My Week - Success Magazine, speaking to 1k people, and new book

So it's your time to access that greater level of motivation and to start practicing the high performance habits that make you extraordinary. You are stronger than you think and it's your time, my friend. Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard. And welcome to another episode of the Brendon Show. In this week's episode to share with you all the crazy antics of this last week of what's been going on in my life as I struggle, just like you, to keep my motivation high, to keep practicing my high performance habits, to become my highest, most extraordinary self and all the fights, struggles, desires along the way to make that happen. I'll be sharing with you four things in this episode. I'll be talking about that goofy face you see on Success magazine this month I'll talk about the Great unboxing of 2017, 2017 with my new book. I'll talk about a event where I just spoke at with about a thousand people and some distinctions there about how to perform better on stage. And then I'll share with you the big week upcoming. And that is the official launch of my new book, High Performance Habits. We've got a lot to cover here and an exciting session with you. I hope you're really enjoying these where I kind of break down how I'm living my life and striving to be my best as well as kind of previewing some things to come. Lots of this only is shared with my podcast community. So thank you all. I hope you're still enjoying this. I have two big announcements before we jump into the four parts of this show. The first one is just a thanks. You know, I shared with you all in the last weekly review about how my grandmother had passed away and you all were so kind in in the love that you shared on social media through email. Many of my friends called me and text me who are really enjoying these new and more personal podcasts and they give a lot of shout outs and you guys did too. So I appreciate the love and my family is okay. Thank you. It was a tough summer losing so many people. In that episode I talked about how my grandmother had passed away, how Hurricane Harvey was just unrelenting at that time. And since then Irma has now just sort of passed through Southeast Florida and caused more damage there. In that last episode I talked about Louise Hay. I gave some book updates. There was a lot going on but you know, the most important thing to me was just talking through how I dealt with losing my grandmother, but more importantly how my whole family did and how proud of my mom. We were, in her experience being so strong throughout that we'll always miss my grandma and there'll always be a huge hole in my heart with her gone. And yet at the same time, we carry on her joy and her presence and her just true humility and peace and living life. And just like my father having just celebrated his, what would have been his 78th birthday a couple days back, you carry on the values of the people before you. And so I appreciate all those who recognize that, who give a shout out. You know, this is an interesting new format for me. So I hope you'll keep sharing and telling me on social media if you like this, that you'll keep hashtagging the Brendon show and sharing what you think of it because that's how I'm hearing about you guys liking these. And that's where I saw a lot of your comments about my grandma. So I appreciate you doing that. Second big announcement is that high performance habits, the book, is about to drop September 19th. And the reason you need to pay attention to that date is because that is the last week to get the bonuses that I'm offering for the book. Now if you listen to the last couple episodes, you've heard the full audiobook excerpts of the introduction on chapter one and chapter two and I hope you enjoyed those because those are the full audiobook excerpts of that book. And the only way to get the deluxe audiobook version of high performance Habits is to go to Brendan.com and I'm sad I have to say this, but I will, I have to spell Brendon for you. That's B-R-E-N--O-N.com habits brendon.com habits make sure you go there and get your book through that page because the reason is when you do, you'll get the $49 deluxe audiobook version for free. What's the deluxe audiobook version? It has some behind the scenes of how I wrote the book. It has some non released interviews or full interviews of people interviewing me about the book. It has some extra training that I have done related to the book including one of our high performance habits builder courses or one of those sessions that we usually charge $97 for. And you get a live broadcast training with me coming up where I'm going to go deep dive on some business habits that can support you. So that's all only available@brendon.com habits and lots of people have been asking for that deluxe audiobook version. And here's the deal, it's literally offered nowhere else. There's no other way to get it than to buy a book through that particular site, brendan.com habits. So I hope you do that by the deadline, my friends. With that, let's get into it. Part one that Goofy face on Success Magazine this Month if you haven't been following me on social media or been at the newsstands yet this month, I'm honored and humbled to be the feature cover story of Success magazine. Which means they put my big goofy face on the front of the magazine and they did a nine page spread on me, my story and my life. So I hope you'll pick up a magazine at your newsstands of Success magazine. Please support that magazine, buy a bunch of copies, give it to a bunch of friends and tell them, hey, this is the guy I'm listening to. And there's a lot that you probably don't know about me that made it into that article. People are really loving it. I've been hearing so much and you know, we've gotten a lot of questions about it. So I'll share a little about that story and that journey to get on the COVID of the magazine and sort of what it feels like to get that. And just first and foremost, again, a shout out to you guys. There's no way that you get on the COVID of a magazine without having an incredible tribe and supporting community these days. It just doesn't happen. And so I know a lot of people who should be on the COVID of lots of magazines, but maybe they don't have the influence that they want to have or the magazine wants to have. And I always think, well, it's not really their influence, it's, you know, the love and the generosity of their audience. And you guys have been so generous that I think that's why it finally happened in terms of them, you know, wanting to do that cover. And you know, I can't tell you how humbling it is because 20, let's see, 22 years ago, I picked up my first Success magazine and I can actually remember where I was reading it. I was sitting on this crappy brown recliner in my dorm room in college and I'd come back from my car accident. I had decided to rededicate my life to living an extraordinary quality of life so that I could live love and matter. And I started getting in personal development. And one of the first things I did was go to the bookstore to figure out how to do that. And they were selling Success Magazine. I picked up a copy of that, I picked up a bunch of other personal development books, including I think at that time, Paulo Coelho's book the Alchemist. And actually, no, my brother sent me the Alchemist. I'm sorry about that, David. And anyway, I really got into it and I read that book and I read that magazine and I read a bunch. I mean, that was just when I got completely crazy about personal development. And so 22 years later, I'm on the COVID And you know, I can tell you it doesn't happen overnight. Just like anything we want in our lives, it is by consistently showing up and giving everything we got with generosity, with excellence, and just doing our craft over and over and over and over and over again. And then someday somebody recognizes