The Hook Point: How To Make Your Brand Stand Out Amidst The Digital Noise With Brendan Kane

Welcome to the Conscious Pivot Podcast with international speaker, business mentor, best selling author of Pivot, and your host, Adam Markell. The Conscious Pivot shares the stories and wisdom of people who have successfully reinvented some area of their business and personal life. You'll gain powerful insights into how you can fully embrace new opportunities, increase your performance, and master the art and science of innovation and resilience. So please join Adam as he guides you on your Conscious Pivot.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Conscious Pivot Podcast. I'm your host, Adam Markell, and I'm feeling very grateful right now. I'm feeling blessed and just happy, really happy to be alive. Joyful about being alive. At the time that we're recording this and filming it, there's just a lot of turmoil in the world. I think it's sort of a daily dose of turmoil and things that just don't feel great. And we've gotten that daily dose almost like it's its own virus pretty much every day from so many different directions. And I'll say just in full transparency, I feel almost addicted to it. I don't know how many of you might sort of relate to that. And by that I mean I have to get. It feels like I have to get my dose of looking at YouTube videos or catching up on the news. And of course, catching up doesn't mean looking at something from two days ago anymore, not even yesterday. Yesterday is old news. It's literally something that's happened in the last hour or two and preferably in the last couple of minutes. And I learned long ago that it's really challenging to focus on the wrong things, that when habitually we focus on the things we don't want, we typically attract the exact thing we don't want. And yet I found myself kind of lured to see what's happening in the world in a sort of almost a voyeuristic way. And I'm calling myself out to say that because I've railed against that for so long. I mean, know, driving on the highway, there's an accident, I never look, I'm always pissed at people that are. Rubbernecking is the term. You know, slowing down to see the car that's burning or to see the body that's lying on the side of the road. And I despise that. And yet I find myself almost leaning into this voyeurism of the chaos and the insanity that seems to be perpetuating itself in our country, in the United States anyway, and, and in other places around the world. And I realized that's like a moth going to the flame. So I'm just, just calling it out for what it is. In this moment. What I feel grateful for is that I have that awareness. That I have that awareness and I can, I can even make it a loving awareness so that it's not filled with judgment, but it's just something that I can be present to. I'm also really excited today as well that I get to speak with an old friend, business colleague, somebody I've had the pleasure to work with, somebody I respect. I think it's okay for me to say at this point in my life, he's a young man, I'm a young man, but he's younger than me and he's a good guy with a great deal of knowledge. I'm going to read a little bit about his background in just a second and we're going to jump in as we always do. So Brendan Cain is an outside of the box thinker. I think that's a cliche, but in this guy's case it really is true. He's a speaker and author who empowers brands to scale by helping them stand out and beat competition in crowded and over saturated markets. Like to find a market that isn't, that doesn't seem to be oversaturated these days. He is the author of an international best selling book called One Million Followers. That's when I actually met Brendan, when he was first finishing up that book and promoting that book and we were really happy about that and his newly released book, how to Stand out in a 3 second world. Isn't that true? As well as being the founder and CEO of Hook Point Agency, Brennan has worked with hundreds of individuals and brands providing business and digital strategy for more than 15 years, including brands such as MTV, Taylor Swift, Rihanna and many others. So it's a pleasure to have you on the show today, Brendan. Thanks for being with us.

Thanks for having me. It's a true pleasure to connect with you and everybody that's listening to this.

Yeah, I think our community is going to really love this conversation. But before we dive in, I want to ask you this question. What's not written in that bio in the intro I just read that you would love for people to know about you. One thing that's not in there that you love for people, people to know about you.

Well, I think that most people that do know me, know me from the 1 Million Followers book and see me as really a social media expert or whatever you think, but it's much bigger than that. Social media is one thing that I do. And that's why I really decided to spend the past two years putting together the information in the hook point book. Because I'm always looking at how can I provide people the most value and help them on their journey to be the most successful. And I really had to dive deep into myself to understand what is the best way that I could express that. And that's really, you know, the concept of a hook point and really standing out in a very noisy world that we live in today, a very oversaturated world that you've got to find ways to win attention. We live in this, this world where attention is the biggest asset in terms of growing your brand or sharing your message or whatever impact that you would have on the world. So I think that that's a lot of people would just get caught onto that 1 million followers concept and book and then all they see is social media. But I really want to help them with much more than just that.

