EXACTLY What to Do In the Face of CHANGE: A Step-by-Step Survival Guide

For most people, they learn to manage emotions over time. Listen, we all do is self mastery. It's like I said, it's vital. Vital, vital, vital. However, the most important part for teams and leaders is to go, we better have an initiative or a plan in place. Otherwise that roller coaster is going to be severe for everybody. But once we have a plan in place, there's a little bit of momentum. If I lack direction or purpose in my life, if I lack a plan, my emotions swing way harder and are more likely to derail me. I want everyone to write one word down. This is every but. This is a session about powering change. I want to let you know everything I've learned in the last decade in terms of powering change. One word. It comes back down to one word. It will always be one word. And I've been able to diagnose companies that fail at change and individuals who succeed at it with the one word, and that is this. When there is change, the one thing that matters, assertiveness, that's it. You are either going to assert yourself into the change, into the flow of change, into command of change, or you're going to get cynical, bow out, stay doubtful, contribute to the noise, get distracted. And you know psychologists, of course, Chris, you know, this psychologist just called this personal agency. You know, are you someone who takes responsible agency like you're the key agent of your life and you approach versus avoid? But there's something around the word of assertiveness that I love. It's like, I'm gonna assert myself into this new context. I'm gonna assert myself into this new reality. It's about the willingness to really step into it without avoiding it, without staying on the sidelines. Because almost every change initiative I've ever seen fail, Chris, whether it's personal or organizational, when you talk with the people who are quote, unquote, in charge or widely affected by it, there's always this phrase, I wish we would done something sooner. Somebody did not assert themselves into the new reality soon enough, and they got gobbled up, they got beaten by the competitors, or they lost their sales, they lost their team. It's just like it was death by a thousand paper cuts of delay. Those who win, they're a little more courageous or assertive into that. I like to use the word courageous, but some people don't like that. I'm not a courageous person. But I'm like, well, then you better be assertive. And, you know, you can assert yourself and be doubtful and scared and fearful, but still assert yourself. And so I don't consider myself a particularly courageous guy, you know, but assertive, will I jump in to the ring even if I'm scared, even if I'm worried, even if I don't know how it's going to go? That's the job if you want to power through change.

Yeah. That's awesome. That's awesome. And it's interesting, as you said, there's that one statement that they always say, I wish I had done. Like everyone had the word sooner to fill in the blank. Like you didn't have to say it like it was sooner, it was sooner. So, so then how do we, or have you worked with someone that you, you've helped them become more assertive? If it's necessary in times of change, how do I, how do I increase my assertiveness to, to run towards it?

Yeah, I think first and foremost is, you know, in all of change, I always say there's four phases of all change. The first change, which is obvious to everyone here is you just have to be aware, right. That general awareness. A lot of people don't have something change is happening, but they're not aware the CEO is missing it. They're, they're, they're, they're aware of it in their locality, but maybe not at a larger regional or national level. They're aware something's going on, but they don't get curious and dig in. That's a difference maker in change. Some people, they miss a movement by a decade. You know, in my industry, people missed getting online by over a decade. There are still some people just discovering this thing called zoom. Most of the world did not discover going live until the pandemic. And I was like, I've been live since 2009 because they invented it in 2008. So I feel like the ability to, to see the change and be aware of it and get curious, to engage and to research and to ask people at the forefront who are succeeding or doing well or innovating. It begins there. And we know from a lot of psychological research that those who aren't curious, they tend to miss it. And let me share something that's very opposite than most of my industry, Chris, and is this is particular important to this topic. A lot of the personal development or, you know, self improvement space which I'm in, they like to sell or talk about the concept of certainty. You have to have certainty, you should be certain. And there's a very type a masculine drive behind this conversation about certainty. And it sounds so great, is an easy way to sell Anything. However, all the research in high performance says people who have too much certainty, they tend to miss the change that's actually happening. There's a level of blinders that they have in which they have so much certainty, they're less curious. So those who high uncertainty, it has to be this way or I know it's this way. They miss the innovations, often by years compared to their competitors in the research. And so I think first, when you're feeling the earth shift or change, instead of avoiding it, denying it, pretending it's not there, get super curious, start asking questions, right? That first research driven reality of all high performers worldwide, they seek clarity. And yes, they seek clarity before their peers. They're asking questions. And I want to celebrate Chris here for everybody, just in case you can't see him at the same time as me. I think you do, but I've known Chris for a really long time. He's somebody who will ask the questions early. He's seeking clarity. What's going on? What are you seeing? What's the data showing? What are our numbers? What, what's the leads look like? What are the responses? What's the market? He's asking these questions so early that he's been able to catch so many waves that many people missed because they don't ask the questions till later. Is that helpful, Chris? Cause I think that, I think you're phenomenal at this.

