245: Erik Qualman — How to Focus in an Unfocused World

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Welcome to the show. We're going to talk all about focus today. Do you have trouble focusing? I don't know. I saw something out my window.

Yeah, no, I got some music going on here. It's nice.

Our special royalty free theme music. We won't get bounced by YouTube or Facebook for this music, but it sounds groovy. If focus is an issue for you, right. I saw somebody going behind you there. I want to know what's up with that. If focus is an issue for you, like I know it is for many of our audience, you're going to love today's show. You need some great tips about how to focus now to use that to leverage your life and do a better job with everything. Hello everyone. Welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. Before we get started, a little mention about a sponsor. I'm so happy about sweet process.com if you find that running your business is tough, that people are bombarding you, you can't get to work on the business because you're always in the business. You need to things away. You got to get your processes out. You got people trained, you got to get them answering your own questions. That's where sweetprocess.com comes in. It's a place, it's a tool. It's an online software app to let you document the processes, train people on the processes and let them actually refine them together. Get the whole team collaborating on leveling up, leaning those things out, improving the process over time. You can get everything, all your procedures and your steps and your references and all that kind of stuff in suite process. And we've got a special offer for our listeners. SweetProcess.com will double the time, the free trial time without any credit card entry to get started go to sweetprocess.com scalingup to sign up now, no credit card required. And that's all you need to use to get set up and start to actually give away some of that stuff so you're not trying to do everything yourself. Hi again, everyone. I'm Bill Gallagher. I'm host of the show, one of the Scaling coaches. This show is all about how to scale and grow your business no matter what the economy's doing, no matter what industry or what part of the world that you're in. And you can find now hundreds of episodes with great guests like Eric Qualmont or Tom Peters or Jeff Smart or any number of other really brilliant folks on the show. And all the kinds of things that go into the Scaling up framework are there. You'll find all of that back catalog and more@scalingcoach.com we've got downloads, we've got their tools, the tips, everything there. Scalingcoach.com join me now as we talk to Eric Qualman who's connecting in from Austin, Texas. Guys, you should know that Eric is a best selling author, a killer speaker if you were at our last summit. You know, he just delivers again and again. He's got six bestselling books, I think now he's performed in over 50 countries. Or spoken. Right? Perform. Spoken and helped and reached over 50 million people. Second most likable author in the world behind Harry Potter's J.K. rowling. And he's the host of the super you podcast. His work has been used and featured by the National Guard, NASA, NBC, etc. Etc. Etc. So all around groovy guy. Welcome to the show. Eric.

No. Honored to be here. Thanks for having me.

Thank you for coming on. Pardon me. So we are going to talk all about your latest book, right? Which is all about how to focus in a world that's pulling for anything but focus. And it'll be tough to focus on that for me. I know I struggle with this. Day in a day I'm like, what was I doing? Honey.

You'Re not alone. That's the most important thing to understand. You're not alone.

Right. And we're also going to finish tell people the amazing story of how valuable it was to get your teeth kicked out. Right. Or knocked out.

Yeah. No. One of the best things that ever happened to me. I know it sounds crazy, but it is one of the best things that ever happened to me. Getting my teeth knocked out.

We'll finish the show with that. So tell folks a little bit about your background. How did you come to write this book? Like what leads you to this point, right?

