counseling, and that can be fine. But when I started to discover podcasts and consulting and thinking, “Wait, I don’t have to just live a life of a typical therapist that’s struggling, I can actually do whatever I want.” I realized that this narrative I had bought into that, you know, you just go to college and then you followed the job that, I literally could do whatever I wanted in regards to my career. And part of that could be counseling. Part of that could be podcasting or e-courses or, you know, I could find something that I want to sell online that has nothing to do with therapy.
When I realized that, that really made me start to rethink, “Where do I spend my time? What do I actually want to do? What to me is a stellar life?” And Rock, he teaches people that all the time. And so, I got really excited. This interview was so good. I really feel like we connected and so I want to just dive right into the interview. Without any further ado, I give you Rock Thomas.
Well, today on the Practice of the Practice podcast, we have Rock Thomas from humble beginnings to a certified NLP practitioner, self-made millionaire, bestselling author, and world-renowned speaker. Rock Thomas skyrocketed to success earning awards, shattering records, and becoming one of the top 50 realtors in the world. Searching for more meaning in life filled with achievements, Rock traveled the world studying one-on-one with the world’s best teachers, including masterminds of growth like Tony Robbins and Jack Canfield.
With a mission to give back to the community and support the collective Rock Thomas now spends his time helping others achieve whole life, wealth and massive success through his events, programs, books, and coaching. Welcome to the Practice of the Practice podcast Rock.

[ROCK THOMAS]: I love it. I love the fact that the word practice is in there, because I think too many people think they’ve already arrived.

[JOE]: Absolutely. And I think when I first named it, I didn’t even understand all the nuances of that word practice, but it’s an ongoing thing. I don’t know how you feel, but I never feel like I’ve arrived. I think that’s a really good thing.

[ROCK]: I do. I agree with you. I think that the training’s always in and I always, like I’m in real estate; have been for a long time. The real estate agent considers themselves a professional, right? And yet the doctor has a practice and I always laughed about that because they go to continuing education and I struggled sometimes to get my sales people to continue. They educate themselves. So, I like the word practice.

[JOE]: Yes. You know, I want to hear about when you are achieving, you’re doing all this stuff in real estate and then at some point you decide that you’re going to kind of go out and say, “Well, what’s life about outside of just these achievements?” Tell us about that journey of transition.

[ROCK]: You know, I think when you start to get past that, different for different people, but say 20 or $30,000 in revenue a month passively, you realize you don’t have to work and then you realize that you get to do what you want and start to bring on a different reflection. And I just started to realize that, you know, I took two years off and I went golfing and that didn’t fulfill me. It was fun for a while, but I’m like, “Is this all there is? A forefoot pot? We’re who? Who cares?” And I started to realize that the greatest joy came from me personally growing as an individual becoming more enlightened and for me to be able to contribute back to other people that were, I was a little further down the road than them. And I could pass on something so they could accelerate their success, they could get more freedom and ultimately my goal is to help people have time, freedom and choices so they can live the life on their terms, whatever their journey is meant to be.

[JOE]: Yes. Use the word enlightened or more enlightened for you, what does that look like?

[ROCK]: Most of it is around self-awareness. We mostly live our lives unconsciously. We’re asleep. We eat the same way, we dress the same way, we drive the same way to work, and we have the same conversations. When you become aware and you quietly have a conversation in your mind through meditation and through consciousness and conscious eating, having rituals around, you know, I like to be grateful before each meal. Take a moment, stop, slow down and be grateful. Be grateful for the truck driver drove that tomato to my plate, and —

[JOE]: Yes, it’s funny you say that. I want to jump in. I have a friend of mine who he’s a staunch atheist and I think he’s really thought through his kind of non-theology. But what was tough for him was figuring out like what does that look like in raising kids? And one thing that they do before every meal, and I wish we had the discipline to do it is they, one of them says thank you all the way from the ground to the plate. And they walk through and you know, thanking that truck driver, thanking the store that had the tomatoes, thanking your mom or dad for preparing the meal and what an awesome way to just think through the animals that gave their lives for you. I love that idea.

