4 Breakthroughs: Cultivate Joy, Thailand Trip, Speaking Strategies, and Building Team

And I'm sitting with 10 of my team members and just kind of listen to them brainstorm and talk and going around the room appreciating what has been, you know, as they share a joyful journey, a challenging journey, a fulfilling journey of serving our people, of challenging ourselves, of treating each other well, of really working so hard to serve a mission every day to change people's lives and inspire people to improve their lives and achieve their goals. And I'm just looking at their faces and I'm thinking, God, I'm so blessed. I'm looking around this office and the studio and how beautiful it is and thinking, God, so blessed. Came so far, you know, came so far from riding on my mom's three legged sewing room fold out table to this 10,000 square feet where we get to change people's lives every single day was, it was a huge moment. Hey, my friend, it's Brendon Burchard. And welcome back to the Brendon Show. In this episode, I cover my four bricks. I know, I know you've been waiting for me. You've been wondering where the next episode is. But I've been out on the road, as many of you saw from my vlog on YouTube, out in Bali, up to Thailand, out to Phoenix, back up to Portland, back down to Phoenix, back out to California. It has been a whirlwind few weeks. So I apologize I haven't gotten you a podcast since Bali, at least in terms of these four breakthroughs. But in this episode, a lot to cover. Going to switch it up a little bit. Start this episode, part one with our listener submission. So I'm taking in the four breakthroughs every single week, as much as I can to keep up with you guys, to be able to share. What's a question you guys are submitting to me on Twitter or mostly I use Instagram. So if you want to DM me on Instagram, some of your questions, I try to throw them into our podcasts. This week's question is all about Brendan. How do you have joy when you're really struggling to succeed and sometimes you're not seeing the results you want to? How do you stay in a positive mindset? We'll cover that. Part two, I'll tell you about Thailand. Part three, today is all about Phoenix. Stepping off a plane from Thailand, stepping onto two separate stages with a thousand people in them across town. Kind of a double booked speaking gig for me that was just, just insane. And then part four, all about the team, the scale, the building, the reaching more people worldwide. Part one, Joy. Our listener question this week is all about how do you maintain joy while you're really struggling to get results or even to get clarity, or while you're struggling and striving so hard and sometimes you don't have people supporting you. You know, maybe your family thinks you're nuts or, you know, you can't find that new employee or that assistant or the help that you need. And so I got a very beautiful direct message from a podcast listener of the Brennan show, and, boy, I hope you'll do that, too. Basically, if you ever want to be featured on the podcast or you want to ask your question, just hit me up on Twitter or on Instagram. Both of them are at Brendon Burchard and direct message me or tweet me and I'll take on your question on this one. I have three ideas. If you're really struggling with joy, here's some simple things that you can do. First and foremost, consider time freedom. You know, I know when people talk about joy, they immediately go to the practice of mindfulness or they go to the practice of gratitude. We'll talk about some of those concepts. But what I have found is the reason many people don't have any joy in their lives beyond those two things, mindfulness and gratitude, is that they have no white space of time in their life in which an appreciation or gratitude or mindfulness could even come in. They have crammed their day, their schedule, with so much obligation or distraction that they don't have any breathing room. You know, it's not that you can't have joy when you're super busy. We'll talk about that. But over a period of time, if you are just smashed on your schedule all the time, always busy, always interacting, always doing, always consuming, then your brain doesn't have any of that free association time, any of that appreciation time, any of that time to kind of just remember or to coalesce everything that's going on and kind of find a coherent sort of foothold psychologically of what's happening in the world. And you're just always going to be frazzled out. And if you're always frazzled out or you're always consuming, it's hard to have that space of joy, because I think of joy as spirit and in so many ways, right? But so many people have squeezed out the spirit of their life by overly producing, by overly scheduling, by not setting boundaries, by not having any freedom. And I really believe if you read the motivation manifesto, which I hope you have by now, if you've read the motivation manifesto in there. It's about the concept that the main human drive that we all experience is this striving for personal freedom, to freely be who we really are and to freely pursue that which matters to us, whether it's love or mission or service or some combination of those, that we want to be ourselves and pursue things that matter to us. And we don't want to be encumbered by other people. We don't want to be encumbered by, you know, administrations or conformity or judgments. We don't want to be squeezed into boxes. We want to be able to have freedom. And in that truth lies a lot of joy. When you get freedom back into your life, specifically time freedom or mental freedom, you have more space for joy. That requires you to take a good look at what's your day been like recently. Has there been