it and something like this happens. You know, I like to share a few insights about this journey because I know all of us, we want attention and reward for what we do. But the truth is there were plenty of years that I didn't have that. And you know, lots of people in the last couple years just think that, you know, it's always been this way for me, you know, from working with the Oprah's of this world. I remember when we first started working with Oprah Winfrey Network as an example, and the first picture of me and Oprah came out and we were about to release our new online course together. Everyone said, oh my God, Brendan, you know, you're famous, you've made it. You're so lucky to get this break. And I thought this break, this is, I've been doing. You know, I did this for 10 years before I got the call from the Oprah team. And I did this for what, 14 years before I got the COVID of any magazine or really honestly any media attention. And believe me, I'm not saying that bemoaning the process at all, because I loved it and I'm still doing it today and I'd still be doing it regardless of those accolades or those awards, that attention. So please know it's not about that. I'm sharing it with you. More of the hey, look, I put in those 10 years and I'm still putting them in and I'll still do it. I'm doing this. This is my mission. I until I'm 90 or 100 years old, and that's just my mission. I remember seeing some of the last speeches of a Zig Ziglar or some of the other greats who have been sick in the past and seeing them do their craft and it inspired me so much. Matter of fact, I remember one of the greatest things I ever saw in my entire life. My wife and I were at a summer concert in Napa Valley, and it was happened to be Marguerite Mondavi's. I think it was her 90th birthday, if I remember right. And there was a celebration on the lawn of the Mondavi Napa Winery, and they had a bunch of musicians, and it was kind of a birthday thing. And we were all out in the. At the time, my wife worked there, and we were all out in the big lawn. And at that point, I really didn't drink wine or really understand it that much, but I really loved jazz. And there was gonna be the great there. Dave Brubeck was gonna step on stage at the summer concert. And I'll never forget it. Dave Brubeck is no longer here. But if you're not familiar with your. If you ever heard the song Take five, if you don't know what that is, just Type in take5 and Brubeck into YouTube or onto iTunes and you'll hear it. And you go, oh, my gosh, I love that song. Well, that's Dave Brubeck. He's one of the great jazz musicians in history. I mean, in the top 10, for sure, in my opinion. And anyway, he was gonna perform, and at that point, he was also old, and he kind of stepped up on stage very delicately and was kind of shuffling across the stage. And he kind of embraced Marguerite and she shuffled off the stage. And he walked over to the piano and he sat down. He kind of whispered like, happy birthday, Marguerite. And he started kind of tinkering at the piano. And it was kind of a moment where I saw, that's great. And I thought, oh, no, you know, he's not going to be able to form like he used to be able to. And he was all hunched over and he didn't, you know, there was no magic or. And he was just kind of hitting keys and it was like, ugh. And then he hit a few more keys and he straightened up a little bit. He hit a few more keys. A little more. Faster. He straightened up a little bit more. He hit a few more keys with a little bit more melody in him. Straightened up a little bit more. And next thing you know, he's pounding on these keys a little faster and a little faster. And then he's sitting up and he's just. I mean, he's just going. He's playing that piano like you never saw anything. He came alive at the piano and the whole audience went bananas. And we're just like, oh my gosh, look at him go. And he just laid it and then he stood up fully, just, I mean, stood up in full. Walked across the stage. Marguerite was coming up, gave her a hug like he was a, you know, just a 40 year old strong man, you know, kissed her on the cheek. Happy birthday, Marguerite walked off the stage and we were like, oh my God, out of our mind. And that's where I hope to be at someday in my life, where it doesn't matter my age, that my craft brings me to life. That's what I hope that happens for me. So regardless of the media attention here or there that's been spotty throughout my life, or the growth or the ebbs and declines of a newsletter or how many views, I've never, ever cared about that stuff. And I communicate that stuff so that I can give my fans, my followers, my students, my communities and, you know, a sense of always. I'm always trying to say, look, you know, this is my story of struggle and what I've been through, and this is the journey to get better. And these were the results. And some people don't like when I do that. I mean, I get plenty of people saying, well, Brendan, you know, why are you always talking about, you know, your Facebook or why even doing an episode, talking about you on the COVID of Success magazine? Because I want you to know there's a dumb, young, sad kid who was freaked out, just in terror that he wasn't living a good quality of life on a $15 nasty brown recliner, reading a magazine, hoping for a better life and dedicating himself to figuring out how to live that better life 20 years later. Plus, he's on the COVID I don't say that to brag. I say it because I recognize so many people who don't believe that transformations are possible partially because they want them to happen in a year, or in two or in three. I never really cared how fast it happened. I just wanted to keep every day asking, am I bringing my best self to this day? Is my highest self interacting with this day? Am I trying? Am I giving my all? Am I trying to live up to who I want to become and live into that each day? And the truth is, plenty of days I suck. And I got no problem telling you that. But I'm always sharing that. And I think you should do that, too. I think it's important for influencers today to share our stories of struggle, to share our journeys, of figuring things out, not finalizing them, not perfecting everything, but Sharing our process, sharing what we've been learning, and then sharing, hey, look, things got better. Let me tangibly show you how things got better. I think that's important. At my program called Experts Academy, we call that expert story positioning. Telling your story, man. You know, the world learns by your example. And the world's never going to learn by your example unless you tell them a before and after story. Right? But you can't forget the middle one. It's not before and after. It's before then your journey to get to the after. Because if they don't believe the journey, the struggle to improve. If they don't believe the struggle, they don't believe the successes. And so it's important for you to always just remember to share that stuff. And, you know, I've got a couple questions here from our podcast listeners on social media. Again, honestly, I don't see you guys unless you hashtag the Brendon Show. That's the only way I get any input at all from this show because I don't look at a lot of other social medias without specific intent. So please, in any of your comments or your love or your images, just post it and then hashtag the Brendan Show. And one of the big questions I got that I thought was really insightful because honestly, I didn't think about it was this question of how does it feel to be on the COVID of Success magazine? And I love that question. If you're an interviewer, you should always ask that question. I was working with Larry King. Many of you guys know, we did a course with him over@growth.com and Larry King did a full online course on how to communicate. And one of the things he said is he loved that question, how does it feel? And I just have never really applied it to myself