The Moments That Shape Great Leaders | With Lee Brower | Founder’s Office™ Lunch & Learn

Well, hi there. Tom Powell here at Lunch and Learn, and we are coming to you from 88 Studios, which if you've watched any of our videos recently out on the mountain skiing with Olympic athletes and where we're doing the Lift Pitch Tahoe, they're the group that makes awesome content or makes— takes our awesome content, I guess, and makes it look really good, including they make us look good, right? So, you know, and so we thought because we have such an amazing guest today that we would go to their studios and sit in here. Someone didn't mention to me that I actually should wear pants because this was going to be—

and then explain, you have pants on, they're just shorter than regular.

They're just shorts. Exactly. And then what they also recognized was that even if they asked me to wear pants, I probably wouldn't have anyway. So that's all good.

You chose shoes today, though.

I did wear shoes. I did wear shoes.

So, of course, this is a pantless podcast or a pantless lunch.

Hey, pants. No, no pants. No problem.

So, of course, should I stand up and show them what I have on?

Maybe not. So, so joining me is, of course, Jackie Kuiper, who brings in our legal perspective and our team building and our intellectual property as our general counsel, and Candace, who runs our family office and has been with me for a lifetime. At least her lifetime. Not all of my life, but it's been a long time. So, and myself. And joining us is just an amazing, great friend of mine, and I feel so blessed to have this person in my life for a quarter of a century, uh, maybe a little longer than that. And I was, I was talking it, and I started with this, and it had to do with this rock. And this rock, I'm not even going to tell you about it, but I'm going to let our guest today Mr. Lee Brower. Now, Lee Brower could go without introduction, but a little bit of things about him. Could you imagine doing work around the world, making impacts that hits not just dozens, not just hundreds, but thousands of people that pay it forward all the time? And we're talking about working with Coach Wooden and having these impact moments, and it's an endless list. So, our biggest challenge today is not going to be, How do we have interesting conversations for 40 minutes? It's how do we keep it to only 40 minutes? Because this could literally be a 4-day podcast. And Lee and I sometimes end up on that. So joining me today and joining us today is just our great friend Lee Brower coming to us with gratitude behind his head. Let's start right there. Lee Brower, so grateful to have you join us.

It's my pleasure, Tom. It really is. It's an honor. It's an honor. And thank you for everything you just said. And I could say boomerang right back at you. You know, I think the respect I have for you, your team, and I, and the impact that you're making, you know, and, uh, isn't it all about impact when you really stop and think about it? You know, it is.

You know, I was, I was just tell, as we were having our conversation, because we have our pre-show, I was talking about a room that I was in this last week, and there was a number of financial planners in there, a number mostly entrepreneurs, and even the financial planners consider themselves entrepreneurs, and they were talking about family offices today. And the point of the family office that this room saw was that family offices are about retaining the founder's wealth that they created for generations to come. And I raised my hand and I said, you know what? That's actually not what our family office has been about. And our family office has been around for quite a while. I said, our family office is about how do we make impact? So we may make or lose money at different times. That's not how we measure our success. We measure our success by who are we making an impact on out there. And that's a different approach. And so that was how I led into there. So, Lee, tell me about making impact and why as founders, that's really the drive, not just about building a big company.

All right. Well, you asked me first about the rock. So let me get that. We're going to go boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay. So I think this is very— this is tough for me to talk about. It's not But I have to tell you, you have pivot points in your life. And when you really look at it, I ask your audiences, can you think of an experience that you've ever had, ever, ever, that you can't learn from sooner or later? I've yet to have anybody say yes. Okay? They, after they think about it, they say, whoa. So in some respects, what we're living in is a perfect school, albeit with imperfect students. I may just throw out another question. Does God waste experiences? No, we do. He doesn't. So as a leader, if I'm running a business, running a family, it's gonna be based on experiences and what I can learn from 'em. And then what I learn from them, how do I share them? And there was a time, well, going back probably 30 years now, that was, maybe not quite 30, 25 anyway, uh, where I was going through a tough time, and I won't get into the details of it personally, professionally. And we have a wonderful, lovely daughter that is just, uh, she's beautiful, and she— but she was born addicted. She— we, we were able to adopt her when she was 2 days old, and adoption means nothing to us. What it, what it means is this child is ours. We totally forget the word adoption. And, um, so this— bless her heart, she was going through a tough time. And, um, and she didn't know, but I was going through a tough time. And so we're putting her in rehab. Now, when you really think about it, is guilt a bad thing or is it a good thing? You know, imagine a world without guilt. I look at some of the atrocities that I see around the world, and And I don't know how they could do what they do if they, if they had guilt. So guilt is really kind of an important thing. What's bad is when guilt turns to shame, because shame is where you move into where you, instead of feeling bad about something you've done or not done, you're starting to feel bad about who you are. That's a bad place. And at some time I could talk to you about all the steps I take every day to make sure I don't go into that place.