Yeah. I mean there's an old saying that if you want an idea for a book, it's write a book, but chicken and egg thing. My first book, Social Nomics eventually led to to this book, which is almost an anti venom to the first book. So Social Dynamics was telling people at the time, if you can imagine, MySpace was bigger than Facebook. But I was trying to tell people that hey, this is going to change the way that we do business, change the way we communicate, change the way the elections are decided. Which at the time people thought social media was just for teenagers. Now fast forward. So basically telling people get into social media, it is important, it's not just for teenagers. And then all of a sudden now we're in this, here we are now. And so if you've got focus as an anti venom from a standpoint of people got into social, but they got too far into their phones. And so they became super unfocused in this unfocused world. And so that's why I needed it. Like you mentioned, your wife was laughing. I needed to focus. And then I started to talk to more and more people, whether it's a school teacher, stay at home, mom, stay at home dad with a small business, a startup, whether it was a CEO of Fortune 500 company, they all wrestled with the same thing. And so I thought it'd be helpful to go under a project where I combine kind of the street science, like me being the guinea pig with the institutional research, marry those together and kind of provide that for the audience. Hey, this is what worked, what didn't work for me. And hopefully you can figure out what works and doesn't work for you when it comes to focus. And it's funny for someone like me to write this because I've been in the digital space now 27 years and I worked at Yahoo back when they're kind of the Facebook of the day. And then I was head of market at Travelzoo, took that company from private to public and it was one of the top performing stocks on the NASDAQ still around today, publicly traded. But it's really fascinating for me to kind of combine those two. I call it the Flintstones and the Jetsons coming together. And as you've seen me in person, a lot of your audience I talk about, it's the Flintstones in the Jetsons, it's the Mary of those two. It's the offline online and now in a pandemic, you throw gasoline on this digital transformation so that hyper accelerates things and now companies are having me come in to talk about wellness because guess what happens. You've got the megabytes. Some didn't transform fast enough. Now they're being forced to move forward five years overnight. But the human capacity can't take it. Your employees, there's mental strain when all of a sudden you're working from home 24 7, your kids are at home, you're ordering everything online, major shifts. And so it's just been a fascinating journey. So hopefully what we talk about here today is going to help your audience.

You know, my dogs bark and interrupt every time a delivery shows.

I didn't hear them.

The leaf blowers come around the outside right in the middle of my recordings. And then every now and then, a contractor shows up. Oh, we just take some measurements of the back pad or whatever, right? It's. It's harder than ever. And I'll be on the phone with the CEO and some kid comes running in. Daddy, Daddy, you know I want this or that, right? It's unbelievable how challenging it's become. And then there I was joking around, holding my phone up while you were talking, right? There's all these pings and dings and alerts and things like that that have been going off. I've been getting like four or five Clubhouse invites on my watch. Stop, stop, stop. I haven't figured out how to combine our live streams with a Clubhouse room at the same time. That's. That's like next on the thing. That'll be an interesting.

That'd be good. Are you on Clubhouse? Have you hit it?

Yeah, at Bill Gal on Clubhouse. I actually. I really do it first, like all things. I was like, what the hell? But then you know what it's like for me. It's like talk radio, where I can either choose to interact or not interact. Right. And I have enough friends and people on there that I can come in and talk if I want, or I can browse around and listen to topics.

So that's great.

If you don't need to wear pants while you're in Zoom, you don't have to wear anything in Clubhouse.

I'm not putting her down in my pants. I do have pants on today.

Anyway.

For me, it might be sweatpants, but there are pants.

That's funny. Who's the guy? I won't make it. So the book is all about focus and how to focus, and you've got some great stories about this. I thought your first one was actually really interesting. As we were getting ready for the show, talking about swimming and Doing triathlons, you don't know, but I did 45 triathlons and marathons in the day. Right, right. And you look like you're still doing them. I look like I used to do them. And I, I dealt with all the same kinds of things of the training and so talk, talk about what it was like for you.

Yeah. From a triathlon standpoint or from a book standpoint or from basketball, like all of it. Right, okay. Yeah. No, I mean, one thing we talked just so I'll finish the story so I don't forget about it, is how could getting your teeth knocked out be the best thing that happened for you? And so when you go through the focus project, and when I went through it myself, I realized I've got to shift that mindset. Is my focus on fortune or misfortune? Am I focused on things happening for me story now? What's that?

You're going to tell the teeth knocked out story?

I'll tell a teeth knocked out story. Yeah.

Save that for later. We'll finish this that way.

