Building Confidence: 4 Key Lessons from Steve Lover for World-Class Performance

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of Contribute to Contribute to a greater cause, add value, have an impact in the lives of others. So if this is your why, then you want to be part of a greater cause, something that is bigger than yourself. You don't necessarily need to be the face of the cause, but you want to contribute in a meaningful way. You love to support others and you relish successes that contribute to the greater good of the team. You see group victories as personal victories. You are often behind the scenes looking for ways to make the world better. You make a reliable and committed teammate and you often act as the glue that holds everyone else together. You use your time, money, energy, resources and connections to add value to other people and organizations. And so today I have a great guest for you. His name is Steve Lover and he is the founder and owner of Blue Mountain Business Coaching, a coaching and training firm that specializes in leading employees to become world class. He's the author of the book Ignite A Blueprint to Spark World Class Performance in the workplace he experiences. His experiences come from owning two businesses himself and managing a nonprofit organization. Steve has developed a powerful insight into what it takes to to win a leadership game. Steve began his training and coaching career when he served as a corporate trainer for Fortune 100 insurance and securities firm where he trained business building skills and techniques to agents and registered representatives. His innovative programs were instituted around the country impacting 7,000 financial professionals. Before getting involved in the business, Steve spent close to a decade as a rabbi both in America and abroad in education and pastoral work. In those positions he learned a lot about listening and understanding people. These skills have been a tremendous asset in helping Business owners find ways to mold their businesses to their unique personality, strengths and skill set. An award winning speaker, Steve has spoken for Chase Bank, Century 21, Jackson National Life, McDonald's management team, the Entrepreneurs Network, and the Kennedy Glazer Marketing Group, just to name a few. Steve is heavily involved in his community as a board member of the local Rabbanical Rabbina school and a local synagogue, a past club president and area governor of Toastmasters, and a volunteer at a local school. When asked about his biggest accomplishment, Steve says, while raising my six children, there was never a time when one of them wouldn't speak to me for over three days, even in their teenage years. Steve, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks a lot, Dr. Gary. Happy to be here.

That was a mouthful.

I thought I had to read the whole thing though, because it was very pertinent to your story.

Yes.

So, well. So where do you live right now? Tell us a little bit about where you live Currently.

I'm a suburb of Detroit called Southfield, just in the north side of. Of Detroit.

Southfield. Okay. So let's go back in your life. Where were you born? Where did you grow up? What were you like growing up?

So I was born in Southfield.

Okay.

Now I had left for a while. I was away for about a little under 20 years where I lived in different places around the world, but I was born probably two and a half miles from my house today. Okay.

And what were you like growing up?

That's an interesting question.

Yeah, I was pretty.

I connected with people well, you know what I mean, to find areas where I could bring something to the table. I remember at very young ages, people commenting on that, that I was able to go to the kid in the class that was sitting in the back because you're a little bit too nervous about getting involved in the group and going over and coax him out a little bit. That would be the type of thing that was pretty regular for me, finding ways to make things better. And that, that, that kind of, it's a little bit kind of the contribute idea.

Yeah.

Give you an idea. When I first took the test at the Y, actually I've taken it twice and contribute was the number one on both of them. The other two I had challenged in both of them and the other, the third one was different and two times, but was, no question, hands down, the bigger thing. And that's played out in a lot of different ways.

Yeah, you always wanted to help something like that.

Yeah, that's, that's kind of, I would say, you know, how can we make it better?

How can we make it better?

How can we get in there and find ways to do something that means something?

So what kinds of things were you into in high school?