Okay.

But in that moment I was near that, but my daughter was especially in it. She was crying. Her nickname since she was 12 years old, 13, has been Mariposa. It was given to her by a group. She was on an adventure trip and they said, you're just like a butterfly. Yeah. And so I was sitting there looking at her and I first said, sweetheart, if you go through this experience, when you go through this experience, are you gonna be better or worse when you come out the other side? And she goes, I'm going to be better, Dad. I said, okay, by allowing me to go through this with you, I'm going to be, I'm not going to be right here, but I'm going to be going through with you. Am I going to become better or worse from going through this experience? And she says, yeah, better. I hope too. I said, so if you're going to get better and I'm going to get better, let's get on with it. And I said to her, I said, you've been known as Mariposa. You've known the struggle of the caterpillar. You've known the loneliness of the cocoon. It's time for you to fly like the butterfly. Hugged her, kissed her, and off I went. We had a place at the beach, Newport Coast, which just in this last storm wiped out the beachfront on where we— the exact spot where I went to. But, uh, I was walking along and I was not in a good mood. I was not in a good mood. I was picking up rocks and throwing them hard as I could into the water. And I went— it was about dark— and I went to go like this, and I looked at this rock, and on it was the perfect emblem of a butterfly. I literally dropped to my knees, and, um, it just dawned on me— well, this whole side story— but anyway, in that moment I said, I'm done. I am done feeling sorry for myself. I am I'm done doing this. I am back. I'm 100%. I'm going to fly like a butterfly. And, uh, so I went back up to the room, packaged it up, FedExed it to her, wrote her a note of what I'd said the night before, and she carried it through all those troubles. Now, from that moment on, I have— you won't find me without a rock in my pocket. I've got rocks that people have sent me from where, um, you know, biblical rocks that came from different areas, like David and Goliath. You know, somebody got me a rock from the David, where David and Goliath was something. So people have brought me these different rocks and different things as they go along. And so it's been a real blessing to me. Every morning when I wake up in the morning, it's sitting on my wallet. So I got, I get to see it every time and I grab it and I squeeze it and I talk to myself in second or third person, by the way, When you say, I am great, like Tony Robbins and everybody wants you to say, your subconscious mind's going, that's not what you said a few minutes ago. Your subconscious mind will accept you are great. So I actually look in the mirror and I say, Lee Brower, I love you. God loves you. Grab the rock and I said, go out and make it a great day. And, um, so we've carried that out and I got thinking the other day about where this journey has led me from that point on. I started looking at doors that have been opened up. I would not have been in the movie The Secret had I not shared a story about a gratitude rock. Not the— it emanated from Natalie, but it was another story that happened as a result of it.

How many people saw The Secret?

They estimate around 100 million or more.

Impact alone from that?

I have been in airports in Santiago, Chile. I've been in Mexico. I've been in London where people have come up and recognized me. And I'm not as— I have a 10-minute part, okay, maybe in the movie where they just excerpted something that I was speaking about and told a story. But it's impacted so many people more, but mostly me. What I'm learning from this is these experiences determine who we are if we capture them.

Yeah.

And then you have to reflect upon them. I mean, I think, you know, I was smuggled into Venezuela. Do you know why? Because they wanted to have a discussion, the opposition, the person that owned the newspaper who's now been exiled. But, you know, the, we, they were trying to figure out how do we introduce more gratitude into our country? You know, when everybody's down and everybody's sad. So I mean, imagine brainstorming with these leaders on something that Why was I chosen? I have no idea because I wouldn't have been in that moment when I was there. I wasn't the most grateful person in the world, but it's a matter of what we learn from it. And I think this is where leadership has a big advantage. Great leaders, great leaders really focus more, as much on building themselves as they do on building a company. We tend to get so focused there.

Let's stop there, Lee, for just a second. So a lot of our viewers, some of them have made a ton of money and are trying to figure out what they do now as their next step, right? Because the making the money sometimes is really easy. When you don't have any money, it seems like it's really hard a lot of times, but it's the focus on that at different times. But it's also when they don't have money, there are a lot of founders that I find are like, no, I'll do that when I make a lot of money. And you and I've had, I don't know, hundreds of conversations within this that the space to be doing it is when you have no money. And showing it and acting somewhat as though you do have it, not as a fake, but it's just being understanding that the universe provides. And so that if you can tithe when you have a dollar and you take $0.10 and tithe it, then all of a sudden what ends up happening is your brain, your consciousness, the universe starts saying, look, we need to give you then $2 or $10 or $1 million or $100 million, however that works. That's the value of gratitude, even though if you do it with the intent of I'm going to get more because I'm grateful, that doesn't seem to work.