Got it. So, yeah, a lot of your focus is really just where your focus goes, energy flows and like one story, whether it's training for sports. And then we'll talk about me playing at Michigan State. Maybe at the end we talk about the teeth with coach Izzo, but it's really about my wife is a funny story from the book. So I'm in this focus project. So those that aren't familiar with it, basically I wanted to focus on one thing per month. So I got excited going, man, what would it be like if I just focused on sales for a month? And I call it growth. And you guys obviously know that, but when you look at it, so that first month, you got to pick something that allows you to have this 12 month project. So the one thing I always ask myself, what's the one thing, if I do it well, makes everything else either easier or unnecessary. So I go, in order to embark on this fancy full focus project, I'm going to have to crush sales for that first month so I don't have to worry about the business. And so just by focusing on sales and I, I screwed up four times. Meaning that over the course of a year, I would start and say, okay, I'm gonna focus on sales for an hour a day. Just sales, an hour a day. That's all I have to do. And then the month would go by and I'd tally up how many hours I spent. 17 minutes. So I go, all right, restart, restart. So basically four False starts. Then we finally, the fifth time, get it rolling. And just by that hour a day focusing on growth, whatever your growth might look like is all of a sudden we not only had a record month, but a record year for that month. Like, I already had a record amount of sales. Just. That is the power of focus. It won't always work like that because I was sitting there going, man, this is daunting this first month because it doesn't work. I can't do this project because it obviously doesn't work, but it worked a lot bigger than I ever thought. Just at that scale, as you guys talk about more than I ever thought. But one funny story that came out of it is midway through the project, I was at home and I'm trying to get something for my daughter. She's eight, one of my daughters. Eight, I've got two daughters. And I'm pulling on the drawer. And you've probably experienced this before. All of you listening. The drawer is jammed because it's just crammed with stuff. And I'm trying to get my hand in there, undo it, open it up, get her what she needs. And then I start displacing stuff. And lo and behold, I open the drawer next to it. Glorious, wide open. It's completely blank. So I start moving half of the objects over there. And my 8 year old kind of pauses and she looks at me, she goes, daddy, you can't put that stuff in that drawer. And I go, yeah, I'm doing it right now. It's wide open. She goes, no, no, that's mommy's drawer. Yeah, but there's nothing in here. I'm gonna put this stuff in here so it doesn't jam. And she goes, no, no, no, you can't put that there. Don't tell you I didn't warn you. And then sure enough, my wife comes home, we have. And she goes, yeah, yeah, that's my drawer. You got to keep it empty. I go, what? What are we doing? And she goes, you know, it's really just my way to make sure I haven't overstuffed my life. I've got to have at least one drawer in the house that's empty.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so if I hadn't been going through this Focus project, I would have thought she was crazy or both crazy. But then I said, that's genius. And so it's just always a reminder to me to make sure that respect that capacity and focus on the big versus the busy.

Yeah, the. I think about that all the time. Am I Like, is this a productive. I mean, there are things that I do that are definitely not. Not focused. Right. Things that I do that are. That are almost pure time wasters. But I treat them like that's my little self indulgence. That's my, like, mental health break. But I'm pretty clear about that. And then if I do it too much, of course, then it's a total time waste.

Yeah, no, it makes sense. And like Warren Buffett, we're flipping through his calendar. If you flip through his calendar, it's almost completely blank. And he goes, that's intentional. You know, I need the space to think. And he's good friends with Bill Gates. And Bill Gates was kind of going, oh, you know, I always thought a good CEO just crams their day, like, with everything like that my team needs, I'm going to cram My schedule 100%. Not even enough time to go to the bathroom sometimes. And then Bill had the epiphany through Warren that actually it's somewhere in that middle. It's that combination. It's making sure you have that space to think, that luxury. And you've got to be intentional to block off that time. And as leaders listening to this, easier said than done. It literally has to be intentional. We call it cowboy and cowgirl scheduling, meaning you got to fence off time for yourself or time for that deep thinking and then also allow for wide open spaces because you don't know what's going to happen that day. You've seen it in 2020 and 2021. You don't know what explosion is going to happen in the morning that throws your day out of kilter. So it's important to kind of have those protective pieces in there.

