Episode 137: The Traveler's Gift with Andy Andrews

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Welcome to another episode of the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. My name is Bradley Hamner, your host. In today's episode, we have Andy Andrews. He's hailed by the New York Times reporter as someone who has quietly become one of the most influential people in America. Andy, he's an internationally known speaker and author. Among his New York Times bestsellers are the classic novels The Traveler's Gift and The Noticer. Leaders from top organizations around the world, including 4 US presidents, interesting enough, regularly seek him out as a trusted resource for unlocking extraordinary results. If you have not read The Traveler's Gift and The Noticer, I highly suggest you pick it up. And I think you'll see why in my conversation with with Andy and—

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Andy Andrews, welcome to the Club Capital Leadership Podcast, buddy.

How are you doing, Bradley Hamner? I'm honored to be here.

Oh man, I'm doing awesome. And it's great to have you. So for those of you that have not read any of Andy's books, I just, I cannot recommend them enough. But for people that don't know your story, And can you just take us back and tell a little bit about your journey, about your— the way you've traveled, you know, your background and origin story to get to where you are today, and a little bit about some of the things that you do?

Sure. I, I, uh, lived kind of a normal life till I was 19, and my, my parents died that year. My mom died of cancer, my dad was killed in a car accident same year, so Tough, tough time. But I've always had the ability to take a bad situation and make it worse. And I did. I made some bad moves and ended up literally homeless before that was even a word. You know, 35, 40 years ago, nobody was talking about homeless people. That wasn't a term anybody used. But I was sleeping under a pier on the Gulf Coast and in and out of people's garages, which is not safe or smart. But I did. And it was there that I met this old guy late one night under my pier. Scared me to death. But he was this old guy. We saw him in and out of town. We didn't know where he went when he left town. We didn't know where he stayed when he was in town. Didn't know how old he was. You know, you look at him and go, is he 80 or 180? We weren't really sure. And he, you know, we didn't know what was in that suitcase he carried around. We called him Jones, not Mr. Jones, just Jones. And he called himself a noticer. He said, you know, when God was passing out talents, I didn't get the cool ones. I can't run fast. I can't sing great. But I notice little things that make a difference in people's lives. And so this was the first guy to really tell me the truth about myself, to get me going in a direction. He started me reading. I'd always been kind of a Sports Illustrated, Field and Stream kind of person. And he got me reading books, actual, like biographies. And I don't know why I thought I hated biographies. Probably because somebody in school made me read them. But I started reading. He gave me 3 to start with. It was Winston Churchill, George Washington Carver, and Will Rogers. And I read the Churchill one first and And I got hooked on them. I just got hooked on the stories. And I ended up reading over 200 of these biographies. You know, when he gave them to me, I said, "Biographies?" And he said, "No, these are adventure stories. They're mysteries and romances and thrillers, and they're true." And I said, "Oh." He said, "Yeah, they're from the library. When you get through with them, take them back." And So I would take them back and get more. And I ended up reading over 200 biographies of these happy, successful, influential, great people. I used to call them great people. But when I say great people, I always think, you know, do they do biographies of any other kind of people? It's not a loser section on Amazon, is there? But I would— I would read these books and I began to graph things that these people were or had or the way they acted. And my big question then, Bradley, living on the beach, was, is life just a lottery ticket or is there something you can do? I, you know, I'm reading about these people and thinking, were these people just born this way? Or is it something they did? And if it was something they did, what'd they do and how long did it take them to do it? And I finally identified 7 things. And that's what I called them at first, just things, and turned out to be principles. These were not 7 habits or 7 characteristics. These were principles that these people had put in their lives and that they harnessed and used. But it was curious to me that I didn't think I could find anybody that I knew that had had all 7 of them. There's like most of these people, well, they had all 7, but it's like they didn't harness all 7. It's like somebody knew they had 3 of them and they really used those 3. But with the passage of time, we could read about their lives and see they also had the other 4. They just weren't dominant in their life because they seem to be unaware of them. But I, I began to think, what happens to somebody who knows all 7? You know, what happens to that life? What happens to a kid whose parents know all 7 of these principles and, and can teach these 7 principles? What happens to that kid's life? And long story short, those are the 7 principles that, that I put in my life to start yanking myself out of that situation. And, and Years later, they became the 7 decisions in The Traveler's Gift, which was my first novel, which is a story about a family going through a tough time, and the dad gets to travel through time, meeting with 7 historical figures who are also having a tough time of their own. He gets to be with Anne Frank in the annex and Harry Truman while Truman's determining how to end the war, and he gets to be with King Solomon, when Solomon says, bring me the sword and I'll tell you whose baby this is. And each of these 7 historical figures give this man a different decision that if he puts it in his life, if he puts this principle in his life, things will change for him. And so that's the basic story of The Traveler's Gift. And, and I also wrote a book called The Noticer about the old man. And so those are, those are 2 of the books I've written anyway.

