Manage and Adapt to Change

The challenge is that sometimes that gets in our psyche and now we withdraw psychologically from our family, our team, those we lead, love and serve because we're trying to cope. When we are in crisis, we turn inward to protect ourselves, to get a lay of the land, to understand how things are going to go at the cost of our connections with others, which is where real good and great ideas come from and great differences come from and great joy in life. Everything we know in psychology is also built upon sociology. So much of our psychological joy of life is tied to relationships. How are you going to change to meet these times? How do you generate the new ideas that grows your business or improves your life or makes. Makes your family come closer together? What do you need to do to get that innovation mindset, that change mindset, to be able to adapt right now, to grow right now, to succeed right now, to scale right now. If you're ever going to step into that ideal of, you know what, I can manage change. I can make things happen. You're in the right place again. I'm Brendon Burchard, your coach, and we are here to work together today. Listen, I know you see all the vitriol out there in the world. You see the chaos, you see the poor leadership. You see the challenges that we are facing globally. And as you're seeing that, I don't think there's anything more important than for you to spend some time on the 1st of each month on yourself, on personal development, to get your mind right, to adapt, to change, to lead. These are difficult times. And in the most difficult of times, it's the most important that you work on personal development because otherwise your mindset goes off and all of a sudden you find yourself sad all the time, unmotivated all the time, reactive all the time. And now the narrative of the world, the narrative of the news, the narrative of other people's vitriol starts coming in. You and your emotions get poisoned. And even when there are things to be happy about and even when things are going well, you don't feel it. You don't feel the day anymore. That's why you got to work on your personal development. It's not just so you can get ahead. It's not just so you can lead, though those are important. It's so you feel life again. We come together as a community. We work on our personal development. We take on the big topics that help us change, adapt and grow, and then we set our monthly goals, start thinking, because by the end of the show, that's what we're going to be doing together, we're going to be asking these questions. What are the major projects I should be working on? What are the goals? What are the deadlines? How am I going to reward myself? How am I going to get some support here? What do I need to happen? What do I need to make sure it happens? That I feel like I'm living the best life I can at this exact moment. Because listen, how many of you are grateful to even be here right now? We must will momentum, we must will positive emotion. Because our homeostasis is what I call the default comfort mode, where we just go, well, you know what? I wish things were easier. They're not. So I'm not going to do anything until they are again, I wish things happened faster for me, but they're not. So I'm just going to hang out until conditions improve. And so we have a lot of incredibly capable, inspirational, aspirational people and they are on delay mode. So how do we overcome that? We must turn ourselves on. That's what we're going to be doing. Because if we can win the week and we can win the month, we can win the year and we can win life. And you deserve to have a vibrant, connected, meaningful life. That is the promise of high performance. That's the promise. It's that life feels better. Oh, I feel more connected with the moment, with other people, with my family, with those I lead and serve and ah, I feel so much more connected to my work. And you know, because of those things, I'm able to create meaning. I'm able to feel like the day is meaningful. I'm able to feel the moments of life again. And you deserve to have that. You must always find your way. In the most difficult of circumstances in life, you can find your way, but it's a lot easier when you're in a community like this, when you got people who get it, who've helped people through this, who've helped over and over and over and over transform people's lives. I'm here to bring some science to you today. I'm here to bring some ideas to you today. I'm here to bring some community to you today, some coaching and let's make this special. Let's get excited, let's do some work today. Let's get at it. So I'm gonna spend about an hour on the topic of innovation. I want you to get out your notes, I want you to get ready, I want you to think about what you have to change in your life, your Career or your business and just have that in your mind. So I hope you'll bust out your journals and get ready. Okay, today's topic is innovation. Now, I know some of you are like, ugh, that sounds corporate. Y or that sounds like, you know, something I don't do. Because, you know, maybe you're in a place where, you know, you're not leading a team or you're not the head of a business or you're, you know, at this moment you're like, but Brennan, I only work for myself or Brendon. I'm just trying to manage the kids. What are you talking about? Innovation. Innovation means creating new ideas that add new value at scale. What does that mean? New ideas? You need new ideas in your career, in your business, in your life, in your marriage, with the kids, when it's not working. And what's the new idea? We gotta add new value. We gotta add new value to the business and the customers. We gotta add new value to the team. We've got to add new value to the family. If we want things to change, it's by contributing into them. Please listen. If we want things to change, it's about contributing value into them. What we hope is, oh, we'll just think positively and we'll attract amazing things and things will change and they will get better. I'm all about hope. You got to have hope. I'm all about positive thinking. Got to have positive thinking. But they are not sufficient on their own. You must find ways to add new value into your relationships, into your mission and your purpose, into your family life if you're going to experience change. So innovation, new ideas that add new value at scale, what does that mean you keep doing? Means you grow. It means you operationalize it. It means you automate it. It means you delegate it. It means it keeps going. Because how many of us have great ideas? I mean, how many of you have had like, in your mind, a million dollar idea in the last 90 days? I mean, so many people are