So high school was interested. I did high school in three years. Okay. I graduated the end of my junior year. High school wasn't. I wasn't one of the jocks and I wasn't one of the thespians. So I didn't have any kind of group in the school that I kind of fit in. I was actually a lot aloner. I found things outside of school that I was active in and excited about. And again, it was, you know, kind of more group things. Leadership roles and youth group and things like that work pretty common for me in high school. But it was, it wasn't so much in school. School. I got along to get along, actually. I believe. It's funny, I wrote a whole section in my book about this. High school is one of the most difficult times of a person's life. And it's so funny because we expect people to go into high school and excel in everything. That's the only time in life we accept that we don't take their individuality into account. We want to see 4.0 students to say they made it. When high school is really about kind of discovering where the places that you really can can shine at. And very often the guy who's great at math is not going to be great at English and the guy who's great at English isn't going to be good at science and so on and so forth. But we don't teach that to our kids. Instead, we take people who are socially awkward, who are having trouble fitting in, giving them a job to excel in everything with no place for them to find themselves. And that's how I experienced high school. It was like. It just was, you know, I went there because I had to go there. I did what I had to do and I got out of there. I wasn't a place that I was going to spend a lot of time. That's a rough period in people's life and we have it all backwards.

I.

Yeah, I think everybody, I think most people would agree with you, except for maybe the ones that excel in something and then that's their, you know, they never stop living their high school days.

Well, that's really actually interesting. I came across interesting research during the book that people that were valedictorians in their high school go on to get above average jobs. They're in the, the upper income level of average jobs. But they're never leaders in anything interesting. And the reason is, is because they learned how to work the system well. That's how they became valedictorians. And they never stepped out of the system. And the real leaders, business leaders or thought leaders or in any movement whatsoever, go look at most of them. Their school years were a wreck.

Yeah.

Because they were. They were. They were personal and they were their own person and they got out of it. And this, that wasn't the case. The valedictorians learned how to work within the system, so therefore they never got to the point where they become big leaders in anything. I just thought that was super interesting.

Yeah. Okay, so graduate from high school, off to college. Where'd you go to college?

I went to first, I was actually in the University of Haifa, and then afterwards I went to rabbinical school, and I was in rabbinical school from 1978. Got married in 82 and stayed in school until 87.

Okay. So that's. That's where most of my schooling was. That's a whole different world.

The question for you, Steve, at what point did you know you were going to go to rabbinical school?

I made that decision in my first year of school. College. Yeah. Yeah. I made the first year that I wanted. Really wanted to be there, and I went there. It's grueling. We started seven o' clock in the morning, finished ten o' clock at night. Five days a week. Wow. Fridays, it's a half a day, but it's grueling. The time is grueling, but it's inspiring and uplifting and unbelievable.

So what was the thing that told you?

Yep.

I think I want to go to rabbinical school.

You know, it was about clarifying more for me where I wanted to be, how I wanted to fit in the world. You know, I'm. I'm an Orthodox Jew. And so getting more clarity in that. Learning the jurisprudence, the systems better, learning the theology better. That was it.

Okay, so off to rabbinical school till 87.

And I. It's interesting what you just said.

Would you guess that most people understand how grueling rabbinical school is?

Only the people who've been there? Yeah. Because it's also what's interesting. It's not school per se, that you go to get a degree. You go to increase your knowledge and your value and your own spiritual levels, and you get depth in the jurisprudence. And at some point you make a decision, see the time to go out to be a rabbinical leader or a rabbi, or you decide, okay, it's time to go out to work. And that's kind of was. I took my first job in 87. I was leading a nonprofit adult educational organization, Jewish community. And that was. I had been two years in rabbinical school in Jerusalem after I got married, and then another three years in Amsterdam, Holland. Then I moved to Minneapolis where I ran for four years, did another year with another organization in Los Angeles, and the year after that I decided that it was time for me to get into the working world. I had five and a half kids and I needed to go from nonprofit to profit. And that's how I opened my first business.

And what was that?

Penny Saver? It was a advertising circular and it's pretty common a lot of the country where you let ads for small businesses to go out. I was very excited about getting in the business and did not have the capital I needed to make it work. Worked at it for three years, ended up having to close it down with a huge amount of debt. And then got in the insurance business based on an old student of mine and did very well there until New York Life came and asked me to become a trainer for Southeast Michigan.

And then you. Are you doing that currently?

No, no, no, no. I love. I left. I left that business in 05.

Okay, so you were with New York Life through 05 and then what happened?