When did you, when did you realize that you had the gift to be able to take the things that you had learned from all those biographies and be able to put it as an author?

When did you really, when did you begin to kind of realize that?

Well, honestly, I probably began to realize that I had some kind of gift for it after about the fourth book, because You know, when I wrote The Traveler's Gift, I just knew I had something to say. I just knew I had a story, you know, in my mind wrapped around these 7 decisions that I wanted to tell. But, you know, I was not the best writer in my senior English class. And so I wasn't sure how to write. You know, I have people ask me all the time, they say, you know, how do you— I would like to write a book, but I don't really know how. And my answer is, yeah, well, John Grisham didn't know how until he wrote one, you know, because I certainly didn't know how. And it was a lot of trial and error. But I— and, you know, when The Traveler's Gift hit, The Traveler's Gift was Good Morning America's Book of the Month. And so it really hit. And then a year later, they named it one of the 5 books you should read in your lifetime. So that book really hit. And I was like a rookie pitcher with a 1-year contract that had just won 25 games. And so the publishing company signed me to a 3-book deal. And it terrified me because I'm thinking, I don't know how I wrote the first one. And so it took me a while to ease into the fact that I could do this. Yeah, but to this day, I can't diagram sentences. I can't tell you the subject or the predicate or the object or the preposition or what. Yeah, I just know when it's right.

So, uh, it really is. I mean, no pun on this, it really is a gift, right? It's a gift. And I think it speaks to the quality of the storytelling, right? Just the quality of the story that people can put themselves in that frame of mind. Like, you know, I really enjoy reading business books and like Patrick Lencioni, the way that he'll write his books and fables, you feel like you begin to relate to the characters, you know, in the story, just as many, so many people can relate to the character in the story, David Ponder, right, that you write about in the book. And that they can kind of see themselves in that. I'm curious, what are some of the— in your— since writing the book and publishing, what are some of the stories that you've heard from business leaders and business owners about how they have been able to internalize the book? And as you said, put some of those things in place, not just read the book and be like, oh, it's a great book, but actually do something with it. And the transformation that they've seen.

Well, The Traveler's Gift, it's my best-selling book. And then it's followed closely by The Noticer. And both of those books are used extensively by organizations, by companies, by teams. In fact, I was just Thinking the other day, I rarely have anybody come up to me to talk to me about The Traveler's Gift that doesn't say, "I buy them for all my clients," or, "I bought them for everybody in my office." And so it makes me think, you know, the book's sold several million copies, but it's probably only a couple of hundred people that have bought them, you know, because they're evidently giving them all away. But But the, you know, I've seen there's some national championship teams that have used it, some, a bunch of companies and tons of small businesses and a World Series team, a Super Bowl winning team. You know, prisons use it, which is amazing to me. And And I think that it lends itself— the Traveler's Gift especially lends itself to going a chapter at a time and discussing that particular aspect of it. You know, we started with 7 of my books. We started what we call a life skills courses. And, and so we've got different coaches that, like, one coach coaches the Traveler's Gift, one coaches the, the Heartmender, one coaches the Noticer, one's the Butterfly Effect. And, and, um, and so these are 3, 6, and 8-week courses that, that are done by Zoom. And so we got another lineup going, and people come in and discuss this online, but it's the same thing that can be done with it in a business setting or in a family setting or a church setting. Yeah. That these, you know, these decisions, these principles can be discussed, and And there's a lot of depth to these principles, Bradley Hamner, that I didn't really expect when I wrote the book. You know, I wrote The Traveler's Gift 20 years ago. And it's amazing to me because sometimes I will still do these 7 decisions seminars. And it's shocking to me that when I'm talking about these 7 decisions, most of what I'm talking about, I learned after I wrote the read the book, or after I wrote the book. And it really just kind of plays on what wisdom is supposed to be. I, um, you know, I always prayed for wisdom because I thought I was supposed to, and so I did. But I didn't really have a, a great understanding of that concept of what I was after or how I would know I got it, or But I saw it, a definition of wisdom one day that really resonated with me, and it was a deeper understanding of principle. And it was curious to me that it was a deeper understanding of principle because, you know, if it was a deep understanding of principle, that's a target that you could hit. You know, you could hit it and go, okay, I have a deep understanding of principle. I'm good. I'm wise. But a deeper understanding of principle, when you get to a deeper understanding of principle, where do you go from there? Deeper, I guess.

