Everyone has triggers: things that push them outside their comfort zone, force them to confront something they don’t want to and make them uncomfortable. While on the surface, triggers might not seem all that helpful, each one is actually an opportunity for growth beyond yourself. Merill Chandler dives into one of the most important principles of success: being able to tread outside of your idea of comfort. Sure, being comfortable, for the most part, is also being safe, but an inability to bush your own boundaries outwards also guarantees that growth never comes to you. Let Merill show you why you should always say yes to these opportunities for growth.

—

Watch the episode here:

Listen to the podcast here:

Principles of Success…An Honest Look

Success Principles

I’ve got a special episode. In truth, this is one of my success principles. The philosophy behind it. We talk about fundability™, your why, why it is you’re doing what you’re doing. Sometimes we do not get down in the dirt enough and look at our unconscious behaviors because we talk about unconscious behaviors all the time. We’re going to look at it as how we treat other people’s money, how we use our credit, how we use our funding capacity. In this episode, we’re going to look at some of those behaviors that are a little more subtle but highly revealing.

—

You’ve heard me say it if you’ve attended one of my boot camps and my book, everywhere I go, most audiences that I speak to. There are two of my major success principles that are vital for the way I run my life. For those students, clients, friends, family, people who adopted these techniques, they’re more personal strategies, but they make insanely powerful contributions to our lives. The two I want to cover that I have covered in the bootcamp and everywhere else. Even though they’re not number 1 or 2, I’m going to enumerate them. First of all, we’re discussing the degree that you defend against something that is likely the degree that it’s true for you.

The next one is when you’re triggered by something, when there’s an upset, when you’re like, “What’s going on?” Whenever there’s that upset, that trigger is your next indicator on your path. The next growth opportunity, the next thing that is going to reveal where you are in your life path, even in your fundability™. They’re corollaries of each other and for me, they have helped me in my life in many ways, my personal relationships with my children, and in my business relationships. Many of us have partners, whether it’s our spouse or somebody who has the same vision for your business. All of these relationships we experienced upsets, we experienced triggers.

When we experienced the triggers many times, most of the time, we defend against them. We’re like, “It was because of this and that.” We’ll have some stories and some examples of this, but the first thing I want to cover for this episode and I’ve shared these with you. For the length of this episode, let’s pretend it’s true. When you’re triggered about something, it’s the next opportunity for growth. It’s cousin, the degree you defend against something when you’re triggered, what if it’s to that degree true for you or you believe it yourself. Let me tell you about one of my friends. One of my business partners.  This has happened to both so it doesn’t matter which business partner I’m talking about. Each of my partners I have established to shore up my weaknesses.

They were hired, embraced originally and then I made them a partner not because they deserved it for their contribution to the vision and to what we’re doing and get fundable at CreditSense. All the gifts that they deserve to be a part of it and have a major influence on the business. The number one reason why I wanted them to be my partner instead of my employee was because they triggered me. Their perspective in the world, their view of what the business should be and shouldn’t be directly triggered me. Sometimes directly countered or opposed my own vision for the world. They trust me to be the visionary, but having a vision and translating that into filling rooms with students who are eager to learn the principles of fundability™, filling our advisors with awesome clients to work with.

The Solutions Coaching that we provide will make them fundable. There are 100 or 1,000 different ways to implement the vision. In every possible way, I’m deeply grateful for their contribution to what we’re creating together, but in every single way, they have bought into my vision. I brought them as a partner from an employee because their views of how to implement my vision differ from my own. Sometimes radically, both of them. I have two partners, you know them as Brad and Jessica. In this episode, I want to share my journey with you through this exploration. If you’re anything like me and we have many things in common already, you’re going to be experiencing it with your business partners or even people you’re working with. Your contractors, the franchise company, if you’re a franchisee. Any relationship we have in a business or our personal lives, we are triggered by other human beings and we end up defending our way as opposed their way.

Each of my partners became my partner because they saw a different way that was completely different to implement the vision of what we see. Our vision is to have hundreds of millions of borrowers who are empowered and know that they are fundable and then know how to partner with lending institutions and banks so that everybody wins. There’s a massive win-win. I don’t want 20, 200, 2,000 or even 20,000 educated, astute professional borrowers out there. My vision is for 200,000, 2 million and 20 million and 200 million astute professional borrowers who know the principles of fundability™. Who have become fundable and are successfully partnering with their partner banks. I’m sitting here barreling down the fundability™ freeway, trying to get people on board. I have both Brad and Jessica and originally hired them because of their skillset. This is what I’m going to encourage you to at least look at. They became partners in my business because of their contribution to being different than me. Let me tell you the story of how we got here.