No, there's levels of gratitude. Okay. Let me just kind of give you the levels and then I can tell you another story about how that pivot, pivot on it again, where it changed. And if you understand the word pivot, I put it, if you look at bias, everybody lives off bias. B-I, and I put pivot, a big P between the I and the A. And so if you put that, that's bypass. Okay? I wanna bypass bias. Okay? So I have a big P pivot.

All right?

So looking at gratitude, gratitude has been something that I have been studied and I've identified 4 distinct levels of gratitude. The lowest level of gratitude that we all go in, I go into it, is the level of ungratefulness. Now gratitude unexpressed is ingratitude perceived. So I may running a company may, I know I appreciate them. I mean, I don't know what I'd do without them, but gratitude unexpressed is ingratitude perceived. So that's the lowest level. So that just reminds me that get out of that level, look around, who can I thank today? There's a whole discussion we can have around empowering questions, but the way your brain works with empowering questions. But who could I, who could I see today that I wouldn't normally see and express gratitude to? Okay? So you get a motivation from that. Second level is social gratitude. That's what your mom told you. Make sure you say please and thank you. They don't ever explain to say why. Okay? Why you're grateful. But that would take it to another level because the next level is appreciation. The challenge with please and thank you, thank you for some people means we're done with you. Thank you. That means get outta line, get over here, get outta the way. You know what I mean? It doesn't mean—

It doesn't mean you're excused, right? Thank you. Just you're excused.

Go.

You know what I mean? But when we use properly, it's very, very powerful and done from sincerity. It's done in, you know, in gratitude. The next level is appreciative gratitude. Appreciative gratitude is where you, you know, just the word appreciation means to raise in value. So if I'm grateful for this cup here is raised in value for me by just acknowledging that I appreciate it. Because man, I'm thirsty and I can drink and it does all these wonderful things for me. But there's a couple of enemies to the appreciative gratitude. One is comparison. Comparison's the thief of joy. Okay? So when you compare something, then you're going, the way you do it, have you ever said to one of your kids or you remember being told, You know, I got a broken arm. Well, look at so-and-so, they don't have an arm. You should be grateful. Okay? We put you in that comparison. Say we're constantly comparing ourselves. You should be grateful. You're making more money than 98% of the, why are you complaining about that? You know what I mean? So people are telling us to be grateful, but they're using comparison as a way to make you do it. That's not authentic gratitude. The other is, Expectation. Have you ever said, uh, that's the last time I'm doing that for that person?

Yeah, right.

And why'd you do it in the first—

yeah, it's, it's like a, it's like an adding a but to your thank you. Thank you, but—

yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. I mean, but you've done something for somebody and you say, uh, that's the last time I'm gonna do that do something for them. But why'd you do it in the first place? Who'd you do it for in the first place? If you're judging it by how you, what you expected them to do, it's not authentic gratitude.

Yeah.

So we, if we understand that, then it can raise us to the highest level of gratitude. And the highest level of gratitude is where we can be grateful in regardless of our circumstances, regardless of our circumstances, that we can be grateful in. And that requires no expectation and no comparison. We're just grateful because. We started a tradition in our family called Legacy Breakfast. Our son came home one day and he said, I was going to McDonald's. I got up there paying, the car behind me paid for it. I said, how'd that feel? It was awesome, man. I tried to pay for the car behind me and, you know, and it was just, he said, but he said they had too big of an order. I said, okay. You know, but the next time we were at Cracker Barrel, I said, let's pick somebody out here and let's buy their breakfast. And there had to be a lady sitting there with about 5 kids and they were the noisiest, rowdiest kids. And I heard one of them say, well, that's because you're just a foster kid. And I'm thinking, oh my gosh. So I said, let's buy their meal. And my, one of a couple of my kids, their meal? Yeah, their meal. And so we quietly told the waitress and we paid, we, and we, and Cracker Barrel, you can walk out and you, you don't have to see what they, how they reacted. So we've developed this tradition called Legacy Breakfast that we've probably done hundreds, maybe thousands of Legacy Breakfasts over the years. And we've yet to see anybody actually receive it because we want to do it without any expectation. I even took my granddaughters recently and they said, can we, Papa, can't we peek in and we just wanna see what they do. No, no. And I wanted to, candidly, you know, but you got to teach them. You do it because it's in gratitude. You can be, you don't have to wait for the rainbow to enjoy the rain.