[ROCK]: Well you know, I think what you appreciate appreciates and most of those take things for granted. We get bored after a period of time and before you know, we’re upset that our phone isn’t downloading something from a satellite in one second.

[JOE]: Right.

[ROCK]: You know, and —

[JOE]: So, do you remember the Commodore 64? Like, it took [crosstalk] to load one game.

[ROCK]: Exactly. So, it’s so easy. Familiarity breeds contempt. So, I do my best to appreciate things that are simple and also things that are amazing, try to grow myself as a human being and become very conscious. I went to India for a meditation retreat for a week, which was something that was on my bucket list, but it was always something that scared me because I’m like, “What am I, I can’t stay still for like a week.”

[JOE]: Well, I want to ask about that because one of my goals for this year is to do one of the 10-day personal retreats. It’s scary. Like, I turned 40 last year and so I’m doing things this year that scare the crap out of me, like doing a triathlon and doing a 10-day meditational retreat. Any tips or thoughts on that?

[ROCK]: Well, that scares me too. I didn’t do 10 days. We could talk, but we were, you know, a lot of time in meditation. What I noticed was that it was really, it took, it’s kind of like if you’re really busy person and you go on vacation, it takes two or three days to unwind and let go of all the things you were thinking about. It was the same thing for me. The first couple of days was really difficult. I was anxious, fidgety. I was like, “Oh my God, this is doing nothing.” And then on the third day, I started to look forward to it and I was in this flow and I was more gentle and I was just more appreciating things that you don’t even see. And it’s kind of cliché, but just literally walking slowly and feeling the ground with your bare feet.
And you know, that’s where back to the first part, I think most of us are unconsciously researching this rat race to achieve, achieve, achieve, do more, do more and more. There’s TV screens in the airport, in the doctor’s office and everywhere. And you can’t even think anymore without somebody blasting in your face that you need to get this or get that. And so that’s really the gift that you get as you start to really get to know who you are.

[JOE]: Now, around meditation, what’s been helpful for you? We had Juliana Ray on recently who, she’s a meditation teacher and then I’ve been doing Sam Harris’ waking up course, for meditation. Any tools that for you are helpful?

[ROCK]: So, I’m like a type A personality. I like to do a lot. I’m a physical person, so I’ve actually used a few different ones. Vishen Lakhiani has a nice one called the 6 Phases Meditation where you’re actively focusing on different parts, six different things. And Tony Robbins has one that he does, it’s called kind of Priming, which is about 15 minutes where we spend time focusing on what you’re grateful for, focusing on a healing of your body, the people around you, sending out good light and energy and then finishing with the things that you want to create in your life. So, a lot of my meditations are active, what I’d call active meditations. And then sometimes I go and use some guided meditations to take myself deeper as well. So, I guess it depends on the person, Joseph.

[JOE]: Yes. So, we kind of went on a rabbit trail there. So, you’re kind of, you transitioned into thinking more about, “Okay, I have this passive income coming in. What’s going to give me fulfillment?” So, you start to pursue these things. Then what happened?

[ROCK]: Well now I’m in a stage where I’m really just spending most of my time getting back to people and helping other people find a path that works for them. But here’s what I have noticed; is that most of the good work we want to do on ourselves is going to be spiritual. It’s going to be helpful and it’s going to be relationship-oriented with family and helping people. But most people struggle with exchanging time for money. We were taught, “Get a good education, go get a good job, work hard, pay your taxes and your student loan hopefully in 19 years.” I think now is the average. And people struggle with this idea of passive income because it hasn’t been introduced to them.
So, I took it kind of upon myself to really go out and help people be entrepreneurial that earlier. Even if you are a doctor making $400,000 a year, you’re still trading time for money because if you don’t show up in the clinic, then the money stops coming in. And most doctors are artists and most people that work in that self-care help is they want to help other people. So, they focus on that and they don’t manage their money. So, I’ve come up with some little things like MMI, (make, manage, invest). If you are really good at making it, then go to the next stage where you get better at managing it. And then we help people do that. And I’m not a financial advisor, I’m just simply talking about knowing what’s coming in, knowing where emotionally you’re spending because spending is emotional and then making sure that you follow some of the rules from the richest man in Babylon where you pay yourself 10% and then you mindfully become educated around investments and you decide whether it’s going to be real estate or stocks or whatever it’s going to be.
But then there’s this other conversation around things like entrepreneurial-ism, where you are five or 10 or 15 hours a week, you could focus on Airbnb. A lot of my clients are very successful at Airbnb, three, four places or 30 places, or my mom who’s 84 years old, Airbnb is one room and make 65.50 a night. And she went out and bought herself a new Honda civic.

