1 Social Media Post πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦ (Family In Ukraine Update)

Brian shares how one Facebook post has helped make a huge difference for his wife’s family that is fleeing from Kyiv.

Transcription

1 social media post.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

Today I wanted to discuss this is a story I’ve been telling a lot of my other friends. And so I figured I’d tell all my online friends. I glad you could come.

We’ve had the situation, right now this is, depending on when you’re watching or listening to this, this is in March, early March of 2022. We’ve been going through this situation of Russia invading Ukraine.

If you haven’t heard my wife was originally from Ukraine, she came over as a teenager with her mother, and to the United States ended up becoming a citizen here.

Her aunt, uncle, grandmother, and cousin are still back in Ukraine. They were in a situation where they were stuck in the capital city. And we’re looking to get out as soon as the invasion was occurring, but really didn’t know where to go, what to do, how to do it.

So my wife went and posted on Facebook, and basically said, Hey, does anybody know anyone in the surrounding countries that might be able to help out if we’re able to get them across the border.

We had people reach out all over the place, everybody. I mean, people we hadn’t talked to in years and other people. People that knew people that knew people.

People sent email addresses and phone numbers.

It really overwhelmed my wife, who’s good at logistics, by the way. So she kind of took it on herself to help them find somebody. We found a handful of different people so far.

So once they were able to get to Moldova, we had someone there to be able to pick them up and drive them to that capital city.

They’re there right now waiting to go to Germany.

they have somebody also, who was going to drive them all that distance and help get them to a safe area. What’s amazing is it took that, you know, besides the human element, and all the craziness and the politics and all the rest.

It took one single organic post on Facebook, we didn’t have advertising behind it.

We were discussing, if you look at it from a marketing perspective, she was discussing a an event that everyone knows about, that everyone’s thinking about, and just gave people a very clear-cut, call to action.

Because of that, it was easy for people who already had that connection to offer it up. I mean, people went out of their way. It’s not that it wasn’t difficult for them to be able to call people up and say hey, are you willing to house people?

Do you know anyone that’s housing anyone?

Do you know anyone who can drive?

It’s not that that wasn’t the case. That was the case that was amazing, incredible what they’ve done. We’ll post on my personal page, you know, eventually, all the different people that reached out and helped out. We appreciate it more than you can ever know.

But what it’s the connections, the thin threads that we have with all the people that we’ve known throughout our life, that becomes power.

That’s the power of social media.

It’s not unto itself, anything all that powerful, except that so many people have already gathered in these places.

But it’s powerful because of the human connection that exists outside of it. And it translates into how we have a connection that we wouldn’t have had 20, 30 years ago would not have had that type of ability to mobilize people in such a short period of time. Incredible, incredible thing.

You can just about write a book about all the things we’ve been through through the last couple of weeks, working with her family and other people. So just a quick idea for you for tonight. We’ll be back tomorrow.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. Get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll see you have a good one get out there and let the magic happen.

Quit Falling For The Control Illusion πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦

As updates from family and friends come in from Ukraine, Brian has an important message about self control.

Transcription

Quit falling for the control illusion.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I’m a Business investor. And one of the things that I find myself doing a lot is discussing things with people who are already in business, or people who are executives in businesses, meaning the people who are in charge.

We get a lot of those conversations going either when I’m looking to purchase a business or find out more about it, or see if there’s some type of partnership we can do.

There’s a common issue along the way, is if you’ve had any sense of success whatsoever in business, it’s really easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you can actually control it all.

When in reality you really can’t, and you have to yet and you know that’s true, you know it’s an illusion.

This control thing is a complete illusion.

Because there’s a difference between what you’re responsible for, and what’s your fault. We’ve talked about that a lot here before is that, there may be a whole lot that’s your fault. But that is very different from what you’re responsible for, you’re responsible for the whole thing.

But that doesn’t mean you control the whole thing.

So I got a great example for you today.

I was discussing this with my wife. She was extremely concerned because as we mentioned before, she has family in Ukraine. At this time of this videotaping they’re going through all the whole situation of the Russian invasion.

And so a whole bunch of issues there and it goes way back, because this isn’t the first time this was discussed, or the first time it was thought about, you know, they’ve been talking about this for months.

Previous to that there was always the chance that it could happen because there have been other invasions that have happened within their country, obviously, if you just go a little bit, a little bit back in history, just a few years back.

So this stuff has been happening, and it’s been crazy. But there gets to be a point where you really have zero control. I’m talking about us here in America, with her family over there.