in terms of media. But Larry would ask people like Mark Zuckerberg, how does it feel to be the CEO of Facebook? Those are questions he loved to ask. So here's somebody asking me that question on social media. How does it feel? And actually, at that point, I hadn't really thought about it, but something cool had just happened. The day I read that Instagram post of that question, which was I was in a meeting. I was on a call with two big promoters. These are people who want to put me on some stages across the country. And the call is going great. I haven't met them before, but a really wonderful call, and they're being very kind. And during the call, I'm at the office and the buzzer goes off. Somebody's at the front desk. I see one of my team members go over there to answer the door. They come up, there's an envelope for me. FedEx hand it to me while I'm on the phone. And I finish up the phone call and I open it up and I get a text from Stuart Johnson, who's the owner and the founder of Success magazine, at least its current iteration. He owns success.com, jimrohn.com and he says, did you get it? I said, did you get what? I open up the envelope and it's the first cover, it's the first basically edition of the Success magazine with, with, with me, my face on it, you know, And I was like, whoa. And it was, it was, it was a surreal moment. I mean, I definitely was like, okay, gotta take this. And my team had come into the room for a next meeting and I was just like, I took it in for a second, I showed them and then I shot a little video of just opening it, sent it to their, the, the Success team, to my team, and sent it to those promoters. Hey, this just happened right after we got off the phone. Thank you for your time today. And honestly, they sent me so many emojis back. You know, I think they felt that more than I felt that they were so excited because they're gonna promote me on some of the stuff they're doing. And it was just, it was really, it was nice to see other people get excited about it. My team get really excited about my texts blow up. And I think that that's what's been really fulfilling, all the love you guys have been giving me on social media. And it literally is just this humbling, awe inspiring feeling that I don't know how to explain other than just tell you the journey to get on it. Because the other aspect to it is I know the people who've been on it. You know, one thing you, I'm sure you're learning about me, or maybe I hope you know about me, is that I'm a complete, you know, geek about the history of self help and personal development. And, you know, because I came up studying most of that history, it's one of the reason that like the motivation manifesto is written differently, because it had a historical tone to it. If you, if that's a proper way to describe what I call really revolutionist rhetoric. But, you know, I've been moved and I am, I am a product of Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill and, Gosh, Earl Nightingale and Og Mandino and Zig Ziglar. And Jim Rohn and Brian Tracy and Les Brown and Marianne Williamson and the Tony Robbins and so many of the greats, the Brian Tracys, the Jack Canfields. I mean, the list could go on and on and on. The Robin Sharmas of our time, even. I mean, there's so many people who dramatically influenced my life. I mean, I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for, you know, listening to Earl Nightingale and probably a couple hundred audio tapes back in the day. And so I have reverence for that real estate on that particular magazine. And it means a lot to me. I don't know how to exactly explain it, but the best part of it all, honestly, is that my two little nephews, I mean, who are just my little buddies, I always call them my little buddies. And they are the apple of my eye, if you will, These guys, I mean, little Connor, little Noah, are just my buddies. They're my sister's kids, and they come to my events. And, I mean, I just love these guys. And they were so excited. They saw some texts and asked my sister to go to the Barnes and Noble to get it. And so they made, like, a field trip to go get this thing. And there I was, you know, on at Barnes and Noble, between two magazines. One on the left, I think was like. I don't remember, it was like Elvis of a Time magazine, you know, Memorial. And on the right was Fortune, you know, Fortune magazine with America's top companies. I'm the guy in the middle. And I thought it was. And they were so excited about it. I thought it was just absolutely hilarious. So, you know, I take it the greatest reward of it has been the community's reaction and my family's reaction, frankly. And I would also say just the validation of why people say what got you on it. And frankly, it wasn't. I don't think it's anything about my story and journey per se that made it and that made it happen. I think it is the absolute discipline and research rigor that went into this new book, High Performance Habits. If we had not conducted that research at that scale, I don't know if it would have happened. Maybe it would have. But the research that ended up in High Performance Habits and created the High Performance Institute now is known as the world's largest and most comprehensive research ever done on high performers. I mean, we went deep. We had millions of data points. We had access to surveys from over 190 countries. We did hundreds of structured interviews, partnered with extraordinary academics, graduate students from the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Masters of Applied Positive Psychology program. I mean, we went to the nines on doing this thing and doing it right because I wanted to bring that level of discipline and rigor because too many, too often, too many people think that their personal story and their journey and their success is the only thing they need to teach from. And you know, I've been trying to push the thought leader industry now since 2009 towards this idea that it's important for each of us to also not just share our personal journey, but to if we're going to give advice, it's important for us to do the research, it's important for us to know our topic, it's important for us to interview the experts, it's important for us to get perspective. Because when people pay you as a thought leader or as an expert, they're paying you for perspective. That's what they're paying you for. So it's important to do that. And I wanted to do it at a level no one had done it in our industry before, at least in the self help industry. I mean, I wanted to go at this thing. We spent nearly a million dollars on this research study. We enlisted well over 16 major names in psychology. Many of them will be writing unique articles. And for our blog, High Performance Institute, which is about to premiere, I mean, we did the analysis, we did the empirical work, we did the methodology reports. I mean, for those who don't know my work and how much I study the academic side of what I do in terms of psychology and sociology, I think you're really going to love high performance habits. And frankly, it was that unique perspective and research that probably got the COVID And I would also hope that it was you guys. It was them knowing that, hey, this, you know, this would be a popular magazine because they're always thinking about sales. That's always going to happen. And so I'm sure it was kind of the two things coming together of one saying, yeah, this guy has a community and a following and he's doing something unique in the industry. That is what should put him on this thing. And that's just my guess. You guys have been asking, I'm like, what'd you, you know, that's all over the web. What'd you do to get on this? I'm like, I just did my thing. And you know, the day after I opened that magazine, guess what I did the next morning? Went back to work. Part two, the unboxing. Now a completely different feeling and a very exciting feeling was opening the first