Yeah.

And, and so it's amazing how many, how many folds there are to these principles that are just life-changing. And principles work every time. I mean, when's, when's the last time you had something in your hands that you just knew it works every time? And that's what principles are. And principles work whether you know them or not. You know, the principle of gravity was working long before the apple ever fell on Newton's head. But once it, it did, and once he understood it, then we as a society were free to harness that principle to create airline flight and suspension bridges and any number of things. The principle of gravity helps sway over. Well, you know, there's principles of life and parenting and business and finances and achievement, there's principles floating around out there too. And so why shouldn't we learn them and harness them to create the future of our choosing? Because it's like you've heard, ignorance of the law is no excuse. Well, ignorance of principle is no excuse. Ignorance of principle does not get you away from consequences of violating that principle just because you didn't know it.

Yeah.

And so it really puts an impetus on us to search and understand.

You know, I think that just you saying that you yourself over 20 years, you wrote the book These were principles you uncovered to admit that over the years you've come to a deeper and deeper and deeper understanding yourself of that versus, no, I got the principles figured out now. I just got to kind of pass them on to everybody else. I think that, um, just because so many of our listening audience are business owners and they're leading teams and they're, they're leaders in their community, you know, there's this idea that like business is a bathrobe, like one size fits all for everybody, right? But there's just so much depth and nuance that's required in business to say, yeah, okay, so I get the general idea, but like I've got to go a lot deeper on that. And I think that that's kind of what you're saying, like these timeless principles to say it works every time. I love that, and I love the fact that you Distinguish deep understanding versus deeper understanding. So I'm curious, um, I want to ask you around— I think you have one of the very first things you mentioned is you've always had the ability to turn a very, very difficult situation, make it worse, but then you've kind of pulled it out, right, um, and extracted some principles I, we are, I said this on an earlier podcast, but we're coming out of an unprecedented time. We're in an unprecedented time for everyone, but leaders especially, like leading through this and then leading out of this crisis. And then, you know, so we're talking about pandemic and we're talking about, oh my goodness, political, you know, war that's happening in Ukraine. There's supply chain issues and there's gas prices, inflation. It's just a really challenging time. That is the facts for sure. How have you been able to help people, business leaders, to guide through this time of turmoil and uncertainty?

Right. Well, you know, it is with a process that I really got a deeper understanding of. And that is perspective. You know, perspective is the only thing.

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It's the only thing that can totally change the results without changing any of the facts. Hmm. You know, if I, if I ask, if you and I went out and asked somebody, so what is perspective? Most people would say, well, perspective, it's like how you see something. It's how you see the glass. Is the glass half full? Is the glass half empty? It's how you see that glass. And that's true, but it's not the truth. Because the truth of the matter is that the glass is what it is. I mean, if you look at the level in the glass, it's not half full, it's not half empty, it's just whatever it is. Okay. But and so, so it's not how— so perspective, your perspective on it is not how you see it. It's how you choose to see it. And, and, and how you choose to see it makes all the difference because we all know what happens to half-empty people, people who see something as half empty. It's like there's a fact. Here's what's happening. And so let's say that one person— and I'm going to show you how perspective is the only thing that can change the results without changing any of the facts. So you got this situation that's happening, and this one person looks at it and goes, well, this is the worst thing that could ever happen. This, this is, this is just the worst thing that could have, could have ever happened. Well, but by declaring that and looking at that that way, what do people do when they are confronting the worst thing that could have happened? They, they're, they're stunned. They, they're, they're still. They don't, they don't move. They're depressed. They don't. You know, they lay on the couch. They give up. They decide they are going to have to wait it out. And they are going to have to wait it out inside by themselves. And when you look at a person like that, that is the kind of person that does not get hired first. You know, a glass half empty person, you know, this is not who we are looking for to hire. This is not who we're looking to promote to leadership. This is not somebody we're going to follow uphill into machine gunfire. You know, this is the glass half empty person. This is a person who's not going to receive even close to an equal share of opportunities because they've retreated. They're by themselves. And opportunities generally come from other people, from situations. And because they've isolated, because they've, they've, you know, they're not receiving the opportunity, you know, it became what they believed became true. It really did turn out to be the worst thing that could have happened for them. But then you got another person who's looking at this and going, okay, I've been in situations before where I would have never chosen them in a million years, and yet 2 years after, I look back and go, thank God that happened, because we wouldn't be here. I would have never chosen that, but look at what's happened. And so, so hey, this, this could be, this could be the best thing that ever happened. We just gotta, you know, we, we have a history of, of dealing with change. We have a history of being flexible. And so this could be the best thing that ever happened. We're just gonna keep our eyes open and see which way we go with this. And so that person you know, remains optimistic. And so with the world seemingly falling apart, people are gravitating toward people who can maintain an emotional IQ, a high emotional IQ. And so, so that person is, is, you know, around other people, that person is, you know, glass half full people are the first people we hire. They're the first people we promote to leadership. And those people, because there are so many people that gravitate to them, when there's an opportunity to be had, they're hearing about it first. And so it really does turn out to be the best thing that could have ever happened for them.