I believe in healthy, loving, mutually respectful, knockdown, drag-out fights. It simply means each party to a discussion, an argument or a proposition battle for their view. Always open that the prevailing view or the collaborated center view will win. I’ve told both of them, Brad and Jess, that the perfection of an idea exists somewhere in the middle of us because it’s not mine. We also have learned that Brad’s exclusively or Jess’s exclusively. If there’s a triad, it’s somewhere in the middle of that triangle. It’s the perfect solution to every single growth opportunity, new market, and especially how to create an amazing client experience. Brad has been with me for many years.

During that period, he has a military background and I thank him for his service. Setting an objective and he’s taught me many things from his experience, his life path. It was set an objective, set interim goals to meet that objective and then come hell or high water, we drive for that perspective. I use the metaphor, but it was inspired by his coming from that. It’s like a SEAL Team Six and you’re carrying the Zodiac on your shoulders. If somebody falters, wounded, and not at full capacity, the team’s job is to support the movement, the caring of the Zodiac while that person regains their health or regains their position on the team.

It’s detailed. It’s an accountable perspective, but it’s a drive to the end of the perspective. In my experience with that, there are no accidents, there’s purposefulness in everything. When it’s time to pivot, we pivot the best we can, but life is more of a channel rather than a pathless country. If you want to have a conversation on the Get Fundable page about probability curves and quantum mechanics, I’m down for those conversations. I believe that our intentions followed by our behaviors create our reality. I’m a little more, I don’t want to say big picture because both Brad and Jess have. I source everything in from that creative stuff.

That intention, openness, willingness and being able to pivot is our greatest gift. Brad, I believe the language he uses is, “To adapt and overcome.” Mine is significantly like, “If it’s in front of us, it’s time to deal with it.” Whatever is in front of us in my world has always led to the next magical thing. We’ve gone to FICO World and all of a sudden, we’re this borrower facing organization that is being allowed access more and more to every single opportunity to help make our clients and students fundable. That’s no accident, it came to us. Where his perspective is set an objective and achieve it, mine is, handle what comes.

It’s more of picking it up. These are not exclusive because each of us overlaps. I’m all about setting goals. If you saw my checklist on my whiteboard, I’m a Capricorn for those of you who care about any of that stuff. I get my things done. My philosophy in life is to allow things to come. Wherever you fall on the spectrum, Jessica is the third member of the triad that’s building the essence and beauty of our mission to make millions of professional fundable borrowers. First of all, she’s younger than Brad and I buy half or more, but her perspective, she’s a genius.

She’s going to Harvard Business School online because she doesn’t want to leave the business. She’s supposed to schedule summers to take those types of courses. This woman is a genius. She’s our business manager. She works with our referral partners. Brad is in marketing and outreach. I laughingly call myself the Show Pony, but I’m the vision. I’m the one who motivates and inspires you. If this is your first episode or your 75th episode, I don’t know, but you keep reading because we’ve created something that is not available anywhere else in the world. I came to it because I like doing it. I like connecting dots that are connectable in most people’s frame of reference. Jessica runs the business, runs our referral partner program, and she does all of our HR and our team relationships, building and training the teams, etc.

Jessica’s perspective is both laser and cut and dried, but she is the most beautiful soul to help solve your problems. She’s got this mix between madly compassionate and make shit happen. Her perspectives and what is important to her sometimes are diametrically opposed to mine. We have this triad of individuals. By relationship building with them, Brad would say something, Jessica would say something and it would trigger me as in, “What are you thinking? That’s not the way.” Every one of us believes we say in our mind that we’re open to other possibilities. Most of us tend to support our comfort zones in our decision-making processes and that’s not the way.

Here’s a perfect example, Brad was saying that there were opportunities that there were people out there in the world who would love for us to do this for them. I’m like, “That’s expensive.” They’re like, “Merrill, there are people who have more money than time.” To some of you, that may not apply to you, but we had a low-cost solution for full-service support for becoming fundable. He’s like, “Merrill, there are people who want to pay us to do the things for them.” We know that if our clients get out of their own way, we can do this faster.”