hardcover copy of High Performance Habits. Yeah, this all happened in one week. The Success magazine. And then Hay House sends me a box of the first editions of High Performance Habits, the hardcover, which is about to release September 19th. And I was freaking out because that's. I mean, I don't know even how to describe that experience. I hope one day that you consider writing a book or if you have, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Because there is nothing like that when the printer or the publisher or the distributor gets you that first copy and you open that box and you see it and you have worked tirelessly for, you know, in my case, three years on this book. But the book holds the insight from, you know, basically last 20 years of my life, but specifically last decade of my life as a certified high performance coach. So everything I got was in that box when I opened that thing. And, you know, the book is, you know, about 350 pages and then another 50 pages of research in there, you know, so it's about 400 pages, but I wrote 1,481 pages. So honestly, my first impression picking the book out of the box was, huh, certainly not as thick as it was, you know, when I printed them all out and I was editing it. And so I really enjoyed that moment and I took it in and I'm happy it turned out the way it did. This is my sixth book, and I've designed the covers of all of my books except the first edition of Life's Golden Ticket, the second edition. I did that one. And I love that whole process. And I literally designed them. And just so you know, I want to share this insight into it. And the reason I'm trying to share some of these insights with you is because people often think that you have to be fancy. I designed the COVID of that book in Keynote. Yeah, keynote. The last five books I discover or I designed those in PowerPoint. I had to get them to 95% of what I can make it look like and pretty. And then I send it off to the publisher and they polish it up maybe a little bit and do their thing with High Performance Habits. I did the front, the back, the flaps, everything I could with that one. And I was really proud of it. Unboxing it, I'm just like, oh, wow, this turned out better than I thought. You know, the materials they used were great. And you guys know, I'm kind of a complete geek about that too, because if you've got Motivation Manifesto with that gold foil on the top, that red ribbon, those red endnote pages that Font, headline font. Oh, that chapter headline font. You wanna know how dorked out I went on Motivation Manifesto? That chapter headline font is the first font that Benjamin Franklin used in his first Philadelphia print shop. Oh, that's the kind of history I love to dig up and to do. And that's the level I dork out on all my books. That's the art. You know, there's a million things that no one knows about the six books I've written. You know, maybe you didn't know that I did that with the font in Manifesto. Maybe you didn't know Manifesto was based on revolutionist rhetoric. And that's why it had the tone, the pace of a tempter that it kept throughout the book. Because that's certainly not how I talk. But that's what I did. And so I'm always trying to do something unique and special with each book and add those elements to it in high performance habits. When I unboxed it, I immediately started flipping pages looking for some of the visuals that we had created for it. And I went, even for myself, reading some of the performance prompts at the end of each chapter. So each chapter opens with a vignette, and these are vignettes that have happened in my coaching career with clients. And then it shares the science of that particular habit that's correlated with long term performance. Remember, there's six of them. Then it shares three practices of how do you actually not only implement some practices in your daily or weekly or monthly life, then it shares three practices that you can put into your life, whether it's your daily or weekly or monthly life that will help that habit stick and evolve and develop so that you do ultimately become more extraordinary and achieve longer term success. And then the chapters end with performance prompts. And here's a tip for those who build curriculum or who appreciate curriculum, and that is there's two different ways. You know, at the end of a lot of chapters, authors often ask questions, right? There might be four or five questions to consider or to ponder. Instead of asking questions, I use prompts. And I learned this from Nathaniel Brandon, who wrote another book, which I hope you'll read or have read, which is called the Six Pillars of Self Esteem. And I learned from him. He's one of the great, I shouldn't say he kind of is the father of academic studies of self esteem and one of the real proponents of the importance of self esteem throughout the decades, Nathaniel Brandon. Interestingly, he had a long term relationship with. Was it Aaron Rand? I think it was. Or somebody Gosh, I can't remember. Anyway, side note is that he taught that instead of just telling people or asking people a question, it's as equally powerful sometimes in psychology to start a sentence and let them finish it so that you're guiding and aiming the thought, but letting them complete it so that you can have more of a powerful framing effect on what they're learning. And so I immediately unbox the book and I went through and read all those performance prompts for me to remind myself and to help myself discover some new takeaways. Because I hadn't read the book in probably a couple weeks, I'd done the audiobook version of it and, and then took some time away from it, the project. And so opening the book, going right into those and reading those was amazing. I hope when you get your copy, you hold that cover, you pet that baby, you know that everything you see there I designed. Maggie Kirkland took that beautiful picture on the back cover at my new office here in Portland, Oregon. She took that picture. She's taken all of my photos for seven or, I don't know, five or six years, I'm sure. Just absolute pro and really proud of that entire book. And I hope that you'll enjoy it. It's going to be something that surprises you how much research went into it, but most importantly how tactical it is. I mean, as I was going through the practices in each of the chapters, I thought, oh yeah, this is something I can do right now. And I forgot to have that mindset or do that behavior. Because the thing about high performance, listen to this. Achieving long term success. We think that some people do it and some people don't. And we think it's about people, we think it's about personality. But long term success is not correlated with personality. Even in academic studies, the correlation is fairly weak. I mean, out of the big five in psychology that's typically kind of considered openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. It's usually conscientiousness is the highest correlate with long term external measures of success. What we do with this book is we want to do both external measures of success and measures of well being, health and happiness. What was really interesting about it is that high performance is not about a particular kind of person. It's about a particular set of practices. Meaning high performers are from all walks of life, all different ages, all different income levels, all different nationalities, all different backgrounds, all different crafts, all different types of personalities. But the ones who achieve success over the long term, they practice the six habits and high performance habits. So again, I hope you support that book so you can get the audiobook and all the bonuses. So make sure you go to brendan.com forward/habits. And when you get your book in the mail, know that three years of my life and many people's lives went into that book. I could have never done it without my team. So shout out to everybody at the