She can do her best to instruct, give advice, help them work through the emotional issues and everything else that people have when they’re going through a life-changing event.

But in the end, my wife and I don’t have very much control over the situation. We don’t have an inline to the Kremlin, we don’t have, you know, anything that you could possibly be of any help.

There’s not a lot we can do other than via the internet, discussing things with them directly.

Here’s what ended up happening, we had a getaway plan, I wouldn’t call it a vacation, we’re just going to be getting away for a couple of days in the middle of the week, which is an interesting thing that you can do.

If you don’t own your own business. By the way, it’s stuff that I highly encourage you to look into. You can watch some of my videos on that, or check out my website, but we had this plan for a while. Then this situation popped up with her family.

In the end, she had no control over it and you got to be able to recognize what you don’t have control over and be able to back off.

On one hand, she thought she should probably cancel our plans and that would have been fine. But it’s not necessary.

I do not like the idea of allowing outside forces, unless they really are something that we have control over to dictate what we do with our life.

It’s just a personal philosophy.

For me, I don’t know if you feel the same way, I’d love to hear what you think. Leave a comment wherever you’re watching this or you could go to BrianJPombo.com and leave a comment in the media section.

So this is one of those scenarios that we just realized that we don’t have control over it.

We’re going to do what we can, we still have internet access and all the same access that we would have at home while we’re on the road.

She’s kept on top of it. She’s kept on top of the news. She’s kept on top of her family and is able to still see what we can do to help provide help. That’s all you can do and you’ve got to be able to do that you have to be able to separate yourself.

When you’re in business. When you’re the person that’s in charge especially or a person that’s in charge. You have to be able to stop away and not get bogged down with the things you can’t control.

Not that you shouldn’t pay attention to them. Not that you shouldn’t watch them not that you should ignore them. You shouldn’t.

But you can’t you can’t let them control you because it’s useless. It’s not going to go anywhere.

So that’s all I’ve got for tonight.

Hey, go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com.

We’ll be back here tomorrow night with another idea. Tomorrow we should be back back at home. So we’ll see you then you have a good one. Get out there and let the magic happen.

Reversing Victimhood πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦ (Ukraine Fights Back)

Brian talks about the power of reversing victimhood.

Transcription

Reversing victimhood.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

I’m a Business Investor, and we have a lot of talks here about business. Both the idea of being a business owner, and also being executives, just the kind of the people who are in charge and how you get there, how do you how do you?

How do you stay happy there and how do you have a more fulfilling life?

I talk about the principles, and the strategies and the tactics necessary to be able to grow and go the next step. And I want to talk about reversing that victim mentality, reversing that victimhood concept, because it’s everywhere right now.

It seems to be I have not seen a person who who claims victim mentality who claims victimhood, who sits in that space, who isn’t troubled, and going the wrong direction.

I don’t think there’s any other way around it see, being a victim, the way I see it, in the most real sense. If you’re a it’s more of an event, it’s the circumstances surrounding an event.

So if I get my car stolen, I’m the victim of car theft. It’s the reference of me having something being done to me, in a specific event, I’m a victim of a hurricane, if a hurricane comes and knocks through my house, there’s nothing that can be done about it.

There’s not a whole lot that can be said about it. I mean, obviously, if someone steals your car, there’s legal issues and everything else, but it doesn’t change who I am, until I adopt victim as part of my personality, part of my characteristic, part of the way that I how I refer to myself, in a sense.

If you see yourself as a victim constantly, it will do no good for you ever. There’s no way to claim being a victim and to come out a winner anywhere in life.

You can’t.

It’s the opposite. It’s a part of the human condition but when you find yourself in that space, of being a feeling like a victim.

That’s really what it comes down to, feeling like a victim when you feel that somebody has done you wrong, it doesn’t matter whether they did you wrong or not.

The feeling is what destroys you, and takes all your power away.

I’ll tell you what, why this got brought up, I had mentioned that I’m part of a book club. We are currently it’s a deep dive book club. It’s very interesting, where we literally will read one chapter for two weeks at a time, and then discuss it both in a Facebook group and a live Zoom meeting that we have.

Right now we’re reading, thinking grow rich, and we are on chapter two. If you’ve never read this book, there’s that very interesting story, where the author Napoleon Hill, his son, Blair was born.

He has no years, he came out he had no ears at all. There is no mechanism for hearing inside his head and something inside Napoleon told him that doesn’t mean he needs to not be able to hear.