Yeah, you know, you. It may even be sort of obvious or self explanatory, but explain if you could for folks what a hook point is for anybody.

Yeah, absolutely. So let's start with what the problem is. The problem is we live in a world today where there's over 60 billion messages sent out on digital platforms. Between social media, text messages, emails, all of that accumulates to a tremendous amount of noise. There was an interesting Forbes article that did research that said the average person is exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads a day. So what that really means is the average person's ignoring 4,000 to 10,000 ads a day. So you, as a business person, or just even somebody that wanted sharing your message, you're no longer fighting against your direct competition. You're fighting against every piece of content. Like it or not, you're competing against LeBron James, you're competing against the Rock, Netflix, CNN, Fox News, whatever it is, you're competing for that attention. So a hook point is designed to grab that attention. And there's three core pillars to a hook point. One is getting somebody to stop in those first three to five seconds so that you can win the first part of that conversation. Just getting them to stop so you can get to the core, the second core pillar, which is your story. What is it that you want to express? What is the message that you want to share? What is it you want to talk about your product or service or the value that you provide? And then the third is, do people trust it? Do they believe it, does it come off credible? And all three of these have to play together, because if you don't grab somebody's attention the first three to five seconds, you'll never get to your story. If you grab somebody's attention, but your story is not good, if you don't retain that attention, you've automatically lost it. And then third is, if you have a great hook and get somebody to stop and you have a powerful story, but people don't believe it doesn't come off credible, then it falls apart. So that's really what, in the essence, at a high level, what a hook point is.

How long for the story and the establishment of trust, would you say? Is it fair to say it's two minutes? Is it three minutes? Is there any rule of thumb about that today?

Yeah, that's a great question. I would say there's no rule of thumb for it, and people ask this a lot, especially when it comes to social media, is how long should my content be? And to me, it's like, well, how long can you retain that attention? Because if you only feel like your message is strong enough in 15 to 30 seconds, then deliver it in 15, 30 seconds. If you feel like you can hold attention for 20 minutes and you're providing value, then you'll go off and do that. And I want to distinguish the difference. Like, we live in a micro attention world, but that doesn't mean you can't hold their attention for long periods of time. What it means is you need to capture their attention and fight for that attention, that first part of the conversation. That's the hard part. And then when you get past that, retaining that attention, obviously you have to be a good storyteller. But there's prime examples. You look at Joe Rogan or you look at podcasts in general, you can maintain attention for hours. Like, people will listen or engage in content. It's really just winning that first part. That's really the tough part in getting you to stand out. But there's no real rule of thumb when it comes to, like, it has to be this, this length of time for your story and then credibility. I'm sure you can answer this just as well as I is. Like, that can come off in the first 10, 15 seconds is. But you can lose it 20 minutes in if you say something that doesn't hold true. So I think a lot of trust and credibility is built very early on in that process because it's not just what you say. People look at your facial expressions, your body posture, your tones, all of that and seeing if it comes off authentic and people believe it.

Right. The non verbal cues are a really big important thing in that. And those are done, as you say, from sort of inception. So again, this is maybe a tough question to answer, but the three to five second piece, if somebody says, okay, I get that, I gotta grab somebody's attention in three to five seconds, are there any rules of thumb about that?

Well, I can steer you to where people go wrong because I think that's one of the helpful places. So first, people treat that first three to five seconds as their story or their product. They almost overwhelm the user in that first part of it. When you've just got to think about what is going to get them to just stop the scrolling. Stop on a busy street or stop in a meeting to pay attention to you. Stop scrolling? Yeah, I mean, that's the big thing, don't you think?

Stop the scrolling.