some spare moments in there that you're building to take a breather, to have a second to notice, to appreciate, to live? I think it's everything. The second idea that comes to my mind is that joy shows up more with routine. Joy shows up more with routine. And what I mean by that is a lot of joy happens spontaneously, doesn't it? You just, you take in that moment of appreciation because you're mindful. So you see the kids smile, you see your spouse do that thing, you see that person help somebody, you notice that beautiful moment. You laugh with your friends, and that's all beautiful. But you can't leave joy to random, hopeful, spontaneous moments. You gotta have a little bit of a routine in which you bring joy in. So you have to have some routines with your spouse that you love to do. You gotta have some routines with yourself that brings you joy, whether engaging in a hobby or watching something funny or taking a moment to journal. You know, I really think of all the science behind gratitude journals and how they predictably improve happiness scores over a short term and a long term, that a gratitude journal is just another moment of routine to cultivate joy. And so what are your routines that generate joy? Mine, as example, are simple ones. Like, I have routines to work out because working out brings me joy and opens up freedom in my body to be more loose and alive so that I can experience joy. I have routines of writing things down in my gratitude journal, but I also have routines like in the morning, every day, I say, what's exciting today? What could I do today that would be exciting? What am I excited about today? And starting that day with that positive frame to be excited about something that brings Me, Joy. I also. My third question, many of you guys know I ask in the shower every morning. If I take a shower in the morning is a simple one. And that is, who could I surprise today with either a gift or appreciation or a shout out? And that surprise brings me joy. So I surprise somebody every single day, even if it's just as simple as I'm going to surprise somebody with a kind text. Doing that brings me joy. And the third answer to the question of how do you have joy in your life more often is the probably most proven scientific way to have long term happiness. And I know joy is an offshoot of that, but let's just talk about the science here. A moment of relationships. You know, a study came out recently that shared that more and more people in Generation Z and the Millennials are lonely than any other generation in the past at their age. And I think loneliness is one of the great culprits of joy and happiness. You know, you can create joy in a vacuum of just being by yourself or doing your gratitude journal or going throughout your day doing your hobbies and the passions, but nothing amplifies joy like social connection. Nothing amplifies joy with being around friends. So much of joy does come from spontaneity, and that spontaneity happens when you're around others. And so you've got to surround yourself with positive, joyful people, and you've got to limit your time and exposure to negative, demeaning, belittling, condescending jerks. You got to get around people who support you, cheer you on, believe in you, even if you suck, even if you're no good, even if you're just starting out, supportive people who got your back. And those are the type of people who create more moments of joy, as I've learned throughout my life. Part two Thailand. Oh man. I hope you saw some of my Instagram posts while I was in Thailand. I didn't do a lot, maybe two or three, but it was magical. It's our second time out to Thailand and I, I loved it. I just absolutely love everything about Thailand. Every, every part that we've ever visited of Thailand. The people are so generous and giving and compassionate and kind and joyous. The food, of course. Oh my gosh. I mean, I usually come back from Thailand like 5 to 8 pounds heavier. And it ain't water weight, baby. I mean, it is just every single flavor, from their chili to their curries to just the freshness of the food, it's just, it's just so good. I love it. And if you got the people and the food is good now the environment and you're looking around and it's crystal clear, turquoise, perfect water, white sandy beaches, just, you know, more aliveness in the ocean than you usually get to see when you're snorkeling or you're scuba diving or you're out on the water. I mean, just standing on the, you know, at the beach, you know, just seeing all these vivid colors of fish and getting to go out to, you know, whether you're, whether when you go out to the islands all around Thailand, whether it's a Phi Phi Islands or others, you get to see just these remarkable, you know, structures just dotting the ocean that give this amazing effect where you can go and you can kayak and you can go inside these caves and caverns and you can be on white sandy beaches. And there is a magic to Thailand that is unlike anywhere else in the world. And I absolutely love it. I know you guys wanted me to, to do an update on it, but you know, I didn't do a vlog there though. I have some video I'll be releasing on YouTube. Didn't do a lot because that was for me and my wife. And I'm appreciative of that trip. And if I can give you a takeaway in this one, it's that, you know, every December 31st or January 1st, my wife and I sit down and we plan out the year. And we're not planning work, mostly we're planning where are we going to go every 90 days, let's go somewhere. Let's take a couple days off, get out of town and go somewhere. Sometimes it's a long trip, like the Bali, Thailand trip was, you know, was several weeks or sometimes it's just a two or three day, you