Climbing That Confidence Ladder

FITNESSPRENEUR’S LIFE

CLIMBING THAT CONFIDENCE LADDER

It’s funny how life works.

Just recently I was asked to give a presentation on how to build, maintain and sustain confidence, I’ll share with you some of the highlights of that process below.

Putting together that presentation got me thinking back to the first time I ever stepped on stage.

That guy, way back in 2010, knew nothing about confidence.

I can honestly say that I remember the feelings I had like it was yesterday because it was in front of five hundred people, my very first time, no easing onto things, huh, and I had very little clue what I was doing.

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I got at least one thing right, that I would recommend you do from now on when you thrust yourself into the unknown- get a coach or mentor.

When I got the call to present and take this next leap in my career, I jumped first, looked for a parachute second.

I remember hanging up the phone with Bedros, there was excitement and nerves all at once, so I did the only thing I could think of; I called my mentor to get his advice.

Alex gave me some really good instruction and I felt prepared, but the minute I took that stage most of that went out the window as I began to pace the stage like a caged lion.

Somehow I survived that day and got some good feedback. I guess people hadn’t seen many presenters yet. HA!

I remember most this one thing Alex said to me after the talk. He asked: “how did you feel?” I responded that I “thought I was confident.” And he said something that has always stuck with me, he said” “Vito, don’t just say it, BE it.”

I don’t think it dawned on me until years later the difference between saying something and BEING something. One is momentary and can come and go, but being something means it’s who you have become, who you are.

I know from that day on I wanted to BE confident, not just think I was, feel I was, or hope I was- I wanted to BE it.


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Flash forward to today and many years of study later working on how to master the art of confidence, I’ve put together a little blueprint for you how to generate the kind of confidence that kills every time.

That last part surprises people. Generating confidence? Isn’t confidence something that you’re born with?

Doesn’t confidence come from money or good looks or some other thing that some are just lucky to have inherited? Nope.

Confidence, like any skill, requires work and practice. It’s exactly like a muscle that you need to work on constantly and without interruption.

Sure, I suppose you could coast on seeming confident. You can wing it, and a lot of people do.

But to build something sustainable, the kind of confidence that is going to help your business and your brand, you need to work at it.

The question is, are you willing to put in the work to be confident? Does it matter enough for you to roll up the sleeves and get uncomfortable?

The phrase “fake it ‘till you make it” is one of those things that sounds great, but really isn’t. Do you want to seem confident, or are you actually confident?

Big difference.

Seeming confident, which is what happens when you fake it, means that you’re wholly dependent on someone else seeing you as a confident individual.

The problem?

If you’re faking it, you’ll eventually let your guard down, something big will be on the line, and you won’t have prepared or had to go on short notice and you’re going to come up short and your cover will be blown.

Now what’s worse, you’ll be seen as an unreliable factor.

Actually being confident is a million times better. It doesn’t depend on anyone but you.

You will radiate confidence from within and that alone feels great. But also, in the long run, that

confidence will help your self-esteem, your brand, and your business. It’s the better choice by far.



















I can see how confidence can be a tricky thing.

Our industry is in such a state of flux, with new technologies popping up and studios/gyms/boot camps in every corner of our lives. We got celebrity trainers, YouTube sensations, and social media hypesters, that it can be a little overwhelming.

A greater marketplace means greater visibility with thousands of people, not just whoever lives in your neighborhood and when you’re still comparing yourself to everyone else versus running your own race, it’s easy to feel un-confident.

Well don’t worry. I’ve gone ahead and studied all the patterns of living a confident life and I’ve come up with a game plan you can use anytime because I remember how scared I was that day I spoke in front of people for the first time. And I didn’t like the way it felt.

Being confident makes all the difference.

So I’ve boiled down that confidence framework into three steps that I’m sure will help you. I call it the

Confidence Ladder.

The Confidence Ladder is something you can execute no matter where you are in your career. You can use it yourself or apply it to a whole team.

















Ultimately the goal is to move beyond that point of saying you’re confident and instead being in a state of actual confidence.

When we say we want to create leaders in our industry, we’re really saying that we want to create confident leaders. These are the types of people that best represent what we stand for in our industry. They are the mouthpieces that share the very best of what we do. They inspire not only the people that are here now, but help recruit the very best leaders of tomorrow.