Yeah. I don't know if you saw the Netflix documentary the Social Dilemma, but it's kind of the perfect analogy of this, of the algorithms are favoring the content that gets people to stop and pay attention. So what most people do is they skip that step. They skip the first core pillar and they just go into their story or they even just go into sell mode right away when that's not really the world that we live in today. You've got to earn the right to do that. The second biggest mistake people are making is saying the same thing in the same way as everybody else. So one of the analogies I'd like to talk about is if we were launching a meditation app or a meditation retreat. Meditation has been around for thousands of years. You type meditation into Google, you'll get billions of results. And yet people will say the same thing is meditation is the key to stillness, or meditation relieves anxiety, or meditation is the key to contentment, all of those things. And if you say that in the same way as everybody else, what happens in your subconscious is like, I already know what this is going to say. I'm just going to scroll past it. Not to say that you as an individual don't have a different expression or provide unique value is people have again, endless content that they can go through and if they think that they've seen it before, they're just going to skip it. So to give you an example of how we could fix that is we talk about pattern interruption. A lot of. So you've got to imagine if you're in Instagram or anything like, let's just take Instagram, for example, you just watch Lebron James dunk. You just watched the latest Netflix trailer. You just watched a news clip of something that's going on in the election. And then your clip comes up. What is going to break that pattern to get them to stop? Now, one of the tools that we use sometimes is called subverting expectations, flipping something on its head. So in the example of meditation, the three core pillars may look something like this. I may start the video with a headline, or I may say, meditation is a scam to get that stop. And then I'll go into the story and say, have you ever felt like meditation is a scam? If that's you, I feel your pain. Because when I first started meditating, I couldn't get it to work for me. I had people telling me I needed to sit down and completely clear my thoughts in my head. And every time I sat down, my mind would race. Is that something that's happened to you? Well, if it is, I want to share a few strategies that I learned early on that allowed me to turn a non meditator, somebody that didn't believe in it at all, to somebody that now meditates every day for 10 years. So will you click the link below to check out these strategies that I want to share with you? So what I did is I subverted the expectations, I flipped it on its head. But I'm not doing clickbait because it plays into the story that I'm going to tell by trying to attract people that haven't meditated and what's kind of going on in their head. And then I share the story that I feel their pain. I've been in their instance and hopefully by me relating to them and doing it in an authentic way and just sharing my experience, that will create the trust and credibility enough will take the next step on the journey. So that's an example of that. There was another two examples that we did from an organic perspective, from subverting expectations that went viral and worked really well. One was the old saying, don't sweat the small stuff, as we've heard that millions of times. So we created a video that started off saying sweat the small stuff. And then we dove into like an inspirational thing of why you need to kind of pay attention to the details. And then there was another one where the headline said warning in all caps on the top with exclamation points and it said safety is dangerous. So again, it's flipping that perspective on its head to just get people to stop to win the first part of the conversation so we can get into the story and the real information that we want to share with them.

Yeah, it's so interesting because our company trains public speakers and people specifically that want to deliver high stakes talks like a TEDx talk, for example. And it's one of the things that's the death knell to public, to effective and impactful public speaking is to be predictable. And it's really the same thing we're talking about to just using different terminology. But we say that it's not so much about being a boring speaker, even though people call it that, it's about being unpredictable. That's how you maintain a person's attention is by not playing into what is the natural. Our instinct and really what we've adapted to is to be able to see how things are going to turn out very quickly. Like you could see an ad or you could see something, you see it coming and you know where it's going. As soon as you know where something's going, it's no longer interesting. It's not novel, it's not unique. There's nothing to learn and you're off checking your Facebook again or whatever it is you're doing that's distracting you habitually. So I think it's really important that you've given us two things that and I want to language it a little differently just so because I think it's important that you look at opportunities to take something that might be considered conventional wisdom and to do what you just said, turn it on its side. Where can you do that that's, you know, so tangible takeaway for people right now is for your marketing or talking about something that's important relative to your content is where can you debunk a myth, turn something that's conventional wisdom on its side. Not for the purpose of just being sort of marketing savvy. Because I don't, I don't buy that. I think that's going to play into the social dilemma stuff that I want to get into with you, but really just to see where it is that you can take a unique perspective on someone genuinely take a unique perspective on something that's been, that's been beaten to death. Like for example, I mean we had the wife of. I think it's John Carlson. I might have messed that up. But Carlson's the author of Don't Sweat the Small Stuff. I think there were two authors for that book. But anyway, yeah, that's a really conventional thing we've heard over and over and over again. So to Say that we're sort of, you know, we're immune to it. Right, Brendan? I mean, it's like it doesn't get in.