Richard Group and High performance institute and growth.com for giving me the time and the, you know, just the ability to focus on a project that big. A big shout out to so many corporations who are already discovering the book. One exciting thing about it is, you know, so many corporations are ordering literally hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands of copies of the books for their employees and having them take the assessment to identify where they really need to work and then saying, okay, that's where you need to focus on. Focus on this particular habit and cultivating it. And it's a really exciting time for so many people because I think in self help we needed this book for a long time. And I don't say that congratulatory. You know, when I first started the book project, I and the research project, I did not know where it was going to go. I would not have guessed that these were the six final habits. We considered over 100 different performance variables in the research. And I look at the set of habits and some of it, I say, well, that's common sense, but I know it's not always common practice. And there's two habits in there I just wouldn't have guessed would make it into the top six. But the data proved the way and we followed that. We studied those high performers, we did the diligence. And I think you're going to find that there's so much in that book that you probably are not doing because that's what I discovered in the research. And I'm pretty transparent about the book. I'm like, I didn't know this. This has really impacted me. And this is how I've applied it since learning it. So if you ever thought that I was a guru because I was on some book cover or on some magazine cover, I'm here to tell you, experts are always student first. And I feel like one thing we definitely learned about high performance, they don't feel like it's lonely at the top. High performers don't feel like it's lonely at the top. They rarely say that phrase because they feel like they're just getting started. The Severe allergic reaction I should have seen coming. So one of the fun things about being on the COVID this month was I was able to go and speak at the Success Live event. They had a big event down in Los Angeles, I guess, I'm sorry, Long Beach. And it was awesome. I mean, they had such a great lineup of people. I mean, they had, you know, myself, Peter Diamond, Mendes, Keith Ferrazi, Les Brown, you know, the great Les Brown who smashed it. I think he's 72 years old, and he completely. He was the best speaker there, hands down. Nobody even touched him. I mean, you know, Les, you gotta be hungry. And he's still hungry. And he just slayed on stage. We had mel Robbins and Dr. Daniel Amen. Scooter and Adam Braun came. It was, you know, Todd Davis, Kim Perel, Tom Bilyeu, Peter Vugd, Simon T. Bailey crushed it as MC Chalene Johnson was there, Pastor John Gray, the legend, Dean Graziosi. I mean, Jocko Weilink. I mean, it was an unbelievable lineup. And I had so much fun seeing all those folks. So if any of those guys are listening, thank you, guys. We had such a good time. What an awesome event. And I learned a lot, like I always do. Anytime you're gonna speak to any audience, especially an audience that comes to that particular event, I mean, it says success on it. A lot of those people, they're hungry, they're ready, and they've studied personal development for. So you can't fool them, right? You better be on your game. An event like that with that many speakers, and I wasn't on my game on day one. Dang it. Ah, you know, lesson learned. You know, there was two events this year, I'm sorry, this summer where I didn't feel like I brought my A game or I was able to bring my A game. And it's just so frustrating, you know, Even if the audience loves it, even if the promoter's happy, you always know the greatest of what you can bring, you know, And I gave two presentations there. My first one, you know, by the time it got done, it was, you know, super strong. It got the standing ovation. Happy about that. But, man, that first half, that speech was just dogging it. And I. I knew it. I could feel it. And it was hard to pull. Pull the energy up and get through it. And what had happened is I made a stupid mistake. They put me up. I got some things that happened in the scheduling of where I was staying, and I was staying at a Weston, and they have this fancy thing called the Heavenly bed. And people love this bed, I guess. And the thing is, my team always remembers when they're booking it that I'm allergic to down. So, like, down comforters, down feathers, down pillows. And I just forgot about it. I hadn't stayed in the Westin for so long, honestly, and I got there so late, and I was working and networking and talking with so many people. By the time I got in the room, I mean, it was like 11:30, you know, midnight. I don't remember. Got a quick shower and laid everything out for the next morning. Ironed my shirts and just crawled into bed and died. You know, I was exhausted. Well, I wake up in the morning and I'm just, oh, my gosh. I had to get up early, and I just felt like, oh, my gosh, I must not have slept well. And I start getting ready for the day, and I have my morning routine that I do, I've talked about in other podcasts. I don't want to go on that. But I do these movements to wake my body up and do some breath work to get going in the morning and get going the day. But I was just struggling, and I went over to the sink in the bathroom and I looked in the mirror, and my eyes were just bloodshot red. And I think, oh, gosh, you know what? Must have just. I didn't turn the air conditioning off last night, and I've been traveling. I didn't sleep that much. And, you know, must be that. So I get ready for the day, and I'm just. But I. I'm feeling so heavy. I mean, I feel like I'm a thousand pounds, and I'm like, come on, Brendan. So I do my movements, I do everything. Breathwork. And I get, you know, I get average Brendan, I'd say, which is equally still annoying. Yes, I understand. And so I go over to the venue, I'm talking, I'm networking. It's just. It's back to. Back to. Back to talk, talk, talk, talk, talk with a ton of people. And then I'm basically, boom, I'm out on stage, you know, and by 9:20am, I think it was, I'm on the stage. And so they had about a thousand people there. And I go out on stage and I don't feel good. And I'm aware that I don't feel good because you always want to be attentive to your feelings and your emotions, especially as a speaker, because you have to access that stuff. And I just. Man, I didn't feel good. And so I get on Stage. And I also didn't know that they put up on the Jumbotrons, they had put my face on the COVID of the magazine up there. And I was going to kind of build towards revealing the COVID of the magazine. So I didn't know they did that. So when I get out there, I'm like, oh, crap. That I got to kind of reconfigure how my stories are going to go, because it's already up there. So I got to give it context now. And, you know, so that people don't think I'm all fancy, because I want them to know that this is like, I'm coming from. You know, you always want your audience to know, especially in the first couple minutes, you're coming from this humble place. And, you know, it's like the. You know, the accolades are already up on the wall. I don't like that. So I just had to reconfigure the first part of the speech completely. And I didn't feel like my best now, like I said, it all turned out fine. So don't worry, everything was fine at the end. Did this just. Barn burner of a story that I have that raises the roof every time and got the standing ovation, but it was not my best. Matter of fact, I'm backstage with some friends that, you know, I was like, what do you think? And any feedback, I always ask for feedback right away and said, you know what? You smash it. But, you know, your first 10 minutes was a bit slow. You didn't really hook me