[JOE]: That’s, I’m glad you bring up Airbnb. I don’t think people would have expected that, but that’s actually something a couple of years ago, my wife and I dipped our toes into, because we have a pretty active summer here and we wanted to get out of town during the busiest weeks. We thought, “Well why don’t we just Airbnb our house for that week?” And we were making two to three grand a week for just moving out of our house and going camping. And then the next year I ran the math and I was like, “We could have the same amount that we’re paying for a house if we had this Airbnbed for only, I think it was like eight weeks a year.
And so, I think finding that supplemental income this past year, I think we made three times what our mortgage was for it off that Airbnb. So, finding that supplemental income then frees you up to do the things that you know, maybe you want to do, whether that’s in your life or whether that’s taking risks entrepreneurially or in other ways.

[ROCK]: Yes, I mean, I love what you did. You have an asset called your house and then you’re away from that asset and that’s not doing anything for you so you maximize that. And people can do that. You can troll your car, you can rent your car out to people and make money with it too. So, there’s so many ways today with a shared economy that you can make money if you’re willing to be entrepreneurial. But like I say to people, there’s the right vehicle, call it Airbnb, then there’s the right knowledge that goes with that. If you don’t have that knowledge, the first, second or third time I Airbnbed my house, which is a large home in Montreal 21-year-old kids came in and they saw it and then they invited six of their girlfriends and there was damage.
Now, if you don’t have the emotional fortitude to deal with that, you’re going to fold your tent and go home. Fortunately, I looked at that and I got excited and I tracked him down and I got them to come back and clean the place and give me some money damage. I looked at it as a fun experiment and then I signed a couple of them up into my mastermind group and I told them to be entrepreneurs. That’s my mindset, right? I’m never going to play the victim in a situation I’m always going to use like, “How do I use it?” And then I made new choices around screening the people that came in and I learned from it.
Had I taken a course that my buddy teaches initially, I would have not made those mistakes. But a little ready, fire, aim kind of guy. But I would encourage people, find the right vehicle that interests you, then find a mentor, model them until you master it, and then make sure you’re the right kind of person that can handle that with decisions, with accountability, with your emotional intelligence, or IQ. Can you handle, you know, the uncertainty of something like that? And if you can’t get the coaching around that so that you can, because let’s face it, there are billions of dollars being made with Airbnb. Why not you? I know people that struggle financially, they’re like, “Yes, but that’s for other people.” And I’m like, “Why not you? Why shouldn’t you write a book? Why shouldn’t you have an online course? Why shouldn’t you have Airbnb or Touro or buy tax liens or own real estate and stocks? Why should you not have 36 streams of income like me? Why not you? Right?”

[JOE]: Yes.

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[JOE]: Well, so today we’re talking about creating that epic life blueprint. Let’s zoom out a little bit and maybe give us kind of some big picture of things because oftentimes I think as people that own private practices, we’ve followed the rules. We went to school, we then went to grad school we got an internship at a nonprofit. Then maybe we work at CMH and then at that point we’re like, “Man, there’s got to be a little more.” And we start a private practice, dip our toes in, maybe it goes well and we get a group practice, but we oftentimes don’t even know what’s out there, what an epic life blueprint would even look like. So maybe zoom out a little bit and then we can zoom back in on some of the techniques, as to what an epic life blueprint looks like.