like, oh, that, oh, if, that if. Ah, ooh, ah. And we have new ideas and we never implement which we're going to talk about. Oh, dear. Okay, so let's just start with the frame. Innovation. What is it? Innovation is new ideas that add new value at scale. Let's start with that. Let's get your head in the game here. Whether it's your family, your career or your business or your purpose, I want you to think about that. I need some new ideas right now because your ideas and the quality of your ideas and how much value they've added and how much you've operationalized and scaled them is where you're at today. Those ideas that you've had that your life is a result of the ideas that you've had and what kind of value they added to your life or others, and whether or not you kept up with it, isn't it true? So think about this right now. Think about this just for a second. Are you happy with where you're at? Do you have more in the tank? Is there more potential there? Could you make a greater difference? Could you earn more? Could you out the competition in some way or another? Outperform them out, serve them? Where are you right now? What new ideas can we come up with today? We need new ideas to run this world. The old ones ain't working so good right now. We need a new way of thinking, a new way of behaving, a new way of adding value. If we're going to change things, who's up for changing things? Let's get fired up about life again. And you know what? You have to will that you have to work for that. I'm sweating already today for you. I'm getting fired up because I know this community. We can shift things if we decide to. So innovation, adding new ideas to add new value that we scale, operationalize, automate, build. Okay, with that, I'm going to begin in an unusual way about what kills that, and then we're going to talk about what amplifies it or speeds it up. In other words, I'm going to talk about what gets in your way. Then we're going to talk about how to make it go. Okay, let's talk about a few big pieces right now. The first one is the internal issue of complacency and delay. Complacency and delay. I think 2020 has really revealed whether or not we got complacent and whether or not we were adaptive when we needed to be. Right? Think about that. We just get complacent. We get comfortable. We just get so comfortable. Things are going good. You know, money's coming in the bank. You know, the kids are going to school. Everything's fine. And then crisis hits and our complacencies are revealed, right? Our behavior is revealed. Like I always say, crisis merely reveals previous habits. Right? It's like when crisis hits a lot of our habits. How did we spend before? Did we save before? Did we have people supporting us? Did we have good ideas? Were we running a good business? Were we adding value into our career? It's not to say that crisis doesn't also completely screw us and throw that all off, which it does. So the question then becomes, do we adapt fast enough? And I know a lot of people are delaying right now, and I wanted to share some of the things that we've done and really worked on. When the pandemic first hit, it was like, I don't know, early March for me, when I started going, I think we're going to have to shift up the whole business. What does that look like? What are the new ideas we can have? What's the new value we can add to the marketplace? How can we make that go in simplest of ways, which we'll talk about simplest of ways. Some of it was just like, oh, wow, we ship a ton of books out to the world. Shipping is going to become a huge problem. Okay, how do I take that piece of my business that relies a lot on shipping and completely transform it so it doesn't require shipping of something that was like, immediate? So it was like, oh, I got to digitize that physical product part of the business, right? Immediate. But how can I digitize that part of the business and add even more value to people? And that was the question, right? I need a new idea here. How do I change it but add new value? We're going to talk about how to do things later, but I want to let you know, the stopping point was a lot of people just been sitting around waiting. They're on delay mode for too long, way too long. My personal perspective is, in a crisis, everyone gets two weeks of delay mode. After two weeks, things aren't uncertain as much as we think they are. Right? What does that mean? Of course, things are always changing. So I'm not being flippant here, but what I'm suggesting is that as soon as you recognize the Earth has shifted a little bit, you got to go, oh, oh, oh, oh, it's on. Let me plan ahead. Let me figure out what's next. And let me not do it in just a reactive mode. Let me do it in an aspirational mode. What good could this mean? Please write that down. What good could this mean? What new door does this open? What new gate to new opportunity does this open? Right? We gotta immediately shift to not just solving problems and protecting ourselves, because that's what happens, right? Default safe mode in us is, oh, protect myself, right? Protect myself. Make sure I'm okay. Make sure I'm safe. Make sure I can handle this. Make sure I can protect my things and my family and things are going on and okay, there's some new problems, let me solve those new problems. So we've got to solve the new problems, but then we must also keep our eyes forward to the aspirations that we still desire. And I know so many people, they become complacent on just solving the new problems of this moment. And they took their eye off the horizon where they could go where they wanted to go right now a lot of people would say, well, I'm just waiting to see how things turn out, Brendan, and I want to let you know that's a form of complacency. We wouldn't usually label it that way, but it is, it is. Because as soon as you go, well, I, I guess I'll wait to see how things turn out. We just handed our power to things. Got it? We just handed our power to things. When I say I'll wait to see how things turn out, no more complacency, no more delay. Otherwise we won't come up with the ideas and add the new value and change. Second idea I want to talk to you about that kills a lot of innovation is isolation. Isolation and superiority. What do I mean by that? I mean that what happens is new ideas don't happen in a vacuum. You are a brilliant person. You are a unique human. You are incredibly special and almost like cosmically and divinely impossible. Like it's an amazing thing that you even exist in the universe. Like it's an amazing like coincidence or impossibility of odds that you are still alive and that we are transmitting my being through this lens out through the Internets, into your zoom thingy. That's amazing. That's