Well, I appreciate that. I want to, I want to sort of talk about two things really quick. The first one is you, you talked about certainty, which is actually the opposite. So it makes sense to talk about it. Probably a couple months ago I started doing just a little bit of research on the differences between certainty, which feels great, by the way, because the results are certain and the outcomes are certain, which means our revenue is certain and our profitability is certain. And if you're a company that's moving towards being a public company, the public likes some certainty. Isn't that interesting? Stock value and prices go up as the more certain you can get results. Well, welcome, welcome to some years of change. And we've seen what that, what that did to the market, especially in businesses that have more uncertainty. So I just, I was just doing research it from a, from a business perspective. But it, but it lived in our world so well and found was, is oftentimes, you know, our human brain has developed to love certainty because it eliminates threat. And, and in our, in our cognitive brain, threat oftentimes was danger. Now we don't really deal with physical danger as much as you know, maybe older man had to. Although I did get a text from my neighbor yesterday morning, said, hey, get the kids in the cougars out back. So that was. That was a physical threat, just random. I, like, I chose to live there, so I deal with it. But. But we run away from threats thread leads to distress, which is an unhealthy stress. So if we look at change and we look at it as a threat, then we will absolutely move to threat and negative stress. And there's all these physiological things that happen. Our hearts beat faster, our vascular resistance increases, so it's harder for our blood to push. Like our heart pounds like we're overworking because of the stress, and we go to bed exhausted. So many in this room may feel exhausted because the change is. Is showing up in our world like a threat. And threat equals distress. The other side that it came across, Brendan, and you can, you know, check me on this, was, was change could be looked at as opportunity, which is not certain, but it's a possibility. And opportunity actually leads to eustress. Right. Like a positive stress. And physiologically things happen. Our hearts beat fast, we get excited, we get motivated. It moves us to do things. But interestingly enough, when we're in eustress, like, we actually see a decrease in vascular resistance. That means we're fluid. We get things done. So you brought up certainty as, as this. It's going to be a challenge versus curiosity. And it just led me to back to this conversation I was having around, well, changes. You will either threat. Did we go down that. Did you go down that funnel to bad stress distress, or did we take the change equals opportunity, which gets me to you stress. I'm going to feel it. But, but you show up like in. In constant change, but it's always opportunity for you. Yeah.

And I think it's important. What you just shared is like, sometimes the physiological nature of change is very similar.

The, The.

The stress is there in one way, though. Sometimes that energetic stress stops you or shuts you down. In the other, it makes you get ready for performance. So often the difference between use stress and, you know, distress often just called the performance edge. When you have the performance edge, it says, oh, I'm going to engage in this. I'm gonna do my best. Now, that energy might feel exactly similar to what anxious energy feels like in another context or another mindset. So backstage, you know, I'm going to speak to the. All the EXP folks out there. Hi, nice to meet you. I'll be speaking to the exp Convention. Keynoting that I keynote a lot of conferences around the country. That will be one of them. And you know, when I'm backstage there, you know that's in Vegas and you know there's thousands of people out there and, and I've done, you know, 70 of the biggest arenas in the world. Keynoting I'm backstage, if they put all the wires and the head cap on me and looked at it like this dude is stressed, but I'm fired up in a positive way. There's a performance edge. It's leaning into it, it's excited. How's this going to go? It's curious. It's open versus closed. And I want you to find that energy through these times when of like, okay, I'm open, I'm, I'm energized. I'm going to ask lots of questions and I'm going to be patient with myself. To learn versus feeling I have to have certainty about I've got it, I'm the winner. I can solve this energy because I think there is a big piece. Of course we want to feel certain in ourselves and but the certainty in self is not perfection. What we want to have is confidence in self. And confidence is the belief in our ability to figure things out. I'm going to handle this change confidently because I believe I can figure it out. I've learned hard things before. This is hard. I can learn it. And that, that's the awareness, the self awareness side of okay, I've learned hard things before, I'm going to learn this one. That's why I'm so confident in my future. I've learned so many hard things, I'll learn hard things again. Will there always be difficulty and challenge in my life? Yep. I guess I'm just have to engage them with that learning mindset, that growth mindset that says I'll engage, I'm willing to try and I'll go from there. And so I mentioned earlier, Chris, that first stage of change is awareness. We got to begin there. Asking questions, being proactive, leaning in growth mindset. These are some of the themes we've talked about. The second one, this is where people really struggle. The second big piece of change is acceptance. And a lot of people right now are in trouble here. They have not accepted that the economy is shifting. They have not accepted that it may be harder. They have not accepted that they had a role in where their business is. They don't accept themselves. That lack of self acceptance prevents them from engaging change confidently. That lack of self acceptance prevents them from engaging other people. Because a huge part of change is to remember this little thing called sociology. We change better and faster in groups when we mobilize together, but we won't engage the group if we're stuck in guilt, shame, embarrassment, self hate. And so it's funny because you think you don't have to do the, the, the psychological or the coaching or the therapeutic work during change. But the truth is, it's like change begins within. I know you all get that. I know you all know that because listen, only two things are going to change your life. Either something new is going to come into your life and force it, or something new comes from within. And a lot of people need to get this idea that when there is change in context out there, we're gonna have to change in our own consciousness about how we view ourselves, accept ourselves, care for ourselves, so that we give ourselves something that I think, Chris, right now the whole world just needs a big dollop of, and that is grace. You got to give yourself grace during change. If you hate yourself during change, you feel inadequate, incompetent, you know, unworthy, that self hate, that disregard of yourself, your strengths, your capabilities. The truth is, even if you're a productive person, even if you're a good leader, even if you're a high earner, the change will destroy you internally. It will eat you alive. You will do irresponsible things, you will gain irresponsible weight. You will take irresponsible actions and risks in your business because you're coming from a place where you're mad at yourself. And everyone knows when you are mad or ashamed by yourself, you tend to do bad things socially and in business. So I tell people when the change is going on, pay a lot of attention about what's going on. That's awareness to the context. Second, check within, check your self talk. Don't speak poorly of yourself. Don't be hard on yourself because you didn't master it at first. Allow yourself to be a little bit of hot mess in change. As you engage, as you assert yourself, just know I'm gonna be a little bit hot mess. I'm gonna accept the fact that I'm new here. This is my first time on my, this bike. In this new environment, I'm riding a bike for the first time and it's a little different. I'm going to let myself fall over and not be so mad at myself. And many people, they're so mad at themselves, discouraged by themselves, talking poorly about themselves, that they shut down their ability to Adapt.