Hmm.

And so perspective is a, is a huge tool if you understand it. If you understand that it's not how you see something, it's how you choose to see it.

Man, that is so good. You know, when I look back on the worst things that have ever happened in my life or in my business, I always— in the moment, I do not think, boy, I cannot wait to tell this story in 2 years. Like, there's no way. I'm not, I'm not saying that. But looking back on it, I think, man, I'm so thankful for the blessing of that. Because I became a better person along the way. And I don't think I would have learned those lessons if it wasn't for that. The things that I have done, the poor leadership that I had, the way that I would lead the team at times and the way that I would handle emotional decisions and all of those. I mean, like, it only made me to be able to look back and say, man, yeah, I was a really poor leader then, but now I know exactly who I need to be at this point. Does that make sense?

Yeah, makes total sense. I mean, I look back at, you know, being under the pier. I wouldn't have chosen that in a million years. I still wouldn't. But if that had not happened, I wouldn't be here talking to you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Where—

so let's go through for somebody who has not read the book. Let's go through kind of quickly the 7 decisions, those 7 principles. Because I think we obviously want to just at least cover those and then we can kind of have a— have them back and forth. So can we just kind of go high level on those 7?

We, we can. But I, you know, I got to tell you, it, it distresses me to do it. And the reason is because if you, if you just hear them, you go, yeah, okay, I've heard that, you know, because if you don't know, if you don't gather the deep understanding and I'll give you, I'll give you an example. The first decision is the buck stops here. And so that is— that's responsibility. And, and I can tell you real quickly, there's responsibility, there's seeking wisdom. Number 3 is I'm a person of action. Number 4 is I will have a decided heart. Number 5 is today I will choose to be happy. Number 6 is I'll greet each day with a forgiving spirit. And number 7 is, I will persist without exception. But to give you an idea of how, you know, if you, if you say responsibility, people go, yeah, okay, I hear that every day.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, I, okay, I got it. But in reality, I don't think many people understand responsibility because I think that if we understood responsibility, we would have an economy it was kicking on all gears and we would have relationships that were lasting longer than they seemed to last. See, there seems to be two extremes on this thought of responsibility. You got one side that goes, "Until they accept responsibility for where they are, they're never going to be able—" And you got the other side going, "But it's not their fault. It's not their fault. Don't you understand how they grew up?" And in reality, neither are correct because responsibility doesn't have anything to do with blaming people for where they are or for where they've ended up or, you know, responsibility at its core is about hope and control. And who among us doesn't want to have hope for a greater future we control. Who doesn't want that? Okay, but if you blame your mother, or you blame the weather, or you blame your neighbors, or you blame your wife, or you blame the president, or, you know, there's not a lot of hope there because there's zero control. I mean, I don't know about you, Bradley Hamner, I can't control my wife. What are we going to do? You know, if it's my— if it's my wife's fault, what are we going to do about her? And, and, you know, if you've ended up in a horrible place and, and you don't like where you are, and it— and if you decide it really is the fault of the President of the United States of America, whoever that person is, what— you know, you might as well jump off a cliff.

