Strategies For A Brighter Future

You see that you can evolve and change and grow. You get the mastery mindset, the growth mindset.

Okay?

You're on the path to excellence. That's where you probably already are if you're here.

Okay?

You also have probably been somebody who put in a lot of passion, right? And you stayed with it for a while. That's Angela Duckworth. That's passion, perseverance. It equals grit. So you're gritty. You've worked hard, you stayed with it, you've been focused on your interests and you plowed through those obstacles. You've been resilient a lot along the way to be able to do that. This framework is called C1, C2.

Okay?

C1, C2. If you want to write down your journals, just call it C1 C2. And the reason I want you to write this down today is because one of my goals with you is to really build this community. I'm trying to create some common language around high performance because a lot of people don't really know how to describe it or talk about it. And I think this will become one of the central metaphors we'll use to explain high performance to people. Okay, so C1 and C2, what does that mean? Well, here's what it looks like.

Okay?

C1 means circle one, C2 means, you guessed it, circle two.

Okay?

That's all C1 and C2 means circle one, circle two.

Okay?

C1, C2. Now, as in anything in life, we can use a lot of metaphors to explain things. We're going to do that with high performance today.

Okay?

If you haven't heard me describe high performance, specifically the description or the detail, the definition that I would give about it is high performance is sustained performance over a period of long time, over long term, which basically means you succeed beyond standard norms over the long term, right? So whatever the standard is, like if the standard is level five in your industry and you go to level seven and you stay there for three years and the industry stays at level three, you're in a high performance realm, right? It's when you're just above your normal operations. For you, that means, personally, look, if this year you're healthier than you were last year and you're going to maintain it, you're in a high performance health zone for you for a period of time until it becomes the new normal, then you go to another level.

Right?

That makes sense. Okay, well, high performance assumes what? Well, if the definition is that you succeed beyond standard norms over the long term, then guess what? Our assumption about C1 is our assumption about C1. This first circle is you're already in success, right? You've already succeeded. So today's framework is about what happens and what created your level of success today. And then circle two is what you're going to grow into tomorrow.

Right.

So in a lot of, like organizational consulting, we would call this as is, right? The as is state, where are we today? And this is to be the difference is what we're going to focus on is when we talk about as is, we're not doing like a SWOT analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, though you could, right, you could talk about strengths, weaknesses, opportunity, stress. What we're actually going to be talking about today is what gets you in trouble. As if you got the email from us, we talked about the reality that some people plateau or they bottom out or they see their performance decline. Why does that happen? What I have noticed with the world's highest performing people, whether it's major influencers, major executives, some of the Olympic clients that we get to work with, what ends up happening is that something in their mindset shifts and they're not aware of that. And all of a sudden they become less good, less happy, less confident. Their overall performance in lots of different areas of life starts going down, but they don't know why. C1 and C2 is going to explain it today. Okay, let's imagine that C1 is where you're at today. And let me just start with a series of questions for you that you can write down your journal. What made you successful today? Like, let's take a, just take a quick beat. What made you successful today? If you had to explain to somebody, let's say I'm interviewing you for my podcast and I said, okay, tell me three things that have made you as successful as you are today. What would those three things be? So try to deal zero on that. I'll give you, I'll give you a beat to write that down. What are the three things that made you as successful as you are today? Some people will talk about their mindset. Well, you know, I'm a passionate person. I'm focused, I'm alert, I'm attentive, which, by the way, are all correlated with high performance. So good on you.

Okay.

Some people would talk about their social environment, right? I had support from my parents, from my spouse. My girlfriend believed in me, my boyfriend believed me. I had good teachers and mentors, which, yep, social support is tied, maybe not explicitly high performance, but it is tied to well being, which is just as Important well being is usually defined as our sense or feeling of safety, health and happiness.

Okay?