like you usually do. And I was like, you know, so upset. And I didn't know what it was. I literally still didn't know. I just felt horrible. And I had a bunch of. I was backstage the whole time, talking with friends, taking pictures all over Instagram, whatever. I just still felt bad. And I thought it was like a bad night of sleep. And then that night, after everything goes away, we finish networking, talking. Gosh, I don't know what time it was. 11 o' clock midnight again. Go up to my room and start putting things away and go to get in the bed. And I just. I literally stopped at the bed. I was like, oh, my gosh. This is. I think this is how the Weston does that thing with a down come. I pick up the phone, I call, I say, did you. Are these. Is this bedding down? Like down feathers or whatever? They go, yeah. I said, oh, man. They go, are you allergic to that? I said, I am. They're like, oh, no, we'll send up some Non down stuff. And I was, I was like, oh my gosh, that's what's been going on with me all day. I mean I was, my eyes were red all day. I couldn't figure out why, you know, and I just didn't feel my best. And there were some things I really had to push. I wouldn't say I forced it, but I was really trying to summon up the best of myself and I really had to work on it all day. And so, you know, got the bedding cleared, went to bed, had a great night of sleep, got up the next day and wasn't on the next day. They were kind enough to put me on at like 11:55 and I went out just ready to smash it because my energy was back, the allergy was over. I didn't realize I had of very extreme allergic reactions. My eyes were just closed and red all day and I didn't know what was going on with me. And so just always something, you know, you've heard if you ever talked to speakers before or trainers before, they have all of these very important disciplines and routines they do to. I mean it almost seems like they're OCD and control freaks. And it's not that the. And I've done surveys before, so it's not the speakers lead towards, you know, a high level of, you know, OCD or even narcissism or even extroversion, believe it or not. It's that, you know, for them expression is a mission. And some people, you know, you give them a Myers Briggs, they lean towards introversion. Lots lead to extroversion. The now, they didn't used to be that way, but they decided they had a message and that message was a bigger mission than their childhood fears of expression. And so they decided to get over it just like I did. At some point the mission becomes more important and bigger than your self doubt or your inadequacies. It's not that the nervousness ever goes away. It doesn't need to. It's. Is the mission bigger? Is the mission big enough to pull your butt out onto the stage? That's the question. When you feel like that's happening, it's not that you stop completely stop thinking about yourself. But I mean, I don't even remember. By the time I got after the first 10 minutes of feeling a little awkward on stage, the mission took over. And the rest of that hour I just did my thing and I didn't even think about myself again. And that's really important because I think too many people think that you have to overcome all your fears and then get in the game. I'm like, look, if the game is important enough to you, you're in it and you'll deal with your fears. But you only stop if the fear is bigger than the mission. If the mission is bigger than the fear, you'll deal with the fear. And for me, backstage, I still get high levels of energy back there. You know, some people would identify that high level of energy as anxiety or nervousness or readiness or, you know, concern. For me, it's just. It's go time. Let's get it. Oh, and one other thing I want to share about that event. You know, at that event, I was able to tell people about my High Performance Master's program, and a bunch of people signed up and that was awesome. And I did something on stage that I really want to share with you guys because I hope you'll implement it in your own life. And that is, I told, I said, you know what? Anyone who signs up for my master's program, while you're here, I would love for you, after the event to come back into this room and they'll give you a little card and then you can come up on stage with me and stand in front of the success logo here and take a picture with me and I'll have it professionally taken, and then I will print it out and I will frame it and I will send it to your house as a symbol of your commitment to self mastery. Because I think a lot of us, we don't do that. You know, I think a lot of people read a book and they put it on the shelf. When I read a book, I take a picture of that book having completed, I post it online or I send it to friends with five points I learned from it. I want to create symbols of my learning so that I remember them, but also so that I celebrate that. And I think that's an important thing to do. Like, how can you create a symbol of something when you've achieved it? Whether it's a photo or it's an award or something. I know that might sound almost juvenile, but I think so many people don't recognize how strong and capable they really are. Because if you never celebrate the wins along the way, you never get to integrate those wins into your identity and feel that strength. And so we did that. And shout out to. I know a lot of you guys who probably signed up for High Performance Masters in the past are listening to me now. A shout out to everybody here. If you're still listening to my voice. A shout out to you. Take it in and enjoy what you are doing here. You're dedicating yourself right now just listening to my voice or this podcast or any other podcast. You're listening to this educational focus. You're focusing on learning. And so many people don't do that. You know, at that Success Live event, there were literally tens of thousands of people who saw that invitation, but only a thousand showed. And there's always just a small percentage, maybe 2% of people who will raise their hand, who will dedicate themselves to advanced programs or to seminars or to books or to online courses or to true personal mastery. And to those who are there, who are in that game with me, thank you. Part four, the Challenges of Launch Week all right, well, I've been talking about it and here it comes, y'. All. As I'm recording this, it's 11:30pm at night in my little booth in my office in Portland, Oregon, and it's coming. I know it. I'm seven days away as I'm recording this from the launch of High Performance Habits and it's go time. In that amount of time in the next six or seven days, I'll personally probably create 30 different new web pages for this promotion. We'll be coordinating with a couple dozen affiliate partners. A bunch of interviews are coming out that I filmed one with Larry King, Marie Forleo, Lewis Howes. Just so many people with some interviews I've been doing. We'll be launching it that week and it's just gonna be, it's gonna be fun. It's always something I look forward to. The first two weeks of a book launch are really important, just like the first two weeks of a CD album launch. Because after time goes by, after the first two weeks, it kind of tells you, is this thing gonna catch fire or not? Luckily, you guys have supported the book enough that we know from the pre orders on Amazon alone that this is gonna be a pretty strong selling book. And I appreciate you guys and all the love for that and I'd just like to share some insights of what do you do when you have a big week coming up? Because I'm sure you have those right. You know, next week might be go week for you. It might be the week that you're gonna start your dream. You're gonna have that big sales call, you're gonna ask that person out, you're going to start that new project, you're gonna complete something by deadline. You know, I think every week is go week. You know, I have My own routines. On Sundays, when I do