What are you—

what are you going to do about the president? Today. What could we possibly do? And so, but the idea is, if you could look in the mirror and say, I've had some crazy things happen in my life, I've had some tragedies happen, and I couldn't control any of them. But I have made choices in response to those crazy things that have led my life right down a path to a place that I don't then if you can believe that you can make choices that would lead your life down a path to a place that you don't like, that's great news. Because if you can understand and believe you can make choices that'll lead you to a place you don't like, doesn't it just make logical sense you could also make choices that would lead you to a place you do like? So the game becomes make better choices, and that's where the next one comes into seeking wisdom.

You know, it leads me to thinking about your other book, It Is the Little Things, right?

It really is little things. I did that book because I, I would hear so much, you know, don't sweat the small stuff, don't sweat the small stuff. And one of the things that Jones told me when I was a young man, he said, you know, you hear that, don't sweat the small stuff.

You better.

And I said, really? And he said, buddy, it's all small stuff. They're right about that. But what you got to understand is that wherever your life ends up. I mean, whether, you know, if your life ends up as a masterpiece or your life ends up as a disaster, either way, it will have been put together one tiny brushstroke at a time.

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It's those little things that matter. You know, if you look at one of the smallest things that I can Remember this in the book. In recent history, remember Michael Phelps, his 8th gold medal in Beijing. Speedo was offering him $1 million if he broke Mark Spitz's record. Mark Spitz had 7 gold medals. If you get 8, $1 million check on top of all the other stuff, you know, and And he did get that 8th gold medal. But most people forget that he won that by 1/100th of a second. That, that's less time than it takes to blink your eye. That's less time than it takes a hummingbird to flap its wings once, less time than a lightning strike. But the most interesting thing about that is most likely that 2/100 of a second that he won that by was probably figured in there somewhere, not even in the race. I mean, was that an extra cup of coffee that morning? Was that an extra hour of sleep two nights before? Was it a thought? You know, physicists are beginning to believe that thoughts have mass. And so, you know, you could see how on the stand, if he's there on the stand, or just churning through the water, and one thought of, this is not going to work. I mean, that could have taken away 2/100 of a second. And the ability to, to control that thought process and choose what he thought. But it's a little thing. What a great—

I'm so glad you brought that up because I, you know, I forgot about that. And what a great illustration for decisions and choices that we make in our life every day. I've kind of mentioned on some other episodes that in March I had, uh, for the past year, so from the previous year, we had done some renovations on our house. And so I'm tall, I'm fairly tall, so I can carry some weight without people really knowing that I've gained some weight. So I'd gained like 15 pounds and nobody really knew, but my pants knew. Okay. And, um, 41, and so this was the first time where it's like, oh man, this is really like I, I can't just, you know, work this off. And I remember that first week, I kind of rededicated myself to it. I ended up hiring an accountability, like a trainer online to do it. But the reason I'm saying this is because I ended up just using simply MyFitnessPal to count, to track my calories. And what the reason I'm telling the story is because I realized that it was the small times that I would grab a Clif Bar and I would grab something else. And this is not about the calories, but it's everything about the calories. It was 400 calories there, and it was fine because if you looked at what I was eating, I wasn't really eating that bad. But I would just grab something here and it was 175. And over a longer period of time, when I wasn't doing the things I needed to do, those decisions, those choices added up to, you know, me gaining weight. That happened to be a fitness example for me. And so I had to start making better choices in the things that I did or did not eat along the way. And even a couple weeks ago, I made the decision to give up alcohol. Like, I just stopped drinking alcohol. I don't know if I'm going to do it permanently, but I would drink, you know, I enjoyed a glass of wine at night or have a beer on the weekends. And I just said, you know what, I just don't, I just don't think I'm going to do it right now. And that's been one of the best decisions. Again, we'll see how long it takes, but that's kind of how I interpret also just thinking about it a little bit differently about what Michael Phelps, uh, went through. What a great illustration.

And what that also does by just saying, hey, I'm not going to do that for a while, it, it proves your discipline to yourself. You know, you know that you can. And if I can choose not to do this I can choose not to do other things, and I can choose to do things I've been avoiding. It's just, you know, I, I think life is a process of demonstrating to ourselves what we're capable of.

Don't you think that we, a lot of times, we go through life and we, we almost— I think for me, like, I, I wonder, you know, am I going to get out of life everything that I was actually capable of? Like, for instance, do I reach my potential? Right? Do I actually reach my potential? Or— because I want to be able to see, like, what can I actually possibly do? Because I don't want to get to the end of my life and go, man, I had way more in the tank.

