Gratitude with Special Guest Todd Bradberry

No, you do not look terrible. Like, Todd starts this off by saying he looks terrible.

So bad juju, isn't it?

So I have my work husband with me today, Todd Bradbury. So we have not been able to be face to face with each other in a couple months. And I brought him on to share him with you before selfishly having him all to myself. So you're welcome for that. And Todd brought up a. A good point. And the microphone's totally on screen, so if you guys are doing interviews like this, I use a YETI microphone, if that's helpful for you. So it has a sound screen on it and it looks like that. I don't have an affiliate with YETI or don't get anything for saying that. But I know it's kind of helpful if you have people that have already done the research to kind of just give it a shout out. And since we do this every week, that's the equipment that I'm using. So I have Todd with. Are you ready for this? It's gonna go right over your head. Parallel management.

Yeah.

And I got the new logo and everything.

Nice. So.

And we're gonna talk about gratitude.

Yes. I guess it's Thanksgiving and that's our Thanksgiving season, and we shouldn't have to wait for that. But it is a. Is it interesting, isn't it, that they. It was Lincoln, I guess, who. Who said that we're gonna set aside a day nationally to be thankful. I wonder if that would happen today. You know, it was the. But what a great concept. And just to be able to set aside one day to be thankful. But I think what you and I agree on is that it should certainly be more than once a year. Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So one of the things that we share in common is that you. You're an expat from the corporate world. And so in the corporate world, we have like PTO and we have sick days, and then we move into entrepreneurship. And, like, we don't have that.

Right.

And so there's nobody that's almost mandating us to take care of ourselves in the same way that there's nobody that's mandating us to get out of our pajamas. But how do we, you know, take personal time and make sure that we're taking care of ourselves not just in November, but like all year long and kind of with. With Rocky, one of the. My eight year old, one of the things that we talk about is her love tank. It's like the visual for her to understand before she walks out of the door. For school. Like if her love tank is full and if she feels like she can take on the day. And I know sometimes I have days with. It's not necessarily because of clients, but maybe it's because it's contract season or something like that. Or my love tank is completely depleted. I'm grateful that I have an 8 year old to kind of give me that representation because I think in entrepreneurship you just kind of get like in the grind. So can you share a little bit about coming from corporate into entrepreneurship? Like how you manage that?

I, you know, I don't know. I've never really thought about that. What the difference is. I mean, to me, when you, when we're, we're talking about gratitude, that is such a personal, internal, internal thing. Right. And it should be, you know, it's not something you're born with. I'm just naturally a grateful person. It's like anything else. It's a skill that you develop with habit. And when I mentioned Thanksgiving, you know, it's sort of like a once a year makes it a habit for us to express gratitude. And to me it's as simple as reminding ourselves to be thankful. And you know, I'm a business guy, so I'm debits and credits and analytics and all that. But that's, I think internally, if we have that spirit of gratitude, it helps us get through some of those tough times because to your point earlier, before we came online, we have to be grateful for our own benefit, if nothing else. But it's interesting, you know, gratitude, a noun, I guess, but being grateful is an adjective. But it's being, you know, there is gratitude and then there is being grateful, which I think is the exercise of gratitude. So we talk to leaders, you and I in our business, we deal with a lot of developing leaders and one of the qualities of a leader is to express gratitude to the their people. Right. And some you you have, have you had a boss who said thank you that you just didn't. It didn't, it wasn't sincere.

Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So it could be fake and then, and that is, that doesn't serve in anybody. But if that comes from a genuine place, you know, if that gratitude comes from a genuine place, it is essential to the leadership, to successful leadership. I think if you're grateful for what you've got and if you, wherever you are, you know, in business or in your career and you have a strategy, so you're thinking long term and you have this vision. But today, right now, it's about right now. Right. And being thankful, recognizing where you are right now and being thankful for the blessing. Blessings of that. Even if you got it, you got a business situation that you need to tear the whole thing down and build it back up. And it seems like things are bad, but if you just maintain that spirit of, all right, I got this, dude. I got this work to do. But I am blessed to be here, you know, And I think it's just a practice. I think it's a habit.

I also appreciate that. And you're really good at this, at having people around you that can kind of help you reflect that back. Because you talked about the boss that says, you know, I'm grateful for you. I used to be the person where even if you were genuine, I didn't receive it like it was said, but I didn't allow that to fill my love tank.