[ROCK]: Yes, sure. I think that one of the things to know is that when you go into a field, you don’t realize that in that field, if you have a clinic, you’ve got to also have leases and staff and hiring and a lot of stuff that may be not in your lane. So, you end up becoming a leader and a manager and that can drain your energy if you don’t like it. So, we all want to do the parts of the business that we like, but there’s other parts, no matter how good, even for a Rockstar, you know, they’ve got to do a mic check and they got to travel and stuff like that. So, I think it’s being conscious of developing an environment where you get to do the most of the things that you’re good at and do the least things.
I have a do-not-do list and I keep on building it over time and I keep on hiring people to do more and more. You know, I used to cook all the time. Now I have a chef. I used to cut my glass years ago now I have somebody that does that. I used to fill my car up with gas wow I have somebody that does that so you can move yourself away from things you don’t like. But when it comes to the psychology, I wrote a book called Your Epic Life Blueprint and it had 10 principles in there that when I would coach and I coached for years and I still do, I would talk about the same things over and over again. So, I wrote out the 10 rules and that’s what I share with people so that I don’t have to get on the phone and say them all the time.
So, as an example, rule number one is 30 minutes a day of personal development. If you’re not infusing yourself with a podcast like this or a new book or a new thought, then the level of thinking that got you where you are is only going to get you to the same place that you are and not any further. So, you’ve got to bring in new thoughts. Does that make sense?

[JOE]: Absolutely.

[ROCK]: So that’s number one. If you’re not doing that, you’re going to basically be stuck. You’re not going to move forward and you’re also not going to be fulfilled because fulfillment comes from growth and progress. Rule number two is a step by step process for setting goals. 97% of the population don’t set goals in writing and they don’t avail themselves of the reticular activating system and therefore they struggle. They don’t have focus on direction, they don’t have clarity. So, we teach them how to set goals and the benefits of doing that. I remember once I wanted to sell a hundred homes in one year and play a hundred games of golf and by the time the snow fell in Montreal, I was at 85 games.
As I was walking down the corridor, I heard somebody say they needed an eight player to go to Florida for a week of golf, two games a day or 14 games of golf. My brain made the link because it was a goal. I said, yes. I went down, I played 14 games, I got 99 games of golf in and on December 31st somehow the universe heard me and I was at 96 transactions and I got to 101 on that last day. The power of setting goals. It’s like a declaration. Imagine you and I are sitting on the beach and you have this dream where you want to get out onto the ocean and go surfing and I’m like ambivalent. I’m not really, but you’re thinking, “Oh, it’d be super, super great.”
Well your mind is going to be prone to it and then somebody walks up to you and says, “Hey man, we’re going out surfing. You want to come?” It’s almost like the universe goes, “Yes. Well, Joseph is putting some energy in there. We’ve got to send them resources.”

[JOE]: Yes, I feel like this ripple effect too, where when you focus in on what Jay Papasan and Gary Keller call the one thing, you know, that one thing that’s going to give you so much more, that’s going to make everything else easier. A couple years ago I said to myself, “If I had a TEDx talk that would make so much easier in regards to promoting my public speaking and promoting the podcasts and things like that. And so, for a while I was just zoomed in on that. And the first year when I pitched the local TEDx people, I didn’t get through. But then last year I did. And then through that, you know, I met John Vroman, Mike McCarthy, Jay Papasan, and all these people that were just like amazing people doing amazing things, and it’s had this ripple effect where I joined John’s Front Row Dads, which then I meet other people that are doing amazing things. When you put that focus in on, “What is the single best use of my time right now?” That ripple effect I think is often hard to quantify because it just starts multiplying each level more than it would have if you hadn’t done that initial first step.