So what happened was, is really interesting. New York Life, great company, great company, great products, pretty good training. But they had one thing that I got to a point that I kind of differed with them. And they said any agent that comes in who's got the knowledge of what he has to do, the skill to do it, he can show that he could do on a roll plan, the desire to win. There's no reason he's not a successful agent. And I had scores of agents coming in that had knowledge, could show that they could do it in a role play, were dying to be successful, and we're dying on the bind. And that's because if the phone feels like it's £3,000, I don't care how much you're dying to be successful, you're not going to pick up the phone and you're not going to do the work you had to do. So there was nothing happening in the company to help these people over the things that were getting in the way. And I started learning about that. I started learning about coaching, I started handing coaching and the company and I basically decided that this wasn't really what they wanted. And so I decided to go out on my own. I went Back to being an agent. And I wanted in the insurance and investment industry. If you want to open another business besides the one working for the company, you need to get the company's permission. And I wanted to open a coaching practice. Company said no. And so I said, guys, it's really been nice to meet you. I appreciate the time we had together. And I went on my own. It was a little bit scary because I didn't have a base or anything to work with. Three of my original clients were guys in the financial service industry. They're wholesalers. One guy, we took his unit from 50 million to 100 million. One guy, he was 42 out of 52 in his zone. And he became number two that year. And the third guy never hit all of his bonuses. End of December, September. So I was doing something right. And slowly it emerged and it got more to other kinds of businesses to get stuff done. And that brings us up to the practice I've been doing now since 2005.

And what's the name of your business now?

Blue Mountain Business Coaching.

Okay. So through the experiences that you had in.

Running your own business, being part of a big organization, you learned to some secrets that you share with people that's helped them do even better.

Yes.

How much of that came from being a rabbi?

There's a lot of things that came from being a rabbi, actually. Being able to listen to people is an unbelievable skill that most people never learn speaking to somebody. They're too busy thinking about.

What am I going to say next? As opposed to listening to what the person's really saying. And when you sit back and you can really listen, you, you, you have really incredible things start to happen when you can listen and hear them and they feel heard and they feel understood. And then you give them a little bit of a. An idea, an insight, a thought of where they might be able to do things differently and they're willing to do it. And you help create some type of accountability system. Really, really powerful. And people love it. And that's what happens.

So is there a secret or a technique or a process that you were taught on how to listen?

It was a lot of practice. You know, Mark Twain once said a great has a great line. He says, success comes from experience. For a second, Success comes from making good decisions, and good decisions comes from experience, and experience comes from making bad decisions.

And so it's a little bit of trial and error. You know, you spend time and you see, well, that really something special happened there. I wonder what happened there. And you start seeing that your ability to really understand somebody else gives you an leg up. And now, honestly, the fact that I lived in Holland for three years was very instrumental in that. Because in Holland I was the odd guy out, you know what I mean? I was the guy that was not part of the regular society. So I had to stop for a minute and say, okay, let me put in perspective where somebody else is coming from. That wasn't the same as me coming from Midwest America.

Yeah. So you had to learn those skills along the way. And are there other skills that you learned from being a rabbi that you've incorporated into your coaching?

I think there's a certain amount of looking at things in different ways, being able to notice things, being able to tweak things, being able to say, well, maybe that's not the right way. The studying jurisprudence of the Talmud is extremely sharpening on the mind. And so you're able to see things or ask things in different ways. It's very analytical. I will tell you another set of skills I really wanted to wasn't from the rabbiing so much as coaching is. I. I'm never afraid to bring up something that's important for a person to hear. I don't care how uncomfortable it is. One of the things that I've learned, it's funny, in the early days of coaching, if I would see something dramatic on somebody and want to tell them, I would hold back because let's wait and see. If you become a client, I don't want to ruin it. And that was wrong because I wasn't serving them properly. Instead, I stepped right in. I serve my client even if they're not a client yet. If they don't want to become a client, that's good news for me because they wouldn't have made a good client. What I found happens is when I ask that real question upfront in the first meeting, that's usually more endearing for them. I've just found a way to do it. It's very powerful. And what I say is, I have something really uncomfortable to share with you. And it's going to be uncomfortable to you, for you to hear, it's now a good time. And when you ask that question and they say yes, they've invited you to come have a discussion. So you don't, you don't go in there like a sledgehammer or a bull in a china shop. You still try to be somewhat diplomatic with how you say it. But you, you bring up the real thing to them to think about and they stop think about it and change happens.