So I preached a long time for the leaders that I coach and in some of my talks about productivity and that kind of thing about booking in time for emergencies and interruptions. And I've typically had like 2:30 to 4 emergencies interruptions time over the years. It changes at different stages of my life, that kind of thing. And first of all, when I throw that to people, they're like, that's just insanity. But it's a little bit like the empty drawer for me. Like, of course, my emergencies and interruptions don't happen between 2:30 and 4. It's just that I have booked in time to have them. So then when they inevitably do occur, I can move things around.

No, that's smart.

And if I take it out the day and I overbook and I don't have that in there, then I know that that day is really, like, everything's dialed in and I'm at risk and I might not be taking care of myself in that day, like, but that's a. That's a practice. So I was struck also by you were trying to train for the triathlon, doing swimming and paying attention to your kids and watching that. Talk to us about that one.

Yeah, I mean, anyone training for anything doesn't have to be a triathlon, but what I was doing was trying to swim. So I'm swimming and my daughter's. It's a small enough pool to where it's got length, but also it's very narrow from the standpoint that I can actually see my kids, who at the time pretty young, they were six and eight, so they can swim, but I need to keep an eye on them.

Yeah.

And of course, kids being kids, you know, they want to kind of swim in your lane. They want to play with you and sometimes accidentally kick you in places you don't want to be kicked while you're swimming these laps. And my old mindset would have been to get upset and say, you know, get out of my lane. I've got to swim here. But then the new mindset was the focus shifted to, hey, they're not going to be young forever. And the fact they want to play with dad is actually a good thing. So you'll hear about work life integration, work life harmony. In this case, it's actually integration with some training. Just how do I integrate that? And so instead of getting mad stopping, which I would have done in the past, and tell them to stay in their lane, is that the metaphor struck me that that's how we treat life sometimes, is that we're going to have people swim in and out of our lanes. And so it's about embracing that and integrating that as much as we can. And so we can still maintain focus, but then we integrate those components and those people as best we can. Now, in some instances, you need someone that's not a positive influence on your life. You need them to get out of their lane, but that's usually hopefully few and far between. It's really about understanding how to do that integration. So in that moment, I kind of let them swim with me. And it's actually better training because I'd try to speed up to avoid them when they're trying to kind of submerge and get me. I would actually time it, so then I'd speed up my cadence. So it's actually a nice break in the pace. And as My daughters would say it's not all rainbows and unicorns every day, but it's really about trying to make that as much as you can. Kind of take those lemons and make that lemonade and do that integration. Whether you call it integration, whether you call that harmony, whether some people call it wellness, you think about focus. Focus, where you focus your energy flows. So where your focus goes, energy flows. And so we're actually now working with companies crazy enough, a lot of them are having wellness weeks and wellness campaigns. So here you've got this digital leadership person, me. Then you write the focus project. I have no idea. This pandemic's coming. Pandemic hits. All of a sudden, you realize all these people are struggling. Oh, wow. Here's the marriage of that digital leadership in that focus, and here's how we handle it.

You know, it's funny, you share the story as we're preparing for the thing and we're talking about it now, and a couple things came to mind right away. One is, if you've ever been in one of these events, it's actually really valuable because in the event there are people swimming around you and they're kicking and you're. They from out of nowhere, suddenly your face mask gets kicked off and they're clawing over top of you, and sometimes you're clawing over top of them. And like, especially in the beginning of a swim in an actual event, like, there's actually value in the distractions and that. So there's intentionality that you could bring to it. And then, as you're telling it now, I was struck by that integration thing. And today's my dad's birthday, and he would have been 81, but he passed in 2008. And one of the last things in the last couple of weeks before he passed, he asked me if I would go for a bike ride with him. And one of the great regrets I had is that I was like, no, dad, I'm training for an event. It needs to be a good bike ride. I can't just lollygag around the island with you. And I said, no. And I'm really overall complete with my dad and good relationship and even now. But there's an opportunity there. That was one moment. I have many, many great ones. But one little sweet thing, Take that. Find a way to integrate and combine it, because there will be, like, those distractions. What could you focus on and where could you combine?