So, so, Lee, we've got so few time, so little time on this one. I want to get through a handful of things. One, can we talk about Strategic Coach for a bit, but more so, can we talk about what you're doing with Strategic Coach but outside of Strategic Coach too? Because these founders, you have so many lessons and so many things, but more importantly, you create tools of how they implement it. So it's not just you read a book and then you got to figure out what to do next. You actually create these things, your positive generational impact and your, your Brower Quadrant. And these are things outside of what Dan Sullivan, which these, you know, many of our listeners know that I talk about Dan Sullivan and Coach a lot, but you are the quintessential person in many ways of what coach embodies in don't just follow what somebody else says, you create your own. So how, how does that work? Maybe, maybe talk through that process.

I think if you really look at Strategic Coach, the, what they do is they change the way you think. Okay. It's all thinking tools. Some of the people that go there, they might drop out because I'm not using all the tools. And then that's stupid. Okay? Because if you really understand what's going on, you're thinking differently. If you go someplace and you start asking a question you've never asked before, your life's changed. And had you not been there, you wouldn't have gotten it.

Well, and then you make incredible impact without even attempting to, because when you change the reaction because you're thinking differently, you change the interaction.

Correct.

Right. And so now it actually causes the other people to think, oh, I haven't thought about it that way. It doesn't always work, but it certainly can change what's going on.

Well, there's a law of precession, and then I'll, I'll do it very quickly. The law of precession is an actual physical law, okay? The law of precession says when an object is acted upon by another object in action, like, so let's just say gyroscope, I push it in this direction, it reacts at at a 90-degree angle. Okay. So when a bee leaves the hive to go to a flower, what does it go to get? What will most people answer if I say, if a bee leaves the hive to go to a flower, what does it get? What do most people say? Pollen.

Yeah. Most people say pollen, but that's, that's not what it gets. Right.

Most people say pollen. The bee has no knowledge of pollen. No, like it's there to get nectar and get it back to the queen. But the bigger effect is that it pollinates the, the, its leaves, its feet, and its wings catch the pollen and pollinate the rooted botanicals of the world. When Kennedy said, let's put a man on the moon and bring him home, that's nectar. But think about the pollen. Okay? The pollen is all the other things that are out there. If you're not asking the right questions, if you're not showing up, and if you're not asking the right questions, you'll never see the pollen. You're going to get nectar, but it's the pollen that turns out to be the greater thing that makes it happen. And so the way I look at Strategic Coach, I've been as a participant in Strategic Coach, I've been there since 1995.

Wow.

I've run many companies. I've put steel fabrication companies, I've been on the advisory board or actually actual board running them from to home, home healthcare. I mean, I've owned a number of different companies. I'm a serial entrepreneur. And, uh, my, uh, and what I enjoy most, quite frankly, is I wanna find the Jack Grauts of the world. I'm looking for the Jack Grauts, and those are the people I want to work with.

And I, you and I talk about Jack Graut a lot, like almost every time we get on a conversation, right?

Well, yeah, that's who I wanna, I aspire for that. I aspire to find the Jack. You're a Jack Graut. Okay. You are a Jack Graut, Thomas J. Powell. Jack Nicklaus only had one coach his entire life, was Jack Graup. Okay. And Jack Nicklaus said, I would never ask Jack Graup to hit a shot for me. That's my job. You've got people that say, I've never asked Thomas J. Powell to run my company for me. That's my job. But I couldn't do it without him. And that was what Jack Nicklaus said. I couldn't do it without him. Imagine if we could, you know, I break entrepreneurs into two very broad categories, thinking categories.

Okay.

Both are good. No, I'm not, they're not criticizing one or the other. Both are essential, not just good, but essential. You have the ones that have the, what I call the reservoir mindset. How much water can I get into this, my reservoir? How much shoreline can I get around my reservoir? Oh, look at that guy's boat. I want to have a boat bigger than that. And they're highly motivated. They're highly motivated. But what they don't have is they don't have a vision of what's even bigger than that. They're, they're just looking at what they want, not what they can become and what they can leave and create. So they're just focused on how do you get fish in a reservoir? You buy 'em. It's the only way you can get 'em. So if I buy big fish, I'm gonna have people come fish in my reservoir. But sooner or later, what happens to your reservoir? Okay? And so contrast that with a, a river mindset. Okay? River mindset's interested in flow. And when you're in flow, you automatically attract, you attract tributaries naturally, you attract spawning beds naturally, you attract wildlife naturally, flora naturally, and you're in flow. But you're also irrigating pastures, you're irrigating crops, you're creating electricity, It's what I call the arrows out mindset. It's not all about me. It's how do we shift that mindset out to be about others. And if— and until you do, until you do, you're going to be a reservoir. And that makes a big difference.