So it's important. Social support is very important to well being, your safety, health and happiness. So some people would say their social element. Other people will talk about, like, their skill sets. Well, what made me successful is I figured out how to do coding, I figured out how to do video. I figured out how to communicate. I figured out how to play that piano at that expert level. I figured out how to do TV or advertising or marketing or business. They describe it as a skill set, you know, and then other people, they describe it how they serve.

Right?

How they serve. And that could be. Well, you know, I add tremendous amounts of value. I'm different in the way that I ran my business. So they talk about distinction or value.

Right.

Does any of this resonating with you? Did you write any of these things down? I hope you're taking notes because if you really want to understand how to get to C2, we're going to have to talk about those topics.

Okay.

And we'll come back to them. So you're thinking right now, what's made you successful? What's made you successful? Okay, now here's where we start getting into trouble. And the differentiation between here and here is if I had accurately drawn this based on where I want you to go, this circle would be way bigger than this circle, okay? This circle. If I was in charge of your life, now I'm not. So I'm just giving you the framework. But if I was in charge, I would say this framework for you is really like this, and this one is like this, okay? It's huge. We're going to grow into something. I don't want to make that assumption yet, but based on that assumption, I want to show where people mess up, even. Even when they're really good, even when they're extremely good. Remember, C1, that's today. C2, that's tomorrow. This is where you're at today. Here is what happens when you get successful.

Okay?

So remember, this is the assumption that you're successful. It's the assumption too, that you know what made you successful. Here's what people do when they're focused here, what they're really on, what they're really after in their mindset, in their career, in their social environment, in the service, in the skill set, all of this, what they're trying to do. They're trying to get this to equal what, mastery. And you know, what they probably have. I mean, if you think about where you're at in your life. You probably, if you're successful, you're good at some stuff, right? And if you don't believe that, you should friggin give yourself some credit. You have permission to love yourself today. If you haven't gotten that for some a while. There you have it. Okay, so mastery, that's the journey you've been on. Isn't it true? You've been trying to get better, you're into mastery and I celebrate you. I bow down at you. You have the growth mindset already. You're already probably doing the things that create initial success. What creates initial success? What are the question marks for some people that made it? We know from, you know, almost every study. Take Carol Dweck's work on mindset, right? You need to have a growth mindset. That means you need to be open to learning, which you are because you're here today. It means that you see that you can evolve and change and grow. You get the mastery mindset, the growth mindset, okay? You're on the path to excellence. That's where you probably already are if you're here.

Okay?