I’m like, “I know, but that’s so much money.” Years ago, it was the most beautiful thing in the whole wide world. A client comes up and he’s chosen to do a strategy session with me. He’s insanely successful like most of you. I offer him our coaching package. The Solutions Coaching was $10,000. He goes, “Do you have something where you do it for me?” I’m like, “As a matter of fact, we do.” I mentioned the price point and the features that Brad had been trying to have me introduce for eighteen months. I mentioned to him and he’s like, “I want to do that.” My jaw drops because in my world, that’s a lot of money.

Valet package, for some people that’s a lot of money. For some people to get $100,000 or $200,000 in credit lines so they can write a check and do a deal over and over again quickly and fast, $25,000 is insanely inexpensive. I couldn’t do that math. I can tell an optimization path for any borrower on the planet, but I couldn’t do that. I was triggered every single time that Brad would bring it up because in my belief system at the time, it was too much. Yet an individual asks, I give it to him and he goes, “That’d be great.” We set up terms and got him started. We’ve never looked back. We have a huge percentage of the people who graduate from the bootcamp and choose Solutions Coaching. That’s the one they choose.

It changed our business radically. We have an amazing advisor group that works with fewer clients and produces more results and the business is more profitable. I’m like, “Why did I resist this?” When you are triggered by something, it’s the next area of growth. To the degree we defend against it is the degree that it may be true for us. It was true for me. It was the next phase of growth for the business. I’m triggered by it because I’m resisting it. I don’t want to do it. I’m afraid. I’m scared. Something was in me. If you haven’t read that episode, look it up. It takes the win. I work hard to get my book done and all of a sudden the second it goes to the printers, I’m like, “Onto the next thing.”

Opportunity For Growth: The vision is to have millions of astute professional borrowers who know the principles of fundability™, have become fundable, and are successfully partnering with financial institutions.

I didn’t sit back and go, “You nailed that thing.” We’re getting rave reviews because it is free plus shipping. You can see what the principles of fundability™ are and have it in your little hand to start making important behavior changes in your relationship with your lenders and become more fundable. The point is that to the degree I resisted it, that I defended against it was the degree that it was true as a thing. Every trigger will give us the next thing to look at. I said this in one of my letters to my tribe, because if you’ll notice in Get Fundable, the Funding Hackers, and the Insider Secrets private Facebook group, there’s a letter to my tribe where I share the parts of my life.

In one of my letters, I talk about once I move, I move fast, but sometimes I get stuck. That’s what I’m asking you guys to take a look at in your lives. Where are you triggered and what gift is on the other side of that trigger? The second you say, “What if we could be open to it?” Like this instance, what if there are people who want us to do all of this for them? What if my own beliefs are out of the way, get my own resistance, hesitancy and fear out of the way, 30% of our clients are coming on board as valet clients. First of all, they’re coming on board because they hear the results.

They’re experiencing the results from friends, family, people in the same circles, the same REIAs, the same franchise groups. They see that something is happening and it’s positive. It’s fast as a valet client, especially because we know what we’re doing. I can teach and train and your advisors are killer at supporting you and training you, but a couple of years ago, it wasn’t even offering. It wasn’t even possible for us to do it for you. I was in my own way. I ask you, how do you tell how you’re in your own way? Watch for what triggers you. Watch for what you resist, what you push back, what you defend against because it’s likely true, you don’t want to admit it and it’s the next opportunity for growth.

This will be a personal one. I want to share how it works in our personal lives and our business lives. I have a dear friend, Michael. He’s a genius marketer. He’s helped me with branding and various things. For those of you who’ve a letter to my tribe, you’ll be reading about it. He shot a commercial for one of his clients and it’s called The Perfect Day. His client is a Jet Share organization and they asked me to be the grandfather figure in it. I got to fly around and shoot a video inside of this jet. We actually flew to San Diego and then shot scenes all the way down and we flew back.

It was so much fun. In this personal experience that I had, I was sitting there and as we were flying home and it was on the summer solstice. It was the sunset while we’re flying from San Diego back to Salt Lake, the longest sunset in the history of time because we kept flying and the sun kept setting for an hour. We’re sitting in the plane and I said, “Thank you for letting me do this, for picking me to be your grandpa.” I had fake children and fake grandchildren that we are making this all about. The link to this will be in a letter 10, 11 or 12. It’s coming, watch for it. In my letters to my tribe, I wanted to share this with you. What I’m about to tell you is not fully in the letter because it takes too long to communicate this idea.