That something told him that he should be able to raise his son relatively excuse the term normal. He could raise him as if he could hear. He shouldn’t have to have if anything, he challenged himself to believe that this might be an advantage.

That something that most people would see as a disadvantage could actually be an advantage.

And he believed it so much. He didn’t come right out and say it but then he started helping to raise his son with that point of view that this is actually an advantage that just because he can’t hear the same way other people can, it can be an advantage because people will look at him differently.

It will allow him to stand out. It will allow him to see things in a different light and so on so forth.

There are different ways you could look at it as an advantage and disadvantage.

Oftentimes we refer to this event well I mean look at the terminology and politics today. Hey, were you talking about the advantaged people with, with advantage?

People with privilege, you know that they, they have something better than everybody else. It all depends on how you look at it, you look at things in a different way, a privilege can become a crutch.

A disadvantage can actually become an advantage.

This is what he’s talking about in this chapter and talking about and he, what it ends up, I’m gonna ruin it for you if you haven’t read it. And you don’t want the spoiler to turn this off now, but I’ll tell you what ends up happening because he reveals it pretty quickly within this chapter.

What ends up happening is his son ends up being able to hear without the physical mechanisms to be able to hear somehow his body is able to adapt, and be able to make sense of a whole lot of what’s on the outside without people screaming and everything else. Which early on he can hear him since something but you have to be really close, you have to be talking really loud.

Well, over time, he was able to go beyond that. And it’s an amazing story.

But it’s not about being disabled or anything of that sort. It’s the concept of what if you take something so extreme like that, and you take it in the opposite direction.

The same thing is true of Helen Keller, who he mentions in there.

I mean, here’s a person we would not know who she was if she had not overcome, not overcome. I mean, she still was not able to see she still was not able to hear. But if she was not able to produce amazing thoughts, amazing speeches, and so forth.

Even though when she was young, she was not able to speak, she was not able to hear she was not able to see and then she rose above that.

But without the disadvantage, she wouldn’t have had the advantage.

You see, she would not know who she was. She could be just as brilliant and be able to say a whole lot of the same things.

But it would not have gone anywhere, it would not have stuck as well as it did, because of her disadvantages, or what we claim as disadvantages.

So victimhood, it’s a misnomer.

It’s not true.

It’s not something that’s real, it’s something that gets into our heads.

The same thing is true of the current situation, while I’m filming this is we’re taught to discuss what’s going on in Russia and Ukraine. Where Russia has invaded Ukraine, this is 2022.

At this current time, the situation appeared to be absolutely hopeless, that no one would even really help Ukraine, for the most part in the situation.

Because the President of Ukraine has stuck around, and because a whole lot of them were relatively prepared and are out there fighting. They’ve turned things around, where people are talking differently.

I don’t know how this is gonna turn out.

If you’re watching this in the future, you already know what happened. But right now they’ve taken a really horrible situation and been able to get so much global coverage and so much sympathy from the entire world, including the Russian people.

It’s a completely different situation than we all thought in the very beginning. And things have not completely fallen overnight.

If they’re going to complete defeat, it’s an amazing thing to be able to see this come about, regardless of what side you’re on or otherwise.

And that’s the idea is that victimhood, I’m not sure if I’m making this clear, but victimhood isn’t real. It’s a fault in our head that we lead in.

You got to be careful with those people. Stay away from anyone or anything that’s looking to make you more of a victim and say, those are the people doing it to you.

Those are the people doing it to you and making everyone else out to be the bad guy.

Whereas all you have to do is stand tall and say, I don’t care what they’re doing to me. I’m going to handle what I got in front of me and do my best with what I have. Hopefully, that makes sense. That’s all I got for tonight.

Go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business. You can get a free copy on AmazonProofBook.com And we’ll be back tomorrow.

In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Is Propaganda Marketing? πŸ“Ί (RT America)

Brian talks about how different TV networks put their spin on what’s going in Ukraine.

Transcription

Is propaganda marketing.

Hi I’m Brian Pombo, welcome back to Brian J. Pombo Live.

This is a very interesting time to be doing any type of media whatsoever. Because when there is when there are world events that kind of grab you and shake you and kind of put everybody talking about the same things, it that makes it an interesting time.

Whether you’ve been through that some at some point in your life, or whether you are going through that right now or going to see that, again, I’m recording this during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

I’m going to tell you some really interesting things that I’ve been seeing now, I’ve always been a student of different types of news media, and watching how they work and watching how they manipulate and change things around and how different sources say things completely different ways, giving you a completely different impression about what actually happened.