You also have probably been somebody who put in a lot of passion, right? And you stayed with it for a while. That's Angela Duckworth. That's passion, perseverance, it equals grit. So you're gritty, you've worked hard, you stayed with it, you've been focused on your interests and you've plowed through those obstacles. You've been resilient along the way to be able to do that. You probably also follow Anders Ericsson's work, who talks about being in what he would call an optimal state, which is really only achieve through practice, right? It's through practice. So you tried and you've tried. I mean, do you feel like you've fallen on your face a bunch of times, but you got back up, you tried it again and you got better and better and better. Well, here's what happens for the people who were here. They ultimately attain this thing called world class, okay? They're in a world class mindset. So you're like, Brendan, what could be the friggin problem with this? Isn't this what we're all after, right? We want to achieve high levels of mastery. And that's. We're on. We want to become world class at something, right? We've already maintained we've gotten successful. So initial success now is leading to mastery, world class excellence. And so what could possibly be wrong with this? Well, first and foremost, if you had no success in your Life. When people are in personal development, as I am, as everybody else is, as Carla is, as Jess is here, who's filming this. We get in this place where we're kind of in a moment of transition, right? Our career might be changing, our relationships might be changing, our health might be changing, our ambitions might be changing. And then. So what we do is we work hard at it, we practice, we allow ourselves to be a hot mess and work ourselves through, and then we become successful. And then the danger begins, right? We work so hard to attain success, but in C1, ultimately, this can be the trap. And this is what most people don't see coming. They get successful and they're working to make that success get better or bigger, and all of a sudden, something starts happening and they get in trouble. And let me walk you through what these problem areas are for people, okay? This is where if we don't have the ambitions to significantly change, we end up plateauing, even if. Listen. Even if we're world class. Let me say it again. We end up plateauing even if we're world class. When I work with Olympians, they're already the best in the world, but often they're stuck in C1 and they can't get the gold sometimes. I work with a Fortune 50 company. They're so good, they're already world class, but they're about to become irrelevant. And I'm going to give you some examples of why that happens. For you personally, I'm assuming you've done this stuff, the hard work, the focus, the passion, the perseverance, the resilience. But here's where the mindset can get you in trouble. Now all of this becomes. First, the mindset jumps into, well, I need to perfect this thing, right? I've been working at something, and now I need to perfect it. So it must be absolutely perfect, or we don't roll it out. It has to be absolutely perfect or I won't even try it. Anything that kind of messes with the boundaries of this circle, which is so clean and so easy to understand. We don't approach it because we think, I'm not good at that. Well, that's not. Here's the big failure in Fortune 500. That's not our core competency, Brendan, because they want to stay in their core competency, because that's what core competency equals Certainty. Guess what. Core competency equals comfort. Guess what? Core competency equals high skill. Guess what. Everyone's getting paid for the high core competency. So they're paid to perfect their skills. They're paid to maintain. They're paid for excellence and world class. And that's good. Unless the things around them, the external environment, the world starts shifting and beaten at these edges as we'll talk about, ultimately, that perfectionist mindset, we know it stops you from trying new things so many times because you're so good and so comfortable what you're doing. It's one of the biggest traps of success. You just good. So now because you're good, guess what? You can get away with going on autopilot. Guess what? You can get away with going through the motions. Guess what? You can get away with not preparing and planning or practicing because you're good now. You don't have to do that. So now it's easy to become an automaton and just go through the motions. And of course, as you know, look, you go through the emotions too long in your marriage, guess what? It catches up with you go through the motions too long not learning and growing, somebody passes you. So you have to be careful if you're a successful person about your perfectionist tendencies can be the very thing that's going to hurt you. So beware. However, guess what? You also need to have it, okay? Because you know what? You can't become world class or develop real mastery without the perfection mindset of, like, let me dial this in. Let me get better at this. So at the same level, if you're not successful, to those who are still on their journey or you're in a moment transition, look, look at whatever you're doing. Go. How do I dial it in? How do I get it better? How do I control more factors to make it even better? Because it doesn't mean this is a bad thing. I'm just saying it's where people often plateau. But to get you there, you kind of need it. Like, I've had to obsess about the little things in my life. I don't know, like grammar, right? I never wanted to become good at that, but I had to get more perfectionist about that as I reached many more millions of people, right? I had to get better about perfecting where these lights go, right? Where do I want the mic? How far do I want the camera? How do I want to warm myself up to be able to do this? Like all those things I do at my events to prepare my body to get better. I'm running routines, I'm sticking to habits that are perfecting what I know already works, but I just don't get attached to all of that because it could Change. Some people got so attached to what made them good or successful that they fear, or worse, unconsciously avoid change and progress. They're good and they'll stay good until the conditions around them change and then they're in trouble. So what does all this mean? Well, what it means is when I work with yourselves today, when I work with my highest level clients, I want to know what is it specifically they've been trying to perfect in their business. If they don't know what that is, if they don't know what processes they're trying to perfect, what individual habits or social group habits they're trying to perfect, if I don't know what systems they're trying to perfect and get better at, I just know they're not even in C1 yet. Does that make sense? Like if I go into a big company and I go, okay, tell me about the systems you're trying to perfect. And they're like, we don't even know what our systems are. I'm like, oh, you're not in the game yet, right? You're not even on the process of mastery or world class yet. You're just starting. Which, by the way, is okay. It's okay, right? You're just not in this success level yet.

Right?

Again, I told you for the sake of today's training, because I only have so much time with you, I'm just jumping right into C1.

Okay?