Gotcha.

And, you know, one of the things that I will be forever grateful to you for is when I had Victoria, you taking the reins on all of the. My local clients and even some remote clients so that I could have all of that time to be with Victoria. And I remember on a weekly basis, almost in tears, telling you, like, I'll cry right now on Facebook live. Great. Thanks, Todd. But how grateful I was for you for creating that space to allow me to be grateful for being a mom and having this blessing of another kid. And, like, I get off the phone with you and be like, he really has no idea. Like, what a big deal this is. And for you, it was just like, yeah, Bunny, like, it's fine. Like, no, you have no idea. Like, I mean, I still tell people about that, that there's, like, you changed my life by being able to give me that space. And it was one thing to tell all of my clients, like, I'm taking this time off, but it was another thing to have another human being that I trusted to.

To be able.

Able to hand my clients to. And, you know, that you received them and just did all of this amazing stuff with them within our. Our shared core values, but also using stuff that is uniquely you and that are your gifts. And so I say all that to say that, you know, a, you know, I'm super grateful for you, but B, how do you receive that? Oh, you're getting snuggles. How do you receive that?

I appreciate that. I do. It's probably something I should work on a little more because that's a good example of you. You have been thanking me for that for three years, and I think it's.

However long she's going to be three in January just to make both of us feel old.

Yeah. And you just expressed that to me in different ways. And I wonder if it's because I wasn't getting it, because I'm like, yeah, I'll go on. It was nothing. It was not. It was nothing. And I think there, I think we should probably pause and accept that, that gratitude that makes the wheel go around. Right. If you, if you feel appreciated and you're going to appreciate others and. Yeah, it means a lot. It means a lot when you're not expecting it. I think when you're, when you just. To me, that was just a, just a thing, a couple hours a week to help you out. Wasn't. Was nothing. But to hear you, to hear you say that it changed your life and I should probably pay a little more attention and be more receptive to the gratitude that I get.

Yeah. I mean, and it's, I know that you're a profit and loss, you know, plus and minus numbers kind of guy. So it was a couple hours for you, but for the person on the other end, it was a chance to create a bond with this human being that, you know, with my health struggles, we had tried so hard and so long to be able to have another kid and so just to be able to take care of myself, take care of my kid. Remember how to be a mom. Because it'd been a hot minute.

Yes.

And then also you. And like this is something with, with coming back to work that I think or I know for me was a struggle, was like if you had just handed me back the reins, day, whatever, you know, month five, it would have been overwhelming. But you and I had conversations on a fairly regular basis where I still felt like I wasn't just a stay at home mom. And I don't mean that against any, you know, stay at home moms. But it was hard. That would be very hard for me because I have a lot of my identity wrapped up in what I do with my clients. So you allowed me to still feel like relevant and like I had a toe in that world as well as kind of made it easier to come back and not feel like I had to just jump back in. Like I still had that relationship there and just the peace of mind over the past three years that, you know, if something happened with my heart or that when I got hospitalized later that year that you were there, if, if I needed you to either step in with clients or just talk through and just have another business owner. And I don't know how common it is to have those relationships.

It's interesting and I don't because to me, I wouldn't give it a second thought. Right. But that's probably from a lifetime of habitually I've always been the one like my dad was to pick up the check.

Right.

I've always been the one to pick up the check. I've always felt, you know, a generosity and felt like I needed to give. And it's become. That sounds brash, but it's become just second nature. But I truly believe if you give without thinking about the act of giving and without expecting anything in return, you know, it starts this miracle process. And yeah, so it is, it's not something that I pause to think about often. But if you're, I think, being generous and being grateful and they all go together and also being mindful, you know, the. There's so much buzz around mindfulness in the workplace now and it is not misplaced. I don't believe it's not just another woo woo thing out there, but being in the moment, being in the moment. And I think a big of being in the moment, living in the now is being grateful for what's going right. So being grateful and being generous is part of mindfulness and that can all come from just doing it. You just do it till it becomes second nature.