What I think causes that, Brendan, is so much of what we do every day is these sort of well established behavioral patterns and, and, and, and they are unconscious. So. Right. Means that we are going to be working against our unconscious, which is not easy to do, to work the unconscious, which, which first takes awareness and then says, oh gosh, like my unconscious self is not going to handle this well. I need to accept rat if, if, if it won't handle it well if we don't change. Right. Those patterns or those, those habits or those behaviors. So I think, I think as I, I, I take that and, and sort of internalize what you're coaching me to, to do. Right. Clarity and awareness of, of the change that's coming, but also what I am doing, the habits I inform, how I've handled life or situations or business up to this point, like getting very, very clear about my unconscious behaviors or activities or thoughts and then saying, okay, I'm going to accept this for what it is that is not going to play well with, with, with my unconscious habits. Like, let's take it on, like, yeah, against the unconscious. So that my, my brain, my, my brain has a fighting chance because I'm more aware that I have some work to do there. And oftentimes the reason why we, we feel bad about ourselves is like, I'm not handling this well, I'm not showing up well, I'm not feeling it today. Well, yeah, because your unconscious self had habits for a different day. Your unconscious self had habits for your, your unconscious self had habits built for, for, for, for different results. And, and, and, and now you have to fight against that unconscious, which is one of the most difficult things for humans to do.

So true, so true. And I think that the lesson in the first piece that we talk about when we think about awareness is to be open to ask questions, to seek questions earlier, to be curious. And in this area of acceptance, it's to know in a new context, in a lot of change that oh, this is a chance for character development. Let me engage this in going, oh, oh, there's a blank page here. I can reestablish who I am in this marketplace. I can reestablish my habits in this new world. I can take this as an opportunity, as you talked about earlier, I can take this change as an opportunity to redefine who I am, how I want to think. And so the self acceptance thing is also an assertive thing. It's okay. I'm going to give myself grace, allow myself to be a hot mess as I move through this. And I'm going to kind of define myself anew. I'm going to move away from the unconscious reactions or the old story into a more assertive, a higher level of agency, if you will. Into this one, I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, it's like those times. Hi, I just left college and I just got my first job. Who am I in this new job? That's part of self acceptance is the ability to continually adapt our perception of self and identity in new contexts.

Right? You're.