But this can be a good thing to get you into C1 and a death knell if you don't move past it because it will make you plateau. What else is going on here in Mindset? Well, here's where we get into the two major areas of trouble. Number one, we start to scale. Okay, we start to scale. Well, we go, well, we've perfected some processes. Let's go, let's scale. Which, by the way, is the right frigging answer, right? It's absolutely the right answer. But people try to scale into C1 versus scaling into C2. Does that make sense? If you're going to scale, you need to scale into the future, not into what you have perfected. And people make that mistake all the time. So what they do, let's say as an example, they hire 20 people to run the processes they already know and have already perfected. But they don't hire anybody to think about new processes or new tools or in your own mindset. What you do is you go, okay, I'm only going to do this. I'm just going to give more time to it, Remember, more Time to something is also scale, right? You're scaling up your hours to something. So let's say you figured out a 20 minute workout and you're like this so works. I'm going to scale it to 60 minutes. Sometimes that's actually not the answer. Scaling the same thing that works is not always the answer because there might be something else that you could put resources to that gives you more of a bump. So this is where evaluation comes into play. In C1, I got to know, what are you trying to scale and is it the right things in your life?

Right.

Some people. Here's. Let me give you an example. Lots of times in marketing when people start scaling is they start especially for small businesses or in people in my industry, specifically for thought leaders. What they do is, well, I'm going to scale, so I'm going to hire a bunch of marketing people to focus on brand and image and strategy. And they think, well, and those things are important because they're like, more people see us, we need to focus more on our design and focus more on how we look. So they scale there at the cost though of scaling somebody who, let's say drives traffic to them, let's say scaling the persons who are in charge of the funnels, the conversions, scaling people, in other words, who immediately drive roi. For a lot of businesses when they get successful, they hire a lot of headcount that don't bring roi. And so now what happens is fixed costs go up, revenue stays the same, cash flow equals out. And all of a sudden they're barely running month to month to month and they're like, but we were successful. I know, but you scaled the wrong thing too quickly. So a lot of times identifying where people are plateauing or getting in trouble, I can just say, what are you trying to scale? Well, I'm going to hire 10 virtual assistants and I go, cool. Do any of those virtual assistants make you money? Well, no, they just, you know, help me scale and organize and maintain. I'm like, oh, well, those are new fixed costs that go up. But if you're not also having any of those people drive revenue up, you're scaling. It's not that you're scaling the wrong things, but you're scaling yourself into oblivion. Does this make sense? So you have to scale the things that matter the most, the business, which is almost always things related to ROI or to reach in the marketplace to draw more people in to get more roi. So it's just something we have to pay attention to. Organizations make this mistake all the time. They're hiring on a frenzy to scale processes because usually the founder doesn't want to do it anymore. They're like, I don't want to do this. No more can I get 10 more people to do this thing I don't like. But they're not strategically thinking about scaling into the future. Scaling into the future means hiring people who are oriented or directly correlated to growth, not maintenance. Just a conversation to think about in your small businesses, my friend. And the last piece, guess what happens when you make this border so successful. I mean, you got this thing dialed in, the last thing that gets you in trouble. Now remember, all these things are necessary to be successful. You got to perfect things so you can get world class mastery. You want to scale the things that do work and that are protecting all this. But therein lies the ultimate word and trouble in high performance. This C1 starts to equate this protect, protect, protect. So everything, everything starts to fall apart and they don't even know it. Because here's what happens. Let me give you a couple examples in the marketplace who have ruined businesses. True case studies of absolute demolition of billion dollar industries and businesses, okay? What happens is because you get good, you start protecting your turf, you start protecting the brand, you start doing all these things to protect what you've built at the cost of being able to move into C2. And this is what happens when competition comes in and destroys people who were good and did nothing wrong. Let me give you some examples. Do you remember Nokia? Nokia, they were owning this thing, okay? You look back around, I mean, gosh, what 2006 or 2005 Nokia had, I can't remember. It was like 40% of all phone industry coverage. Like Nokia owned the world like 40% of the market, right? No problem. By the way, they were right here in C1. Frigging amazing, right? Absolutely amazing. They were building business processes, they were perfecting their business and their product. They were scaling like nobody's business and they were protecting their turf. C1, look, they did nothing wrong. And then guess what came along? C2, iPhone, C2, Samsung. And all of a sudden it wasn't, they did nothing wrong, but they were irrelevant. Oh no, that's the challenge. Sometimes what makes you world class if your mind gets protectionist and mastery, which we are all told is necessary for us to get good, it can hurt us. Let me give you another example. C1, okay? Go to New York City, right? Five years ago, go to New York City and throw your hand up in the air and within 30 seconds a yellow Vehicle pulls up, called a taxi. Okay, I'm sure later on people watching this in the future on replay will go, what's he talking about? Taxi. Taxis got good. Do you remember like the first time you ever got in the back of that cab in a major city? And they had a TV, they put TVs, they were so good. They had televisions in the back. Do you remember when the televisions now could take money. They could put your credit card right there, you could pay, you could look. You had a mobile transport working on dispatch services that covered the entire city within seconds. Not minutes or hours, within seconds to get cars, places that were mobile doing transactions and mobile transporting media. It was unbelievable. They had gotten to unbelievable levels of C1, uber.