Sometimes people do things, they don't even realize they're doing it. It's just become the habit for so long. And when you can, in a slow way kind of or an easy way, make it easy for them to make.

Their change magic happen, I love it.

So for those of you that are listening, Steve's why, like we talked about, is to contribute to a greater cause, right. Add value, have an impact in the lives of others. How he does that is by making sense of the complex and challenging, solving problems that ultimately what he brings are outside the box solutions. Not typical, not traditional. And how did that feel to you, Steve?

You mean when, when I, when I saw the report from the Y or just in general, how does that go in life?

How does that feel for you right now as we bring that up? Does that seem.

Yeah, that's really what it's all about because, you know, every single person's different. And when you have, you know, I love the story about the tailor who a guy goes to pick up a suit from the tailor and he tries in the suit and he looks at the two arms and he says, they're not the same length. The tailor says, well, I have to stand like this. He says, okay, I stand like this. But now look at the back. He said, well, you got to pull this back a little bit. And he said, okay, now that's wrong. And he goes like this. Taylor says, look, it fits perfect. And the guy's walking down the street like this. Two guys across the street look at him say, look at that poor guy. And the other guy says, yeah, but he's got a great tailor.

So what happens is we live in a world where everything is a tailor made. This will fit you off the rack. Just take it. You don't even need an alteration. Nothing to do with you. Just go, use my system. I'm the guru and I got it. And it's not really like that. It's not taking into account how you're different and what your things are. And I think that that's really what it's all about, at least for sure. On a coaching perspective, when we speak to people about what, what to do to get to the next level, to make things different, to do things differently, you got to take the whole situation into account. And if you take that whole situation account, it's not going to be off the rack solution. Now, it might be the same solution other people have used, but that's not why. It's because that was the right solution for them.

So let's talk for a minute about the coaching that you do. And I, and I assume you talk about this in your upcoming book, Ignite. So let's talk about that. What's. Tell us the title again and what's the subtitle, and let's dive a little bit into that.

Yeah, the title of the book is Ignite, and the subtitle is Fueling world class performance. Even if your employees are not yet world class. Class.

Important word you use there. There's one word in there that was very important.

Few yet. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Because everyone could have world class employees. You know, here's the truth. The truth is for the mo. Look, there are some lousy people in the world, but for the most part, people come and do a job. They want to do a good job, they want to be satisfied, they want to like what they're doing, and they want to get do something that means something. And unfortunately, a lot of business owners have come to the conclusion or been taught, you know, beans will continue till morale gets better. And that's not the case. And one of the things about my book is I've come to the conclusion that the number one thing that causes somebody to be successful is confidence.

And if their confidence is good, they can go into great things. Now, it's really an interesting catch 22 because it's a very big mistake in the world. They think confidence is something you get while you're sitting in your chair humming Kumbaya, getting ready to go do something that's difficult. And the truth is, confidence comes after you went out and you did the thing that was difficult, and you get results from it. And so how do we help our employees, for that matter, our children or our students increase their confidence by taking on challenges, taking rough action, uncomfortable action, and getting results so they become more confident, more powerful people. And the book is really. First section of the book is what is confidence? Where does it come from? Second section of the book is what gets in the way. How do we lose it? Because every baby in the world is born confident. Did you ever see a baby try to learn to walk? And falls down a thousand times, and he still gets up and keeps going until he finally learns it. If we were to learn how to walk when we're 20 years old, most of us would crawl into meetings today and there'd be some guy that's running the show as the guy that pushed himself off and, you know, powered through to be a walker. And so what happened? Why does, why does everybody lose that confidence that every little baby Has. And then finally the third section is the really powerful part is what do you as a manager do to help your employee increase their confidence so they do something. So think of it this way. My vision for a company is when you have employees come in, you get to know them and you go through some of the things that I speak about to get to know them and what they really need and want, get their buy in and they take upon themselves a challenge. And you're there rooting them and helping them and encouraging them. When they take actions to make that challenge happen, they get results. And now you celebrate those results. What happens is these people get very excited and they're ready to go take on a new challenge. So now you have this system and the whole, whole company ends up working in that system. So if you think about it for a minute, you have a scenario where you have a company of everybody taking on things that are uncomfortable and difficult and they do it once a quarter and they're constantly increasing because of it. So how do you look at your employers that when you're doing that, how do you look at the other people in your business? How do you look at yourself when that's what your business is doing? And I believe that when businesses get the reputation that's what they're doing for their employees, there's going to be a lot of employees standing out the door around the corner because they want all those personal soft benefits that are not money and not health care and not 401k. But it's about personal development.