When you move to a new city, you get that new shot, that new chance. Who am I here? Now, we all know we carry ourselves with us into the new city and into the new home. But some people, I know you all work with those people, they get a new house and they're in a new neighborhood, and they're like a new person. Not everybody. But because they made that change, they're in a new house, their mindset goes with it. It elevates with it. Chris saw that probably with me at one stage of my life. I bought this beautiful place in Oregon that Chris helped me secure and find. And all of a sudden, it elevated my writing. It elevated how I perceived myself as a writer because I was up on this cliff overlooking things. I had this beautiful place to write, and there was a part of me that consciously elevated with that change of habitat. And so I know everyone here in place. You all see this in real life. So some people shift in a neighborhood. They make that change in themselves, and it becomes a powerful new part of their story. I want you to do that for.

Yourself, Brendan, just as you said that you're taking a physical environment as a change. And what jumps out at me is like, we actually. You looked at that as an opportunity, whether consciously or unconsciously. For you, it was probably very conscious. Like, I'm in a new environment. By the way, you. You. You went there specifically because you wanted to change the direction of. Of the writing of that specific book that you were writing at the time. Like. Like, this is not. Not what I want it to be. It's not coming out how I wanted to come out. And. And you were able to move from unconscious to conscious. So there's some questions there that, like, well, gosh, is. Is the unconscious. You're referring to our belief system? I. That's part of it. You believed you were now a different person or a better writer. Like all of us, that change can. Can. Can. Can show up, and we are now the person that can handle it. You mentioned physical environment. You Know, this week we were doing a session with a small group of us. I run an experiential MBA is what we call it. And in that session we were actually talking about behavioral change. And one of the, one of our participants said, you know, I realized I, I bought a house last year and I actually changed a lot of my behaviors just physically in the new house. And she said, I recognize I'm moving again in a few months. I have the opportunity to look at that and say, okay, well, what behaviors do I want to change and how I make sure as I go into that new space, those behaviors change. So that is the unconscious into conscious. And, and, and all of us can do that. Like, we have to, we have to choose to do that like, like you did in that space. But that, that we could use a physical landmark. We can use a temporal landmark, right? First of the month, first of the week, first of the year, first, first day after I turned 45. Like first day after a holiday. Like, we can use those temporal landmarks or a physical landmark to say, identify change. Clarity, awareness, acceptance. So those are the first two. What's the third one?

The third one is accountability. We've got to take a higher level of personal accountability and what you might call social accountability when there's new change. I think that when you are accountable for your life, you know that you're responsible for it. No one's coming to save the day that we have to take it upon ourselves to assert ourselves. But really at a broader level, what accountability means is you've made a promise to own something, and you're going to navigate to make that thing the best that it can be. You're going to fulfill the promise that you made to yourself or to other people. That's what accountability is. I, you know what? I'm a good parent. I chose to have this child. I'm going to take care of this child. That's a personal responsibility, but it's a social responsibility to the child.

Right?

And we do that in our own careers, in our lives a lot. And here's what happens in times of change. I want you to all write this down. In major times of change, we need to sit down and journal. Obviously, we all use growth day journal. I hope you all use the journal and growth day for your mindset journaling and you make this promise. I promise myself that. Dot, dot, dot. I promise myself that in this time of change, I'm going to check in on my mindset every Monday. I promise myself, in this time of change, I'm going To look at my numbers every morning. I promise myself, in this time of change, I'm going to make five outbound every day. I promise myself, in this time of change, in this economy, I'm gonna do this new lead acquisition like you. You, you have to make new promises to yourself in new contexts of change. And some people, because they, they don't do that, there's no accountability. And if you don't set that goal or make that promise internally, you have no guiding system. And so if you have no guiding system, then what happens is you, you start to waffle and get distracted and you feel bad. Also the social accountability to go to your team and say, I've got you. During this time, I'll be more available. Here's what we're going to do. Each of us. What's your promise? What's your promise? What's your promise? And the group commits to themselves anew. Okay, New world, new chime, new month, new economy. Okay, what we got to do. What's your commitment? What's your commitment? What's your commitment? And we share how we're going to deal with the social change, right? It's just like in, in the military, when you move into a new campaign, right, There's a bunch of people standing around a table deciding, what are you going to do? What are you going to do? What you are, what's your play? What's your play? And they look at each other when they leave that tent or that building and they're out to initiate that campaign where their life is at stake. The reason they all talk about it before they go do it is they look each other in the eye in the military and they know what each person is going to do when they walk out to do it. They trust they will execute. There's a personal and social accountability. There's the personal accountability sounding out, walking you through my moves, walking through my playbook, walking you through what I'm going to do during the campaign. And that receiving of it and seeing of it, that accountability ends up being the trust piece through change. I trust you. I trust myself. I trust we have a plan. This is the stuff of accountability. Some people don't like the word accountability. That's why I try to use this other language. And when we can trust each other to fulfill on what we are saying, we all move through change with a whole different level of mobilization and confidence and effectiveness.