Lyft.

Destruction. Let's go another industry. And you remember a great company that was in every business book, every single industry followed that were in. You could not pick up any business book in any top tier school in the world without seeing something, a case study. And that case study was on what usually Kodak, right? Kodak, it was everywhere. They were unbelievably good at this. World class at this. And then what ended up happening? They were protecting their brand so much, protecting their turf so much that they missed the entire mobile and digital revolution for cameras. They missed the entire DSLR segment. They missed the entire move to integrated videos into cameras. They were protecting their film so much they didn't see digital. Even though don't forget, they invented it. Inside of Kodak, a person and then a division started looking at digital way before everybody else. They in fact invented it at Kodak. But because Kodak senior leaders were protecting what made them profitable, they weren't willing to mess up this frigging line. Kodak Tang. So what are you not willing to mess up right now? Think about that. What are you not willing to mess up? What are you so scared of changing that you might not even know you're scared of changing it? I know that sounds like a weird trick question, but is there something you just like there's a routine or a relationship or a service or a product that you're unwilling to change because you're trying to protect it. Kodak protecting film. Hewlett Packard and Dell protecting their processes and their versions of the laptops and the desktops. Missing an entire new thing coming along called Apple. Okay, like you have to think this is real. Think about music. All of think about for my musician friends out there. I love you and you know how unbelievably stupid major media was in almost all aspects of how they were trying to develop mastery and world class. Sure. And then perfect it, scale it and protect it. Think about all of this for traditional publishing in New York. Think about how Hollywood used to work with their actors and their talents. They try to do what? Lock you up, try to get. Gobble you up, lock you up, prevent you doing things. Exclusivity, exclusivity, exclusivity. Without realizing the new world has nothing to do with exclusivity. Right. You want to be on Netflix, you want to be on Hulu, you want to be on itunes, you want to be everywhere. But what are they trying to do? Exclusive, exclusive, exclusive. And lock stuff up. And they're still trying to do that without realizing that. The ability to reach more people. Let me give you an example of people busting that. Leonardo DiCaprio, what did he do with his last documentary? Right. If you haven't seen his last documentary on climate change, what he did is say, hey, you know what? Let's premiere this for the whole world on YouTube. Let's let Netflix run this baby for free. Let's just put it out there for the whole world to consume and then at some point we'll lock it up and distribute it. That's the new world. Everything is changing. The ideas of protecting everything, we need to be careful about. I was the same. I was like, I can't let my video be here and there. Why did I believe that? Because I was stuck into how the world was operating. C1. But remember C1. It's every industry that has been disrupted because they weren't into C2. Let me give another example. Major billion dollar. Oh, okay. Unbelievable mastery. Famous for world class, famous for perfection. Scale protection. Two big, huge companies, unbelievably phenomenal, Maybe the best in the world. Marriott and the Four Seasons. Show me a case studies in colleges in the 90s and early 2000s. Those brands dominate that. And by the way, they're great and they're fine. Everything's great. Except they missed this, I don't know, trillion dollar opportunity over here that came up and snuck away and started taking away from them and will continue to unless they figure their stuff out. Called, I don't know, Airbnb. Think about it. Apple, Airbnb, Uber, Facebook. You're seeing all these things that came in and they took something that was successful and messed with it. So why do I go on and on about this? Because it just takes a different mindset to move us into C2 and most of the conflicts in your life. Listen to Me very closely, because you might not get this, especially if you're a leader. Listen, most