I.

It was really moving as you were sharing that, thinking about that.

No, I mean, I love Sharing your story and sorry about your dad's passing. But it's really, sometimes it's those moments that strike us to go, okay, let's reset. And so that's what the hope is. That. And I wrote the book for myself. Like, I got to reference this thing all the time. I'm not a focus wizard. I've gotten much, much better at it. So it's really about 1% improvement each and every day. And so it's a reminder that integration. So what does that look like? Because I like to give examples.

Yeah.

Is so for your audience, if you're not doing it, you should do this. You should write physical letters. And so if you write a physical letter, it's actually therapeutic. But whether that's for a family member, whether that's for a business partner, I recommend both. You know, client prospect, whatever it might be, it allows you to stand out. But that integration, especially for those that have kids, this is what integration looks like. Doesn't mean you have to have kids. This is just one example. So if I write Thanksgiving letters every Thanksgiving because it's a non religious holiday, it stands out from all the other cards that are dumped a month later. It's less likely to get lost in the mail. It's. I'm thanking people, so it all makes sense.

Yeah.

So I do this. It takes a long time to handwrite all these hundreds of letters. And so I write them, but I like to kind of draw and then draw. But I go, why don't have my daughters draw this stuff and have them colored in and have them put the stamp on the envelope, have them put the return label. And so all of a sudden that becomes that integration point to where we're doing a project together. They're enjoying it. I'm moving things forward that I need to move forward. And so very well said with your dad. How do you integrate that? Yep.

Yeah. My son, by the way, commented and I remembered the two and then he became a runner with me and we went on to run a number of events. Right. But in the beginning, he was, you know, 8 or 7. He started running and it really took something to teach him to like focus on the next lamppost or something to run to and he want to anymore. I think we all struggle with that. I think there are maybe people who are really, really good at it, but I think the vast majority of us struggle to some degree. And that's what I love about the ideas here, is that it's. There's something to learn and to develop a muscle, to develop around focus, especially if you are prone to lots of ideas, prone to lots of input and stimulus. And our environment is so much calling for that to this day. So you talk also about saying no to things. Talk a little bit more. Tell us some of the stories around saying no, learning what to say no to and where.

And yeah, I mean, I always reflect when I get done with a book, I reflect. And what did I learn? And this was a project that became a book. And so I was sitting there, what are the top three things that I learned? And the first one, you just mentioned it. That focus is very, very, very, very hard. But that focus can be learned. It can become a habit. Now you have to have a purpose behind that habit. We'll get into three Ps in a second purpose, and then you move to, you know, process and then progress. But the second thing I learned, which is process, is that really good people at what they do, they're better at focusing than most others. But when I sat down and talked to them and said, what do you struggle with the most? It's the opposite side of that coin. They say focus. So a little better than focusing. But that's the number one struggle, is to stay that edge a little better than most. And the, the one thing that rose to the top is when I talk about process. So that's. The second thing, is that, you know, successful people are better at saying they don't rely on willpower, they rely on process and systems. And that number one system is basically saying no to almost everything, which seems unamerican, but it's actually a smart thing to. If it's not an emphatic yes, it needs to be an emphatic no. That you need to treat your yeses like inventory by saying no today, you're allowed to say yes tomorrow. And then for those that are super people pleasers, which we all, most of us are that are listening to this, because it usually does as well. You've got to understand the mindset that if you say yes to everyone, you're basically saying no to everyone because you don't have that capacity. And then the third thing that I learned was that you've got to go for progress, not perfection. So, meaning when I looked at New Year's resolutions, that married up to the. So the New Year's resolutions, the top failed New Year's resolutions, and the top resolutions themselves are basically the same. Also married to the top 10 selling books, there's a huge crossover which makes sense. And by the middle of January, 90 of us have failed Their resolution. And so it's really about progress, not perfection. Meaning that when we do a New Year's resolution, all of a sudden I might say that I don't want to drink coffee. I don't want to drink wine. So you try to 100 cut out coffee and wine. And that's why it fails, because you've tried to go for perfection rather than just progress. Progress meaning, all right, maybe I'm not going to drink coffee every day. I'm going to stop on Friday not drinking that coffee. And so those are the top three things that I learned was. Number one is that it could become a habit. That it's hard, but it can become a habit. But it has to be a purpose behind it. Two people that are successful are better at focusing than us, not because they have inherent DNA or went to college or did something for it. They don't rely on willpower. They rely on systems or processes. So that's the second p. The processes. And then third, it's about progress, not perfection when it comes to focus. About 1% better each and every day with that focus. And so you're gonna have days when you're not focused, and that's okay. You got to accept that and then move forward. It's not a natural line. It's. It's just a straight trajection, but it's more of a roller coaster. So you got to make sure that trends like this, but just like a business, you're gonna have these dips, and then you keep going up.