Yeah. You've got to find a way to stand out. And it's not to say that there's not value in that message. And when we're working with clients, we're not changing who people are. We're not changing their core message. We're contextualizing it in such a way that we can get people to pay attention. Another big distinction where people go wrong is understanding the difference between what people need and what people want. Because a lot of times when we're creating companies or books or whatever that we're trying to push out in the world, we're. We're so entrenched into it that we cannot see the forest through the trees, that we know it so well that we know what our core customer audience needs. But they may not be there yet. We may need to bring them on a journey to get them to what they actually need. So, for example, with my first book of 1 million followers in 30 days, that's playing to what people want. That's a hook. Everybody wants followers, so that's what brings people in. But really, the substance of the book, yes, I teach people follower growth, but the real journey I take them on is what you need to really know to be successful in social media, which is how to test properly the proper mindset, how to create shareable content, how to leverage strategic partnerships. But if I would have started with any of those things, like the title being the art of Ab Testing and Social media, or you, you know, how to create shareable content on social media. It wouldn't really have the impact of creating a hook, a pattern interrupter, to say, this is how I generated a million followers in 30 days, so I can get them to stop, so they can take them on the journey of what they need. And that's really. I think, a lot of people, especially the people that are super brilliant, super smart, they're so in their head, and it comes so intuitively and easy for them that they forget that they need to convey that in a way that can bring the largest audience in to pay attention to what they have to say.

Yeah. Brennan, what's the difference between contextualizing and manipulation?

Well, it's just getting. Again, contextualizing is positioning it in a way that people can actually hear what you have to say. We're not manipulating the decision. We just want to get people to pay attention. This is what we're offering. This is how we can provide value in your life, in your business, whatever it may be. And then they make the determination whether it's the right path for them or not. Manipulation is trying to convince them of doing something that they may not want to do or maybe is not the right fit for them. And that's where that credibility and trust comes into play. Listen, are there narcissists or people out there in the world that are really good at just manipulating people? Yes, but those people are few and far between. Most of us, with the amount of content that we consume on a daily basis, we can see between, you know, the lines where we can see if somebody really has value or somebody does not have value.

Right. I mean, another way of sort of getting at the question is to ask what the ethical dilemma is, because not everybody maybe has seen the social dilemma. I recommend it. I loved it. I thought it was. Yeah, loved is a strong word. My eyes were opened by it. I thought I kind of knew a bunch about a lot of these, how it is that social media has been used and parts of it are documentary like and parts of it are more fiction or at least from the standpoint of it's been set up, not strictly reporting on facts. But I'd love to get your beat on what is sort of the ethical dilemma around things like hook points or around figuring, figuring out the equation to effective marketing. Because on some level it is like figuring out a complex math problem or an algorithm. And that once you do figure it out, I'm not saying you figured it out for good, because I know you're in this space and I'm sure if you just went to sleep for the next, you know, four months, you'd wake up and you'd have to figure out some things you didn't plan on figuring out. But let's just say when you, you've gotten a certain tipping point in your, in your understanding of how this stuff works, it can be used for really manipulative things. I mean, that's just, that's not a. I'm not going out on a limb to say that that's what's happened. So just get your thoughts on the ethics of it.

So, yeah, I mean, you hit on a really great point. I mean, it can be used for good, it can be used for bad. To me, I choose to use it for good. So the only ethical dilemma that I see is are you using this to better the world? Are you using this to really enhance somebody's life, provide value to them, to overcome a significant challenge in their life or their business or just world humanity as a whole versus are you just selling something that's not really going to, you know, help better the world or better somebody? That, to me, is the dilemma in all of this. Now, you can say what you want about the social dilemma or, you know, a lot of this marketing has been around for a hundred years. We're just kind of repackaging it for today's world and today's society. To me, I look at the world and instead of fighting against what it is, I try and understand how things work and then use it for the benefit of putting positive things and positive messages and positive products into the world. Because you look at the social dilemma, for example, I don't have a solution for it. I'm not that smart, nor am I the person to solve that. I'm the person to solve, to look at understanding how all of these things work and ensure that the people that have the ability to transform the world in a positive way, that have a positive message, that have a positive product or service or retreat or whatever it is, rises above the noise of all the negativity. So that's the way that I look at it.

Do you think the genie is out of the lamp when it comes to how to solve the, the big issues that are raised in that movie and other documentaries on that topic?

It's very difficult to solve. But you're also talking about some of the smartest people on the planet. So it is solvable. I think that. And they posed it in the film. I think the biggest part of solving it is looking at the, the underlying business model about how they make money.

Right?

That, that, that's kind of the biggest, the biggest challenge.