[ROCK]: Yes, I agree 100%. So, I mean it sounds simple, but a lot of people don’t do the things that are simple, like have a morning routine and things like that. So, rule number eight for me is tell me what you do before eight o’clock in the morning and after eight o’clock at night. And I can predict your financial future for the rest of your life. And the reason is simple; is that people will, they’ll do okay in the margins of life from nine to five they’ll hop all the way through, there’ll be at the office, they’ll do their thing. Most people only get about three and a half to four hours of effective work done in the day because of Parkinson’s law.
So, I teach something called the Sunday system for success, where we really drill down to, “What is your vision for the week? How intentional are you? What emotion do you bring to each appointment that you have each week? What are you looking to create, experience or do, and really, really be purposeful about it?” And when people spend that hour and a half on Sunday or Saturday or Friday, whatever works for them, I do it on Sundays. Then they all of a sudden get more out of their week. They have less unforced errors, they’re open to more opportunities, and their life starts to make a shift. So, it’s things like that, I’ve just analyzed successful people and then I looked at what worked for me and then I just start to show it to other people. And the greatest thing is, you know this, when you share with other people and they go down that path and then they get success, they come back to you and they tell you it’s very fulfilling. So, I’m a little addicted to that.

[JOE]: Now, you said before eight and after eight, it’s easier. You can predict what they’re like. So, what are the things you see people doing before eight that are effective towards building wealth and growing income? And what are the things you see people doing after eight or not doing after eight that helps with that as well?

[ROCK]: Well, the quick answer is that if you’re doing something that gives you instant gratification, like you’re drinking, watching TV, playing video games, and mortgaging your future before or after eight o’clock, surfing YouTube and looking at stuff that gives you pleasure but doesn’t give you fulfillment, then chances are you’re not building a bright future. You’re mortgaging the future. So that’s the quick answer. The answer on the holistic side or on the, what I think is people that are living a purposeful, fulfilling life and that are creating value in the marketplace for themselves and others would be journaling. It would be meditating, spending some time.
Jeff Bezos apparently spends two hours in the morning; I don’t know, because I’m not in his room, but visualizing in bed, just visualizing what he wants to create. The average person wakes up, 32% of people check their email in bed and they don’t spend any time visualizing what they want to create. And Einstein says that the imagination is more powerful than knowledge and more important. So, if you’re not spending any time imagining what you want to create, how much are you going to actually create? Zero.

[JOE]: There’s a video I recently saw, I don’t know how old it was. It didn’t look like it was terribly old, but it was an interview with Warren Buffet and Bill Gates. Bill was talking about how when he first saw Warren Buffett’s schedule and it was like a little handwritten kind of scheduling book that a good third to half of the time was just labeled thinking time. And he talked about the power of just pondering and we’ll link to that in the show notes and embed it there for you guys to go over and watch but that idea, if the richest person in the world says, “I need to have time to think and ponder to make good decisions,” like why would we think that jumping out of bed and reading our email right away or even worse, doing it in bed is going to help set us up for the day? I mean, that’s somebody else’s agenda. Putting, being put onto your agenda for the day when they’re emailing you. So, I love that idea.

[ROCK]: A 100% and it’s usually because people are operating from fear. They’re like, “Okay, now what did I miss? What’s happening that I didn’t think about?” Because they didn’t plan. And if you fail to plan, it’s because you’re planning to fail. So, you spend time in reaction. So, the thinking people are saying, “Okay, what do I want to create this week? Who do I want to meet? How does that, how’s that going to go? How am I going to show up?” Could you imagine the quarterback of a team in Superbowl going, “I’m not going to think about the game at all. I’m going to show up one minute before the game and I’ll give it a shot.” [crosstalk].

[JOE]: Recess football, you know? Just kind of, ” Who’s open?”

[ROCK]: Yes, exactly right. Everybody go long.

[JOE]: Nobody black.

[ROCK]: Right. So, it doesn’t work that way yet. Ironically, I think you know what it is, is that in school you’re told, “Sit down, be quiet,” the bell rings, “Go here, do that. You can’t do this. You can’t do that.” You’re so used to being told what to do and including probably told by your parents when you go to bed and brush your teeth. Then you get to college, you get a modicum of freedom and you generally mess it up by partying and stuff like that. I’m generalizing. Then you go into a job and from nine to five you’re told what to do, but on the outside before eight and after eight you’re like, “Dude, nobody is going to tell me what to do. I’m going to do exactly what I feel like doing, which is a whole lot of nothing and it’s going to feel good.”
And that’s what people think. Instead of realizing that discipline actually leads to freedom, planning actually leads to choice. So, they have it all backwards I think because they just haven’t been educated in that way.