There are very few sources that have any sense of nonbias whatsoever or trying to present any type of nonpartisan idea.

They just don’t exist anymore, at least during this current period of time.

It has amazed me, so this Ukrainian invasion, it’s affects our family, because of my wife I’ve mentioned before my wife was originally from Ukraine. She still has family back there. And we’re in communication with them, finding out from their perspective what’s going on.

But also make sure they’re still alive, you know, so forth.

But at the same time, it’s caused her to watch anything she’d get her hands-on in terms of news. So we’ve looked at every live streaming news station that’s available on YouTube or anywhere else. Just trying to find anything we can and see what they are saying and see what they’re showing.

Overall, you get a very common perspective of what is going on, which is unusual.

In most cases, it’s unusual to find something like CNN, Fox News, saying basically the same thing, that this was an unprovoked attack, and so on, so forth.

But you’ll always find an exception to the rule.

I found that a very interesting exception.

It’s called RT, for Russian television.

And it is the American version. So it is a station that is put together, specifically by the Russian government, to give their perspective, and this is specifically for Americans.

So it’s in English. And so if you aren’t American, you’ll appreciate this.

But they also have different versions for different countries and different nationalities.

So you can find your version, watch that if you’re somewhere else.

But so amazing, because they have given a completely opposite idea.

A lot of the specifics may be very similar in watching it. But then if you’re watching it or listening to me years ahead in the future it’d be tough to go back and see this, but you really ought to do this when it comes to news media when it comes to worldwide events that everyone’s watching.

This is one of those scenarios that everybody is watching, everyone’s paying attention.

Everyone kind of has an idea of what’s going on. And to have them come out and say completely different things.

Like, for example, the night of the invasion a few nights ago, they were talking about how they were specifically helping to free these new New Republics that were coming in.

I haven’t heard this discussed anywhere else.

But from the Russian government’s perspective. They’re saying, there’s this republic and that republic, and all these places that have never, I’ve ever never heard mentioned in Western media whatsoever.

And all they are is basically they’re these cities that were closer to the Russian border.

They’re saying, we’re freeing them from Ukrainian control. And so that was just one example.

But there were many examples of how they completely changed the perspective.

I’m not saying who’s right or wrong.

Obviously, I’ve got my own perspective coming from where I come from and the sources of news and knowing a little bit of history.

I am a little bit of a student of the history of this stuff. So I’ve got a certain perspective but to see a different perspective and to see how it changed because you got to think about why something like this developed.

Very simply, many governments have their own news sources, they have their own news stations nowadays, cable news, satellite news, it’s very common around the world.

The United States is one of the one odd places that doesn’t have something that is specifically owned and ran by the government other than public television.

But even then, it is not promoted as a mouthpiece of the executive branch.

Whereas over there, it basically is, but RT America is specifically, it’s not just what the Russian Government wants you to believe. This is what the Russian Government wants America to believe about things.

They have you know, RT France and other ones.

They are very specific they have people speaking with their accents, and an obviously in their language.

They are trying to present what they want France to believe. And so this is a very fine-tuned form of propaganda.

That is, it’s interesting, and propaganda really is marketing.

If you can see what they’re doing, and not get offended by it, and not get all worked up by but just see how these things work.

Obviously, there’s some form of propaganda on old news stations, regardless of what country they’re coming from.

But with that, you can see a very direct tie. And you can see very much what they want you to walk away with, and how they want you thinking after you’re done watching or listening to what they’re presenting.

Very interesting, interesting, it is schooling and marketing, to be able to pay attention to these things and pay attention to how different people different sources are attempting to manipulate you to their way of thinking to come to a very specific conclusion from where they’re coming from.

So it says something to watch out for, and something to watch out for an old news media, but news media, make no mistake about it, you’re still dealing with human beings, fallible human beings, who are attempting to sell you something.

They’re attempting to sell you an idea.

They’re attempting to sell you a perhaps philosophy.

And they’re attempting to sell you the products that show up on the commercials.

So something to keep your eye on and something that you can, if you can watch these things and be able to step back and relate it back to how business works.

I think it’d be helpful for you so go check it out.

Also, go check out my book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business if you actually want to stand out in the marketplace in your industry, and be completely different from anyone that would ever be perceived as a competitor.