of the conflicts in your life as a leader, if, is because you've got people in C1 and some people in C2, and they don't know. They're just in the different circles. One of the greatest gifts I give to organizational leaders is saying, oh, that person you had, they're in C1. They're compensated to be in C1. You've got this visionary leader who. They're in a whole other world and all the people over here don't like them, right? So I've worked with bands, major musicians who. Who they were trying to take their career in a new direction, change their sound, change their performance, change something that's significant. They're over here, they're living into the future. They're trying to mess things up. And their band or their musicians or their managers or their fans are going, no, man, this is what you do. And they're going, but I need to go over here and guess what? Conflict. Conflict. The space in between C1 and C2 is almost always a big conflict. It causes internal conflict. This is where you go, oh, my God. Should I or should I not? This sounds like a risk. This might be a bad thing. You start freaking out, right? Your spouse goes, wait, you want to quit your job and start writing books? Are you crazy? Bananas? And you're like, yeah, guess what that usually causes? Guess what? Anytime you start some new entrepreneurial endeavor and your old coworkers. When I left Accenture, the world's greatest consulting company, bar none. I mean, an unbelievably talented. Everybody there, unbelievably driven, world class, excellent. I mean, they epitomize this, right? And I go, I'm going to go out in the great unknown over here. Everybody I work with said, you're stupid, young man. You realize that, right? Because guess what? Sometimes C1 mindsets can't see C2. Sometimes that happens for you, too. Inside, you start getting in trouble without realizing it. Because everything you've been doing, my friend, has been to build a border here. And so what are we going to do, Brennan? Give me some tactics. Let's jump into it, okay? First and foremost, you need to realize this conflict exists. If all we did today is help you understand that this conflict exists, you may not understand the value of this program today, but you will the next time the fight comes up and you realize you're in C2 and they're in C1. And what you need to do is honor C1, be cool with C1. Understand that C1 is there, but you need to make sure that you explain what's happening here to them or yourself and then paint the picture for C2 better and get them involved, Help them start asking the questions that can break down the barriers to C2.

Okay?

Because C2 is a different mindset, isn't it? It's like if this. You're trying to perfect everything over here, guess what this conflict is to go over here. Guess what this conflict is to go from perfect to break over here. I know this is gonna get a little messy, guys, but check this out. Guess what you got to do to get over here. You got to break stuff. Is it true? You got to start messing with this boundary over here. This thing needs to change a little bit. It gets a little messier, right? Then you need to build something totally new. You got to build the new boundaries over here. That's a whole different process. And then, of course, now you're going to scale as well. But the scale is different because you're scaling it in different categories, different ideas, different things. So C2 requires almost the opposite sometimes, right? You got to be. Instead of protecting, you got to break. You got to figure out new points of distinction, change things. To get over here, you got to build new things, which you're like, oh, my God, that's going to take so much time. This is easier. It's so much easier to stay here. This is easy. And that's why people start to plateau when they don't understand why, they're like, I'm successful. I'm like, I know, but you're in C1. That's all we need to be conscious of that. So tactics, what do we do? Well, with major organizations, they've figured some of these pieces out. Let's throw a shout out to my friends over at Google. Watch this. You guys have already implemented some of this with your 80, 20 time allocation. If you guys didn't know, like, Google, one of the things Google did, gosh, it's almost six, seven years ago now, they started saying, oh, we want our people to focus on their core job and responsibilities 80% of the week.