amazing. It's impossible. It's impossible. So you are an incredibly blessed, unique, gifted person and you are not sufficient enough alone to change things significantly. Now I know everyone's going to hate that. Brendon Burchard just said that. The personal development guy, the self reliant guy, the personal control guy, the high performance guy. What I'm suggesting is, can you have personal power? Yes. Can you make amazing changes in your life? Yes. But you want to make a real difference. You need a team. You want to change things for real. You need a community, you need a group, you need a powerful tribe of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 friends on your side or your family on your side, or your co workers on your side, or that big huge organization you work for. You gotta have five people there who got your back, who you are constantly and please listen, this is the point. You need people who you are constantly ideating with, brainstorming with together. What happens is we get alone and we don't use the tools to communicate with people. We're in our silo of what we do and we're just doing our thing. We forget to reach out, communicate. What are you guys doing? How's it going? What do you need? What new ideas do you have? What's working over there? Could you share this? Could you share that? One reason I'm here in my industry as one of the top three earners in the history of my entire industry. One of the reasons that is is because I simply am always asking people, what are you doing? What's working? How's it going? What else should we be doing? Where's the industry going? What's working with your customers? What do they love? What are you struggling with? I'm always asking everybody questions. Why? Because I'm a dumb kid from Montana. That's why I can be humble enough to ask questions. What happens is when we get good at what we're doing, we adopt a superior mindset. I know how to do this. I know what's working. And here's what happens psychologically. And please listen. If you read High Performance Habits, you know the shift. What happens is we go into a mode of certainty versus curiosity. The world's most successful people are incredibly curious. Incredibly curious. I mean, you think of literally some of the wealthiest people in the world. Curiosity drives them. Think of the Fortune 500 CEOs who are the best rated ever. Curiosity drove them. They didn't go, this is the way it is. It will always be this way. This is what we're doing, which is what people are doing right now in times of change. Instead they go, let's get curious. Let's keep talking here, let's keep having dialogues, let's discuss, let's brainstorm. Because no one knows what's going to happen five months from now, 12 months from now, five years from now. It's great to think about those things and brainstorm those things. Have the humility to be brainstorming. My question to you, my friends, is this. How many people did you talk to last week and brainstorm with? How many people on your team did you talk with and brainstorm with? How many people in your family did you talk with and brainstorm with? How many people in your community or those you lead or love or serve? How many did you talk with and ideate with and brainstorm? Or did you talk with a lot of people? But it sounded more like, this sucks because that's what Most people do. Hey, this sure sucks. Doesn't this suck? Oh, my gosh. This is terrible. Did you see what he said? Oh, my gosh. Did you hear what the CEO is doing? Oh, they. Oh, my God. And what they do is they connect through complaint versus build through brainstorm. Let's reevaluate the tenor of our relationships, my friends, and how many we're having. The challenge is that sometimes that gets in our psyche, and now we withdraw psychologically from our family, our team, those we lead, love, and serve because we're trying to cope. When we are in crisis, we turn inward to protect ourselves, to get a lay of the land, to understand how things are going to go at the cost of our connections with others, which is where real good and great ideas come from and great differences come from and great joy in life. Everything we know in psychology is also built upon sociology. So much of our psychological joy of life is tied to relationships. And so if we want to have great ideas, we also have to have great relationships and. And great conversations. You know, you hear about the great writers or the great artists back in, you know, the days of, like, amazing change in Paris, and there they are, all the writers are all at the cafes, and they'd sit there all day, talking and smoking and doing whatever they were doing. You think of, like, these times and like, when you hear that brainstorm of those founders sitting in a garage somewhere, coming up with ideas all day, it's about that. Let's not lose that. That's why I honor you for being here. Let's come up with some ideas today together. It's in conversation, in thinking that things change. I'm here to be your coach, and I'm going to be accountable with you. I'm going to ask you, last week, how many people did you actually brainstorm with about anything? That's a tell. Okay, what else? I think it's incredibly important to realize innovation is also killed by internal competition. Now, we know in companies, right, that if you pit this team against that team, they might like that, and they might amp up some results over a period of months, but it ultimately kills the culture. Competition is killing your ideas. You think you're competing with that girl on Instagram, so now you're kind of trying to keep up with her and do what she does, and now you're conforming with her versus doing your own thing. The more you try to compete, the more you're pulled into competition, the more you're pulled into conformity as well, because you're trying to level the playing field. And often you don't recognize the unique genius that you have, that unique, authentic part of yourself that is so different. Because innovation is something that is different. New ideas, new value. It's difference. It's differentiation. You are that too. So we have two things that kill new ideas, new values. One, our internal competition. Well, I feel like I have to compete with her or them or that other company all the time, but also on our teams and in our families, meaning when our teams are not aligned, when our families are not aligned with us and what we are trying to do together, the odds of new ideas coming up are almost zilch. Instead, what comes up when we're disaligned? Unaligned here, unaligned there. We're out of whack here. What comes up? Complaint, blame, resistance, bitterness. Anyone recognize these words? That's what happens. What happens when we're not on the same