In this episode of The Agent of Wealth Podcast, host Marc Bautis is joined by Martin Salama, a life coach and author that specializes in helping people frustrated in their life quickly shift their mindset to uncover their greatness. The key to his success is he’s mastered the ability to Live Incredibly Full Everyday, which he turned into the acronym L.I.F.E. and created the Warriors L.I.F.E. coaching program based off of.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How to build emotional strength and keep your feelings from ruling your actions.
- What it means to Live Incredibly Full Everyday.
- Common triggers that provoke frustration or anger, and how to deal with them.
- How to maintain a positive outlook through daily habits and rituals.
- And more!
Resources:
Connectwithmartin.com | Bautis Financial: 8 Hillside Ave, Suite LL1 Montclair, New Jersey 07042 (862) 205-5000 | Schedule an Introductory Call
Disclosure: The transcript below has been edited for clarity and content. It is not a direct transcription of the full episode, which can be listened to above.
Welcome back to The Agent of Wealth Podcast, this is your host Marc Bautis. Today, I’m joined by a special guest, Martin Salama. Martin is a life coach and author that specializes in helping people frustrated in their life quickly shift their mindset to uncover their greatness. The key to his success is he’s mastered the ability to Live Incredibly Full Everyday, which he turned into the acronym L.I.F.E. and created the Warriors L.I.F.E. coaching program based off of.
Today, we will discuss how to stay positive no matter what’s pissing you off. Martin, welcome to the show.
Hi Marc, thank you so much. I love when people use that line – “how to stay positive no matter what’s pissing you off – it makes me laugh.
Yeah, it’s definitely a unique one… Can you start off by sharing a bit about your background, and why you decided to create The Warrior’s L.I.F.E. Code?
Creating The Warrior’s L.I.F.E. Code: Martin Salama’s Story
So, I’ve been working as a life coach for about 12 to 13 years now. Prior to that, I spent the majority of my life as a businessman, starting from my childhood up until my mid-forties. During that time, I was heavily involved in various business ventures.
In 2008, my wife and I embarked on a project to construct a multimillion-dollar tennis club and health center near the Jersey Shore. It took us five years of meticulous planning and preparation to reach a point where we were ready to begin construction. As anyone in the construction industry knows, it’s quite a long process. But, upon obtaining the necessary approvals from the city, we encountered a different challenge: securing funding.
In the years leading up to 2008, accessing loans was relatively easy… I refinanced my house three times between 2002-2007. However, fate had other plans. When I approached the bank in the summer of 2008 with all our approvals in hand, we were denied. The global financial crisis was unfolding, and lending institutions had tightened their belts. Just a month later, the financial world was rocked by the collapse of Bernie Madoff’s schemes and the subprime mortgage crisis, leaving me among the casualties.
I found myself in dire financial straits, unable to meet mortgage and car payments. I distinctly remember the day when my BMW was repossessed… Foreclosure proceedings on my house dragged on for years due to the backlog of cases in New Jersey. Amidst this turmoil, I sank into a deep depression that lasted for about a year. However, with time, therapy, and coaching, I began to see a glimmer of hope.
I reflected on my life and realized my passion for community projects and leadership roles. I had always been adept at rallying people around a cause, emphasizing their unique contributions to the greater good. This realization led me to pursue coach training, which I found serendipitously close to my home. Just as I was gearing up for this new chapter, my personal life took another unexpected turn — my wife expressed her desire for a divorce on our 24th wedding anniversary.
Despite this emotional blow, I resolved to continue with my coach training, viewing it as an opportunity for self-discovery and growth. It seemed as if the universe was nudging me towards the career path. Before coaching school began, I finished a recommended reading, The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Have you read that, Marc?
No, I haven’t.
Well, it’s a great book. One of the agreements — “Don’t take anything personally” — struck a chord, revealing my tendency to seek validation from others and internalize criticism. Through coaching and self-reflection, I confronted my people-pleasing tendencies and control-freak tendencies. I realized that my reactions stemmed from a fear of not being recognized or appreciated. This awareness empowered me to enact meaningful change in my life — not to salvage my marriage or appease others, but for my own well-being.
I learned to shift my perspective from one of victimhood to accountability, recognizing that I am responsible for my actions and reactions. Instead of lamenting, “Why is this happening to me?” I now affirm, “Everything happens through me.” This shift in mindset has been transformative, enabling me to take ownership of my life and chart a path forward with purpose and resilience.
How to Build Emotional Strength
So when you’re working with someone in a similar situation, how do you coach them through that?
It’s part of what goes on in my coaching. I have to first understand how each individual reacts to situations. Are they acting the right way? Are they reacting, or are they responding? That’s how it starts, by understanding that you have to control your emotions. I call it building your emotional strength. It doesn’t happen overnight, but that’s how you can stay positive no matter what’s pissing you off. It’s not what happens to you, it’s how you respond to what’s happening to you.
So, let’s say someone goes through a negative situation, like the examples you provided from your own life. How should they react?