know, weekend trip or a staycation. But it's where we go off the grid and get some time together. And if you have a significant other, you, I hope you're doing that with them. And if you don't, then, you know, plan that same 90 days to go away with a family member or a friend, to recharge, to find those moments of freedom where you can appreciate, be mindful, be grateful, and also have adventure. You know, if you're lacking adventure in your life, that ain't nobody else's fault. You gotta schedule in the time, I mean, wherever you're at and wherever you're listening to this right now, you could be having adventure with family, friends or loved ones within, I promise, 10 minutes of wherever you find yourself. Right now it's just a matter of willing yourself to do that and going for it and, you know, stopping, just living mundane. And I know it's easy to do that because you're just going through the motions to get the job, to make the business, to earn the income, to feed the kids, to, you know, do everything that you have to do every single day. It's a lot of work. I know. And I'm sure you can hear in my voice, I'm tired right now. You know, coming back from Thailand was probably one of the harder jet lags I've ever had. And as you'll hear in the next part of the story, I landed and had to get right to work. And so I've been going and going and going. And I know how hard it is to build a brand and run a business and care for your family and love your lover and do your work and everything else. I mean, it's a lot of stuff. I know. So that's why it's even more important that you ensure you schedule time for adventure and joy. Part 3 Phoenix so I land and I know I might sound funny to you all because I'm kind of a little bit wiped out, honestly. I just finished filming for the last four or five hours and I've been going 247 since I got back from Thailand. I mean, literally landed back in the United States when we landed, I think in Los Angeles, off the plane over to Phoenix and went to bed for a couple hours, woke up, ironed my shirts, got the suit ready, got in the car, went over and spoke at a friend's event who had a thousand people in his audience. Very, very high end marketers. And I got to get on and wow them with some marketing advice when they've already been in a seminar learning marketing for three days. I kind of come in as the ringer at the end to kind of take it at another level. And it was tough, you know, backstage just trying to activate my body and doing my qigong and my movements and my breath work that many of you know that I do to be able to survive and got up on stage. And one thing I really wanted to give that audience was a sense of urgency. If you're a speaker, one of the fundamental things you have to know how to do is give your audience a sense of urgency that it's time to chase your dream, it's time to start that new business, it's time to raise your hand, it's time to ask for help, it's time to put your idea forth at work, it's time to pursue that person. It's time to say sorry. It's time to find a deeper spirituality. It's time. And that message was really relevant for me, sharing that with the audience because I really believe the marketing landscape continues to change so significantly. And you got to be aware of that if you're in that space. So I was sharing with them some of the best practices that I know and practice and that is really important right now in the current landscape. And then it was about a 90 minute presentation and then go offstage, literally went backstage, thanked the promoter, gave a big hug, and then ran outside, got in a car, went 45 minutes or so across town and gave another speech to another thousand people in another audience on a different topic. And you know, then afterwards did, I don't know, two hours of picture taken and glad handing and talking to people and then went back to the hotel and literally laid down with jet lag and just fell asleep in my suit. I mean, I was out for the count and then woke up, had an all day meeting the next day, fell asleep, all day meeting, next day, fell asleep, flew back to Portland, Oregon, caught up with my wife there because she'd already gotten head back and then had some friends in town for a day. And then the next three days, which I'm just completing now, have been with my team. I use mostly a virtual team, but I've been building out a studio and been working on that and been working on building my own marketing team because I think things are really, really, really shifting right now and I'm trying to get ahead of it. So it was a lot. And what I learned from that experience is something I wrote about in High Performance Habits that was introduced in the research. I just learned that so many high performers were so active in taking these little micro breaks throughout all these experiences. So for example, when I went from that one speech to another speech across town, I had that little 45 minutes in the car. I meditated the entire way. I might even napped a little bit. I may have fell asleep, I can't remember. And then when I'm on the plane, meditation or sleep, then as my team starts to brainstorm or something, I excuse myself to another room and close my eyes for five minutes. You know, right before I did this podcast, I pushed away from the desk, I got up, I got some water, I did some stretching, I set an intention and I began this thing. And it's all these little things, like it's not just to recover from jet lag. Which is a big thing. And I think the best thing to recover from jet lag is just get on the time zone as fast as you can and get on a workout schedule as fast as you can on that time zone. Hydrate three times more than you usually do. Really focus on a plant based