9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business you can get a free copy at AmazonProofBook.com

You have a great night we’ll be back tomorrow.

And in the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.

Russia Invades Ukraine and Your Business πŸ‡ΊπŸ‡¦

Brian chats about what’s going on in Ukraine and the value of preparedness.

Transcription

Russia Invades Ukraine and your business.

Welcome back to Brian J. Pombo. Live.

I’m Brian Pombo, this is a very interesting story because it hits home a little bit.

I’ve mentioned before, my wife, Kate was born in Ukraine, and still has family back there. And so watching this is really interesting. I mean, she has family right in Kiev, and watching a lot of this go on is pretty heavy.

So this is being recorded. I’m recording this the night that the invasion while the morning over there, that the invasion is occurring. Watching is pretty, pretty wild stuff.

I’m not going to get into the politics of the situation. Not here, you’re always welcome to ask me personally. But you can imagine where we’re kind of what we’re thinking about this.

But I want to bring it back home, because this is a conversation that we’ve had with her family for years, really going back and certainly the last few months, attempting to impress the idea that there may be a reason for an emergency in the future. You may want to be prepped for anything.

I don’t know, it kind of seems like the way the world’s going right now.

That we might I would predict within the next 10, 20, 30 years, we’ll probably be seeing more and more outrageous situations, social, political, economic situations that we haven’t seen, that most of us have never seen in our whole lives.

We’ve lived through the last 40 years, 50 years or so, of relative peace, harmony, economic gain, and so forth throughout certainly United States, most of the western world, and a good portion of the world.

I think a lot of that’s going by the wayside.

This is just a sign of the times, it’s just my own perspective on things.

I’ll give it to you from this way, I host a show called, The-off-The Grid Biz Podcast.

The whole point of the show is to discuss being self-reliant.

Specifically, businesses that surround the Self Reliance industry.

So everything from raising, you know, teaching people to raise chickens, and all the way to emergency preparedness. I mean, we really run the gamut and we talk to people of all different political persuasions and everything else.

So it’s a great show you go check it out, offthegridbiz.com.

But the main point of it is really being self reliant and a huge piece, a huge chunk of our audience are people who are into preparedness of some sort.

No, we’re not talking hardcore prepper or necessarily, you need to go join a militia or anything like that. But just being prepared for just general emergencies.

It could be a natural disaster.

It could be something of more political nature, like somebody invading you.

I’ve got my tea here tonight, just to keep me warm. It’s a cold night on top of everything else.

It’s one of those things that is really important to me, that people at least have a minimum amount of preparedness for anything that could possibly go wrong, especially if you have family and so forth.

This was something we were trying to impress upon our family in Ukraine. And it’s really easy to fall into. This is the way things have always gone.

That normalcy bias, like they call it this is the way this is what’s normal. So more than likely, nothing else will happen because this is the way things have happened up until now.

If your life wasn’t shocked, from normalcy bias, during like, things like 911 It certainly should have been relatively shocked free from you through the COVID 19 pandemic.

I mean, there’s a lot of things we’re seeing now that we’ve never seen before.

You got to be ready for anything. And this isn’t a dig at all on our family in Ukraine or anybody else but

it’s a lesson to not get caught up so much with I got to pay attention my business I can’t can’t watch all that news and politics and stuff like that.

I understand that point of view, certainly, you have to have a separation, and you can’t be consumed by everything that’s happening and go into a panic at every moment.

But having systemized plans in place, for ongoing, you know, just in case stuff, just in case something bad happens here or there just in case this happens, you may not even plan for a foreign invasion or anything of that sort.

Just in case, we should have this on hand or that on hand or have a backup plan. In case things don’t go the way we want them to. So this is really a lesson for you personally.

And you’re saying, well, where’s the business lesson in this?

Well, the business lesson is, is don’t let your business get in the way of life. Because life will get in the way of your business once in a while.

You need to have a lot of your essentials handled. If you do that, you it’s a lot easier to kind of back away from paying attention to a lot of this stuff that you don’t necessarily need to pay attention to for now, if you’ve got backup plans.

If you’re relatively prepared. I’m hoping this means something to you. And if not just let it go. I will go on to something more lighter. Certainly tomorrow I’m hoping.

My book, 9 Ways to Amazon-Proof Your Business is what I use to sponsor the show. So if you’d like to get a free copy, go to AmazonProofBook.com. You can download a free copy there or you can purchase it at Amazon.

We’ll be back tomorrow. In the meantime, get out there and let the magic happen.