I love that. How do you. So what I think I heard was.

In order to develop confidence, help put people in challenging positions where they, you know, stretch themselves and then encourage them along the way.

Exactly correct.

And when you encourage them, how do you encourage somebody when they're not getting the result that you want?

Great question. So let me back up one step. First, if you don't mind, Gary, that is. We have to understand something very fundamental. Courage and fear are not opposites. A lot of people think either you're courageous, you're fearful, you're not. Both. That's the biggest mistake in the world. Because a person does not need courage unless he's fearful. If you're not fearful, there's no reason. Of course you're courageous. Big deal. That's not called courageous, that's called living life. When something gets difficult and scary and fearful, that's when it's time to put on the courage pants and go do what you have to do even though the pants are wet. Right so, so, so that's the first thing is, is courage. The second thing is there's a very important word you mentioned there and that's encourage. You would encourage means to give somebody else some of your courage when they don't have enough.

So somebody's trying to do something and they're, they're, they're getting a little bit freaked out because they're afraid or they're, they're not think they're going to do it. So if you can help them do that, then you're helping get it. Now there's times that people are not going to be, might not be able to. You need to bring the challenge down a little bit because it's too far for them to shoot for it this time. But very often it's just a matter of somebody being there. One of the interesting things, if you go on YouTube and watch people that do bungee jumping for the first time, there's 10 guys around them, they're all getting a bunch of jump. This guy's doing it for the first time and they start counting down. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, and finally 1, he jumps. I believe the 50% of those people would never jump if they didn't have the other nine guys. That's what encourages and knowing that this celebration, that when you finally do it, there's going to be people that are going to make a big deal about it. You know, a lot of people think when somebody wins, you give them a compliment. So Johnny comes home with a 99 on his math test. And dad says, johnny, good job. That's almost a compliment, let alone a celebration. But if that says, hey, Johnny, I know you struggled in math for a long time. I saw the last couple of weeks you've been hitting the books and working really hard and it paid off. You got a 99 test. I'm really proud to be your father. Can we go get some ice cream together to celebrate? What does that do for the kid versus just a good job, Johnny? And so it's, it's a three point thing. You have to inspire the challenge. Inspires again, a very important word. Because most people think in business about motivating and motivation means I want you to do things I want you to do for my reasons. And inspiration is I want you to do things that you want to do for your business. And the difference between those things. So now if you have a manager or business owner who is inspiring the challenges, encouraging the effort and celebrating the results, you have a, a, an environment. It's very powerful to Help people move along. You know, encouragement does is not always. I would say that Lou Holtz was a great encourager and normally think about encourage. You think about that soft grandfatherly touch on the arm. But that wasn't Lou Holtz was. And I, I have no question. 34 years of players, if you want to ask them, how would you describe Lou Holtz? Nobody, not one of them would say he's a nice old man. But if you ask a second follow up question, did you ever see a softer side of coach? 100% would say, yeah, you know, this time my dad got sick, he was there for me. Or this time or that time or the third time, whatever it was there would be very. Absolutely. I think you'd be surprised at how many places he was that soft guy. And so here's the same thing here. Guy takes on a challenge. So part of is an encouraging. Just come on, you can do it. I know you can do it. Part of it is also, look, this is what you said you want to do. Is that true or not really. Let's create a little accountability and help them get over the stone because they're increasing their own, their own inner drive. Those are both true.