diet, which I didn't do, I failed to do that. And those little components are all really key and important. But then in day to day life, just making sure you're taking those little breaks, it's huge, huge, huge free long term energy. And I'm about to do it. After I finish this podcast, I'm gonna take a five minute stretch, close my eyes, lay on the ground for five minutes, get up, pack it all up and go take my lady to dinner. And then tomorrow I fly down to meet with my Mastermind members who are some of my highest level clients that I work with for another three day event. Then I fly to Utah to close a deal with a major company that is providing my personal development courses to all of their people for a fee. And if you didn't know, I have a all access program where you can get all of my courses for a monthly rate and you can start with a dollar a month. So if you haven't seen that before, just go to brendan.com forward/access. That's Brendan B R E N D O N.com forward slash access. And you can get three of my online courses in achievement, influence and research on the top 2% of the most successful people. I've learned about what they think about wealth, about how they think about team, how they use their mindset for confidence, all that. You can get those three courses right now for a buck as a trial into our all access program. Brenda.comaccess so major companies are starting to buy that so that their employees can get a new personal development course every single month from me. That is a big deal. I'm finishing up in Utah, then I hop another plane. I go out to Philadelphia and I'll be interviewing some of the top positive psychologists in the world and I'll make sure I get some of those clips and play for them for you on the Brennan show. At some point. I'm not sure exactly how that content will roll out just yet, but I'm doing that. Then I'm back home. Then I'm out to Experts Academy to teach, you know, a thousand people. Marketing, you know, it is in tenths of a schedule and I could never do it if I didn't know how to cultivate joy along the way and if I didn't take time to recover, both with those big trips and with those little micro breaks, I'm feeling strong enough. Feels like ever since you left this place. Part four Team Team my friend. You know, throughout my career, many of you know, I've really worked hard to stay small. And what I mean by that is I, I, I had the ambition to reach a lot of people worldwide, but I worked very hard to figure out what are the strategies and the tools, especially the online tools would allow me to reach millions of people around the world without having to be on the road all the time and without having to be in a place where I had to have, you know, hundreds of employees. And you certainly see a lot of major influencers today, you know, showing their big offices and you know, they've got hundreds of people helping them, their social media or ad agencies or they've got, you know, 10 people over here or 50 people over there and, and you know, we're in that economy in that time when a lot of people are getting funding and it's really exciting and, and I always understood all of that. But for me personally, lifestyle doing this was really important to me in a lifestyle that I like because first and foremost I'm a writer. I need a lot of free time, I mean a lot to be able to think, to be able to research, to be able to do draft after draft after draft after draft. And it's a lot of work to be a writer alone, let alone running a team to run all of our online courses and to fulfill all our high end events and coaching clients. It's a lot. And I can't do it without an awesome team. And for 10 years I've been blessed to have team, whether it was one person, two people, three people, five people who worked virtually, who really supported me in doing my events, or supported me from time to time with marketing projects or always with customer service. All of that was something that I ran virtually and remote and, and I'm blessed to have three or four different companies that I invest in that many team members around those different companies help me out once in a while. But I'm formalizing my team much, much more into a strategic marketing team that will support some of the initiatives that I'm trying to roll out. Not necessarily related to, you know, any one thing, the podcast or YouTube or social media, things like that, but, but some big, big things. And I'm not going to announce those until the fall, but I'll be taking you on that journey on my YouTube vlog so make sure you're subscribed to over on YouTube because I'm going to show by vlogging how to build a modern thought leader brand that really transcends a lot of things that people are trying now, you know, in terms of just being on one platform, Instagram or Facebook or podcasts, but really does something that has not yet been done. And I've secretly been working on this strategically for almost a year and a half. So I'm really excited to share that. But I want to share this part about why I brought the team together and some things I shared with them. You know, I think it's important when you bring your team together always to root them, not necessarily right away on the, in the vision or the values or the sequences or things like that, but rather if you're working with people, get them together, talking about why do they love working, what is it they love about working with you and for you? So I don't just start preaching at them, I just listen and we go around the table. What do you love about this? What do you experience? But we also share, what are we learning in working together, especially so many people virtually. And, and getting insight on what people like and don't