Yeah, Brendan, it's, it's interesting just, just this past Friday, so a week ago, less than a week ago, we spent about 20 minutes of our, of our sort of, you know, weekly call. We have about 13, 1400 people on every Friday. And we talked about what are, what are your non negotiables. And what I challenged everybody to do is write down their list of non negotiables. Right? That is a promise to themselves and then share that list of non negotiables with their group, with their team and then check in at the end of the week after sharing it every Monday. Did I do my non negotiables? And the reason being is because that, that adds in this level of accountability. But we're making these promises to ourselves and also promises outwardly to others. It was, it was based on, honestly, probably something you shared with me eight years ago, nine years ago, about one of the key aspects of all high performers, right, Is, is necessity and, and figuring out who needs your A game today. And so yes, hey, I promise myself that Then, then, then sometimes you need your A game today. Sometimes it isn't someone else, sometimes it's me right now in this environment, I promise all of us need our A game today. Like I need my A game today. But I also believe that the accountability piece, awareness, acceptance, then, then accountability for me, I've always done well being highly accountable to other people. And that is why I've always made some pretty big promises to people. I will promise things to people.

Yes.

Because I know that I identify as a promise keeper. So if I'm a promise keeper and I'm always going to keep them, that means promise away. I'm going to go out, I'm going to say I'm going to do something and I'm going to do it. And interestingly enough, like, it doesn't matter what change shows up because that accountability keeps me so focused on what I said I was going to do. So that's why I love that. I love that like in your journal, I love that I promise that and I love that these are non negotiables. This is who I am as a human. They're non negotiables to me in my life and my business. And it was around Keith Cunningham's quote in his book. He said, the quality of your life is a direct result of what you decide to make a non negotiable. Well, heck yes, let's quality up our life. Like it's that simple. The quality is based on like, how big are your non negotiables? How real, yes are they? And if you promise the right people that they are non negotiable to you and to Them that is, that sort of encapsulate. Encapsulates this conversation of accountability. Anything you, anything you add or, or is that. Is the non negotiable. Not good language. Did I mess up or.

It's for. No, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine for every. You know, everyone's got their different way of looking at this. What you got to understand is there's that personal side and the social side. You know, then. And, and we have to have that and we have to have our, our way of operating our day that we're very clear about. What is our accountability? Like those simple things of the checklist for yourself, but maybe the checklist for others and what you're going to do that day. And I think that's a lot I'll do with CEOs. I'll go, okay, I want to make sure you have a checklist for what you're going to do. That's your, that's your personal productivity for the day. I also want you to have a checklist for your social accountability, your social leadership. And I want you to separate them in your mind purposely, because we'll make you stronger when we do that. It reminds you of your role as a leader. I'll give you an example. Some of you guys see it. I don't know if they can see this. I wear this this year. I'm wearing this band. It says Ultra. And we've got a lot of place members in Ultra. Ultra is like, it's like our private success group in Growth Day. So some of you know, you guys are all in Growth Day. And in Growth Day, kind of a highest level membership we have is called Ultra. And so we meet live in Los Angeles every month or virtually. And I made a commitment to this group. I said, I'm going to mentor you on how to become ultra successful all year. It's the biggest promise, Chris, I've ever made. I was like, I will be in person with you in Los Angeles every month, and if you're not there, then I'll broadcast it to you. And you know, this is a $10,000 level membership. Kind of like what YPO is for a lot of people. Ultra is for people like us. This promise I literally made, I made this for me. Like, this is just for me that I, that I'm like, okay, this is my accountability. And it does two things. First, I go, brendan, make sure personally you adopt an Ultra mindset. I want to always remind myself to be ultra successful in every area of my life. What does that mean? To me. But then also I have a group, it's the Ultra group. I'm responsible to this group. And so those, like, for me it's, it's a, it's a band. Maybe you all have a, you know, you got a cup or you've got some kind of physical thing in your office up on the wall. And I do this as an example and a metaphor for you all because I want you to think like visualize your accountabilities. So the two examples I just gave you. One, I make my clients have a personal productivity checklist, but also a social or leadership checklist. So that's just daily operations. Another one, it's a symbol, right? It's a symbol. What's right around my office says, oh yeah, I have to be accountable to my wife and be amazing to her, to my family. Over here it's something that visually we can check in or for me, I wear, I'm a, I'm a wearable kind of guy. So I think it's important. Yeah. Mary says she's got place bands for those who aren't in Ultra. You can go to ultra.vip if you want to join that group. It's Ultra Dot vip. And, and I think it's. Every group should have that. And I say this specifically, Chris, to team leaders, because all, everyone here, you with your team, teach them these two things. Like Chris and I are just talking philosophical here. This is like how we run, you know, unicorn type businesses. And I want you to think about that with your team. Maybe each of you teach your team personal checklist, social checklist with your team, get them a wristband during this time of change, get them a hat or a wearable during this time of change, get them that mug or that thing to put on the wall. They, during this time of change, accountability, when it's visual and social is so much easier to sort of create a foundation of strength socially. So I hope that resonates for some people.