So, Lee, I don't know if I'd even shared this with you, but, uh, I, I knew you well before you knew me because I I did watch The Secret, but I revisited The Secret actually when one of my startups wasn't going well. It was, it was absolutely just shitting the bed. And, uh, I was in a dark spot, which I'm guessing somebody on this webinar today, someone, somebody attending has had a series of, of calls this morning that they— that were just total letdowns. They've got that pit in their stomach. They didn't sleep well last night. Um, and I revisited The Secret actually, because I was like, man, I got to get my mind right because my, my mind isn't right. And you were one of the people in The Secret that I really enjoyed listening to, and I realized gratitude was one of those things that I needed to emphasize, like I needed to focus on. One of the things I realized going through that though, gratitude was a muscle that I had to work on. It was actually not easy. Every ex— everything you said about the stages of gratitude, I actually had a hard time getting to like true appreciation, true value gratitude when I was in that dark moment. Um, it's— it was— it was hard because you would— I would be like, I'm grateful for this, but I don't have, you know, and it was that, it was that moment. So today's session, you know, we have it about these moments and adversity. And, you know, what should somebody like recognize in that moment? If they're in that moment, what can they do right now? Or maybe put in their back pocket for the next time they're in that moment? When you already talked about they're learning a lesson, they're living an educational moment. But what is the next thing they should be doing to get to that next stage of gratitude?

Well, there's a lot of things. If I was coaching you right now, okay, for example, I would first look at your language. Okay. You're throwing out the word, I need to. Yeah. Okay, that's a very needy word if you haven't felt it. And it actually disempowers you.

Yeah.

Because it develops a space between you and what you think where you're really at. You know what I mean? So I would, you know, there's a thing called empowering questions. What are empowering questions? Your subconscious mind cannot ignore a question. There was a study done, and I may not give you the exact bridge, but it was done with 3 universities. They repeated it, but they had groups broken down into 3 groups. And one, they gave them here do anagrams. You know what anagrams are, where you have the words with the letters? Okay. And they said, here, go and get as many words that they were in the same group. Two, they said, be Tony Robbins. I'm great. I'm the most fiercest guy. I can do anything. Give me the world, I'm gonna chew it up. Okay. Between those two groups, between those two groups, you would think that this group would've outperformed this group. They were the same. Group 3, they used positive interrogatories. Can I see good in here? Can I see multiple numbers in here? Can I see? And they just did questions. That group got almost 150% more words in the anagrams than the other 2 groups.

Wow.

So I start thinking about this. The first thing you want to eliminate is I need to. I've got to, I have to. Have a company that we worked with that I worked very, very closely with. And the president was asked, he took a 3-year sabbatical. It's the reason I was in there working. It was a big company. He left at $75 million, came back at $100 million. So I was like, yeah, we did good. We fired the CEO from there. But anyway, he came back and he was speaking and somebody says, what do you consider your success? And he said the letter E. And it was the letter E. Yeah. He says, when I was a young, young boy, I loved basketball. My buddies come over and said, let's go play basketball. My dad had a welding shop in the back and I had to take the trash out all the time. So they come over and says, Steve, let's go, let's go play basketball. And he goes, I can't, I gotta take out the trash. And his mom goes, Stephen, change that O to an E. I get to take out the trash? Yes, you get to take out the trash. There's a truck that'll pull right up to our house. You get it up there, they're gonna put it in that truck, they're gonna take it off, they're gonna take it someplace where you don't have to smell it and deal with it, touch it again. And how many million people would trade places for you, with you right now to be able to take out the trash? And I'm like, wow.

Wow.

And I was actually stuck on the freeway the next day and I started to complain and I said, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. How many people would trade places with me right now to sit in this car, in this freeway, on this doing? You know what I mean? So I move away from, and I'll give you one other example. I shared this one time in Strategic Coach, I paired everybody off, had them share something positive and everybody was, yeah, and the energy in the room just went here. Then I said, wait a second, why don't you share something that you wanna learn while you're here that'll be good for you. Then I heard him saying the got-to word, you know, well, I gotta find somebody to come in and take over my company. And one of them right behind me says, I gotta strengthen the relationship with my wife. I said, all right, the energy just went, boom. I said, stop. So we need to rephrase that. I had the study in mind. We need to rephrase this in the form of a question. So I used him as the example and we moved it to a question was, What can I do each day to strengthen relationship with my wife? Now you see your brain now is focusing on the solution, not the problem. Because when he says, I gotta strengthen relationship with my wife, the brain thinks, oh, the relationship sucks. I'll show you all the reasons why it sucks. So when she doesn't get up in the morning to have breakfast, it's going, see, this is why you need to strengthen the relationship.