my full review of the prior week and I look at my schedule for the upcoming week, I always put my hat on. I never complain about, like, oh, my gosh, I got all these things coming up. Instead, I go, okay, I got a lot coming up. Meet this with your highest self. How do you need to enter this week, Brendan? Like, how are you going to end of the week? Are you going to end the week complaining? Or are you going to end the week saying, I get to do these things? What a blessed day. How can I raise my performance necessity? If you listen to my previous episode titled Making Success a Must, you know that I try to, like, align my thoughts about my identity with my passion for mastering a topic, with my sense of social duty to do a good job of the mission with a deadline to be on point. And I think about those things and I stew up this sort of necessity to do a good job, which gives me that performance drive to really show up. And so if you have a big week coming up, you know that big week doesn't start on Monday morning at 8. It starts on Sunday with thinking about how you perform the last seven days and how you want to perform the next seven days. In other words, you need that weekly review. Without that weekly review, it's hard to really bring it that week. Or more importantly, to continue bringing it week after week after week after week. You know, I don't want to focus here just on the marketing angle of. Of what we're doing with the book campaign. Most of it you can see@brendon.com habits instead, I want to tell you, how is it that when you're doing a launch, you stay sane? This is my sixth book I've launched personally, but I've helped over 100 other authors in launching their books over the last decade. Matter of fact, if you look at the New York Times bestseller list in nonfiction, especially in how to and advice for most of those people have graduated experts Academy and they're just following the game plan of, you know, building up and doing it right. And so, you know, I've been a lot of part of a lot of these processes. And so many authors are like, how do you. This is insane. There's so many moving parts. I go, yeah. And they. So it's so stressful. I go, yeah. And they go, there's so many people involved. I didn't know there were this many web pages and this many promotions, this many links and this many people to talk to and this much email coming in oh, my God. How do you handle it? I go, yeah, get ready, baby. And the way that you do it, listen, so you gotta have a war room. What do I mean by that? Well, you gotta have a place in your house or a place at your work where there's a dedicated wall where you've drawn out the moving pieces of the project. Meaning, do not be one of those people who goes, well, I'm just gonna have a couple scraps of paper here, a couple scraps of paper here. I'll have some of my notes in one journal and things over here have everything in one place to keep you sane. I'm amazed by how many people I've coached over the years in the Fortune 100 who. I'll go in and we'll start talking about the upcoming project. And they'll go, this is such an important week. And then I'll look at their surroundings and it's a disaster. But high performers, they usually put most of a major project in one space. And for. Often it's on a big whiteboard, maybe, or maybe it's on a pinup board, or maybe it's on one specific desk, or maybe it's on a panel of big screens in a corporate decision room. I don't know where it is for you, but if you got a big important week coming up, you get yourself organized and get all your stuff in one place as much as possible. It's really important because being scattered in the game while you're going, that's not what you want. Second, big idea for when you're in a launch week, when you got something big coming up. And I don't just mean, you know, again, an online promotion like I've got, like, when it's go time, you gotta crush it that week. Couple simple things. One, do not check your email in the first 60 minutes of your day. Just don't. You'll be tempted to. I know. You'll go, that's impossible. No, it's not impossible. You need to break that cycle. When you wake up and you check your email in the first 60 minutes or your social media, what you are doing is you are checking out of yourself and you are checking into the world. You are going from a position in which you are capable in the morning of being strategic and intentional about the day, to going into automatic reactive mode. And if you are automatically in reactive mode, you are not going to be centered, you're not going to be thoughtful, and you certainly won't be strategic. So we have found, and this is a long running Stat from High Performance Academy for probably five or six years of research over and over and over and over again that those if you will stop checking your email and social Media the first 60 minutes of the day and instead get your body and your mind in a good place and sit down and strategize the day and then begin it, you're going to become double digit more effective that week within seven days. You tend to increase your productivity that week both by self report and external measures of what we've done between that 24 and 33% level, that's 24% more productive that week. Just stop checking your email in that first 60 minutes. I know in a launch you really want to cause you're like that. You know, you're just like that gerbil on the feeder. You just like can't handle it. You just got to keep hitting refresh. I'm here to tell you stop it. Pick the time my friend. So what I do during launches is typically I'll work in the hour. So I'll get up and I'll do my morning routines, which never involves checking email. Then when I have sent out the emails I have to send out for the day, that's my first action. If I open up inbox, I'll send out what I have to communicate because I've thought about that. I'll look for the people I'm waiting on a decision for because I've thought about that. And then I will choose a time during the day when to check the rest of the email. It may not be right then, but here's how I'll do the flow. Because sometimes in a launch there is a lot of email flow that you have to be on top of. So what I do personally is I work the hour and then at the top of each hour I check into my inbox and I refuse to let my body or my mind check the inbox during each hour. It's only at the top that I'll check in and when I check in at the top of the hour, no one's ever mad at me because during a launch I've replied within the hour. And for me most of it's checking the email stuff is my customer service team and I can focus on the creation or the management of the higher level strategic relationships that make a major promotion like high performance habits will be happen. So those are two very important things. You know, not checking your inbox, picking a time for it, you know, having everything in one place, your war room and then the other two things I'd like to add to this list. Number three would be that it's very important for you not to compromise on your workouts. I know, I know, I know, but Listen, I've done 23, 22, 20, 20, I don't know, 21, 22, 23, seven figure launches. These are million dollar plus online launches generated in two weeks or less. And I can tell you, I remember the miserable ones. And the miserable ones were physically, I felt horrible because I wasn't working out, I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't eating right. Why not? Because it had to be that way. Because I was allowing myself to be reactive. No one is making anyone work crazy hours. No one is making. Look, we all have personal power. And if you feel like somebody's making you do something, please go read the motivation manifesto. We all have the ability to choose, and we all have the ability to over time set up our own way of living and our own structure and our own times. And it's important that we learn how to do that. And for me, I said, well, I got to