Career Advice for Thought Leaders

Well, hi, everybody. I'm Brandon. If you haven't met me before on the Internet somewhere, I am here today to talk to you about the power of pivot. But I'm also here to talk to you about how I started my career. I'm here to talk about how you can start yours. I'm here to talk to you about, like, how do you deal with this craziness we have going on in the world right now in a service driven way? You know, because everyone wants to do something right now, but they don't know what to do. And it's so hard when it's stressful and you're freaking out and, you know, you're already everyone here, you've already been pivoting, you've already been trying new things. So now it's just a matter of what level do you want to go to in your life, right? You've already been adjusting, adapting. Now just. Okay, what level do I want to go to? You've already taught yourself you can adapt. I mean, some of you can see it. I cut my hair today. Look at that. Anyone else cut your own hair recently? Anyone? Anyone in quarantine? Like, I've cut my hair in quarantine. We're learning some new things together, people. So you're already adapting, so you might as well adapt into success. You're already thinking about the things that should change in the world, so you might as well change those things in your internal world that will unlike, open up your joy and your happiness to do what I always talk about, bring the joy, to bring some joy into this world in these dark and crazy and chaotic times. That's not just something you get to do. That's a responsibility we have right now. That's a responsibility we have right now. We got to turn this energy around. So many of us have been stuck in coping. Cope, cope, cope, cope. And by that it's very important. We've had to be empathetic with each other, empathetic with other people to realize how difficult this time is. You got kids in the house. I see many of your kids. Hi, guys. I love it. You're taking care of 50 different things, trying 20 different things, signing up for 17. Like all this stuff is going on, plus the kids, plus you're trying to figure out the food, plus you're trying to figure out jobs and the future and security as all that's going on. That's okay. But listen, I'm here today to share with you if you have not yet made this shift, here's the shift you have to make. We must at some point go from having that space of internal where we're focused on just the coping, just trying to deal, just trying to figure it out, just trying to get back in balance, just trying to be empathetic with other people. And we got to shift from that, like, coping mechanism back into performance. We got to stop just. How am I going to get through this? To. No, no. How am I going to rise? How am I going to be my best? How am I going to exude and express the truest, most beautiful, most vibrant and fulfilled part of my nature? Not just, oh, God, how do I get through the day again? And I know how easy it is to get stuck in that. Who's been stuck in that cycle at some point in the last five months where you had, like, several weeks where it sucked? Anybody. And maybe it didn't suck, like everything was so terrible. But, you know, because your friends will say, why can't you just be happy? Well, yeah, you can be happy. I always say you can be extremely happy, grateful, appreciative of what you have right now in front of you, and ambitious for a better tomorrow. That's a false dichotomy that you can't be happy and still striving. No, I'm like, if you ever meet me, I'm a happy guy. I'm grateful, and I still want things. Even the Dalai Lama, the most spiritual being supposedly on the planet. Here's this person who's incredibly grateful, present, connected with what is now, and still wants the world to be better and still challenges himself to give. You know, it's so often we get stuck in our own head. And I'm here to tell you this, and I hope you'll hear this with love, because I've sat in so many of your shoes before, you don't even know. But often the reason people don't start their dreams, it's not because of what everyone else tells you. Oh, they don't start their dreams because they're fearful. They can't figure things out. Oh, they don't start their dreams because they're just oblivious to the opportunities. Oh, they don't start their dreams because of this doubt or that down thing or this circumstance. You know why most people. I found after coaching people one on 1 For 20 years of my life, every single week. 20 years. You know why most people don't start their dreams? They're afraid to be seen starting small. They're embarrassed to be seen starting small. People don't start their dreams because they're embarrassed to be seen starting small. They're embarrassed for their neighbor to see they only got 10 views. They're embarrassed that their old co workers are like, she's a coach. What's she doing with herself? Who does she think she is? I worked with her. She wasn't that great. You're embarrassed that your family's gonna be like, who are you? What are you trying to do? I had Thanksgiving with you. You ate all the food. You know what I'm saying? You're worried what other people are gonna think about you, and that is blocking your own action from learning and giving and contributing and changing the world. And then you tell yourself, well, I'm embarrassed what they're going to think, so I better get everything perfect. And now your perfectionism stops the very progress that would make you feel good. And so you're getting in your own way because you're worried so much about what other people think. And then you try to get so perfect and so buttoned up and so proper that maybe they'll take me seriously if I like, what? What are you going to tell yourself? You