Yeah, I think that's a really useful thing to notice that it's a muscle you can develop. It's a habit you can develop to get into it. But it takes work, especially for some of us who are more prone to that than others. I lead with ideation, and I wake up with ideas, and I have more ideas and more ideas, and I've just learned with time to let most of them go and not to chase them. But there are times in my day where I have, like, free permission to just wander and click and think and walk around and, like, do whatever and to let that sort of roam. But then a lot of it, I just. I let it go after that. I don't pursue it. I don't like. I don't carry that forward unless it relates to something I'm working on. So I get obsessed with a particular idea. I start to go down it, and then I realize it ties into one of my quarterly priorities or annual initiatives. And then I actually, like, really indulge it right Commit to things, take things on. Because that's. But others are like, you know, I could tell you about this SUV or that SUV or some new thing or whatever. Just had nothing to do with anything. It just amuses me.

Like, yeah, you need those breaks. So that's good. And then one thing that just jogged my memory is, might be helpful for the audience is you've got to create. 90% of you are making to do lists because you're successful. They're good. But what I want you to do today, just look at the to do list and this is going to give you. Some of you guys are going to start sweating just by me mentioning this. You don't even take the action to do this. I know as a type A person and a lot of listeners are type A, that's going to give you some heart palpitations. But it's, look at that to do list and then write the word not at the top of it. Just write the word not and then look down that list and then just pick one thing off that list and move that over and that's your new to do list for today. And so again, it's, it's good to practice that. It's going to give you a lot of you like pause. You could call it a not to do list, you call it a not yet list, but just make sure you do that.

You're saying that people should actually create a not doing list.

Yeah. I always joke, not, not for your kids, but for yourself. Just like, here's what I'm not gonna do.

Love that. Right? Cowbell for you. Put those up. In our team sessions when we're in person, you know, we haven't been doing Lucy's in the background, our producer and assistant client coordinator. We haven't been doing enough of that with our online sessions, but we frequently have in our in person team sessions a big area that's not doing. And as we work through the ideas over a couple days of the team, we move things over to say, you know, we brainstorm that, but we're not doing that. And just so we're really clear, we're saying no to a bunch of things and it's a hard muscle develop, but it's really liberating to say, yeah, no, I'm not cleaning up that shed, I'm leaving that shed alone or whatever it is that's like occupying angst and like whatever things you think you should do to say, yeah, I'm not doing that.

Yeah, no, it's great. And Arianna Huffington, when you look at, she said something that's very profound is that she goes, when you, she goes, that's great. You've got a not to do list. But also look at that not to do list and, or you call it a not yet list. Whatever works well for you. And she said, you know, sometimes you can look at that and then take something off. That's the best way to complete something is decide you're absolutely never ever going to do that. So whether you just move it off, I mean, again, sounds un American, but it'll actually lead you to be more successful by doing that and paring things down.