You know, here is, uh, here's the first— one of the first conversations I have with a new client. And that is the best piece of advice I've ever gotten in my life. And it was from the old man, from the noticer. And that piece of advice is, you can't believe everything you think. And that kind of went over my head when I first heard it. But what I understand that to mean now, the best way I can explain it is, have you Have you ever known something? I mean, you knew it and you could argue it and you could win the argument every time. And then you found out 6 months later, a year later, oh, well, that wasn't exactly right. Or gosh, my information was a little incomplete on that. Well, of course, you know. And so if you've ever done that, does the possibility exist that something you know now Your information might be incomplete. And you would go, well, Andy, of course, something I know now, my information might be incomplete. I agree. But the point is, we don't know what that is, do we? Yeah. And we don't know how many subjects that may cover in our lives. Yes. And so the idea that, you know, things can be true and not be the truth. Because the truth is a foundation. The truth is, that's bottom of the pool. That's as far as you can go. But things can be true along the way. And the biggest danger to someone fulfilling their potential is that they've stopped at what is true. And it's particularly dangerous for people who are doing well, who are in the first or second or third place or something, because they're looking around and they haven't got any much to compare to, compared to them. And, you know, the danger is that they stop because when you, when you, when you're dealing with what is true, it's working. It's producing. You have an answer that's producing, and evidently it's producing as well or more, you know, better than anybody else. And so, you know, when you get the answer, you don't keep searching for an answer. You know, when you get an answer, you don't keep going deeper. Yeah. And so what happens is that people get hung up on what is true and leave So much potential because the biggest danger to your potential is not what you don't know. The biggest danger to your potential is what you know for sure. Oh, man.

That's so good. That is so good. I wish I could pull this quote out that is similar to that. Now, I just heard it 3 months ago, is that we're willing to challenge the things that we believe except for the things we really believe, and we never, never begin to think to question those. And it's something like that. I think I might have butchered it, but you get the general idea, right? It's along those same lines. I'll question— I'm willing to hold loosely in my hand these things that I believe, but then the things I really believe, I'm not willing to question those. I'll give you, for business people out there, give a kind of an example for me about within the last year, my thoughts of this have totally changed where I was 5 years ago. And that was, I believed as the founder, you should really hold on to equity of a business. You should absolutely hold on to that and don't just give away that equity. And slowly but surely, I started to see examples in small business and even in big businesses. Elon Musk doesn't own 50% of Tesla. I think he owns like 30. Warren Buffett owns 15-20% of Berkshire Hathaway. Those are big examples. And then there were other examples of small businesses where, you know, uh, they brought somebody in, they gave them 20% equity in the company, and the pie went— literally doubled or tripled. And I started to think, you know what, I don't know if I have that right. I think that at the end of the day, people want a piece of the pie. And I've changed my thought process on that. Now, you don't want to dull it out just throw it around. But that's an example of me totally seeing that differently than I did years ago.

Yeah, amazing. And I think the way you see it now is more accurate than the way you saw it years ago. Obviously you do too.

Yeah, for sure. Andy, this has been great. Tell people, what are you doing now? Tell us about— are you working on another book? Tell us about— how you work with people, somebody wants to reach out to you.