need a fancier background. What? I mean, I don't even know if these plants behind me are real. I don't even know. Who cares? What else are you going to tell yourself? Oh, it's a video. I don't know how to do the Internet. I don't know how to send emails. I don't know how to make money. Who am I? Because this, this and this. It's like, oh, my gosh. You got to choose whether or not you continue the downward spiral trends that stop you from progressing, or you would choose to realize that the only upward spiral always comes from trying, always comes from serving, always comes when you demand more of yourself than what you're comfortable with. You got to demand more of yourself than what you're comfortable with. You do. That's that upward spiral, your upward spiral. Listen, I don't want you just to pivot a little bit. I want you to experience the upward spiral and momentum. But momentum only comes from that action. Motivation only comes from momentum. That means all things rest on forward movement, even if it's imperfect, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's ugly. And I know that. Listen, I had the same thing as many of you like for me. I went to school. I had a good experience, mostly until a girl cheated on me. And if you know my story, a girl cheated on me when I was 19 years old. She was my high school sweetheart. I wasn't equipped with the emotional intelligence to deal with it. And when that relationship fell apart, I fell apart. And I really fell apart. I fell in the depths of depression, then suicidal ideation and planning. And fortunately, unrelatedly, I had a car accident that made me realize the preciousness, the preciousness of this life, y'. All. I realized I didn't want to take my life, I wanted to live it. I realized I didn't want to take my life, I wanted to live it. I realized my heart wasn't broken forever. I wanted love still. I realized I was a young man, I wasn't done. I still had things I could do to make a difference, to matter, to change things. And so I just kept at it. And I believed things could be good. I went to college, finished college, got a good job. You know, it even had benefits. You ever get a job with the benefits? Who remembers our first job with benefits? I thought that was their. They're giving me what? I get a paycheck every two weeks. It was the most unbelievable thing ever. I couldn't even believe it. And it was more than my parents had ever made, working two full time jobs between them. Couldn't believe it. Great job, unbelievable. And I had a great job and nothing wrong with the job, it was okay, it was fine, paid, I mean, I could pay my rent. I was happy about that. But inside I noticed that I wanted something different and something more. You know how. If I can give you three ideas today, how I'd like to start with is this first one. And I'm not going to say the words right, and I think they're both really hard to spell. But don't be oblivious to the obvious. Don't be so oblivious to the obvious. And that always starts within the way you unleash your life and you open up and you enjoy things again. You find your passion is you start following those interests, but not casually. You go, oh, let me dive in there, Let me see what that's about. Let me try that out. Let me notice the internal calling. See what you're missing? What you're missing is you're mistaking often the internal calling for having complete clarity. See, you don't take action because you don't have the perfect, complete, step by step blueprint sometimes. So you're like, ah, I don't know, the how is going to get figured out. You got to recognize what's inside. Saying this is good, but it's not exactly right. This is good, but I feel like I could do more, be more, serve more, learn more, give More and honoring that. So it begins. Don't be oblivious to the obvious feelings inside that say, I want to try something new. The second thing is don't be oblivious to the marketplace. I would say a good 90% of the world just discovered virtual coaching and going live in virtual groups. Let me share some numbers to you for those who are new to the industry. I was blessed to leave that corporate job in whatever it was 2006 and write my first book called Life's Golden Ticket was the first book I released to the public anyway. And I was unhappy with how it did. I didn't know marketing the world of experts and thought leadership didn't even have a name yet. You were an author or you were a speaker or you were a coach or you were some. We didn't call ourselves thought leaders or influencers back then. And if anyone's done a good job, I hope for the last two, for last, especially last decade of teaching the world about what thought leadership is and influencership really is, I hope that my name gets thrown in that bucket. Because for me, I figured out in 2007. So listen to some of the numbers people don't know. I'll give you an example. Like ustream started going live, live broadcasts. That was in 2008. 2008, some of you might remember. Now, don't worry about the politics here, but if you watch the Republican national convention in 2008, it was broadcast live for the very first time. If you don't like that side of the party, don't worry. Barack Obama's inauguration, January 2009, broadcast live on the Internet. 