Well, that's a great tie in. Also to our sponsor, sweetprocess.com you want to build processes around things that help you to focus. And if you build out a great process, right, and you want to focus on progress and making it better and better, tying into that, you want just not you working on making the progress better, but the whole team. So if you could get a place where you could document all the process procedures and your rules and that kind of thing for the business and then get everybody trained on them and then get them making them better over time, making them, progressing them, getting them up and up and improving them with time, sweetprocess.com is that kind of a place. One source of truth, where everybody in the team, the whole company can go, not only get trained to refer to it, to be retrained, cross trained, that kind of thing. And reminder that we've got a special offer for listeners, viewers of the show. It's double the normal time, so free trial time goes from 14 days to 28 days, an extra couple weeks to play with it. You don't have to put in your credit card, I'm told. So sweetprocess.com scaling up is where you get that special offer. Go there, play with it, see if it wouldn't make a difference for you and your business. Before we forget that kind of thing, talk to us about getting your teeth knocked out. That was. People enjoy that.

Yeah. The premise of this is just remember that things happen for you, not to you. It took me a long time to realize this, but it's great having younger kids because they'll tell you, hey, daddy, why are these teeth a different color than your other ones? And so I was a huge basketball fanatic growing up and I was cut from our team as a junior in high school. So it's the only thing I share with Michael Jordan, who's cut as a sophomore. But, and, but I still had the Dream. And so I got to Michigan State, and I said, how do I get involved? Like, how do I get involved? I know I'm not going to be on the team, but how do I get involved? Well, you can be a manager, which is basically a waterboy, and Michigan State's top 10 program, so you even have to try out to be the water boy. So it's crazy. And so I was fortunate to make that. And then, you know, I didn't let the dream die.

You carry the jug without spilling it.

Or you get out there, you wipe down the floor. You'll see people at halftime. Now you'll be very selective. Attention. Next time you watch a basketball game, you'll see people that are wiping the floor because they have the huddles on the floor, blah, blah, blah. And then eventually, you're basically the CEO. By the time you're a senior, you're actually doing a lot of stuff the coaches do. But here I am. Waterboy. Haven't given up on the dream. Workout hard, blah, blah, blah. Long story longer. Occasionally, you get into practice. So junior year, looking back, I was good enough to make it junior year, but I didn't have the confidence. I didn't like why me. I was cut from my high school team, and. But they're like quammen. Get in practice, you know, we're down a couple guys, we need a body. And I get in there, and I am having the day of my life. I cannot miss. Like, everything's going right. I go, this is unbelievable. They're gonna say, he's got to be on the team. And then I take an errant elbow, and it literally. I had. Was born with a couple teeth, nothing missing. So I had a fake tooth already in there. So it hits me, and I'm thinking, I could feel, like, stuff in my hand, so I put that on the side. But I'm not going to come out of the game, the scrimmage. And I'm also thinking, that's just the fake tooth that I've had since kind of I was younger. And I keep playing. And then all of a sudden, the trainer calls me over at 20 minutes. He's like, hey, what's going on? Like, you still have stuff coming out. He looks in there, goes, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. There's a lot of teeth missing in here. Let's get you to the dentist. So on the whole ride to the dentist, then I won't bore you with the pain because they can't give you a painkiller. You got to put the tooth Back in. I won't bore the audience with that. But the whole time thinking, I cannot believe this happened to me. You know, that this was my chance. And then fast forward the next year when I do walk on and get a scholarship to be on the team, is that. That actually is the best thing ever happened to me. Because Coach Izzo, he's in the hall of Fame. He's still coaching, but he's in the hall of Fame. He built that entire program around grit. And I know from a business standpoint, everyone's starting to understand that it's about the grit that really wins. And so he saw the grit that day, actually said Quammen. The next day I practice. Quabbin, I don't know if you're the dumbest guy I know or the toughest guy I know. Somewhere in the middle, I think Qualman. But I realized that that and talk with Coach many years later, he's like, that was the moment that actually got me that position on the team. And here I was thinking that happened to me when actually looking back, it's the best thing that happened for me.