There’s something bigger than each of us, and confident leaders help us get to that bigger thing.

Ready to work? Here we go!



























STEP #1: BUILD. First Decide.

This very first step of building confidence happens in the smallest synapses of our brain. It is a very basic thing, and yet so complex. It’s easier said than done…to build confidence we need to simply DECIDE to be more confident.

Say what?

Did he just say: “to be more confident you just have to decide to be more confident?”

THE CONFIDENCE LADDER

















Think about how many times we do the opposite.

Every morning that you wake up, there are basically two choices in front of you.

1. You can, on one hand, start to worry about the day.

You can think about everything that needs to be done and how you may not have enough time to do it all. Fixating on not knowing how to do it or even what to do, constantly stressed and complaining, doubting yourself. Sure, that’s one way. Or…

2. The other way is start your day, planting your feet and reminding yourself, “Be More Confident.”

Studies have shown that triggers and daily reminders can train your brain. So set the triggers. And though it may seem small, it’s powerful.

A simple exercise I have all my high performance students do is to set a daily reminder on their phone.

Most people now live and die by their phone, so I have them put a little reminder in their calendar that is set to go off at 9am, everyday, with an alert, that reads ‘Be More Confident.”


















This way no matter how bad the morning was going, they get a jolt, at 9am that snaps them back into their confidence and they can course correct the day and get a few more hours of productive living back in.

Little by little that daily reminder becomes the person.

It’s all about intention.

When you’re moving toward your confidence intentionally you’re not letting life sneak up on you and ambush you.

You can’t be ambushed because you’ve already decided to be confident and handle whatever comes your way in the way that you know best…confidently.

We let those nasty triggers in our lives derail us at the drop of a hat. Why? Nothing in your life can rob you of anything unless you first let it into your mind.

We let obstacles, real and imagined, prevent us from achieving that intention. Why? Do you think anyone has it all figured out?

Perfect is the enemy of good and if you’re waiting for your life to be perfect before you set out in life confidently, you’re going to spend your whole life watching the boats sail on by you.

I was recently working with one of our coaches in our high performance coaching sessions and I saw firsthand just how crippling negative thoughts can be; I noticed something was up with her and when I asked her about it, she told me about anxieties that went everywhere, from a low bank account balance to how her father used to compare her unfavorably to her sister!

I was like, “Is he here? Is he watching us? So why are you dragging those bad memories from the past into the present?"

She was pulling those feeling and memories into her day. She created those feelings willingly. You can stop that.

You just got to train the brain.

Direct all your energy and your intentions toward living a confident life. Forget the past and let go of wanting to be perfect. Have the courage to live into your best self. And be ok with it not being easy.

Once you do that, you create an integrity that no one can take away from you. Acknowledge those tiny fears and triggers, and then toss them aside.

Your newer, more confident, you begins today.



















STEP #2: HAVE A NORTH STAR.In this step is where much of the work happens. You see it’s not enough to just decide to be confident. That choice, many times, doesn’t last for too long.

What happens to us time and time again is that we live confidently in moments and the train gets moving. But then, suddenly, another moment comes and rips the confidence away from you and…eeeeeeeeeeee….the train comes to a screeching halt.

All of a sudden now we’re set back again and we’re not so sure about our confidence. We’ve become paralyzed, frozen in our tracks.

Now you may be able to get your confidence back up (in fact, I hope you do), because that stopping and starting is killing your momentum.

And momentum is a confidence builder.

In the long run, you waste a lot of time when you live in the peaks and valleys of life.

Those valleys, in particular, have to go.


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If you are constantly being derailed in life you can never get a full head of steam behind you to really push things through to heightened and sustained levels of action. Heightened and sustained levels of confidence are necessary if you want to achieve greater things in life and take your business to the next level.

The key to sustained confidence is an understanding of your purpose in life or what I like to simply call “Have a North Star.”

Which just means, have that thing that is up in the night sky always calling to you, beckoning you on, just out of your reach that is bigger than you. Something you might not ever attain, so that when the moments of doubt come, you can always remember you are living for something more important than doubt, worry, criticism, and fear.

Understanding that purpose, no matter how big or small it is, is the essential fuel to keep your sustained confidence in place.