What I’ve done is I’ve taken the word life, as you said earlier, I turned it into an acronym called Live incredibly full every day, which is my mantra. I wake up every day, I go, I’m going to live full today, and that means I’m going to be happy and I’m going to do things that are meaningful. Happiness is one thing – that’s self-care – but meaningful means selfless. So I tried to do that every day. So I took that same life acronym and turned it into another thing, which is the life code method to stay positive no matter what’s pissing you off. So first is L, listen to your inner voice and acknowledge your feelings. So acknowledge the emotions. There’s a difference between emotions and feelings. Emotions are that immediate thing you feel when somebody hits you with something. Anger, sadness, happiness. Those are all emotions, but the feelings are the deeper level of it.
For example, what kind of anger? Are you pissed off? Or are you just a little ticked off? Are you enraged? Or maybe somewhere in the middle where you’re just like, you’re disturbed by this and what are you going to do about it? So by naming these things, it helps you to get through it a little easier. So when you go, I identify your feelings. I have a chart, which I’ll be very happy to share with your audience. The end, we’ll give them a link to go there and get this chart along with a worksheet and they can write it down, oh, I’m angry. Well, what kind of anger are you? As we talked about and wrote it down. Now you are allowing your emotions to start to simmer instead of explode. And then what do you do? You find out why. Question. That’s the F. Find out why. Question your feelings. Basically cross examine yourself like you’re on the witness stand. Why are you feeling this? What is doing it? Is it hurting you? Is it helping you? What’s the reason behind it? And all that. And then E, engage in change and take action. That doesn’t necessarily mean right, that at the moment, but you may want to turn around and do it in a slow way. So this is a deep conversation that I’ve had with people I’m coaching with, and I go through it slowly with them and I start them off with something even simpler. You remember, mark, maybe you or your kids when they were going, if you have kids, I don’t know, I didn’t ask. When the kids went to school, they came home and the fireman was in school that day and they taught ’em fire safety. They said, kids remember three words in case of a fire: Stop, drop and roll.
I changed it to: Stop, think and respond. If someone’s going to get you upset and you know you’re going to explode, stop. Then think about it. You may even want to say, that’s interesting. I need to think about it in the beginning. As you’re trying to build that emotional strength, the thinking is, am I taking this personally? Is it going to affect me in the long term? Is it about me or is it about them? And then you respond instead of react, stop, think, and respond. I’d love to say that I woke up one day, figured this out, and then the next day I was good as gold, but it took practice. That’s what’s great about the things I do. And one of the things you mentioned, I recently came out with a book, it’s called Warrior to Warrior, WO Warrior to WA Warrior. I know this is not on video and my Brooklyn accidentally screwed it up. So I also have a card deck, and in the card deck it’ll show you that what the people can get is download what I talked about, the chart and the worksheet.
Common Triggers That Provoke Frustration or Anger, and How to Deal With Them
Are there any common triggers that you see in clients?
They’re usually around relationships, work and finances.
Money will put people on edge in a second, and what I’ve come to learn is that most anger, the root of the anger, has to do with fear, right? Someone’s afraid of something. So they manifest it in anger, and once they start working with me and understanding this concept, they realize that it’s the fear of what might happen that is intensifying their emotions and getting the anger and brought in. So it’s about allowing your emotions to happen to you. People think coaches, life coaches are all about getting you to stop being angry. No, it’s not about roses and happiness all the time, daffodils and all that stuff. It’s about how to respond, how to control your emotions instead of your emotions controlling you
Work in relationships. There’s probably definitely another person involved in money, finances or money. There may or may not be. Should the response be the same if there’s another person or let’s say there’s not and there’s something you have to deal with yourself.
That’s such a great question. I think the response should be the same because you’re having that conversation with yourself, right? It’s money. Oh my God, how am I going to take care of this? What am I going to do? Break it down. Think about the four others I just went through. One of the things I do with my clients, and I leave the financial part towards the end of my course because I always find that it’s a stronger trigger than some other things because they feel like they have no control over money. Whatever happens, I can’t control money. So what I do is I teach them about financial abundance, and some people look at me like when I first tell ’em this number, and they go, I can’t do that. And then, okay, we’ll build into it. I say, take 40% of all the money that’s coming in and put it to the side and put it into four different categories, which are big expenses, charity fun, and the last one is the golden egg (retirement).
And now when something comes up that you’re not expecting, for example, a few years ago I took my car in for an oil change and knew he was going to cost me 50 or a hundred dollars. The guy calls me, he goes, well, you need new brake pads and you need this and blah, blah, five, $600. The old me would’ve just lost it. The new me said, oh, let me look at my big expenses. I have enough money in there to cover it so it doesn’t take for me every day. Now some people say, I can’t do 40%. Okay, start with 20%, start with 10% and break it into four categories. Find a number that works for you, but build up to that.
How to Maintain a Positive Outlook Through Daily Habits and Rituals
Are there any daily habits or rituals that can contribute to maintaining a positive outlook? What do you recommend?
It starts by waking up every day and being grateful. It’s really that simple.