Tell us about that. Well, I'm always working on another book. Our biggest thing going right now is wisdomharbor.com. It's a connector for businesses, for families, for schools. But wisdomharbor.com, you got to see it to believe it, and you can subscribe to it. An entire family subscription for a year is, is less than half a tank of gas. And so we've put this just rock bottom because this is helping so many people, is connecting parents and kids and grandparents and grandkids and grandparents and adult children and bosses and employees and And it's a connector, you know, I mean, if you're looking in business, if you're looking to grow your company, if you look at what traditional businesses do, look another way. Okay. Because one of the ways that I have explained to people what's happening. If you look at the 5 hours a day, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, 8 hours a day that people come into work, well, that's the time the boss is in control. That's the time you kind of— that's what time you tell them what to do. And it's not really 8 hours a day, it's really 7 hours a day because they're having lunch. And it's not really 7 hours a day, it's really 6.5 hours a day because, you know, they got to send their funny YouTube videos to their friends and text each other. And so say 6.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, and that's in a little oval right there. And if you look inside that, that is the time they have to produce, okay? And their production is based on what they believe, how they think, how they behave, their understanding of relationships and teamwork. And so, a boss will look at that and instinctively know that to create more production, I've got to increase their level of thinking, increase their belief. I've got to— I've got to increase their ability to communicate. I've got to grow their understanding of relationships and grow their understanding of teamwork. And so, but what most companies do is they'll spend like this little 1 hour a month or 1 hour a quarter to bring a speaker in or to tell them something. And the challenge with that is even if it's good stuff, You got people who are going home and there's 17.5 hours over here, 5 days a week, and then 24 on Saturday and 24 on Sunday. And people are so affected by the culture of the 17.5 and the 24 on Saturday and Sundays that even if they change a little bit at work, they go home and they're so inundated with that culture by the time they get back to work, It's the same person. And so, companies have a hard time increasing the level of their employees with what they're doing. And so, the only answer is to engage people in this other time. And yet, the challenge is you can't tell them what to do in that other time. And what has to happen is they've got to to buy into it themselves. They've got to enjoy it. It's got to have some benefit that they see beyond the work. And, you know, most people, their important thing behind their spiritual life is their family. And so, what Wisdom Harbor does is it provides this stuff out of work that families can watch together that families can do together, that schools can use. You know, Wisdom Harbor is a web portal, has 20-something docks in the harbor, and these are like, "Betcha Didn't Know Dock," "How Do I Dock," a musician's dock, a writer's dock, you know, all different kind of docks, and the material, the content is delivered by Grammy winners, bestselling authors, comedians, coaches, master chefs. And it's delivered in 6- and 7-minute little loops. And so they can pick and choose. Not every— not all of it's for you. But gosh, there's enough of it. You know, Dave Ramsey, we just— Dave just put— answered in the question and answer doc. Dave had a couple of questions answered in there. And there's, you know, in the question-answer doc, you can click on parenting, on leadership, on community. And if you click on parenting, it'll say, do you want children, adolescents, teens, or adult children? And then that goes into another. And, you know, we've got CMA Songwriter of the Year, Jimmy Urie, the guy who wrote, uh, "I Drive Your Truck." He wrote "I Call Mama" for Tim McGraw, and he's doing guitar lessons on Wisdom Harbor. Awesome. And, and so it, it's, it's pretty cool. And I use that extensively. That's wisdomharbor.com. And I use that extensively with, um, with my coaching business, which is creating measurable results. And, and I, I, I help businesses. What I tell people is I, I help you compete in a way your competition doesn't know a game is going on. And I figured out some stuff a number of years ago that I started applying to a few select clients, and I knew I had to have incredible results. I couldn't just get by with regular results because I, I'm a nobody, you know. And so, you know, it's like if Peyton Manning works with you and you only increase 15%, then wow, Peyton Manning worked with us. But if I work with you, you only increase 15%, you probably could have done it by yourself, right? And so I knew I had to have companies doubling and tripling. And, and so we have figured out a way that, that we're guiding people to that. We have, um, a mortgage company that, that doubled in their first year we worked with them 7.5 years ago. They were $5.4 billion and they went to $11.2 in a year. It had been 19 years to $5.4 and went to $11.2 in a year, and that's 7 years ago, and they just closed last year at $72.5 billion in 7 years. Um, got a boat company, OneWater Marine, that's, uh, up 400% in a year and a half. Uh, a bank that has been, uh, stuck at one level on loans for years and years, and they've just about doubled that now, and from $2-point-something billion to over $4 And the coolest thing is, well, we have a bunch of big companies. We figured out how to scale it and how to be able to help small businesses. So, we've started working with some small businesses now where it's affordable, you know, because at first, at first, I couldn't figure out how I was going to help anybody do this other than these big companies. But now we've got some great successes with small businesses and it's a lot of fun. I love it. I love helping people win. I love it.

I love it. And I love that you say creating measurable results and then you just went and gave all the measurable, gave examples of measurable results. The only thing that you've said in this entire hour we've been together is that I disagree with is you said that I'm a nobody, and that is not true. You're definitely more— well, nobody. You're kind. Yeah.

And people can, can get up with this on andyandrews.com. And if you put, you know, put your, your email address in there, uh, you'll get, you'll get my podcast. It's not as good as yours, but we have one, and we call it The Professional Noticer. Observations and answers. And so, but definitely check out wisdomharbor.com and become a part of that because that's just, it's a one-of-a-kind thing. There's nothing else out there like it.

That's a no-brainer. We'll put the link in our show notes and also in our email that we send out to our listeners as well. Andy, it's been an honor. I hope to have you back on Kamoan in the future.