So, so Lee, you know, you and I, lot of, lot of opportunities have come our way and a lot of great things. We've also had a lot of challenges that have happened throughout our existences because when you get off the step, I use that example of if you're a dog and you get off the step, you're going to have some experiences that may not feel that great, but they're always learning experiences. And I just want to tell you one that I just had. Actually, it was a while ago, but you made me just remember it. So, I was having a grumpy day. And I was down in my guest house where my office is, and I'm coming across because my trainer to swim in my 20-meter pool was coming to the house. And I'm walking across and I'm kind of grumpy, grumbling, whatever. And the guy who picks up the poop in the yard, right, is there. And he stops me and he says, right? So if you can picture, this is a crazy thing. So the estate's kind of a nice place that we have. It's a beautiful house. It's got a lot of wonderful things. And I'm still being grumpy in this beautiful place, right? And the guy who's picking up the poop says, "Mr. Powell, I just want to tell you, since I started with you, I've been able to build my business. I now have 12 employees, but yours is still the house that I come to because your house is just so beautiful. When I come here, it's like being in a park and I just enjoy it so much." And I talked to him for a minute and I find out how's business doing. I keep walking towards the pool and I'm like, I am such an ass. Because the guy that's cleaning up the poop in my yard from my dogs is more grateful about my house than I am at this exact moment in time. And it's those times because we, I think we also have to give ourselves grace that at times we need a reminder that it's like, oh my God, I can't, I can't believe it. It doesn't mean it's not hard. It doesn't mean we're not going through challenges. It doesn't mean you don't have loss of friends, loss of children, loss of money, loss of everything, health. Right. But it does, it is that.

Well, see what just happened. Okay. You got a payday in that moment. Okay. You got a payday in that moment and you got a boost of dopamine, adrenaline, something happened to you. We could call it a payday. You got a payday moment. Okay. And you took that and you, you, reason you didn't remember it is you put it on your desk, you put it then in your drawer and you didn't do anything with it. You didn't bank it, you didn't deposit it. Do you know what I'm saying? What you're doing now by sharing it, If you name it now, you give it a name, now it's got legs of its own and it'll outlive you. And you could be talking to your children, you could be talking to your employees and saying, you know, I had a, a dog poop moment, you know what I mean? But what, what was the guy's name? Do you know?

I think it's James. I'm not positive on that. I have to go back and look at that.

But I mean, a James moment, you know, I mean, but I like the poop moment because, you know, again, okay, the poop moment's good.

We've got grandchildren, so poop moments are always different than that. But, This is a poop moment.

Yeah, but the dragons still like the name poop. They think that's funny.

You made an important, I think, a really great point there, Lee, and you checked me on my language, and I could use more checks than anybody, or I get to, but I think it's easier to spot it in— do you find it's easier to spot it in other people's more than yours sometimes? Right? It's almost easier to see the opportunity in language when you're hearing it versus sometimes in your own internal voice?

I think, I think what she's saying is how often, how often does Lori poke you and say, Lee, you're not being real?

Yes.

Well, we have codes. Okay. We do have codes. Um, I'm gonna give you, first of all, I'm gonna give you 4 questions that I use, but, but let me tell you about the codes first of all. Okay. Um, Does the event determine the outcome? Yes or no?

No.

No.

Okay, so then what determines the outcome? Your attitude about it. Okay, how we react. Right now, when we react to the outcome, all right, what happens most of the time is it comes from our amygdala. The very simple example, driving down the freeway, we all have this, and somebody cuts over in front of you and we say something like that, idiot. You know what I mean? And that's reacting. That's not responding. That's reacting. It's coming from the amygdala. And we live life from the amygdala. Well, why? That's where all the animals live their life. The thing that, the thing that separates us from the animal kingdom is our prefrontal cortex. And so if you could say, uh, I mean, I'd give you some good examples, but it'd get political, so I better not. But if you could say, if you move into green R, I wonder what's going on in that person's mind that would cause them to do that. You see, that's green R. And so when you develop a language now in your family and your business, if you share that and you give each other permission to catch it, and are you red R right now or green R? Are you looking curious, curious, curious gratitude? Curious gratitude, you know, is the place that you want to be. Grateful curiosity. That's a better way of saying it. Grateful curiosity of thinking, you know, I don't have to be grateful for this experience. I could be grateful in.

Okay.

And that's what I, grateful curiosity. And so Red R, Green R is a way. So you can use that. Am I in Red R right now?

Yeah.

I mean, I was having a fit one time we were in Venice and we had booked a hotel through Marriott, one of their classic hotels. And we came in and a young man standing behind the desk all proper, you know, and I come in and I said who I was. He says, I'm sorry, sir, you canceled the reservation. I said, pardon? I did not. If I wouldn't be here if I canceled the reservation? No, sir. It's right here in the books. You canceled this afternoon. We don't have a room for you. Okay. Red R is just going, Yeah. Okay. This is like Lori does come up to me. She goes, green on her, green on her. So we worked our way out of it. You know, I stayed calm, stayed cool. We were able to get a room. We had to call Marriott and they had to call in. And then he still got me almost red after that. He says, yes. Okay, so we were able to find a room, but you only had one person on your reservation. So that took me to a whole other level. She's like, stay cool, stay cool.