Every morning, I write down three things I’m grateful for. And then for myself, I pray, I go and I spend some prayer time, and then I say my mantra, which is I’m going to live incredibly full every day, and today’s the day. And every day I say that. And now I go out looking for opportunities. Instead of looking for problems, I look to appreciate things instead of complaining about things. And when things come up, I go, okay, what is the way I usually act in this situation? Do I say, oh my God, the world is coming to an end or Can I figure it out? And then it’s changing the mindset from lack to abundance by saying, instead of saying, I can’t, you say I can, or if you can’t get that, I can yet. How can I? It’s like, oh, I can’t afford this. Well, how can I afford it? Your mind is any other muscle in your body. You’ve got to change the muscle memory of added and move from complaining to appreciating.
I know you recently launched a new program called the Seven Figure Abundant Entrepreneur. Maybe can you talk a little bit about that and kind of how some of the stuff we’ve talked about ties into a little bit of that?
Absolutely. Like I mentioned, I’ve been a coach for 12, 13 years, and many of those years I was always looking for a program that would get me to being a seven figure entrepreneur and coaching and being able to get my message out there in a big way and make a big impact. So I would sign up for these programs that would say, oh, it’s done with you done for you. And at the end of the day, what they really were, they were a done to you program. They had you pay everything upfront. And then they said, okay, well here’s the videos, here’s the things. Go do it. And I would get through it, and I was like, but I don’t know how to do Facebook ads. Oh, you’ll figure it out. Or I don’t know how to build a website. Oh, go figure it out.
It’s not that simple. Plus it’s spending all my time doing things I don’t want to do. So over the last six months or a year, I put together a program, and I launched it about two or three months ago where I show people how to do a done for you and a done with you program. It’s built on what I call a risk reversal strategy. 87.5% of your investment into my program doesn’t come until you hit financial benchmarks. So if you are not hitting those benchmarks, I’m not getting paid. So how motivated am I to get you over the finish line?
Yeah, so it’s almost like a guarantee basically that
It is, it’s a guarantee.
What are some of the areas that you focus on with someone and does someone have to be, could they be starting out or is it someone who’s already an entrepreneur and this is a way to kind of get them moving forward?
Yeah, it could be either one. It’s better if it’s somebody who’s got the entrepreneurial spirit, entrepreneurial understanding and has the basis of what they want to do. But even if that’s not the case, we can help you build it out. So it starts out, and here, mark, you have such a fantastic idea of a show here, the Agent of Wealth podcast, right? So the mindset for a coach, let’s just use them, or a typical entrepreneur to get to a six figure business, takes a good system,
Definitely.
But to get to a seven figure business, you have to have the right mindset. You have to say, I have belief in myself. I have belief in what I’m selling or I’m sharing, and I have belief in those around me that are helping me get there. But to get to seven and beyond seven figures, you have to be scalable. That means finding the right people to do the right things in your business. What I call from a great book I’ve read called Who Not How, not How means if you wake up in the morning and you go, how am I going to get this done and how am I going to get that done? Doing stuff that you are not qualified or really want to do, you’re wasting your energy. For example, let’s say you’re worth $200 an hour and you spend five hours trying to figure out how to build a website that you don’t even know how to do.
That’s a thousand dollars you’ve wasted. Imagine if you went out and found somebody that can do it and instead of doing it, you somebody who can do it for you, and they can do it at 50 or a hundred dollars an hour. Let’s just use those numbers, and they do it in two hours. So instead of a thousand, you spend 200, right? So that’s the concept that becomes scalable. You find the people around you to do the things that you don’t want to do or don’t know how to do. It’s Robert Kiyosaki, Rich Dad, Poor Dad.
That one I’ve read.
Right. He says, in my business, I want to be the dumbest person in the room. And I say, the people that know how work for the people that know why that doesn’t minimize the people that know how. That’s their zone of genius. I want you to stay in your lane, stay in your zone of the lane of genius. For me, it’s coaching. I want to be coaching 95% of the week, and I want other things to be happening by the people that are around me helping me get there. So that’s what my program does. It shows you how to get there, blueprint, step-by-step templates to go step by step to get to the seven figures within two years, really less.
That sounds great. Alright, Martin, that sums up all the questions I have for you today. Thank you for providing us with so much valuable information about mindset and positivity. Where can our listeners go to learn more about your coaching program and get in touch with you?
So I’ve made it very simple: Go to Connectwithmartin.com. You can scroll down and find the free gifts, and you can find the life acronym that we talked about, the life methods so that you can take care of no matter what’s pissing you off. There’s also a button there that you could click on for a free consultation with me. If you want to learn more about my program that I just discussed with you, we could talk about it there. And soon I’ll have a link to a four hour workshop that I’m going to deep dive into showing the entire program. And if you walk away at the end of it and you can do it on your own, great. But if you want to get there faster, you do it with me, but I’ll show it all to you. It’s not one of those webinars where I’m going to tease you. I’m going to give it all to you and you can have, if you stay till the end, you’ll even get all the PowerPoint slides.
Great. We’ll link to all that in the resources section of the show notes. Thanks again, Martin. And thank you to everyone who tuned in to today’s episode. Don’t forget to follow The Agent of Wealth on the platform you listen from and leave us a review of the show. We are currently accepting new clients, if you’d like to schedule a 1-on-1 consultation with our advisors, please do so below.
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