[JOE]: Yes, I’d love to speak to the people now. So, we have the people that start a practice and then people that are growing a practice, adding clinicians, it’s starting to kind of scale, but there’s a lot of people have big ideas inside of them. So, it might be, “Wow, I’m an EMDR therapist, I’m focusing on trauma. What I talk about in sessions, the world needs to hear on a broader kind of platform.” Or they want to launch a podcast or an e-course or keynotes kind of. So, I’m doing something outside of the chair of therapy.
And so, we’ve got a lot of people that have joined our big ideas mastermind group that are really interested in, let’s move beyond just the practice. And so, for those people that are like, “Yes, I want to go after big ideas. I want to design my life differently. The practice is going well enough that I feel like I can really contribute a good, say 20 hours a week to level up.” What would you say to them in regards to designing that 20 hours a week really intentionally to fast forward things?

[ROCK]: Yes. So, I’m a big believer that if you’re ever going to do take something on new is find the person who’s already done it and either spend some time with them or work for them or work with them so that you can learn from their mistakes. Yes, you can do it new and that could be fun and trial and error and all that. But you know, you, if you wanted to get into social media marketing, why not go work for Gary Vaynerchuk for a while doing an internship and watch the craziness of years and years and 10,000 hours with other working?
So that’s one way. I call it the three M’s. Find your mentor, model them until you’ve mastered it, and then you can go out on your own. And in this day and age I think there’s no shame in being transparent saying, I want to start this out, but I’m willing to work under you for six months and figure it out. So that’s one way. The other way is simply, you know, take an online course or take a stab at it yourself by, like when I wrote my book, I just wrote an hour a morning. Every morning I got up, the first thing I did was an hour of writing and two years later I had a book. So, if it’s a matter of being intentional and going, “Okay, I need to chunk this down and I know what I want to do, I just need to find the time and the system to do it.” Most people underestimate the effects of doing a little bit every day over a long period of time. People are like, “Oh my God, I could write a book. I could never do it.” If you just took that little step, if you just did a little bit every day before you know it, you know, and time keeps on going. It doesn’t stop. So, I don’t know if that answers your question.

[JOE]: Yes. I love the idea of mentor, model, master. I think what I often see is people will just try to model someone without having invited them in as a mentor in any way or as a consultant and they may model it, but they don’t master it because, you know, they’re wasting so much time trying to figure out the small details. Like, “How do I do a webinar that actually sells something?” Well, “Why didn’t you hire someone that’s good at selling on webinars?” You know?

[ROCK]: Well, often it comes down to their money blueprint is that they’re afraid of spending the money or they’ve had a bad experience and they’re like, “I don’t know if I can trust that person.” I don’t blame them because I’ve had those experiences too and especially when it comes to online marketing, everybody for some reason is an expert. I don’t know if you’ve had this experience but I have my website and I have my social media marketing team, and then the next guy comes along and goes, “Oh, you’re doing this wrong. And you could do this and I would do that.” And I’m like, “Really, really? Oh, okay.” Fire the people that are working for me, hire the new guy and then the new guy’s crap just like the other guy. And then I go around in a circle and everybody that comes along and I get totally brought, you know, pulled in and the next guy has different problems or similar problems. We didn’t solve them. Have you ever witnessed that or seen that?

[JOE]: Yes, I think I’ve seen it, but I’ve also been on the consulting side of helping people get out of those situations which, you know, whether it’s someone that had a terrible website experience and you know, we help connect them with someone that we’ve worked with. That’s where I think having some background in being able to have the big picture for me to say, “Oh, here’s a website company, like Brighter Vision that works really well with therapists and they …,” you know, Perry, he texts me probably once a week, the owner. And you know, if we ever have a problem, I can intervene and say what’s going on with this consulting client versus I think people are attracted to what’s new, which is good. I mean, we want to be attracted to what’s new biology and evolution has taught us, you know, to do that. But that doesn’t mean it’s always going to be better than just kind of taking that long-term approach.