But, uh, we just, we just dealt with Marriott in this kind of scenario.

Travel can get me right to red R real quick.

But see, now you have a way of talking about it. Yeah, you see what I'm saying? You know what a poop moment is now. Now you— we could be in a group, everybody that heard this, okay? And you, all you'd have to say is, is this a poop moment? And everybody would really understand it. Oh yeah, everybody.

Because of you, I have named— I didn't name it the poop moment, but I have used that story a number of different times because it's how I remember about being grateful. Because, yeah, most— but the other thing, people would trade for my problems that I had in that moment. You know, probably millions of people would have probably traded me for my—

oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, exactly. But at the same time, you're developing— look, life's about choices. It's not about decisions. Yep. Okay. Life's about choices. So the closer we can get to the moment, choices only happen in the moment. Decisions happen in our past. And interesting thing, the word itself, decide, homicide, pesticide, et cetera, means to knock out, to cut off or kill. But if I say I'm gonna be in the best shape of my life and I'm gonna start working out, I decide I'm gonna be the best shape of my life. But at 5 o'clock in the morning when my alarm goes off, I don't know how we did that.

I don't know how we keep doing that.

Somehow something I'm doing with my hands. But at 5 o'clock in the morning when the alarm goes off, it's a choice. And what naming it allows you to make better choices. When you identify your company, now this is the other thing about company, going back to your question, when you're going through tough times, I think certain things, one, you should be more positive. I think that's a horrible statement. Puts you in the gap because you start comparing yourself immediately. I'm not positive, so I gotta do this and then that. No, no, don't do that. Move yourself into possibility. What's possible? Okay, we just had this event. What's possible? Yeah. Not what's probable. That's what AI can tell you. AI can tell you what's probable. What you can say as a human is what's possible. Hey, I can't do that. So you look at it and say, what did this teach? What did this experience teach me? So I go, what did this experience teach me? Then what principle did it reveal? And in your company, what's interesting, I could be in a room with 35 business owners, all entrepreneurs, highly successful, and I'll say, what are your values? And half of them have to go to the website to look them up.

Okay.

Values, in my opinion, are, are, they force you to be judgmental. They force your team, your employees to be judgmental. But yet every marketing company that comes in to, and by the way, throw the word marketing out. And there's a whole story. I was on a panel, international panel on that, and throw that out. That word should not even be used today. You have a Chief Engagement Officer, not a Chief Marketing Officer. Engaging is where you're interested. Marketing is where you're interesting and you wanna be interested. But see, see how I get off track. 4 questions.

You mentioned, you mentioned Strategic Coach. And they have these tools, but the tools aren't the thing. They're actually teaching you how to think differently.

Correct.

A lot of what you've been speaking about really is your perspective and how you've changed your own thinking over time. Do you know the story about the shoes or the metaphor about the shoes where if everyone put their shoes in a pile, you know, 100 people put their shoes in a pile, and you had to go back and pick a pair of shoes, but you get the life that goes with those shoes. Like 99.9% of people go, you choose your own shoes.

Yes.

Do you know this story or this?

Yeah, I can tell you a story about that if you'd like.

I would love that. Yeah.

So our son Nick, he had, uh, lived for 4 years with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma. Got it at age 18. We learned so much and continue to learn so much from the experiences because we documented them. They continue to teach us. You mentioned that story. There was a time when he was in such pain. He was, he was on, he had, they, because of the, he had a tumor that was up in here. So it became very tough as they're getting radiation and treatment. He couldn't eat. So he's taking fluids in, but then it's also killing tissue inside of there. And he was in really pain. At the same time, we had somebody that was in our Strategic Coach program that we had developed a relationship with, and Nick had actually met him. And he had been paralyzed from the waist down in an accident. And he was so positive and so good. And then his wife gets ovarian cancer. And so I told Nick the story about the shoes, okay? And so how everybody would take their own problem back. And my wife and I and Nick are sitting there. And he says, I wouldn't take mine back. And I'm like, oh, and I didn't know what to say. Yeah, because I knew how much he was going— I knew what he was going through, you know, I could understand it. And then he said, unless it meant that somebody else had to take mine, then I'd take mine back.

That's Nick though.

Wow. That's—

yeah. What— so take that, and you guys do so much good work. You've been doing for how many years now, uh, the, the fundraiser, uh, Wacky?

Well, since before Nick passed, so that was since 2000 and— he— 2008.

Yeah, I was gonna say it's got to be close to 20 years now.

Yeah, it's 2008.