Well, one of the things that I'm going to give you a couple seconds to think about is to give the difference makers group and then once we share this on Facebook and social or on YouTube and social media, there will be others that will receive this homework because I want to start ending sessions and I'm going to give you homework too to start ending sessions at least until the end of this month with saying I'm grateful that you allowed me to X. You know, because with the coaching client relationship, sometimes clients, it is that boss kind of relationship where you know, clients are like, thank you for all of this. And you're like, it's just my job or it's just me doing my job. And so but I had that journal that like three times in the morning, three times at night you write what you're grateful for. And at least six times a week. One of the things that I'm grateful for is that I'm, I'm able to do this. Like I'm able to show up and.

Just share my value and get paid.

And like my lights stay on.

You're right.

So, you know, ending a session with I'm grateful that you allowed me to X or whatever it is. I'm grateful for. And let's just see how that impacts how we feel and the client relationships, because you're absolutely right. You give and give and give. And I know so many people are so grateful for the fact that if you ask Todd, like, you know, how do you start working together? Todd will be like, well, I'm just gonna show up at your office, and I'm gonna talk to you for several hours, and I'm gonna make this huge difference, and then I'll most likely do it again. And then. And we share that in common. I'm not doing it for several hours, but, you know, and then if we want to continue, then we'll figure it out from there.

Yes.

You know, and I know you've had, I'm going to say, hundreds of those kinds of encounters where you've made a difference, that they haven't become clients in some way, shape, or form.

So.

Yeah, I know that was kind of a squirrel tangent there.

No, well, it's. I don't think so. And I'm thankful. I'm thankful. I'm grateful that I have my daughter Emma working for me. That's tag her here at Emma Bradbury. But if it weren't for you drew that out. That was an at. I'm thankful to have Emma, who is a little more rigorous about making sure that people are paying for the value that we're giving them, because otherwise I would tend to give it all away. But, you know, when a. When you get. What keeps us going. I'm not speaking for you, but what keeps me going is just a little. I had a client who told me that I had made a difference in his family's lives, you know, and talk about tearing up when I'm working on debits and credits and projections and strategy and all that. And I would expect a compliment to be something like, you really helped our business, but you've really made a difference in our family's lives, that kind of thing. Man, I would do that for free for sure, if it weren't for Emma. Yeah.

So do you have a piece of homework for our starfish?

Yeah. Wow.

I gave you, like, a solid minute there.

Yeah, I know. And I was talking instead of thinking. I believe that it is. Here would be my assignment. Let's see if we can put some meat to this and actually some structure. But gratitude is like anything else is about habit. That's why I brought up Thanksgiving. If you just set aside one day a year, that's a great thing. I believe that setting aside Time every day for gratitude will get you in the habit of being more grateful. You know, not to get political here, for sure, but when I was a kid and we had prayer in schools. Right. I know the argument. I get the arguments against prayer in schools, and I don't want someone else deciding what religion, you know, or to push on my kids. So with a caveat, I get that. That we don't do that anymore, but it used to. When I was in the third grade, we had this nice little plaque on the wall that gave us, you know, just. Just to be thankful for the meal that we had right there. And it was a habit. You did it every day. So I guess my homework would be to have the equivalent of that, to pause once a day just to. Just to. To be thankful for something or someone. Pause. And I think your. The journal is absolutely the best way to do that. Yeah. So. So that's not very exciting, but I'd say to challenge the starfish for every month in November, at least to pause and think about three things that they're three things or three people that they're thankful for. It can change your behavior, it can change your mindset, and just with repetition. So every day in November, you guys show some gratitude.

And I'm sure you can post it in the difference makers group because Todd's in there, so then he can know that you're doing your homework.

That's right. And I'll be appreciative.

Well, I'm grateful that you joined me today.

I am grateful to be here. Thank you for being here. I've, you know, I have a lot of friends who have podcasts and. And shows, and nobody ever invites me to be on them. So if you're out there and you, you know, if I wasn't too awfully bad, I love doing this kind of thing. So. Did you know. Do you know Shirley Burke? Did you know Shirley? So that's the one time I was on her radio show, and it was just a great conversation.

Oh, my gosh.

And this is number two. So I've never. I haven't done this.

We'll get you on more. We'll get you on more.

I would appreciate that.

Be grateful for that.

That's right.

Well, I'm grateful that you guys make the world a better place. And I will talk to you guys next week.

See you. Bye.