Yeah, I love that. Quite, quite honestly. I wrote down social, personal and, and, and it's good for us to check like, do we have both? Because we need both. We may, we may excel in one, we may excel in social. Right. Accountability. But we may, we may not show up on our personal side or vice versa. Okay. Awareness, acceptance, accountability. What's number four?

Number four is action. Number four is action. And if I could draw this out today, I'd put awareness, acceptance, accountability and action. And then I put a line underneath it and the word underneath all of that would be assertiveness. I didn't have a preparation in how we were going to approach this today in this way because I. I love the rift that Chris and I get to have is rare because he's such a good friend. With action, I want to come back to one concept, which is assert yourself earlier. So again, the foundation is assertiveness of this conversation today. With action, though, it comes down to two things. The first action is to reestablish your pattern or practices. I call it habits, during a new context. Right? And we all know this, as Chris referenced earlier, like a temporal time, like back to school time. If you have kids, you got a new pattern, right? Change in season, they're back in school. Great. I got a new pattern. These are my new habits. I got to do this before school and after school, right?

We get.

We get that. We have to do that in economies. We have to do that when our team changes. We have to do that when we're hiring. Like, what are the new habits or practices or processes that go along with the shift? And these are recurrent. That's why I call them habits.

Right?

It's a recurrent thing. This is your daily, weekly, monthly, quarter, quarterly rhythm. I tell all leaders this, and this is so important for place members. Does your daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly rhythm directly correspond to how much money you want to make? It is a fundamental. I asked this to our Ultra members last month and people like, oh, my gosh. Because that's accountability, right? There. Are the actions, your recurrent actions, I call them habits. Are they directly corresponding to the level of income you want? If you want more income, you need to change that daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly rhythm or process to reach that level. It will not happen by shotgun strategies. There's a rhythm of change and a rhythm of abundance that has to be built in for a new layer of success. A lot of times when I go work with professional athletes or teams, I'll just. This is the first question I ask them. And some of you know, I get to work with Olympians and NFL teams and NHL teams and NDA teams. I work with everybody. And in that process, I want to know for the players on the field, tell me what's constantly happening. What's the recurrent patterns or practices? And inevitably, a lot of them, the underperforming teams, they don't have them. They're like, well, we got practice. I'm like, what happens between practice? They're like, games. Well, what happens between the practices and the games? They're like. And it's like, oh, well, I Can't get, I can't get you championship level unless we have practices as the first pillar of the actions. But I want to let you jump in here, Chris.

No, I, I just was gonna say, and these are not, it's not Little League. It so it, so it happens to all of us. These are, these are the best teams in the world that, that haven't sort of double clicked on, on what I wrote down in the middle of my piece of paper in big words is rhythm, right? Like a rhythm directly corresponding. Like if we, if we take those three words and say, okay, I need to figure out the front of that and the end of that. What is the rhythm? I mean, like, why don't you just look at your rhythm and then figure out what it's going to directly correspond to? Like, get, forget, forget. Starting with what you want. Let me tell you what you're going to have. Like send me your rhythm and I'll, and I'll do the equal sign, fill out the blank and say, okay, this corresponds to X. Like, it's a good self, self study of saying, okay, well what is my rhythm going to lead to today? How do I change that rhythm? But I just, I just, I guess it hit me when you were saying that these are, these are the top teams, right? The best teams that say, okay, you know, we're not winning the championship. We're still pretty amazing. Oh, and you're saying, well, show me your rhythms. And they don't have them. That's why we don't either. I'm giving, I'm giving them some grace. I'm giving them. You may not have them. The top teams don't either. But now how do we become a champion?