You know, this notion of silver linings and what's the actual outcome of it. I know so many people that have said, if that didn't happen to me, if I hadn't endured that hardship or that guy hadn't been such a jerk and told me I never would win, I never would have been pushed and gone on to do those things, and who knows what would have actually happened. But I think there's a lot of times at first we feel sorry for ourselves, then we lean into it, and for the last year, everything's massively dislocated, disrupted, interrupted on a global scale, delayed. What comes out of that, I don't know. I was really excited to go speak over a couple days with a group on Santorini, and it was really heartbreaking that it was delayed once a year and now a second year and it's pushed out. But over that time, did my exposure, visibility to that group improve? Did the material get even better and better that I was going to do with that group? Probably, right? And there are things that we got better at time and again this year, we're looking at these things that happen to us and throw us off our game. But if we can look for what's the opportunity of that, right? What's the silver lining of 2020? And 2021 is off to a fantastic start, right? All that bad stuff just ended last year. We're still dealing with stuff, right? I Still, I can't figure out how to get my in laws vaccinated. And they're like 90 and in their 80s and with significant health issues. Right. Like, what the heck? I think there's so much to be learned from that and to think about what is that we got better at video this year. Our audience grew substantially. Our number of clients grew this year. So many things happened as a result of this that could be considered a silver lining. Now many of our clients also and some of their people were impacted. Right. But what might come out of that for them? Maybe they finally got on to something that really mattered to them. Right.

Yeah. No, I mean, you're right. It's one of those things that it's not all silver linings by any means. But I always talk to people, I go, you've got to not waste this opportunity because the other side of that isn't doing you any good. Like if you just stay. If their focus is on that darkness, that's not helping anything. And so it's really, how do I. Why is this happening? What can I learn in the moment? Sometimes you can't learn until you're through it. Just like the teeth story. But in the moment, what is happening that's positive and try to write those things down and take advantage of it as much as you can. So don't waste the opportunity that's now in front of us. Again, it's not about being a Pollyanna. It's just like there's, there's not much you're helping when you're on that other side of that edge.

So if you want to know more and read this book or the other books, go ToAwesome man, equalman.com and you'll find out more of Eric. See all of Eric's speaking and his books and all the groovy stuff that you've got. It's always a pleasure. You're so engaging. You bring such energy and aliveness to us. It's a pleasure to talk to you. So, guys, go to equalman equalman.com and you'll find Eric's info there and that kind of thing. I want to give some shout outs and special thanks. If our show helped you with something, please share it with somebody else right now. If you like it and subscribe to it and you send us a picture of your subscription, like screenshot, the little thing where you subscribe to our show. We will send you some unreleased tools that only a few other coaches have that aren't in our free downloads yet. You'll get the early access to stuff that won't be out for a very long time, a whole bunch of extra like worksheets and that kind of thing. So just send an email showing us that you subscribe to the show. Could be anywhere, Facebook, YouTube, our website, whatever. Send that to infocalingcoach.com and put subscriber subscribed in the subject line and we will get those new tools out to you. I want to give a special thanks to Vern Harnish, the author and creator of the original Scaling up framework and the Rockefeller habits that led into it. Big shout out to Lucy Summers who's in the background getting our show ready all the time, promoting it, releasing it, getting our guests ready and scheduled and all that kind of thing. And Albert Burge who edits the audio and the show as we put out the audio at Pop Fly Productions and our show notes get written up by Ein Kadena and proofread by Tim McGowan. Thanks again to everyone for joining the show today and keep Scaling Up. We'll talk to you next time.

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