I know the title for your next book.

Yeah.

How to Encourage.

So really that's what the whole third part of the book is about is how do we make this all happen? The original title for the book was the Confidence Creator.

The reason I changed it is because this book was written for business owners, because of my business. And I realized that most business owners don't go to sleep at night thinking how do I help my employees get more confidence?

And so it wouldn't really hit the same way. But they do go to sleep at night wondering how do they get better performance?

And this is the way to better performance. I think I probably will have a follow up book on this called the Confidence Architect. For parents and teachers.

Two thirds of the book will be mostly the same. The third one will be okay. Now let's take this that kids and students as opposed to, as opposed to employees.

There's a lot to be said for knowing what to say 100%. Without knowing what to say, it's hard to say it and have confidence saying it. You know, have confidence. Encouraging when you're not sure exactly what to say. I mean I can see myself struggling with that.

You know, I think that depends a lot on the relationship. And somebody that you're not close with or you haven't developed a relationship, it's a lot harder than somebody you do Number one. Number two, I have in the appendix of the book, I have about 17 or 18 distinctions. And distinctions I believe are hugely important because you make a good distinction. It changes how you think and how you work. So for example.

One of my big distinctions, the difference between pleasing and serving.

When I'm pleasing, I want people to like me. That's going to have me showing up in a certain way.

When I'm serving, I'm not focused on me and how I'm feeling and how they're treating me. I'm focused on what's the very best thing for them. Whether it feels good to me or not.

Or them.

Yes. And when you get into surveying and they realize you're in their corner rooting for them and what you're saying for them is to really help them, it's not difficult to figure out what to say.

You might ask a question, you might hit a nerve, you hit a nerve and they hit the ceiling and bring them back down the ceiling and say, okay, what was that all about?

So you have a team member or an employee that, you know, has all the skills, all the talent, all the ability, but just doesn't seem to be getting it.

How do you handle that? Because, you know, I can think back to many situations along my.

Career as a dentist and at the Y student where just the results were not happening. And I'm sure a big part of that had to be me, you know, as the leader.

So the answer is yes or no. And in the insurance industry, for example, 25% of the people go and make it.

And the problem is they have set up the situation this and by the way, not just New York Life, this is all the companies, they don't really, they speak a lot about wanting higher retention rates, but they don't because it would mess up their business model if they got that's number one. And number two is they compensate managers by how long the guy is sitting there. So if you got a guy coming on a manager doesn't want to start prodding and doing things that could really help the person, let them stand the vine until they die. Well, meanwhile they've gone through their savings, their wife is really ticked off with them, their self esteem is in the, in the gutter. And instead of.

First month, okay, let's get the plan together and let's work a second month, guys. Not working. What do we have to do to make it worth third month is still not working. And what this is probably not the right business for you. And that's the way of serving Them and they get out, they still have their dignity, still have the family, they still have hopefully some savings left. They can go on and do something. But when you let them sit there for nine months and the manager is trying to be pleasing because he wants them to love them, he's not trying to bring the real value to him. He's not. He's not, you know, creating the accountability, creating the things you need to know. So that guy's going to die in the riot. Whereas if you see it's not working, you got to bring it up and be kind.

Again. Another distinction I use is between nice and kind. And what's the difference? I remember once I was in the. I was a manager in New York life and. And I went to the restroom and having nasty or something because there was some dirt on my tie. This real gregarious Italian guy comes over and he says, hey, Steve, you got some snot in your tie. And I look down and it was very uncomfortable. And of course I went to clean it off and he says, you know, I know it's uncomfortable. It was uncomfortable for me to tell you, but I care about you enough to tell you. And I don't want to be one of those nice people who will see it but won't say anything and let another thousand people see it because I didn't care about it. And when you really care about somebody and you know, you have that, I'm going to even use the L word, the love word, because that is part of what it is. Do you really care about somebody? You want them to be successful, you're going to help them be successful? I would rather be a manager that took a guy in and helped him and pressed him hard till he really got it and created a beautiful income for his family and have really. Just stay away from me because I'm a rough guy and to be this sweetheart that allowed him to dine on the vine. And that's really about pleasing and serving.