page. Internal politics, gossip. All these things happen when we're not all on the same ship, rowing in the same direction, fired up about exploring new things. Got it. So if you're wondering why you. I don't have better ideas. I'm like, what I tell people all the time is like, don't worry about the new ideas yet. Align the boats, align the team. Get the vision and the values and the excitement out first. Get everybody kind of jogging in the same direction. Then. Then ask, what new worlds can we explore together? If you just go up to a bunch of people who hate each other and say, hey, y', all, what can we do together? Do we have any new ideas? It's like everyone's smacking their forehead. No, no, no, no. We need to find some type of alignment. So internal competition. When we compete against other people or other companies and all of a sudden we start becoming like them, we lose our differentiation. And internally, when our family's not rowing together, when our team is not together, when our company is not more aligned. That's why innovation isn't happening, because everyone's in survival and competition mode versus exploration mode. You got it. So these are just some components that we're talking about that hurt innovation. When we are complacent, when we delay, when we have that sort of isolation or superiority, when we are in that place where we are more certain than curious, when we are all out of alignment. Those explain a lot of things. So I hope this is relating with you wherever you're at in your life, whether you're a CEO or you run your business, or you're an entrepreneur or you work for somebody or, or literally, you're with the family each day just trying to make sure everybody doesn't hurt each other and they eat no matter where you're at. New ideas, that's what we're talking about here today. So how do we make those happen even more? I want to talk with you about some principles of innovation. First principle, all outcomes are not an accident. All outcomes had a process preceding the outcome, people involved in that process, and an intention. So if you were to draw it out, you would say intention, people in process, outcomes. So you got to look at your area. If you want to add new values and change things, you got to go, oh, what are the outcomes? What do we have right now? What's really happening right now? What's really happening in your business right now? Most people won't look at their outcomes. That's why they can't come with new ideas. They're avoiding what's already there. If you are in a mental mode of avoidance, you can't simultaneously be in brainstorm. I really want you to hear this. If you have been like, struggling for months to come up with any new ideas, it's because you're likely in avoidance or protection mode. It's like a different channel in our thoughts, in our brain waves, if you will. It's like a different channel. And if you're on avoidance, I'm not going to look at how bad the bank account is. Well, then of course you're not going to be accountable for it. And of course, if you're not accountable for it, you wouldn't say, I'd better come up with new ideas. You just avoid it, pretend, shut it out, feel ashamed, shut down. Innovation becomes with let's face what's real, where are we? What's working? What's not working? And you can do this in every area of your life. You can do this in your business, right? Whatever. You're out your financial bank account. Okay? There's process leading into that. What were your intentions and your goals? So I have intentions and I have goals I think of. I have intentions for my customer. We do these processes. Here's how my team is involved. Outcome. Work it backwards if you want to improve it. Got to change the intention, change the process or the people and get different outcomes. Right? So I want you to think about that. Like, what about how does that apply to your marriage? How does it apply to your health? Right? Your health. There's outcomes there, there's process. What do I eat? Do I take care of myself? Do I rest? Do I recover? Do I have good habits. What was my intention? I want to be a healthy, vibrant, powerful person in my being and my body. Okay, cool. Or I just want to get through the day. See that? Intention changes how you set everything up, changes the outcome. So think of that as a model just for thinking of things. There's an outcome. There's people or processors involved, and there was an intention. Let's rework that. You want to change anything in your business? What? Rework that. Process flow. Just rework that. If you want to change anything in your business or in your life, just rework it. And often, what people do when they don't innovate, but they incrementally improve, they start. Please listen. This is going to change your entire life. Please listen. What people most often do is they start with the outcome. Oh, you know, we're only making a. You know, we started our business, we only made $30,000 this first year in our business. Let's tweak this thing so we can get to 32,000. Or let's tweak this thing, maybe we can get to 40 or 60. And they start with the outcome. You want innovation? You want paradigm shifting? Start with the intention. When you shift the intention, you shift everything else. Incremental improvement lies in going backwards. We start working on the outcome. Okay, let's change our goals here, everybody. We're all going to change our goals. Everybody. Okay, well, let's get these new processes in place. Let's hire some new people. Let's fire some people. Okay? Incremental improvement. Paradigm shift. You shift the intention, everything changes. This happens all the time in. Let me make this. You know, I know I'm focused on career and business a lot today. Let's take it into a relationship. Well, we're not as connected as we used to be. Outcome. I guess. Process. Need a few date nights in there, huh? Let me get some date nights going. That'll be great. Date nights, outcome. And they're like, why isn't things shifting here? Then they get like, savage. They're like, well, outcome's not good. We changed the process, added date nights. That didn't work so good. Let me change the people. And they change out their spouse. Okay. Sometimes it begins with, okay, hey, listen, things aren't vibing. We're not clicking together. Let's change the intention. Let's change the intention of this relationship. What do we really want in this? What do we want our relationship to be like and to feel like? Let's begin with a new intention in the relationship together. Well, that Happens the same thing on teams. You got to sit down the team and come up with new intentions, different intentions and shared purposes together and let that sweep through process, let that sweep through team, let