Okay?

Meaning we want our people 80% of the week in C1, but we want you 20% in C2. So what they would say is, they'd say, hey, do your job, Be excellent, world class, perfect. It be super awesome. And I want you to spend 20% of your week thinking about the future on. Do hobby projects, do research and development on your own, have Unstructured time just to think stuff up. That has nothing to do with perfecting this thing that we're doing over here, right? And that's really important. So here's what I tell people all the time, all the time. Especially if you're a leader, okay? Especially if you're a leader. What I want you to do, I want to make sure 20% of your day is sitting in the bucket of strategy, okay? 20% of your day is, is sitting in the bucket of just thinking about the future. If you're a leader, you have to understand this is people already, they conceptually understand it, but they don't practice it. Leaders go, of course I think about the future. I'm like, okay, show me your calendar. And guess what happens? I open up their little calendar and there it is. I get into their job, right? I just did this last year at a Fortune 100 company. Sat right down with three of their C level executives. I said, right in the, right at the conference room, boy, they hated it. They were embarrassed and they hated this process. And then send. And of course afterwards change their life. And then they sent me a bunch of money. Here's what happened. We opened up their calendars and we sat literally laptop, laptop, laptop, sea level, sea level, sea level. And I went through each of their calendars in front of them. They hated this. But guess what? There it is. From, I mean, they were booked from 7am till 6pm at night. All these things including meetings with our other senior executives. And I just said, well, okay, let's bust it down. And we did a little white chart work. And guess what they weren't spending. There was no scheduled time on strategy. Even when they were meeting with their senior employees. Guess what they were focused on what's broke? How can I be of service? They weren't thinking strategically, right? It's important for me. Every morning when I do my one page productivity guide, what do I focus on? I'm sitting there thinking about the projects in the future that are going to build my future that aren't even related to these aren't my to do's. Most people wake up and they go, what do I have to do today? You know what, what do I have to do today is see one. I'm not saying don't be there. I'm just saying be beyond there too. So how much of your actual day, if I got in your calendar, can I see that? You're focusing on thinking about the C2 of life, right? What is it? And here's the hardest part. The Reason. People don't do this even though they know they should. Leaders pay attention because I know it's so easy to go, oh, of course. I'm thinking, you know, I'm in division, Brendan. I'm like, no, you set your vision when you started the company, and you haven't really extended it in the last three years. And that's typical for a lot of major organizations because the last three years, they spent time perfecting, scaling, and protecting, not continually in an envision process. So what happened to Kodak as an example?

Okay?

Because here's why. If this over here, success equaled, remember, mastery. Guess what? This one over here equals? Mayhem. Okay? Mayhem. Which is why I'm so comfortable drawing such a disastrously ugly flip chart for you guys, because I know you can handle it because you're high performers. But. But this is why people don't go there. It's mayhem. It's scary. It's the unknown. Brendan, don't. I mean, oh, my gosh, this is scary stuff. You're telling me to mess with what's profitable and what works and what people know me for. I'm like, yes, because if you don't evolve, you'll get gobbled up. You'll get C2ed by Airbnb. You'll get C2ed By Uber. You get C2ed by Apple. You'll get C2ed BY the person who is nicer to your wife. You'll get C2ed by the person who is going to hire your talent away because they're doing something more relevant. You'll get C2ED by yourself. You have an internal conflict that is pulling you down, saying, please, dude, change, grow. You get C2ED because you'll feel plateau. If you're restless, frustrated, feeling like you're plateauing in life, it has a lot to do with. There's something. You might not even know it, but unconsciously, down deep in your gut, there is a higher calling for you. There is a something. That restlessness is something to listen to, not to avoid. People avoid that restlessness, that desire for more, because it equals mayhem. Because when you open up to the universe, it's a bigger picture than you've been playing, my friend. And so what ends up happening is it's scary. But what I tell people all the time is you will never understand your full potential and capabilities until you believe and charge into the unknown with faith. You just won't know. You won't know. I didn't know. Like, if I kept doing what I was doing in My early career, even when I started writing and doing my own business, if I wasn't open to C2, none of us would be here together. Did this thing create mayhem in my life? Yes. I had no idea how to do any of this. It was a financial risk. It was terrifying. I lost my shirt when I started this. Many of you guys know, I went broke. I had no idea what I was doing.