We were sitting in the private jet. It was a G200. It sat 10 to 12 people. It was beautifully appointed and gorgeous. I’m sitting there looking around at all the other cast members instead of the photographer guy. I’m like, “I could get used to this, Michael.” He’s like, “Why don’t you.” Immediately all of my stuff pops up. My defense mechanism was like, “I don’t have the money yet. I don’t have the opportunity. Where would I fly one of these things? My commercial relationship with Southwest or Delta, whoever we’re flying, takes me straight to the cities where I’m going to be a producer.”

I’m not going to Podunk, Wisconsin. I noticed all of my resistance started coming up and pushing back. He’s my personal friend and invited me as his friend to do this, but he knows what I do. We have great relationships and great discussions on how I support his fundability™. The thing that came to me, he asked me, and you may have heard this saying, he goes, “Merrill, if you argue for your limitations, you get to keep them.” I’m like, “You asshole.” because I teach that to my clients and my students. If you argue for your limitations, they’re yours. Congratulations. You get to keep them. I was triggered. The trigger doesn’t mean just anger.

The trigger is resistance, defense, and pushback, anything where we’re not willing to say yes. I don’t know if you remember the Jim Carrey movie years ago called Yes Man. He was challenged at a seminar to say yes to everything, no matter what the ramifications were. We always say no or we’re super skeptical. I’m not proposing that you say yes, but what about being open to yes, to everything before we say no? He caught me perfectly in a position where I was like, “What am I going to use with Jet Share? What am I going to do with my share? How would I use it?” Everything was a no and push. He simply said, “If you argue for your limitations, they’re yours. You get to keep them.”

I loved flying on this jet. I loved the ease and facility with which I got to travel. I shared that I’m choosing more for myself in my letter to the tribe version. I wanted to share with you also that, like you, I pushed back. My comfort zone is comfortable. There are times in which I have to be triggered out of my comfort zone. You also sometimes get to be triggered out of your comfort zone. Most of us don’t say yes to everything effortlessly. By divine comedy and design, whatever you believe in that is bigger than yourself. The truth of what we’re doing, if we resist, it persists. The underlying principle under that is that it isn’t the resisting or the positioning. We’re going to be told in one way or another that we can do it. It’s possible for us that we can grow and expand. I’m going to wax super philosophical here, but physicists say that we live in an expanding universe. It’s expanding all around us. Interestingly enough, in 360 degrees. It’s not expanding from one point. It’s expanding from some central place in the universe.

That expansion happens everywhere. I love watching the buds on trees come out because as the earth heats up, the exposure to the sun heats the earth. That sun enlivens and warms the earth. That warmth and energy now start moving the sap up through the trees where it’s contracted so it could survive the winters depending on where you are. Palm trees don’t work this way, and then all of a sudden, buds start popping out on all of the branches. That is our visual expression of the universe expanding. It’s heating up again and it expands all the flowers. All blossoms are the expansion of the energy that warms the earth, warms our souls, and creates our awareness wherever your beliefs take you. It is natural to expand. I believe at some psychic level, spiritual levels, emotional, mental level, wherever it is in your beliefs or in your person, you are expanding. We can resist it or we can surrender to it. This doesn’t mean being a yes man or yes woman, but it means that it’s natural for you to be more, do more, and have more as your life progresses.

I Resist

The only way that doesn’t happen is if we get in our way. I first one to admit it, I stopped the flow. I say, no, I pushed back. I resist. Bringing it all the way back around. The reason why I have chosen partners who see the world differently for me is that I trust them with their worldview. I want their feedback so that I can have more evidence to stop resisting the natural growth that is my heritage, my destiny and opportunity. You have a heritage by being a human being on this planet. Everything is expanding, including you, your body, your soul, your vitality, your openness. All have the power to expand if we allow for it.

I’ve chosen people in my life to trigger me, and I want you to take the people in your life that are triggering you and love them. Bless them and thank them because some of the knockdown drag outs that I’ve had with my partners have been the greatest breakthroughs of my personal, business and professional life. If you’re becoming angry or embittered by someone being different than you, then find out what the trigger is. Find out what the message is. Find out what it is because you will grow. Let’s walk down what could be your path. Once upon a time, you are a W-2. You could have been sixteen years old, you could have been 60 years old, but you are working for someone else. Your belief system included, you’re trading your time and skills for money.