that sweep through outcome. I'm not here to say you can't incrementally try to adjust things, but I'm also here to talk about innovation, which is real change, real new value. So I would love for you to think about that with even your customer flows. Right. Think about the people you serve. What is your intention for them? Some people are just like, well, if I can make an extra buck off somebody, that's a very different. If your intention is to change other people's lives, equip them to achieve their goals faster, help them radically transform the quality of their life, that's going to shift that whole conversation. That's what I'd love for you to think about. Change the intention. You focus on the outcomes too much. That's why you incrementally grew. You shift that intention. We shift life. Second big idea. Often our job in innovation is to remove friction and increase engagement and enjoyment. For those who own a business or run a business or you're a big part of a team, you want to change how you serve that customer, remove the friction that they have. In buying from you, in receiving products or services from you, in communicating with you, in staying in touch with you, in buying the next thing from you. Decrease friction and you increase speed. Yeah, it's like if you and I go out for a hike and you're out there with a 30 pound rucksack and we're walking together and you're like, this is hard. I'm like, well, take off the rucksack, you know, take off the weight, release the weight and you're more free. You can move faster, go longer. But often we pile on all these policies. We pile on this administration. We pile on, you know, seven layers of management, 40 layers of people. To talk to somebody, 17 different prompts on your phone. You ever call a bank? Good lord. You ever call a bank, beep, boop, beep, boop, beep, boop, beep boop. Seventeen days later, somebody calls you back or picks up. In the meantime, they play the worst music possible just to grind and give you friction in your brain. So you hang up. Because if you hang up, they make more money. It's true. They put friction in to keep you away from changing things. We don't want to do that in great businesses. We want to remove friction to speed up their ability to be with us. Buy with us, support us. Same thing in your company, in your teams. You got to remove some of these layers you built up, right? Most companies I go to consult or work with, they got seven too many layers of managers. You're like, what is going well? None of these people do anything that helps the customer. They're all moving things around and evaluating each other. And no one's evaluating, do we help people? Like, we got too many layers here. Removing friction. But with customers too, not only do you remove friction, you increase engagement and enjoyment. So your question should be, how do we connect more and make it more fun? Think about the power of that in your marriage or your relationship with your significant other. Think about that with your partner. Think about that with your kids. How do we increase engagement and make it more fun? Write this down. You want to change things, you want to innovate things, Remove friction, increase engagement and enjoyment. I teach software makers this all the time when I'm consulting companies. It's like, oh, you want to be a high performance company? Yeah. You got to increase the engagement with your customers. They never hear from you, they don't collaborate with you. There's no community, what's going on, Right? And also in every way you talk with them, it's so boring. There's no personality, there's no connection to the brand. Like, let's make it more enjoyful. It's like enjoyable. Like, let's do that. That's the secret to innovation. Third, big idea. You've got to have innovation sessions built in. What do I mean by that? You have to build in brainstorm sessions. Maybe that's Sunday night with your family, Monday, Tuesday meetings, maybe that's once a month. Innovation session. It has to be something that you purposely go do. Here's what happens in work and in life. We just do what's already on our plate, right? Everyone? I mean, how many of you raise your hand, have so much on your plate right now, you can't even handle it, right? When you're overwhelmed, you're not going, what new ideas can I come up with? You can't even. You're trying to survive, man. That is the vast majority of people, especially if they have not had high performance training, if they haven't been with us, if they're not practicing their high performance habits, if they don't have their journals and their planners, if they don't know how to schedule time and manage time. And people, all of a sudden, they're super overwhelmed all the time. You can't expect them to randomly walk through the day and come up with a great idea. You got to create a safe space for ideation. You got to create a process, a time, a meeting where like change ideas can be brought up safely about what outcome, process, people, intention. Got it. Oh, Brendan's saying I should have more brainstorm sessions. Yes, but then what happens? The brainstorm, everyone goes, well, what should we do here? Here's what you do. Show all the outcomes, talk about the process and people and talk about the intentions and ask, how do we do better? What are we missing? What else is happening? What's the root analysis of why we're getting these outcomes? What's the process that's really happening, that creating these things, what are our intentions? That type of session, if you will, is powerful. Now maybe you run your own business like I do. I schedule that session with myself. Like I have to have saved time just for me, where I'm not managing somebody or trying to deal with 50 people, where I can just have that for me. And then you got to have those ones where you have it. Maybe that's with your team. And it doesn't have to be super formal. It can be, you know, you go to lunch with your two leads and you say, how are we doing? What's working? What can we do better? How do we serve the customer better? How do we increase what engagement and enjoyment? How do we decrease what friction? I've been giving you the topics the entire time. Do you feel like we're being a little bit too complacent here? What are you curious about in the marketplace right now? Ah, okay. What are you seeing happening with our outcomes? What's our process, our people, all these conversation points I've been giving you for that brainstorm session. Alright, next up, number four, you want to change, I want you to write this down. Amplify the winning features. Amplify the winning features. I'll tell you what that means in a second. Amplify the winning features. You ever heard the 80:20 rule, the Pareto principle? You