Okay.

It was mayhem. I also had none of the skill sets to do any of the things you see me doing.

Any.

None of this, right? Lights, camera, action, talking. I just walk in front of the camera, start talking, right? That's it. I got three bullet points. Here's my. Here's my whole notes for the session, my friends. That's all I got right there. That's the whole thing. So I would. I couldn't do this before. Now I can do it because I'm always. I knew I had to grow into C2. So I had to develop mastery and world class skills that I didn't have. Public speaking, curriculum design, copywriting, video, these things scared the crap out of me. I wasn't good at them and I didn't get paid for them. But knowing I needed to create them created mayhem and uncertainty and fear and doubt in my life. The difference is I honored the struggle. I knew that between these two things is conflict and struggle. And as I knew, and I accepted that this was going to be real, this struggle, I got ahead. Other people, they'll say this, it's not worth it. This is easy. That's not struggle. It's why I say honor the struggle. People, when I talk with successful people, they often say, well, Brendan, I don't feel like, you know, it's a struggle. And I go, well, I know that's because you're in C1. If you were between C1 and C2, you would feel a lot of struggle. And when you get there, honor it, anticipate it, expect it, deal good with it. That's where people get challenged. They're good, they're really good. But they look at the struggle and say, not worth it. Why would I do that? That's so hard. I'm already good. Well, if you feel restlessness inside, if there's something that wants to go another level, you better listen to that restlessness. Because if you don't, it will eat away at your life. Our impulse to grow and evolve as humans, it is biological and it is spiritual. And so we have to understand that and honor the struggle. The reason I got here, into my career at this level faster than most of my peers had nothing to do with. With talent. I'm. It wasn't this shirt. It wasn't the lighting. It wasn't. There was no skill sets. It was the only thing people say, what made the difference for you, Brendan? And they think it's something I said. Look, I didn't invent personal development. I am here standing on the shoulders of giants, mentors, people who changed my life. I'm here because of Wayne Dyer. I'm here because of Zig Ziglar and Jim Rohn. I'm here because of Earl Nightingale. I. I'm here because of Og Mandino. I'm here because of Dale Carnegie. I'm here because of Napoleon Hill. I'm here because of Benjamin Franklin. I'm here because of Socrates and Aristotle. I'm here because of Jesus. Let me tell you what I am. Nothing. I'm nothing special. I'm nothing new. What differentiated me from my peers, though? I was willing to honor the struggle so much more than most of my peers. They would say, brenda, I'm not good at video. And I was like, me neither. But they weren't okay with the discomforts of entering into the unknown. I was. That's all. So for those who think that I'm lucky, I'm not lucky. I'm willing. That's all. For those who think I had something special, I'm not special. I was willing to honor the journey into C2. I was willing to listen to it. And so if you're a leader, start spending more time thinking about moving into C2. Otherwise you'll be left behind. If you are a person who just feels that restlessness, listen, listen. If you're a person who's already world class at something, start asking the questions. What else could you grow into that will serve your future or your family or your organization? All right, I know I went way long on this. Most of my work with high performance in working with people is figuring out what this is, what this needs to be, and dealing with all the conflict and the struggle in between to get them more successful there. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Think about C1 and C2. Honor the struggle, and as always, live fully, love openly, and make your difference today.