And hey, listen everybody. Chris and I both are always working on our rhythms. And as, as friends, we talk about our supplement stacks and our workout routines and, and how we work and how we show up at events in life and business. And I want to, I want to share again as, as Chris and Ben have been so kind, invite me to be, you know, a chief growth advisor. My advisory to each of you is to not listen to what we are saying just for yourself, but to take the very conversation we're having right now to your team, to your agents, to the people who you count on, and pose this as a question with them. Like check in with them about their daily, weekly, quarterly, yearly, in terms of how you lead them, but also in their personal life. Because, you know, the great coaches in history who I've studied, I think most of them been on Stages with most of them advised many of them. What's really interesting is the great leaders is certainly in athletics they are more involved in their players lives than others. Right. You talk about, I know as soon as I say somebody's name, Chris, I always get in trouble, which I'm always very generic. But you know, you, you, you take a, a, we'll go a throwback, a John Wooden or you take a Belichick. They're more involved in the players lives. They're just, they, they know, well, they know so much more about their players lives, on how their lives actually operate daily, weekly or monthly or yearly than other coaches. In fact, some of the best coaches in history had several players who would say that they felt they were micromanaged a little bit in their actions. And that was because the coach has to establish the actions that make the player successful. So they're up in their grill a little bit more, at least in the upfront. And I think that that's important for us to realize. It's like we bring team members on and we don't know anything about them or how they live their lives. But you have to as a leader, imbue these practices, right? Because in change, conscious action is vital to success. In change, conscious action is vital to success. So that's setting up the rhythm, that's setting up the actions and the practices that, that we know will move us forward. Okay. The second piece of action is identifying just maybe tops, three initiatives, other language, three levers, three needle moving activities, whatever you want to call them. In leadership, we typically talk about it as an initiative, that this is initiative our team is going to put forth during this time of, of change. Now if I work with a Fortune 50 CEO, I always tell them you only get three, even when you're the President United States. And I've worked with two. Don't worry, both parties chill. Guess what? They only really get three. It's like this crazy rule of three. You think you can roll out 30 things, but in times of change, you kind of have to hit this messaging over and over and over. And what I mean by initiative is you say, okay, this is where we're going to focus on. Usually it's in a 3, 6 or 12 month initiative. Most initiatives are 3, 6 or 12, not 3, 6, 9 and 12. It's almost always 3, 6 and 12 that are successful, at least internationally in organizational theory. So we want to take okay for our initiative as a team in the next three months. This is the playbook we're going to follow. And these are the results we're going to track. These are our KPIs or OKRs. You call it whatever you want, but you put a value system on top of it. Like, you name the initiative something cool. We're all in it together. We're all going to ride this wave or build this new change together. Like, you literally name it as a project or initiative so there's something to reference. Oh, we're all doing this right now. Because otherwise it just feels like everyone's doing everything. But once you name it. Oh, this is why in the military, it's always Operation Blank. Right? Why did they do that? Because it's absolutely critical to leadership communication. It's absolutely critical for the team to be able to align around an initiative. Operation Blank. Project Blank. Right. There's a reason that works in times of change. Most leaders forget to do that. So what the leaders are doing, they're espousing values. Work hard, damn it. Check your voice messages more often. Everyone come together, but we need to name it something and then we do it. There's a. It wasn't. Hey, everybody. Freedom's important. It was the civil Rights movement. You have to name movements. You have to name initiatives. And during times of change, especially if you want to drive it, leaders call it something, rally around it, put leaders in charge of it, measure it, and move as one. That's the idea of action being conscious and action becoming a practice and action becoming a campaign. And when actions become a campaign, now you know you're leading.

Yeah. So good. So good. Right? I. I never really thought of that. Operation, Project Movement especially, right? We. We started talking about the change that kind of just happens and, and how we manage through it or power through it. But this last one, action, you could work up from the bottom and say, okay, you need someone to change. We want to change behavior. We. We. We wanna. We wanna change directions. Well, those, Those. Reestablishing your patterns for this new behavior and then identifying the initiative. And it's funny, you heard it here first. If a president only gets three, like, real estate agents should not have more than two or three. Right? Like you. Only two or three to move. A business like ours, like our country, gets three. We get three. So super, super solid. Yeah. I have one more question for you, Brendan, please. Every minute we might. We might ask if, if the, if the audience has one or two for you. I. I know we're running out of time here.

I'm good on time. Let's do this. I love you guys. I'm so pumped to be able to do this work with you because a lot of people are, are, are just in reactive mode and not building the initiatives and the campaigns that will build the future. Yeah, that's assertiveness.

Yeah. So my question would be what, what role do emotions or our emotions play in, in either powering through change or getting, or getting just destroyed by change? Like they're the emotion, the, the emotions seem to, to, to affect it. What is, what is your take on that?

Yeah, I think in general, during times of change, our culture here in the west, we overemphasize them. And here's what I mean, they're vital to someone's day to day reality, someone's day to day experience of the world. But see, emotions, by definition in psychology anyway, emotions are automatic, physical, impulsive and usually reactive. And so in a lot of psychologists will say, well, in a lot of us in coaching, emotions happen to you. They, they come, you hear that phrase and metaphor, they come in waves. They happen. But emotions tend to be gone and out of the system fairly quickly. Right now feelings are separate than emotions.