[ROCK]: Yes, and I mean sometimes it’s a matter of what’s in front of you, right? It’s a friend of a friend or it seems like it’s easy and you don’t want to interview 14 people to get to it. That sounds good. You want it to sound good, you want it to work. So, you go, “Okay, let’s try this.” But at least I’m guilty of that.

[JOE]: Well, Rock, the last question I always ask guests is, if every practice owner in the world were listening right now, what would you want their big takeaway to be?

[ROCK]: You know, not that I’m an expert in that area, but I think that all comes down to your own personal psychology. 80% of success is mechanics and tone, you know, and the rest is the psychology, but we tend to not look at that. So, I would say make sure that you’ve got the right you, that you’re working on, that you fall back in love with you and that you’re not just chasing the dollar. You’re not just chasing, building up and opening up 10 clinics if that’s the path you’re on or your second one or your first one, but that you’re spending some time.
And that’s been my experiences. I was an overachiever for many years of my life because I was filling in an empty void of not being enough because I always sought the praise from my father that I never got. So if you’re an overachiever and you’re charging hard, make sure that you’re not forgetting the little kid in you and that you’re taking care of that kid and that you’re rolling around on the ground once in a while for three minutes with your dog or your kids and that you’re walking barefoot in the grass and you’re just doing some fundamental things that are simple in life but at the end of the day I think are the most important pieces.

[JOE]: Oh, such good advice. It reminds me of every Tuesday my daughter has ballet and she goes with my wife to ballet, and then my four-year-old, kind of this thing that she’s gotten into where she wants to wrestle on the bed. And so, we’ll turn on music and we’ll like jump around and she’ll pin me down. And it’s just one of the most fun moments of my week having this little four-year-old just want full attention, you know? And so, I love that you brought it back to just that, that simplicity and that joy. We often talk about the four I’s here of income, innovation, influence, and impact. And you know, when you focus too much on one of those, the others often are kind of off-kilter a little bit. So how can people connect with you Rock if they want to learn more about what you’re doing and continue to follow your work?

[ROCK]: Yes, rockthomas.com they can go there and get my free book if they fill out a little assessment and all of the
social media handles. Just put in Rock Thomas and I’ve had a video that went on Goalcast if the people follow the Goalcast videos that went viral; was seen by 80 million people. So, if you just put in Goalcast Rock Thomas to get a snippet of what my story’s about.

[JOE]: Awesome. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Rock, thanks so much for being on the Practice of the Practice podcast.

[ROCK]: That was a pleasure. Joseph.

[JOE]: I had so many takeaways from this interview with Rock and the big one was kind of right in the middle of the interview when he said, “Why not you?” Like, why shouldn’t you have a successful book? Why shouldn’t you have a successful practice or 35 or 38 streams of income like he has? Like why shouldn’t we? And that’s such a good question. We sometimes limit ourselves into what we think we’re capable of, but in reality, the question that Taylor Nash, the guy that I still walk with every Monday, we were roommates in college as I was deciding to transition out of the community college, he said to me, “Joe, people, way dumber than you have been successful in business.” And it’s so true. You know, there’s so many people that have businesses that they just do a terrible job at and they are still successful.
So, what’s standing between you and getting you to the next level? You know, I don’t know. I think you probably have to take some time to think through that and evaluate why you aren’t getting there yet and what tools you need. I do know that surrounding yourself with people that are motivating and exciting is a great way to do that, whether that’s through Slow Down School or Killin’It Camp or one of our mastermind groups. But however, that is, if you’re not sure, reach out to us. I’d be happy to jump on a phone call and help you sort it out.
So lastly, we’ve got to thank our podcast sponsor. Brighter Vision has been such a loyal podcast sponsor and the way they’ve been dedicated to this podcast is the same way that they’re dedicated to your website solutions. They make beautiful websites, they help you attract your ideal client and to keep your ideal clients. So, head on over to brightervision.com/joe and then they’ll get you started today on an awesome website. Thanks for letting me into your ears and your brain. Have a great week.
Special thanks to the band Silence is Sexy. We like your intro music. This podcast is designed to provide accurate, authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is given with the understanding that neither the host or the publisher or the guests are rendering legal, accounting, clinical, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.