know, the idea that, you know, oh, wow, just a few things actually lead to the biggest results. You know that, right? Well, your job, if you're going to innovate and change things, is to always be looking for what are, what we call in high performance work. What are the needle movers? What are the things that make the most difference? What are the things that really work? And let me take it out of business for a second for people, let's jump into your partner, your spouse, your relationship with somebody you love. There are things that you do that really work in lighting up that other person. Do them more often. See, what happens is often we think, you know, innovation and change is just completely new things. Sometimes it can be new emphasis on things already working. Right back to business. It's Steve Jobs coming back to Apple and going, why are we doing all these crazy products? Most of them aren't even outcome. They're not even working. And that's not even our intention. What are we doing? Let's remove all these other things that don't serve the intention. Blows up like 10 or 12 product lines, right? Or take the idea more modern. Take Instagram. For those who know the history of Instagram, it didn't start as a photo application. Photography was one feature of when you checked into a place in the original versions of Instagram, before it was even called Instagram, where you just check in to a place, they basically had a check in app, like an arrival app, like a share where you're at app. And they noticed the feature that was most being used was photography. Oh, all these other things are good, but they kind of, everyone else is already doing them, but this thing seems different. And of course Facebook already had photography, but they said, we're just going to do that. They amplified the winning feature. This is working. Oh, notice I'm not saying let's just improve it. They said, let's make that the thing. What part of your business is actually the thing? And what if your business became more of or completely the thing? See, I work with a lot of high performing entrepreneurs around the world and often they'll realize in their business or a business they're consulting or working with or acquiring. Oh, when I go to acquire this business, really it only, it's actually only this is the thing they do, but they have all this other crap around it. We're going to spin this piece out. If you ever heard about taking over a company and they spin out a division or spin out a unit because they recognize that thing has so much value on itself. Let me spin that out and spin that up. Have you ever heard that phrase, right? You spin it out, you spin it up. Well, that might be for you too. There might be one thing in your business that if you look at the outcome and you think about your intentions, you're like, that's actually the thing. That's the thing. That thing right there is what we're really built upon. I'll give you an example. In my own business, two times in my life, I completely shifted everything, I mean literally the whole thing back in 2010? Yeah, 2010 or 11. I was thinking about what my intention was. Well, my whole dream of my life, as many of you know, was I want to be a writer and a coach. And my business at the time, if you looked at the overall business, you know, I'd already, at that point, kind of achieved, like, way beyond my dreams from where I came from. My whole goal in my entire life was maybe one day to make 40,000 doll, like, ever. So for me, it was like, that was crazy. Beyond my personal dream. And we had, you know, at that point, I'd already become a millionaire. It was like, crazy. But I looked at the business and I was doing all these things, and I said, well, what's the thing that drives everything else? And for me at the time, it was like, man, my intention. It's like a book, man. When people buy the book, they love it. They want to come to the seminar. When people buy a book, my gosh, they want to go to the mastermind. They want to hire me as a coach. I mean, the book is the access point. Now. The book was earning the least thing in the entire business because, you know, my masterminds are tens of thousands of dollars. My coaching was hundreds of thousands. I mean, it was like the book seemed like such a simple thing, but I was like, that's the thing. And everyone thought I was crazy, but I made the business literally operate completely automatically on the book. And it just wham, super scaled up. Now, if I tried to do 50 different things, we wouldn't all be here together. But by turning the business that way, that was in 2010. Recently, I also realized, you know what, looking at all this, I really care about ongoing impact with people. You know, personal development has to go beyond a book. It's got to go beyond one course. That's why you all are here with me every single month. It's like, I want to be with people on a journey. I want to help them transform over time. I want to keep imbuing this energy, keep challenging them, keep asking the questions, keep giving the value. It was so important to me. And I was like, oh, well. Oh, our subscriptions. I need to. That's the thing. Let me take that thing that's working really good, but not the biggest thing, and let's build around that. Let's isolate this thing and really amplify that thing. It was a complete game changer for the business. It also benefited us coming into this time when it was so like, people just needed this energy, they needed this work, and they needed Digital examples like this. Like right now, the whole world is discovering zoom and live casts. I did my first live cast in 2009. It was like that long ago. I've been doing livecasts every month since 2009. So for me, I was lucky I was already here because I recognized people wanted that ongoing connection. But it wasn't the business, you understand? So I made it the business. That's what I'm talking about. Amplify the winning features. What is already working. That might actually be the thing. I'll give you another example. One of my clients, she was doing garage sales and literally garage. And I'm a Montana kid, so I love garage sales, right? Just nothing better. Going driving up and down the alleys and going to garage sales. I don't know if anyone garage sale people out there. I know that a lot of people are garage sale people, but it was a big thing when we grew up. My mom would do garage sales. Dad, garage sale day was a big day at our house. We did a lot of them in the summertime. And I remember I just loved it. And this woman told me she was doing it and I was like, great. I said, what sells the best? And she said, what do you mean? I said, well, like, what do you sell? And she was somebody who went to a lot of garage sales. She