Yeah.

When you get the distinction and you understand what you're really doing for the person. And again, I'm not going to say this is what I need you to do. I'm going to say, what do you want to do? And let's make a program to get that happen. How much money do you want to make? What do you want to have your lifestyle look like? Let's find a way to make that happen inside the business so that you can grow and be what you want to be and who you want to be and be who you want to be to Your family, and therefore. And then I have never. I never. I never have awkwardness with what to say at that point. We had that discussion up front.

Yeah. That's awesome, Steve. I can tell your book's got a lot of great stuff in it that you've learned over the years, and it just. It just, you know, kind of feels right. So if there are people that are, you know, actually before this, what's the best piece of advice you've ever been given? Or maybe the best piece of advice you've ever given?

That's a really hard one, because there's so many things to pick from, but I. I would say the number one one that I would push to the top. It's done. Is better than perfect.

Every time we try to do something, we want to get it perfect. And guess what? It's never perfect. And if you keep waiting till perfect to get it out, I don't care if it's you putting out.

A new guy comes into the insurance business. The guy who's like, I got to get the pitch right. I got to get the pitch right, and I got to get the pitch right. I could take a second guy that says, okay, got a good enough bitch. And he goes. Knocks on 60 doors a day and says, listen, I sell life insurance. You don't want to buy any, do you? Which is about the worst pitch you could do. He'll make two sales a day in $60. But each time he does it, the pitch will get better, and the pitch will get better, and the pitch will get better. And so, really, when it comes to output, it's almost to the point, and I'm a little careful in saying this because I don't want to be misunderstood. Quantity will surpass quality. Because if you're working on quality, you know, there's a famous story, I bring this down in the book also, about somebody who was in the ceramics class, and he came in the first day of school, and he split the two sides into side A and B. Side A, you have to work on one project for the year. You make it as good as you can, as perfect, and the other one, you're going to be graded not on the project, but on the pounds of ceramic you produce. £50 is an A, £40 of the B, £30 of the C, and so on. At the end of the year, he brought some judges in, and they pulled the 10 best pieces for the judges to decide who was the best ceramics guy. And all 10 came from section B because they went and did it and learned from it and did it again. Learn from it. Did it again and learn from it. Did it again from one for it. And we did something I call the adult method of learning, which is if I try it twice or three times, it doesn't go perfectly, then I give up. And you have to be lousy at anything before you're good. So understanding that, that it's good to be lousy because that's the only way you're gonna ever get to good and done is better than perfect. I think those are probably the most important lessons because people kind of clam up and they close down because they're afraid that someone's gonna say something that's gonna look funny. It's not gonna be great, it's not gonna be perfect, when really it doesn't have to be this. It's gonna be you.

Yeah. So, Steve, if there are people that are listening that want to connect with you, want to work with you, want to learn more about your book, what's the best way for them to connect with you?

So LinkedIn is probably the best way. And they can either put my name in it or it's LinkedIn. I think it's slash your dash business dash coach.

You know, I don't even know if I pronounced your last name correctly, so you better spell it out for him.

Spring L, O V E R. Aha.

I wasn't sure if it's lover or lover.

No, no problem. I get that all the time. And so LinkedIn is a great place. Anybody who would like to email me, it's Steve at Blue Mountain business coaching.com so long one. I'm really sorry I didn't say goodbye that when I created it. Blue mountain business coaching.com and they can email there. It will be on Amazon.

And you're special, you know, like, who is it that you're wanting to connect with you?

So really, anybody wants help in this area, but the people that I really serve from a business perspective, as business owners or organizational managers that have teams that are not making it. So if you hear somebody say, I feel like I'm hurting cats, or I don't know what I need to do to get my guys to perform, that's the guy that honesty.

Perfect. Steve, thank you so much for being here today. I enjoyed hearing all about this. Very enlightening. Look forward to seeing your book and staying in touch.

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to why institute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.