work out. Remember, from high performance habits, one of the things we discovered was the top 15% of high performers worldwide are 40% more likely to work out three or five times a week, most of them five times per week. So 40% more likely to be high performing. You have to be, you know, knocking off that stress with exercise. You have to be fueling yourself well, hydrating yourself well, sleeping yourself well. And some people say, well, Brendan, not during the launch week. That's the one week I compromise on that stuff. I'm like, really? The one week. You should be smart, at your best, well rested and ready, that when it's go time. I mean, imagine, imagine if a quarterback did that. Imagine if a quarterback going into the super bowl said, you know what? This super bowl is the biggest week of my life. So you know what? I'm not going to sleep, I'm going to stop working out. And, you know, I'm going to be generally disorganized and not take care of myself going into the most important game of my life. When people do that, they fail. You got to think of yourself. You are an athlete. Whether you call that a, you know, whether you're a knowledge worker, that means you're a mental athlete, you know, or you're an entrepreneur. Which means, look, entrepreneurs burn as much emotional, mental and physical energy as professionally paid athletes. We found that to be true in high performance habits research as well. So please do not think that if you want to be in your A game. You don't need to be taking the basic care of yourself. It's more important that week. Because most people say I'm too busy during launch week to do that. I'm like, no, no, no, you're too important not to do that. We need you on your game time. Let me give you an example of today. I'm doing this at 11:30 at night. By the time I finish this and get the heck out of this office, after I complete everything, it's gonna be well past midnight. And yet today I was supposed to be in here around 1pm to do this, but I felt a lot of the tension from the day and a lot of things happening. So I did my set intention release tension activity from the book and then I said, you know what? I would rather take an hour right now and make sure I get some exercise in. I feel like if I don't do that, I'm not gonna be my best for the podcast. I'm not gonna be the best for the rest of the day anyway. And today was an unscheduled workout, but I just, I felt like I needed to do that. So I canceled three meetings so that I could go work out. Now some people say, how dare you cancel those meetings on people and how do you do that? I said, no, no, no. If you're an entrepreneur, you have to learn to prioritize your things. You have to prioritize your health. And if you're an executive or you're a high performing person, you've got to be willing to do that. I'm shocked how many people are unwilling to cancel meetings so that they can take care of their own work or their own health meetings. Most meetings are not actually emergency meetings. Most meetings don't need to happen. Or if they're scheduled for an hour, they could really be happen. They can happen later on for 10 minutes over the phone. It's very hard to get me in a meeting. I mean, extremely hard. If you looked at my calendar, you'd be stunned by the lack of meetings. I have experimented at times with many of our certified high performance coaching clients at the top levels of going meeting less of not doing anything but recurring sort of meetings that are more oriented towards performance measurement and management than it is towards like, you know, just a bunch of meetings with random people all day. And now everyone's got their own opinion on this and you got to figure out what's proper for you. But here's what I'm here to tell you. If you feel horrible, cancel some meetings and get yourself back in a good place. Because once you're back in a good place, guess what you can do? You can follow up with those people. You can schedule those things. You'll catch up. You'll catch up. But I think it's important that more people are willing, especially in a go time, big, important week, to give themselves the breaks or the rest or the workouts that they need. And I know my team needs me at my best. So if I'm not in a good place, I'd rather just skip that meeting and then give them my best, you know, when I can get back up and caught up. Like right now. I've been doing this at night. I feel great. I feel amazing right now. I do it, you know, I feel amazing. One, because I'm having so much fun talking with you and also because I took that time today to be in a better place. This is a better podcast because I took time today for myself. Does that make sense? I hope you'll start doing that for yourself because it makes you better in your relationships. It makes you better in everything that you're doing when you take care of yourself, especially when it's on, my friend. Well, I hope you have enjoyed this episode of the Brendon Show. Please know that as I've been talking about, we're going into my launch. So if you want those exclusive bonuses before they Expire, go to brendan.com forward/habits. Please know that it is only in you supporting that book that I am doing these podcasts ad free. Now, you may or may not know this, but I do all my podcasts, all my blogs and all my YouTube videos and all my newsletters for my entire career without a single ad placement, without a single ad buy, without a single sponsor. I don't take sponsors and I don't take ads. And people say, why? And I say, well, I wanted to create a space where people could come for positive information and personal empowerment without sort of corporate interference into their ears, you know. So I've never sold any underwears or mattresses in my podcast or my YouTube videos and no judgment, by the way, to people who do that because you know what, having ads and sponsors and these things, insanely lucrative. I give up over seven figures of ad revenue and sponsor revenue per year. Well over 7 million. Well over 7 figures per year. That's over a million dollars per year. I just say no. And so how? Well, I self fund it. I pay out of my own business for doing this. And I do that because I figure, well, if you guys are Supporting me. I'm supporting you with no ads. And so it's when you guys support my books or my courses or my seminars, I take all that money and I throw it right back into doing things like this. Updating the equipment, getting the offices, getting the team, and making sure that we're running this really well without sort of that corporate interference from ads. It doesn't mean I'll never do ads. It just means for 10 years I haven't. And so if you'd like to support this and help me do that, the way to do it isn't to go to some website to support me on some GoFundMe account. I just say get some education for yourself today. You know, buy a book from me, get a course from me, or share this podcast with your friends. It's in that process that I'm able to do all this and you guys have kept me going for a long time. So thank you all for being here for this one. A big week's coming up. I would appreciate all your support in getting the message out about high performance habits. When you get the book delivered, if you ordered it, please take a selfie with it. Please. Highperformancehabits all over the web. Put your pictures up. If you didn't know, I'm doing some giveaways so those who take a picture and highperformancehabits, I'll be looking for you. And if you didn't know, I do the same thing with the podcast. I randomly find people who hashtag me or my products on social media. And what do I do? Oh, I do some of those all expense paid trips. What do I do? I give some signed books away. I send some T shirts and swag and all of that in just thanks for you participating and listening in the brand and for being a part of this new show. Thank you again for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the B R E N D O N Show. Sam.