was one of the people go to many garage sales throughout the week and then the weekend and the next or the next week. She would basically sell all the other things she already bought, mark it up. So she'd get a bunch of cheap stuff at other garage sales, mark up the price and sell to gracha. So she'd been doing this for two, three years. I said, well, so what's selling like the best for you? And she's like, honestly, it's this. And forgive me, I don't even know how to describe it. It's a type of blanket, apparently, you know, crochet kind of thing or something that people really loved that she got from this lady. And long story short, I said, oh, that's the thing. She goes, yeah. I said, why don't you make that the thing? She said, what do you mean? I said, well, go open a garage sale on it. She goes, what do you mean? I said, go to Etsy and you know, open up a store on that thing and just, just to see one month take off the garage saleing. Just don't do garage sales and just focus on promoting that Etsy store. Just promote the store, see what happens. That's her entire multimillion dollar business. Now, one thing might be the thing and you never knew it. One thing might become Instagram. One simple thing, right? Karaoke. TikTok. What? Follow. Simple, simple, simple, simple, simple. Wisdom loves simplicity. Innovation comes from simplicity. Okay, next up, number five. When you're trying to. Like, if you're really struggling with me here, here's some simple rules. Create new ideas, connect existing ideas, or add and subtract from current ideas. It's a good thing to do in your business, but also in all your relationships in life. What new ideas can we do? Family. What new ideas can we do? Team. But another question is, what are some things we can connect that haven't been connected yet before? Right. Most innovation isn't just like this completely new idea. It's like, oh, no one ever put these two things together. And when we put these two things together, everything shifts. It's just no one ever put these two things together. They never sold these two things together. They never made a feature that did these two things together. I'll give you an example. As simple as it can be. You know, like cameras, like this camera as an example I'm shooting right now, this camera. Cameras were sold the same way they were forever. They kept trying to make the cameras better and better and better and better. And they said, oh, well, you know, what we have is we have a camera here and everybody's got these screens and these monitors over here. Why don't we put a flip monitor on the camera? So this camera has this thing that turns around where I can see myself? No, duh. That's a whole. That's an innovation, right? This is different. It's like, oh, when the first cameras came out, everything you know about YouTube and the vlogisphere, the vlog sphere. Yeah. Think about every vlogger. They hunt for these cameras that have that flip so they can see themselves. An entire new industry category began. You gotta think about it, that, like, we had video cameras for decades making that thing in we could flip it that had already been on other products. But now when we put those two together and we market it for that specific new use, we have innovation in the entire category. Take two things, combine them. Take the bicycle, combine the engine, and you have an E bike. Those things existed separately, but by combining those things, things changed. Right? You used to have camera and laptop. Most of you right now on zoom camera, on laptop, in laptop. Remember, you used to have the thing. You had to put the thing on. Some of you guys, I know you have to do that. You have the little webcams and everything else like that. But why not integrate them? Think about this. What in your business or your life can you integrate? Connect. That's innovation. What can you integrate or connect? Got it. Okay. What else? Take a look at your results and ask always. Or your products or your services. What can we add or subtract? What would add or subtract that would remove friction, add or subtract or increase engagement and enjoyment on both sides, your side and their side. Let me give you an example. I used to like everything. I mean, beginning of my career, whatever I sold on the Internet, I usually gave people a free 30 minute strategy call. Like a phone call back in the day, right? So I would do phone calls all day with everything. It was just like, whatever you bought, you can talk to me. I mean, for everybody. I didn't care. I was on the phone all the time. And then one of my friends and mentor said, why are you doing so many calls? I said, well, I'm just trying to add this value here. He's like, was there? Could you subtract the calls? Add a new way of engagement without hurting the value that they get. It was like mind blowing. I never thought of taking away my time and subtracting it, but the second I did that, I enjoyed life more. And the customers didn't care because they didn't know. We just removed that bullet. Take that bullet out that says 30 minute call with Brennan. Remove the bullet. They still bought the thing. They didn't know. Sometimes you're adding so much value, it's actually stealing away your time to be able to add new value. So look at all the services, products and the things that you do and say, what can we remove? Listen, parents, sometimes you got those kids in 70 different groups and 80 different after school activities and 30 different things. And this has become a moment where some of those went away. Be really thoughtful about whether or not you're going to add them back in, right? Be really thoughtful about what went away, what was subtracted in this time and what was added to you follow? So think about this for a minute. You have the ability to look at anything in your life and go, what can I take away? What can I add? What can I take away? And here's how I'd love for you to do it. Since we're here together in personal development, would you please put happiness as an outcome? Happiness. If you're going to have more happiness, what do you need to add to your life and what do you need to subtract from your Life. It's such a simple conversation, right? When I look at my business, I go, okay, our products and services, what can we add to increase engagement and joy? And what can we remove? That really doesn't make the difference? It's not the needle mover. I bet most of you have 10 things you could completely cut out of your life right now that wouldn't bother your family, wouldn't bother you, wouldn't bother your customers. Wasn't adding that much value, but it was adding work and time and administration to your life. Some of you, it's time to subtract some projects that don't make any