And maybe this isn't a fair question for you, and if not, you know, we'll, we'll punt on it. I'm just curious whether that in the form, because I've looked at it and said to myself, look, if this is a private company, and they simply decided, you know what, yeah, we let the genie out of the lamp and now we're going to retrieve it. And we have the ability to do that because it's our technology and we control, you know, the data and the users and all that kind of thing. But when it's a public company, I just thought to myself, putting yourself in the shoes of any of these CEOs, if they wanted to just go rogue, get a conscience, grow, decide, hey, listen, we started with the most egalitarian ideals at the beginning, and now we realize it's being subverted Talk about subversion, right? It's being subverted for things that are causing great harm to a great many people. So we've got to do something about it. That CEO of a public company would probably not. They probably get the boot the way Steve Jobs got the boot. If they tried to change a business model would ultimately cause harm to the company financially because that would drive down stock price. And then all of a sudden you've got, you know, retirees living in Florida or someplace going, you know, I have a third of my portfolio invested in your stock and now I can't, I gotta go back to work at age 75. Because you decided to change your business model for whatever reason. So I just look at it and go, it feels like a catch 22. When a company is public and the number one driver is shareholder value, I don't know if. Tough, right?

Yeah. I mean, the only blessing in this is that all the people running these, the big winners right now, the YouTubes, Twitters, Instagrams, Facebooks of the world, they understand that if they just make a drastic shift without looking at the long term play, somebody else, some young startup will just use the same principles that they did to game the system and make people addicted to it and keep going. So there's a larger shift that needs to happen of what is the future of these platforms, how are they structured, what is the business model, all of that, that needs to come into play now. Whether they solve it or not, I don't know. I can tell you that Mark Zuckerberg, for example, is taking this seriously. You can say what you want about him, but I see the changes. I'm in these platforms every day, especially from an aver perspective. I don't know if you saw that they banned political advertising for at least another month where you cannot promote anything. And they've taken away certain targeting parameters and things of that nature and they're trying to get smarter and better. But you've got to understand. And people don't give them enough credit. It's like the level of scale that they're dealing with is unprecedented. You're dealing with billions and billions of users.

Yeah.

And billions of content. You've got billions of users each creating content. And to police all of that and then stay in line with free speech, it's really hard. It's a really difficult problem. I'm not saying it's not solvable. I'm not smart enough to solve it. I think it can be solved. Will it be solved? I don't know. And I think that the people in charge, I think they do have a good heart. They don't want to, like, destroy the world. I think they're just trying to navigate themselves through a very unprecedented problem that they're facing.

I agree. I really don't think anybody thinking rationally would think that that's the case. There's so much they have to be grateful for. I mean, you know, these folks have created something that really is life and world changing. And yet, you know, and I'm sure they're concerned about their legacy, not just their financial legacy, but their legacy as well, in some, in historic terms. And I hesitate to even say this because I'm not a big fan of regulation, but it almost feels like helping, helping these guys out means. Bodies involved to say, you know, there are. I just.

Yeah, but is the government the right person?

It's tough because. Right, exactly. It's almost like if you could create an independent think tank of some kind of the brightest people from each of these companies, let's say each company. Almost like when we used to do pickup games when we were kids in the schoolyard and you say, look, I'm going to take, you know, take one from you, one from you, one from you. And everybody brings in their best, their smartest and their brightest to independently think about how you police some of the things that we're talking about or regulate them in some way. Maybe that's the thing. But let me pivot for a moment to just drop that term in Brennan. Resilience in the moment in so many ways is just that much more important. We've got a book coming out next year called Change Proof. Leveraging the power of uncertainty to create long term success, build long term growth. The book is really a book about resilience. And originally when we were pitching it to publishers and before we had the right one, that was a good fit for us. It was called Radical Resilience. And the underpinning of this book is really about resilience. So I love to get your take. In fact, you can see I've got this little graphic if you're watching on YouTube where it's the fortune cookie, which is you've got to develop your resilience before you need it. That's been my. If there's been something I could say again and again in my own business career that's, that's really worked well for me, is that I've been, I've been able to deal with change before change dealt with me. Let's put it that way. I think a Lot of people got wiped out by the wave of COVID By the wave of change. Drastic moving from working in office to working virtually a business that might have been shut down and, you know, any number of other things, myriad things. Your business must have been impacted like all of ours were. I'd love to get your beat on how you define resilience for yourself personally. And then maybe if you did have to pivot in the last six, eight months as a result of any of these things, we'd love to get the sense of how you did that. What was your mindset about it? And then tactically speaking, you know, what did you do to get about getting, you know, taking advantage of the opportunities?