This requires you think about your purpose and what you want out of life.

I often tell people that the piano of purpose is not going to fall on your head one day while you’re walking outside. It won’t be tucked away neatly into a basket that arrives on your doorstep.

You need to choose it and follow through, like you chose to be confident. It all comes back to intention.

So just as you consider your purpose as a mother, or leader, or spouse, consider your purpose as a fit pro. It doesn’t have to be complicated. It just needs to be meaningful.

Aim Your Skills.

If you’re one of those people who sit around saying “I don’t know how to do that?” Or “I don’t know what to do.”

Have you heard of Google?

If there’s something you’d like to know more about, look it up, take a course and work on your professional and personal development versus sitting there thinking you don’t know what to do or how to do something. That’s just the lazy man’s excuse today.



















Anything can be learned, researched, and studied if it’s important to helping you achieve your dreams and marching towards that North Star.

After that poor speaking performance in 2010, I set out on a plan to learn how to present, to learn how to put together my talks, how to move on stage, how to use my voice better. I even took acting lessons because I knew that presenting was going to be a crucial skill in being able to take my brand to the world so I wasn’t stuck with my message not getting out.

Are you willing to create a learning plan? Stick to it? Invest in it?

Arm yourself with as much knowledge and professional experience as you can. Earn the skills that will take you to the next level.

Don’t let anyone or anything zap you back down into those valleys that rob you of your momentum.

Sustain that confidence so that you can get to your purpose as quickly as humanly possible.


















Step #3: TEACHHere is where you take that confidence and share it with the world.

I hope at this point I don’t have to explain why the work that we do is so important.

It’s not enough to become proficient in training, sales, and marketing. You need to have your message ready for whoever walks through your door or finds you online. And teaching is a great way to share your knowledge and continue building your confidence.

We learned from Aristotle that you are what you repeatedly do. And from that repetition comes excellence. And that drive to be a hunter of excellence is tied to that North Star that’s bigger than all of us.

Just look at the strides that our industry has made in the last twenty or so years; there’s no telling what the future holds. And your ability to teach and share your message is a big component of the future.

There’s nothing that holds your feet to the fire like teaching. Teaching activates a whole set of skills in your mind that require you to be confident.

That wholesale accumulation of knowledge, training, and leadership abilities all converge when you teach a group of people something new.

I don’t care if they’re newbies or athletes that have been at it for decades. Your teaching them will lay bare exactly what you know and how you can communicate it. That requires confidence and it requires it every time.

You have to put yourself out there and teach. Teach like your life depends on it, because it kinda does.

Teaching is the sum total of your confidence and, when done right, it’s the perfect

springboard to continue the growth of your future confidence.

The upside of being a confident teacher is that your reputation will grow. Your networking possibilities will increase. People will ask you to come and share your experience as I recently did.

I doubt that person that paced like a caged animal in 2010 would have been invited to speak anywhere, and today I turn down more invitations than I care to admit because I’m so busy.



















So if I did it, you can, too. You can build the necessary confidence it takes to be regarded as a confident leader. That may not even matter because you yourself will feel the difference in your bones and everyday life.

Let today be the day that you assume the mantle of a confident leader.

Build, sustain, and teach that confidence in order to keep the train of your life going.

There is no telling where you will end up if you apply my framework. I can tell you this: you’ll leave behind any other fit pros that aren’t so sure of themselves.

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confident fit pros in the market aren’t going to have clients or business gravitate toward them.

In today’s ever expanding marketplace, where time and money are getting scarcer by the day, clients will head towards the men and women who project confidence and value.

Those people aren’t the ones who were born confident. They are the ones who work on themselves and ignore the negative frequencies that trip us up in our everyday lives.

It’s inside you, so get to work on bringing it out to the world. There is no greater purpose.

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As a certified High Performance and Funnel Optimization Coach, Vito La Fata, is the NO BS business & personal brand coach to the wellness and fitness professional or company that is looking to get outside the box of the industry and start learning how to grow a personal brand online and offline utilizing a hybrid business model of offline and online marketing strategies that deploy customer value optimization systems in order to create as much benefit and offering for the customer and as much profit and lifestyle for the company as possible.

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Climbing That Confidence Ladder