sense. It's time to subtract some paperwork that doesn't make any sense that you built in your own company or your leaders asked for or you asked for your team from. And it's slowing everybody down. Sometimes stripping away things makes people go faster. So please listen to those thinking categories I just gave you. Come up with new ideas which we've talked about. Connect or integrate some things which we've talked about, or add and subtract. Simple. Take this out, add this in. That's how you kind of brainstorm great ideas. But please connect this with what I said earlier. You need to have time to do that. When are you going to do it? Is it going to be the first of the month? With me on the first of the month? That's when I do all this stuff. I have my little Innovation Brendan session where I just sit down, I'm going through these thinking strategies for myself, for my own business, and it's how I come up with ideas. Oh, we got to pivot. We got to change. Let's try this. Let's do that. And you got to have those times with certain people or your leads or people in your family that you have those conversations with. So I'm kind of giving you the map here of not just how to think for yourself, but how do you engage other people. But listen, none of this happens just like all of personal development. No personal development happens without a schedule, without a routine, without a habit. You have to establish that. Okay, last big idea today. You've got to turn experimentation into a way of life. So many people are scared of change because they never do it. But also so many people are scared of change because they think it's permanent. What people have forgotten is the idea of testing things out. I'm only here with you all because I'm great at testing. We test stuff all the time. Right now, there's probably 70 different ads being tested across dozens of different pages to see which one works. We're always testing. I'm not certain this works. I'm curious. Let's try this. Let's try that. Let's try that. In this world, you can test and pivot and shift and get data and get feedback on the same day, and you're like, oh, I don't want to try that. Because you think, well, I'm a perfectionist. I have to have it all complete and done and know everything and be certain about it before I begin. No, I would rather be a hot mess of movement and trying things and seeing how it turns out than a perfectly organized perfectionist coward who won't do anything until everything's perfect. I know that sounds harsh. I'm saying that's how I prefer it. I'd rather be a hot mess. I'd rather bumble into things. How do we do this? Test this test. Let me try this. Let me try this out. If I hadn't done that, we would have never figured out almost everything in the company. So I know you know that, but what tests are you currently running? This is the tell as your accountability coach, your high performance coach. If I go into a company and I sit down with you, it's in the first 10 questions I have. What are the tests you're running right now? What are you talking about? Well, what new thing are you trying right now to see if it works or not? Adds new value, reduces friction, increases engagement, increases enjoyment or not? We haven't tried anything new here in 15 years, Brendan. Wow. I wonder why I got called in. Because your business looks like this, right? So it's like, what tests are you running? And don't fool yourself. We can measure this real fast. Let's talk about your health. What new supplements are you trying? What's the test? How long are you trying it for? What's the results you're looking for? What new workout routines? If you're the same size and shape as you've been last 10 years, try something new for a month, right? We got to get tests going. And I know you know this concept, but this is an easy one to bust people on. Most people in most businesses don't have any tests running. They say they do, but they actually don't. And so what happens is they're in trouble. See, you can have stability. As an example, my book routine, my book funnel, we're still selling, you know, hundreds or thousands of books every single week. That thing runs. Has been running for a decade, nonstop. Cool. But all around, it we're testing new things, new emails, new email sequences, new flows, new videos. We're always testing and that helps us go faster, find the needle movers. So I want you to think about in your business, are you testing? But not just, okay, we're going to test once in a while when the outcomes suck. Here's what I'd love for you to try in your life. Test something new every week. If every week sounds so overwhelming, set a monthly challenge for yourself, which we're about to talk to in a few minutes. Set a monthly challenge for yourself every month. I'm going to try this. I'm going to test this this month. I'm going to try kettlebells, baby. We're just going to. I'm going to do kettlebells all month and see how that feels. I'm going to watch 50 videos on YouTube about how to do kettlebell home workouts. And that's what the test is going to be this month. Cool. Or maybe the test is, hey, let's try stripping away these services and products with these particular customers and delivering just that. Let's see what their feedback is. Let's see what happens to the revenue. Let's see what the stick rate is. Test, but weekly. I don't want you to ever go into a Monday ever again. We're going to have this as an ongoing conversation via text and email in this program. You're with me now. What are you testing this week? Because if we can get you in motion of testing a few more things and I know how it feels, it's like, oh, my gosh, I'm already overwhelmed. Brendon, how am I going to test new things? Don't worry. I already answered it in this entire conversation. You're going to reduce some friction here, increase some engagement there. You're going to find some enjoyment here. You're going to add subtract there. You're going to combine and integrate here. You're going to try a new idea. We're just going to keep doing that. Listen, if you ever chose a year to be innovative and to test things and try new things, this is that year. You've gotten permission from the entire world to pivot. No one will complain if you change things right now. No one. And if they do complain, they'll also understand it if they're, like, paying attention to what's going on in the world. We have real societal problems. We have social injustice. We have a world uncertain on its own economic base and on its entire political spectrum. We have a lot of change and shifting right now. And thank God that gives you permission to do the same. What's your shift? What's your new idea? What are you going to try this month? How are you going to get ahead?