Yeah. So resilience to me is everything. I mean, without it, you, you. You're really going to struggle to succeed. Because, you know, the analogy that I like to use and start telling people is being an entrepreneur. It's like getting punched in the face and getting back up. It really is. On a weekly, monthly, sometimes on a daily basis, you just get punched in the face with new challenges and you've got to find your way through it. And if you don't, you're not going to last as an entrepreneur or business owner very long. And for me, a part of it is you're not thinking forward too much and just trying to tackle the challenges day by day in front of me, because I used to think forward too far and it gets way too overwhelming. I worked with the Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University, and the guy that founded it talks about success, momentum through tiny.

Is that Robert Cialdini or is he.

No, it's BJ Fogg. Interestingly enough, there's a clip of him speaking in the Social Dilemma. They don't talk about it, but the guy that trained all these, Tristan and the founder of Instagram is BJ Fogg, and he talks about. He created a program called Tiny Habits, where you form a new habit, you choose two habits to form over seven days, and that habit can't take more than 15 seconds. So the example he gives you is if you want to get into habit, flossing your teeth, you floss one tooth or one tooth a day for 15 or for seven days, and then you celebrate after you do it. And what he says is in the subconscious. What it does is it allows you to tackle bigger and bigger tasks the more you do it. And that's something that I've really held onto. In addition, I. And this is just for me, but I don't see any other option. Like, there's that. That story of the Vikings showing up on enemy territory and burning their. Their ships behind them and not giving them any other option. I don't see any other option for myself. Like, I'm not going to go work another job. I just. I don't have that in me. I will never do it. It's not rewarding to me. So I'm always. No matter how hard it gets and even. And I'm not going to say that I don't have thoughts about giving up and quitting. But then I asked myself, what am I going to do? Like, okay, I quit tomorrow. What am I going to do? I'm going to go live on a beach someplace. I'm going to go to Thailand or the Philippines. I'm going to get bored in two seconds. And then it's not going to be other problems.

It's not. It's not like quitting this problem scenario puts you in a, you know, like, escaping this room doesn't mean you're not in a room of some other kind.

Yeah. And I'm not sitting here saying, this is easy. I still, you know, get challenged with it all the time, but I decide to just move forward. And a lot of times what happens, and I think this is just for all entrepreneurs, is we get into something because it truly excites us, but we really don't know what it takes to pull it off. And if we really knew how much work and time that it took to pull it off, we probably would never.

Get started to begin.

We would never get started. So that's kind of the point.

Being an entrepreneur is like being Rocky. You're like Rocky in the first. In the first Rocky movie. You just keep getting hit in the face all the time. And you are.

Mike Tyson says is, everybody's got a. Got a plan until they get punched in the face right by me.

That is so true for entrepreneurship by Mike Tyson.

Yeah. It's such a relevant thing for entrepreneurship. So for me, my resilience comes from a. I love learning. I love learning new things. I get into experiences because it excites me without really understanding the amount of work that it goes in. And then I have this mentality of I don't have any other options. So the only option I have because I burned the bridge or I burned the ship behind me is just to keep moving forward to find the path that works.

You're no longer employable, Brennan.

I'm not.

I know. I'm. Same with me. I don't know when that happened. But it's a weird, it is kind of a weird thing. I don't hear a lot of entrepreneurs speak about, which might be an interesting chapter in a book or something, how unemployable we are.

Yeah. And I think that that's a good thing.