Yeah, bud, I'll be glad to. Bradley, thank you for having me. It's an honor, and we're lucky to have you out there digging and understanding because that helps us understand faster. Thank you for what you're doing. Thank you.

I think that sometimes I have a hard time trying to figure out what are the major takeaways. I don't think I have a hard time this one. Number one is when he distinguished between deep understanding versus deeper understanding. That hit with me. Number 2, whenever he talked about perspective— how do you choose to see it? And then number 3 that really stood out is true, something that is true versus the truth. I've never heard that before. That was a big deal. And I guess actually I'll give you a bonus one. Whenever he said that Jones told him You know that when people say don't sweat the small stuff, you better sweat the small stuff. And it is, it is the little things. And I think it's like in that tension, right? Um, I've heard many of you listen to the Craig Groeschel Leadership Podcast. I love Craig Groeschel, would love to have him come on the podcast at some point. I love his episodes. He is just a dynamic speaker, incredible leader, some somebody who I'd I just don't miss one of his episodes. And, you know, he talks about Gitmo, good enough to move on. And the idea is, can we get it to 80% and then move on instead of wallowing in perfectionism? And then somebody else that I look up to, who I've kind of referred to in the past, um, who I'm not friends with, but just I kind of see from afar and consider them a mentor even though they don't, they don't know me. Is they talk about, hey, it's the difference between like the gulf between good and great is massive. And then the gulf between great and excellent is even further. And so I wonder in the tension sometimes of where do certain things fall, right? Don't sweat the small stuff. You know, what is the saying? Penny rich and dollar foolish, as an example. Or pennies smart and dollar foolish, whatever it is, you get the point. And so sometimes I just, I, I end up kind of going back to, I think it's settling in the tension of that, of understanding that these small decisions and these small choices that we make ultimately add up. And I thought that was a great illustration whenever he talked about, uh, Michael Phelps winning his 8th gold medal, winning a million dollars, and how small of a difference that was, right? That's the difference of him deciding to get one more rep, you know, one more lap, not eating a cookie, sleeping one more hour. All those things add up to that fraction of a difference. That was awesome having Andy on. What an honor. Hey, real quick, big shout out to our podcast sponsors: Coach P Consulting, DirectClicks, Club Capital, and Rock Solid. They have been partners of ours for quite some time. They're all people that we use, we vetted out, and ultimately at the end of the day, they get results for their clients. Make sure you mention the Club Capital Leadership Podcast when you talk to Dave of it and sign up for his coaching, get a free month, uh, free month. There's no reason why you wouldn't take him up on that, and you'll see why he's definitely the fastest growing, uh, business coach out there for insurance agency owners. Talking to Micah the other day around just the success they've been able to have this year with CFO Services, some of the results they've been able to get, the perspective that people have to be able to see, you know, what rate changes and adding increasing marketing spend, adding staff is a big one for sure. So go to club.capital, book a no-obligation demo. And if you're looking to actually add some staff and you want to actually consider, you know, so you can focus on more income-producing activities and you put the best use of money, uh, is to be able to buy back your time, reach out to Tracy and her team. Go to rocksolidassistance.com. I love my team. I could not imagine not having Courtney and Ellie on my team going to be able to do this. We would not be able to pull all this together. We produce like maybe one episode every 6 weeks because I have no idea how they do everything that they do to make that happen, along with Ali on our team. So shout out to him and just the incredible work that he does of the production and the podcast engineering. And then last but certainly not least, DirectClicks. If you want to be able to get some really good leads that actually you can— your team can convert, your sales team can convert. and be able to do it in a way that is profitable, you want to be able to work with the team at DirectClicks. Go to directclicksinc.com. All right. What an honor to have Andy on. That was great. This was helpful to you. Would you consider sharing it? Shout out to Tyler Bullington was the one that actually inspired me to get Andy on the podcast. He had mentioned in his episode how much he enjoyed that book, and I thought, Oh gosh, yeah, totally forgot about that one. And we were able to get it. So shout out to Tyler for that one. All right, everyone, till next episode, lead well.

So the big question is this: how do small business owners like us grow our leadership, develop our teams, and scale our business in a way that allows us to get our products and services out to the world yet still remain profitable?

That is the question in this podcast. We'll give you the answers.

I'm Bradley Hamner, and this is the Club Capital Leadership Podcast. Hey, before we get into today's episode, did you know that Club Capital is the largest accounting advisory firm for insurance agency owners in the country, providing monthly accounting, CFO services, and tax preparation? Check them out at club.capital.