2009. That same year, I made my first big launch, big money going live in 2009. So why am I saying this? YouTube live started being available for everyone 2011 to 2013, the whole world. So I say that because we're 10 to 12 years into this and some people are just finding it now, if that's you. Okay, good. You got what's called a second chance. There's some of us who've been doing this who started their first videos and they were like, weird and awkward. That's me. I was so weird and awkward. My first videos, you don't even know. I had like a shirt that hung open. I was all like, hello, everybody. It was like, scary. Anyone ever tried to do your first video and you can't even pronounce your name? You're like, hi, I'm Brendan Burchard. Hi, I'm Brendan Burchard. Hi, I'm Brendan Burchard. Hi. Hi. Hi. And you can't even. You're like, I hate my tone. I hate my voice. Oh, my God. Yeah, that was me for my first hundred videos. Okay, you get over it. But because I wasn't oblivious to what was happening, I was like, wait, things are going online, things are going virtual, things are going live. And if you miss the first wave, here's what I'm here to tell you. Don't miss the second one. You ever heard that metaphor? If you heard me talk about Experts Academy before, it's like as a metaphor, the old world, it's like everyone's standing on the shore and they hop in the boats and they go out into the world, and some of them come back and they go, oh, my gosh. There's treasures, there's new lands, there's gold out there. Oh, my gosh. And some people, they just stand on the shores where whatever, that's crazy. That's a new thing. That's unsafe. Whatever. You're so crazy. And more people went the second time. Fewer came back because it was better in the new world. But salespeople came back. So you had two or three boats going, but finally someone came back and there was only like five people standing on the shore because everybody else had already gone or died. At some point, you need to do the new world is set sail. If this is your first time hearing about you being able to earn by sharing your voice, by teaching, by monetizing your learning, your passions, your interests, your ability to go find information, to solve problems, to talk with people, to coach with people, what I call thought leadership. If this is the first time you're hearing it, I want you to hear me say it began in 2008 where it was worldwide, available, popular, possible. Now. There was a whole real, a whole, like, raft of us who got on. And what happened then when we got to this day, we were ready and some of you are going to go, well, that means I'm too late. No, what that means is this is the second boat. Don't miss it now. Don't be oblivious to what's happening in the world. The world just did this. What we are doing here. The world just did it. That means you have first mover advantage. Because remember, back then, that live broadcast was more outbound. This is more interactive. I'm from Montana. For those who don't know, I grew up in a super small town. I had no idea it was possible. No idea. But you know what I loved? This is my second point for you today. I loved that I Had to teach to learn. Somewhere along the line, it switched in my head. I love to learn, but, you know, when I learn the best, when I'm teaching and hearing what people say about it, and I get it back. You want to become an expert. You don't become an expert, then start monetizing. You start helping people and working problems through with them. You start figuring out, what do you know that could be helpful? What could you research that could be helpful? What could you say? How could you interact? How could you guide them? And all of a sudden, your expertise gains in the interaction and in the process of teaching, you don't just go on the Internet and suddenly you're wealthy. No, you go on the Internet or you start interacting with the clients. And the wealth builds as you stay consistent. Because as you stay consistent, you learn. As you learn, you notice those little things that work and don't work, you know what to say. You get better at it. You get over yourself, and all of a sudden you become a better teacher. As you become a better teacher, you grow your wealth. I'm not. Everyone thinks I'm like this amazing business person. I'm like, no, I'm a good teacher. I love teaching. The business comes along with it. So if number one is, don't be oblivious to the obvious. The obvious is you have a calling brought you here today, and the obvious is what's happening in the marketplace. And you got to grab hold of it and take advantage of it right now, because there's not going to be four or five more boats coming. This is your time. The second idea is you've got to teach to learn. And the good thing is you get to monetize your learning. Do you know what I did this morning? I spent three hours reading books. I like taking notes on them, thinking about how that adds up into a framework or something that I can teach from, that I can understand from my own perspective and share. And I'll go live with that at the top of the month. And I go live with tens of thousands of people, and I just teach. How cool is that? And I get paid for that. Literally. This morning I took this. Good Lord, look how big this thing looks on the Internet. It's 20 ounces. I fill this up with some green tea in the morning. I sit there with my books. I. I read and I take my notes and I think about life. That's my career. Anyone else dig this? I get paid to learn and share. That's the hardest thing, is to find people who want to learn and share that's literally the hardest thing because do you think it's hard turning on a camera or joining zoom? No. But you're telling yourself this story. Oh, email sure sounds hard. The Internet sure sounds hard. You can figure it out because guess what? If it's true, you're a learner, you're going to take the step to sign up, to keep learning more so you can master it. I never knew. Everything I do now that you all see me do, right? In these years, my first time on stage, mortified, threw up backstage. Now in the last decade, I would say the only person who earned more from stages was Tony Robbins than us. Right? And Tony's a great