Yeah. No, I don't mean it. Yeah. In a bad thing, a bad way at all. And I'm not implying that anybody who is employable is somehow less in some way. There's just once you've crossed a threshold and I don't know what that threshold is, which would be interesting research for me personally. It was, it's the, the, those, those ships have been burned. You know, the book I wrote, Pivot, is all about how you pivot without burning, burning ships. It's a commitment device for sure, but, but through making those small changes. And that's what pivot really is about in so many ways, is those micro, micro changes create momentum and then you find over time that you've created something that can replace the thing that's causing you the misery, etc. But, but I agree with you. At a certain point, you just recognize, you know what, my freedom, there's an element of personal freedom that comes in, in working, you know, doing your own thing. But you've got to, you've got to be able to endure, not only endure the punches, but you've also got to be able to recover. And that's what our research on resilience really has disclosed is that it's, it's a little less about the rocky model and that ability to just take the punch, get back up as many times as it takes. There is that level of tenacity that's required, but long term, the performance and the finding, because you, you've, you've not only just been able to endure, I mean, you're not, you know, like Rocky don't look too good at the end of that movie. Right. He wins our hearts, but he's all banged up. You're looking pretty good. And I mean that just because, you know you're looking pretty good. You, you stayed in the game long enough to figure things out. And that's my experience in entrepreneurship and in any area of business. You've got to be in the game long enough to figure out what works. And, and you've got to go through a lot of, a lot of shit and a lot of not things that don't work to be able to at some point figure out what does work. And that's, that's a, that's an That's a long term game, that's a marathon game, which you can't just get hit in the face and hit in the face and hit in the face and not recover from that in order, you know, and still be able to play the long game. So, and I know you and I, we were talking about this before we turned this thing on is that thinking about where you run your business and the options to run it remotely now more than ever before, don't have to be tied to a particular state or even a particular country may play into how it is that you create that longevity. Because if you can't recover, if you don't have the all the sort of mental. When we look at resilience, we think of it mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. It's all of those things. And so it's so important that you, you are able to be in it for the long run. And I love what you said, man. I mean, you're addicted to learning. Like, what else could life be? What better thing could life be about than just constant never ending learning? Yeah, no, no question there. But I do want to get a sense of when it comes to your own resilience, do you have a ritual? Because you brought up BJ Fogg and Tiny habits and I gave a TED talk a couple of years ago, which at a certain point you and I had talked about naming it, how to name it, and one of the things, one of the titles we ultimately settled on was doing this for 10 seconds can change your life because it's a 10 second habit. And so I'm just curious, do you have a 10 second habit or a longer habit that you use kind of each day on a ritual basis to help you to maintain the resilience you were talking about?

Well, I think the fundamental base of it is when I first started out being an entrepreneur is when a challenge or obstacle or one of those times you get punched in the face happens, sometimes it would take weeks or months to get past it. But with each time that you experience a challenge, you start to understand it's a part of the process. Process. And the more that you understand it's a part of the process, you can cope with it and deal with it much easier. So all the way up to today, if I run into a big challenge at max, it impacts me for a few hours. Sometimes it's only a walk around the block that allows me to deal with it. So you just get better and better at it. I would say one of the things that, and this is more recent is I've spent the past six or seven months retraining my breath and just. I think I've been breathing wrong my entire life and just doing breathing exercises throughout the day to keep my mental clarity, to keep my energy up, which also allows me to relieve stress. I mean, it's just. It's truly amazing that most of us don't even focus on it when it's something that we do 18 to 25,000 times a day. And that has really helped me immensely. And then on top of that is just having a support system. Having people that you can call to talk through something or just listen helps tremendously, because if you internalize too much in yourself and you don't get it out and you don't express, can just build up and really eat you alive.

Letting go is definitely a class that we all missed in elementary, middle, high school.

Just crazy, right?

Think about that.

It's like, I don't understand. Like, school is just so focused on science and math and history. It's like they don't teach us the fundamentals of how to deal with mental health and just challenges and things of that. It's just. It's really baffling to me.

To me, too, brother. Well, listen, I so enjoyed. I knew I would. I knew our folks would enjoy listening to this conversation. And. And I want to just give you sort of an opportunity if there's something else. Of course, everybody knows. If you've not subscribed to the show, please do and let a friend know as well. If you think this is an episode that people would enjoy, please pass it on. We have full show notes so you can go to AdamMarkel.com podcast and this episode will have full show notes where you can find out more about Brendan Cain, about his work, the kind of clients he serves, as well as the books that he has available. Hook Point is available right now. Brand new book, as well as a million followers in 30 days. So, Brennan, is there something that you want to leave us with? Just information that we didn't cover today that you'd feel more complete if you shared?