Okay.

An emotion kind of hits you, it just happens. It's automatic, impulsive, you're really not choosing usually the emotion. The emotion happens physically. Now the feeling is usually the meaning you give to the emotion that you hang on to. Okay. And you might ride out a feeling for hours. Now physically, the emotion, when we measure it in your body actually has probably left. But now we're holding on to a definition, a vibe, a feeling, and we ride that out. So these are important because they can impact my, my day or my hour and I can ride it. It might be up or down and the things like that, but over the course of a week, here's what tends to happen in high performance. And I, I talk with my teams about this a lot. And that is when people lose a change, it's less often the emotions. Because guess what, here's what emotions are. Everybody, if you can watch me on, on camera, this is emotions. This happens for every human. You get stressed, you get anxious, you're fine, you're placated, you're grateful, you're happy, you're non compliant, you're aggressive, you're kind of like stuff just happens. Like you feel like a yo yo sometimes in emotions. Welcome to life. It's a little bit of a roller coaster, especially in times of new context. You go to a new school, you know, you feel terrible all day and embarrassed. And then one person talks to you at lunch and you're like, I'm accepted and Loved. This is gonna be a great school. Like, it's a ride. However, what usually derails teams or high performers or people like us here, like more of the place member, ultra successful type thinker over the course of the span of a week is usually directionlessness, aimlessness, lack of the planned initiative or campaign. Meaning it's not just how they feel. It's I don't know what to do, Chris. When I lack a plan, my emotions actually vary more in such a way that I'll be disempowered. For most people, they learn to manage emotions over time. Listen, we all do. It's self mastery. It's, like I said, it's vital. Vital, vital, vital. However, the most important part for teams and leaders is to go, we better have an initiative or a plan in place. Otherwise that roller coaster is going to be severe for everybody. But once we have a plan in place, there's a little bit of momentum. If I lack direction or purpose in my life, if I lack a plan, my emotions swing way harder and are more likely to derail me. The emotions will always be there, but emotions without the purpose are much more harsh, negative, wild, likely again, to disempower me. And so I want to come back for the leaders here. We need that plan, we need that initiative, we need that campaign. Otherwise this wild, reactive nature you're going to see in your teams will continue and it will hurt your performance.

Yeah. Not to, not to totally take that amazing summary and boil it down to how I think this, but, but I hear that. And what I hear back is when we tell ourselves, I'm just not feeling it, I don't feel like it. Today we are missing the plan. We had something happen in our life that was just a simple emotion that turned into this feeling that derailed us for an entire day, two days, three days. I haven't shown up to the office because I'm just not feeling it. Which, which then. Which gave me, gave into the emotion, turned it into a feeling. And the solution is your directionless, aimless, don't know what to do. And that is because you don't know what operation. It's Operation Blank. Still, you haven't filled in the operation. It's Project Blank. It's, it's zero non negotiables. Right. It's. It's. I didn't make a promise to myself or others today. And, and then, and then we get lost in the feelings there. Yes.

And another gate that we walked through. Remember, it was awareness, acceptance, accountability and action. And here's the biggest question for sometimes, if we're not getting progress in life, are your emotions the priority, or are your accountabilities a priority? When I'm accountable to my team, when I'm accountable to my wife and my family, that's a bigger game than how I tend to feel in any given second or moment, because the emotion will pass. But the accountability can be the thing I build my life upon. My promises. My promises are more important than my physical impulses. My promises are more important than my physical impulse. My physical impulse is Netflix, is, you know, pizza and beer. My like, it can be very, like, detached from the progress or the health of my life. And so I have to ask, what's the bigger promise? What's the bigger accountability? It's why I know it's so simple for everybody, but many of you know I have next to my computer over here, that little card that says, who needs me on my AAME today? I look at that card every day before I open my computer. Who needs me on my aame? It reminds me, oh, you know what? Chris needs me on my AAME today to serve our place members. I gotta do a good job for them. This is a blessing that I get to work with this many achievers. Right? Okay, Brendan, you kind of had a slow morning. Your brain was a little checked out. You got to check back in. You got to do a good job for Chris and Ben. You got to do a good job for these PLACE members. They're working hard out there. They're trying to help families. I got to get my head together here. Okay, cool. And so I'll elevate my performance in service to others. And that's how you manage change. Because sometimes in service to our comforts or our needs or emotions, we'll check out. But when we elevate ourselves in service to others, we've hit just, you know, another level of beast mode in change.