friend and mentor. I love the guy. Learned so much from him. I presented Experts Academy, all this stuff on thought leadership at Tony's seminar in 2009 to his people. I was shouting from his stage in 2009. There's this whole new world called the experts industry, the thought leadership industry where you take what you learn and you share it and you do that on the Internet and that can be a career. I taught that 11 years ago on Tony stage. Please think about that. Don't miss this time. Don't miss it. For those of you who are here, you love learning. I'm just here to say, might as well monetize learning. I think it's important. Then the third thing, this is just tactical and practical. For those of you who are like super overdoing how hard this is, you think you have to do every. You got to do webinars, you got to do online videos and Facebook groups and you got to write books and do membership areas and masterminds, you've got to do live events, you gotta, you know, have team for digital media, digital marketing, social media tools, you gotta do online chat. Like you're like, oh my God, you need three things. You need three things. That's it, Three things. Number one, and this is where it all begins. Number one, where it all begins is you need to have what I call the integrated product suite. Fancy friggin words. The integrated product suite. What does that mean? You need three offers. Three offers. You can start with one, but you can also scale to millions with three. Three offers. What does that mean? A low tier offer meaning a low priced offer, then a mid tier offer, mid priced offer than a high tier offer. High priced offer. Now I know that's too simple, but for a Montana kid, I was like, oh, okay, so if I had a book, low priced and I had like an online course, mid priced and then they could work with me on the Internet as a coach. High priced, that would be like a business. Now you gotta decide. But the whole model can be that for you. We call it integrated proxy. Why? Because if they want the low price, they'll buy the mid to get the high, right? Think about how many Apple users, any Apple users out there, right? You remember you bought the ipod, then the iPhone, then the iPad, then the computer. That's called escalation. That's called an integrated product suite. I became famous in business strategy for teaching. Oh, there's a name for that. It's called an integrated product suite. So you got it, but you don't need five. Listen, I always remind people, Apple, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, what did he do after he got booted out? He came back in, he said, why do we have 28 things here? We're selling, we should be selling five or six. So a billion dollar company, listen, only sold five or six things. And you in your living room think you're going to start 15. A billion dollar company sells five or six things. No, the beauty is you need to sell one, two or three. Tops. Tops. So stop freaking out. The second thing, what do you need? Consistency on social media. Everyone's like, oh, I don't want to be consistent on social media. Fine, hire someone to make you consistent on social media. I'm not live every day on social media. Why? Because I'm a dork. I like to read books and stuff. You get to pick where you play. You don't have to do everything right now. You know what people are getting wrong? They're getting work life balance wrong right now. Work life balance is not about equal number of hours going to equal things. Well, I better give four hours to the kids today and four hours to work and four hours to the husband and four hours. No. Work life balance is not about hours of balance. Work life balance is about harmony. Harmony, not hours. There's some days, man, it was the kids all day for you. There's some days, you know, the pipe broke in the basement. That was what got the attention you need to build the business that runs. Regardless of those days, the business earns just as much tomorrow online if I show up and do anything on social media or not. Okay, so number one, the integrated product suite, Number two, social media consistency. You have to set that up so that there's that people can see, like who is this? What is this person doing? What's this about? And number three, absolute awesome value in number one. And number two, just awesome value. Good energy Value Good. Share your learning. Just be awesome. Value. And don't think you have to be so different than everyone else on the world. You have to be you and share what you're learning. If you just shared every day what you're learning and you kept learning every day, I always say listen, people would be profoundly wealthy if they stopped focusing so much on money and they focused on service. You want richness in your life? Share what you are learning so it eases someone else's pain or shortens their learning curve. Hey all, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, would you please smash that subscribe button and also post any questions you have down below? Because it's these questions that you're all asking that inspires these episodes. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Also, if you would love to join us on our next upcoming live training. We call it our High Performance Experience Coaching Program. If you'd like some coaching and have some perspective and get some two hours of live with me every single month, then click the link in the post down below so you can join us in HPX Coaching. I'd love to give you some more strategies, more insight and more interaction to help you reach your next level of success. Until next time. Again, please subscribe, Share this video with anybody who could be inspired inspired by it today and thanks one more time for being part of my community.