like, especially in terms of my leadership style is really important. Feedback about your leadership style and being transparent about how you lead and the fact that you're not fully adequate, the fact that you are not, you know, perfect and sharing your own failures and shortcomings and allowing people to talk about work in a way that's open is really important. I mean, even though I've recommended the Culture Code in my four Breakthroughs newsletter before, I hope you've read it before if you want to run a team. And that was, you know, a real eye opener for me in many ways about high performance cultures that really reflect a lot of the individual differences that we also see in psychology with high performance studies. And I wanted to bring that into the team meeting. So we then did talk about big vision, talked about our values. I talked about how we performance sort of manage the team when so many of us are spread out and doing different things. And I also was onboarding new people as well. It was awesome. And I don't really have a lot of a takeaway here other than get support, get support sooner than later. Hire strategic A players sooner than later. Ask the team to do things well beyond what you're capable of. Ask the team to do things in ways that are more metric driven than you probably do on your own. For example, I laid out some marketing funnels. And I said, hey, this is how I want this to be built out. And these are the kind of the numbers I want to improve. And these are the goals that we have across all these funnels. And okay, you guys take it from here. You know, and me stepping back a little bit from pushing all of the dials all the time, because a lot of the systems have matured now. And, you know, it used to be in marketing, you had to have a lot of specific, unique individual skills. And now the truth is, with all the tools, anybody can help you spread your message, do a good job in reaching more people beyond yourself. And I'm excited, though, to work with a players. So that's been a really great experience with the team. I'm still recovering from an unbelievably awesome trip to Bali and Thailand. And then it's been busy. It's a busy season for me. It always is. May is always one of the busiest months for all thought leaders, especially those of us who do a lot of speaking and training, because it's just a big time. It's spring cleaning time in people's lives. It's time where companies bring a lot of their people out for training for that last opportunity for training for the spring. Because once you get into June, July and August, a lot of people take time off there. So a lot of the conventions, conferences and events are happening right now. That's why I'm out on the road and then looking forward to the summer where I'm doing a lot more vlogging and updated podcasts for you all, even more consistent than I've been over this last year. Because it's important to keep doing this and I've loved your feedback and that's my only ask today. As you see, we got no sponsors or anything like that. The only real ask I've got for you today is could you go on to Apple Podcasts and leave a review about the show? It really does help people, really do look at that stuff and I'd love for you to hear. That's where I get the feedback from. You also drop me a note on Instagram or direct message on Instagram, or tweet me up at Brandon Burchard and let me know what do you think about this episode? Take a screenshot of it, share it on social media, share what you're learning, share what you like, share what you'd love me to cover. Because next week I'll do another session where I cover another listener's question. So if you got questions hit me up. Also give me some feedback. I hope this gave you a little bit of insight in the last crazy two weeks of my life. As always, keep listening to Brennan Show. We've been posting some best of my training sessions. Whether live training sessions or live events. We've got a lot of exciting new content coming over the summer. And as always, I just appreciate you. You know, as I was shooting some videos today, I got to walk people around the new studio and show what we've been building here and what's going to be happening over the next couple months. And honestly, it's the most exciting time in my career I've ever had. I feel like, as always, I've just been getting warmed up for higher and higher levels of service and to have this opportunity to speak with you today and know that maybe you're working out or you're driving or you're just listening between things right now. To me, it's an honor to be in your ear. It's an honor to be in your head. It's an honor to get to spend every day of my life thinking how I might be able to change some people's lives. Inspire them to go after their dreams. Inspire them to reach for their goals. Inspire them, as always, to live, love and matter. If you liked this week's episode, make sure you go to Brendan Forward slash Access. I've got that dollar trial running right now for you where you can get a dollar trial that gets you three of my online courses that by the way, each cost $300 each. So getting $900 of online courses for a buck. And then every single month, on the 1st of each month, I'm going to release a brand new online course for you for the next 12 months. That's me every single month releasing a new course for you into our all Access program. People are freaking out. When I first rolled it out, a customer called it the Netflix of personal development, which I'm pretty honored by. And if you'd like to check it out, just go to brendan.com access until next week, my friend. As always, please live fully, love openly and go make a difference today. Thanks for listening to the Brennan Show. It.