Opportunity For Growth: Every trigger will give you the next thing to look at. The degree to which you resist something and defend against it is the same degree to which it’s true.

No leveraging there, it’s a trade. You’re trading time and skills for money. All of a sudden in your growth, the sun is heating you up and you’re expanding. You’re like, “This isn’t enough.” Maybe you are triggered by something that happened. A friend of yours got canned at their job but retired early. Someone else was in control and you were triggered by, you’re like, “I don’t want that to happen to me.” Somebody got in an accident and they lost their job and their family is suffering. They were working for somebody else that pushed them aside because of that equal balance of skills and time for money. The second that that trade no longer works, we get shelved. We get pushed to the side.

At some point, you were triggered to become an entrepreneur, a real estate investor, a franchise owner. Whatever you are exploring to become a leverager of you and your gifts rather than a trader, you said, “There’s more to me than just trading my time and skills for money.” That’s you growing, but something triggered. Tell me if it wasn’t true for you. You woke up one morning and said, “It’s still a trigger.” You got triggered to become more, and then there was resistance from your husband, your wife, your children, your employer or your partners. They’re like, “Don’t do it.” I started this episode is to the degree you’re triggered is the degree that is probably true.

Even your spouse or your partner is like, “I don’t want to do this. This is scary,” but it’s probably the right thing to do. You chose your venue, you looked at all the different things, you went to the big box stages. “I’m going to become an Amazon store.” “I’m going to become a real estate investor.” “I’m going to become a tax lien buyer,” whatever it is. As you chose which one of these vehicles to leverage who you are, all of a sudden you ran into new triggers. “What about this? This isn’t working,” and you have been expanding the entire time. Where are you expanding now? The reason why we’re talking is that you want more money to do and expand what you’re doing.

This is not philosophy. This is you saying, “I need resources because I want to do more,” so you’re triggered. One way you read the book, watch the web class. You went to the boot camp, you read the blog, whatever it was. All of a sudden you said, “I deserve more. I want more.” I triggered you. Your spouse or somebody triggered you to say yes to more. Your little buds on your tree start popping and bearing fruit. You don’t just want one tree of fundability™ and funding. You want as you’ve learned the funding formula, ten trees that are all giving you $100,000 in the proverbial fruit. Love your triggers. Love the people who trigger you because they’re showing you something that you can’t see.

We have a whole episode about blind spots. Go and look that up because these two are related. They’re probably triggering you because they can see your blind spot. Make sure that you love the people who are triggering you and don’t say no fast. Be willing to see what gift is on the other side of that trigger, that argument or that person who is making you feel uncomfortable with your current comfort zone because you were designed to expand. I shared that tree story because the universe is expanding. You’re designed to expand. You have energy, emotional, spiritual, physical power that is expanding in your space. How fast you experienced that is how much we let our minds get in our way. One of the greatest gifts that I have ever received is the people who trigger me, the ones who call me out, the ones who say, “Fight for your limitations and you get to keep them, Merrill.”

I’m here to support your expansion, your spiritual growth, your mental growth, and your emotional growth. When we have all of those clear in our hearts and souls, where do we get to express it? In this big beautiful world of ours. Some of you are renovating neighborhoods and creating better communities. Some of you are offering goods and services to people so that they can expand their lives. We’re all doing something in this tangled web we weave called our lives and our relationships.

I’m here and I dedicate myself to help you expand. As you can tell, some of these episodes are expanding your soulfulness and how that translates into the world. Every one of you, the second you want more for yourself and your loved ones, you’re going to want more resources to create those end games. That’s where you and I get to partner up. I will trigger you and I will call you out like this. I want us to each take a look at the impact of being open to yeses rather than no. I blessed Jessica and Brad for not being yes men and women. Having a different perspective and by pushing back sometimes are hard when I’m defending my smallness and my limitations. I want you to be open to yes and closely examine your noes. Godspeed. God bless.

Important Links:

• Get Fundable – Facebook page
• Funding Hackers – Facebook group
• Insider Secrets – Facebook group
• Past Episode – The Black Holes of Success

Important Links:

• myFICO.com
• GetFundableBootcamp.com

Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share!

• Here’s How »

• GetFundablePodcast.com
• Get Fundable! Facebook
• GetFundableBootcamp.com