I think we've covered a lot of really amazing topics. I would just really say that just keep taking one step at a time. I know that's a cliche thing to say, but that's really the determining factor of whether you're going to be successful or not. Anything is just take it one step at a time and just keep learning. Keep challenging yourself and see a challenge. Or if you do get punched in the face, just know that's a part of the journey and it's not a negative thing. It's just a learning experience. It's something that we all go through. And just know that you're not alone in that journey. We all experience it. We're all human beings. We all have feelings and emotions. We know what it's like to be challenged and to face obstacles.

Yeah, those are just such true words, Brennan. We're not alone. And I know it can feel that way. And loneliness isn't something that any of us have the corner on the market of. So we all feel lonely from time to time. And it's so important. In fact, I was on a call, a zoom call earlier with an organization that's hiring me to do a keynote for them. And they wanted. Among the things they really wanted me to focus on was the fact that, that so many of the people in their ecosystem feel like they have to do it alone, that they just don't. They're not reaching out to people for help. They're not communicating where they're looking for support. And so what a grand opportunity is to bring that to the table for that particular talk. And I think I was thinking that that kind of thing is cultural. So it comes from the leadership in any organization to actually give people permission to ask for support and to reach out and to recognize, as Brennan was saying, that none of us were alone. As we wrap things up, I want to close an open loop. Earlier I said, just referred to that TED talk I gave in that 10 second strategy, which to me is the waking ritual. And it's the waking ritual I engaged this morning when I woke up. And God willing, I get to wake up again tomorrow, I'll do it again. And it's three steps. It's really simple. First, wake up. Waking up is obvious, right? If I ask a hundred people, did you wake up today? And you get some laughs, you know, not everybody feels awake, right? Another cup of coffee. And if I say, you know, do you intend to wake up tomorrow in everybody's hands, you know, like 100% right? And waking up is not just physically. It is a mental waking up, an emotional waking up, a spiritual waking up that we're talking about, it's metaphoric. That's the first piece of it. Just wake up. And secondly, and of course, when you realize that you're waking up, you can also recognize that it wasn't a guarantee. When you went to bed last night, nobody gave. I didn't have a contract. When I put my head on the pill last night, Brendan did you have a contract that said you were absolutely going to wake up today?

Nobody does.

Nobody does. So regardless of what you're waking up to, it could be, you know, challenges in your life or your business or whatever that looks like you're waking up as a blessing. It's a gift. It's not promised, it's not guaranteed. And so in that moment of waking up, that's first, you can feel gratitude. That second, you could be grateful and appreciate the fact that you've been given a brand new day and a brand new start, I would say. And thirdly, lastly, for me anyway, is I put my feet on the floor and I recognize what a blessing it is just to be able to do that. And instead of feeling the anxiety and even the dread that I used to feel 10 years ago when I put my feet on the floor, now I put my feet on the floor and I make it a point to say something out loud. I say four simple words. I love my life. No matter what, I love my life. So I invite all of you to create your waking ritual tomorrow. Wake up first. I know everybody's going to agree to that. Find something in that moment to be grateful for and feel appreciation for. And lastly, say something out loud. We create our lives by what we say. We're constantly bringing our lives into being by what we say. The words we speak are self fulfilling prophecies. So what are the words that you want to start your day with? You could start with I love my life, but you don't have to. It could be anything. I had a woman on the show a couple of months ago, beautiful lady, who said her first words are, I wonder what miracles are coming today. Judy Whitcraft. And you can check out that episode as well. It was really a cool conversation. So choose your words carefully. And lastly, as we say goodbye, anybody that's looking to figure out and get more clarity on how resilient you are and maybe even how resilient people that work with you are, you can take a free assessment. We have a tool. There's nothing to sell. All we, in fact, what we're giving away are tremendous resources. Once we find out what your score is, once you find out what your score is, takes about three minutes is all. To fill out this assessment, you can go to your.resilienceculture.com your.resilienceculture.Com Three minutes to take the assessment. Then you'll get your score and a whole host of free resources to help you meet you where you are. Because as Brendan said, it is the most important thing right now for ourselves, personally and professionally, to develop the skills of resilience and resilient leadership. All right, everybody, Ciao for now. Thanks so much, Brendan, again. Thanks for being on the show.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thanks for listening, everyone. We hope you now have the tools and greater insights to navigate your own pivot. Help us inspire others by sharing this episode and leaving your comments over@adammarkel.com podcasts for more tips, strategies, and support as you consciously pivot into a new business and lifestyle you love. Join our Pivot community on facebook@pivotfb.com.