But you— there's hardly a time that we have a conversation that Nick doesn't come into the conversation because it's the pay— the pay forward that Nick brought to you and brings to then so many tens of thousands of others has been just major.

Yeah.

Major.

Always make your learning greater than experience. And he's one, one of his first rules was be in gratitude. And then always have something good to look positive, to look forward to was number 2. And number 3 was have fun. And he put 'em on his shirts. That's what he, that's, that's, that was his 3 mottos to live by.

Topics that we often talk with founders is more like the mechanics of building a business and raising capital and building and protecting wealth. I would posit that your definition of wealth is likely not a standard definition of wealth. What is wealth to you?

Well, you know, I've worked, I started in the estate planning business, so I was seeing wealth, very, very affluent families from around the world. We had a former president and their family as clients. We had movie stars, we had different people. And the statistic that kept bothering me was 97% of family wealth never survives that third generation. So why are we doing all this work? And I really made an aggressive approach to really kind of figure it out. I interviewed different people and law firms and different things trying to figure out, is this what I really wanna be involved in? Is this really worth it? And I had an aha moment one morning. I got up, And you know how you get your ideas in the shower? You know, that just hit me and I was, I had my little TV and I was hearing it like that. You got, I can see you, you can see what I'm talking about. And I jumped out, wrote on a piece of paper. The next thing I'm on a plane sitting next to a lady whose husband was managing all the properties for Ted Turner. Okay. Just say his name. I don't think there's a problem with that in the Western United States. And she was from Jackson and she was telling me about how she really enjoyed her, her two girls. They had a, they had a, store that sold, you know, crafts that were made from the area and stuff like that. And she finally asked me what I do. Well, that was the 4 o'clock morning moment. Okay. When she asked me what I do, that was the 4 o'clock moment. And I pulled out a Dilton napkin. That's all I had, a piece of paper. And I said, well, I optimize wealth. You asked the question. So this is my, this is my aha when it happened. Okay. I optimize wealth. And she goes, well, how do you do that? And I said, well, when you hear the word wealth, what do you think of? And she says, well, real estate, obviously from, you know, it's the first thing she said, stocks, bonds. And so I put a little 4 quadrant there and down the lower left-hand quadrant, I started making a list. And I said, so everything you've named are things, right? And so I wrote the word things. And she says, yes. And I put the word financial at the top of it. And then I asked her, are there things that you value more than your financial? Are there things in your life that you value more? She says, you mean like my family? I said, well, would you trade your family for more of this? She said, well, of course not. Okay. So I wrote family. I said, what about, she goes, what about your faith? I said, would you trade your faith for more of this? No. What about your character? No. You know, What, you know, so you just went down the list, your family, your values, and created things up here. We call that their core. What's at the core of you? Okay, so we had that there. Then we got two empty boxes. So I came over to the right one, so she had said education, and so I put education up in the right-hand one. And I said, well, what, where do you really get your education? She says, well, from our experiences. I said, yeah, so would you trade your learning from the experiences for more of this? She goes, no. You know, I said, just good experiences? She says, no, we would probably learn more from our bad experiences. And then we start thinking, what about relationships, networks, alliances? She says, yes. We packed up that northeast corner with what we called experiences. And then we have this one empty one. Okay? So then I put down there and I put contribution. She goes, well, what do you mean by contribution? Well, when you leave this planet, would you rather be somebody that consumed more than you created or created more than you consumed? And she goes, 'Wow, create more than I consume. Yeah, I wanna be somebody who can help others. I wanna be, you know, I wanna make sure that I'm making a contribution that's helping other people.' So I wrote contribution down there. So as we looked at it, you know, I said, 'All right, let's say something happened to you tomorrow and you could transfer 3 of these boxes to your children, but you couldn't transfer all 4.' 'Which one would you leave behind?' Now, I was in a search mode at the moment. You see, I was sitting there, do I go forward where I'm at, where I'm at? And I was really holding my breath what she would say. But it didn't take her 2 seconds. She takes her finger and she puts it right in that southwest corner and said, 'Financial.' And I said, 'Whoa, why would you say that?' She says, 'Well, I know this. If my kids are bankrupt here in their core, their health, their family, or they're bankrupt here in their learning and experiences and the relationships that they have, or they're bankrupt here and they're, they're going to consume more than they create, this is going to go away.

They won't have it. That's—

well, so you know that, Johnny, but if you're, but if you're building in these three things, then the money is going to take care of itself.

So you remember the Johnny Carson Yes. I don't think you're going to be able to read it, but I don't think that the screen will come in. It says, wealth isn't what you accumulate.

Yeah.

That's the note that I wrote on before we started talking was wealth isn't what you accumulate. That's my lesson from Lee Brower. You, my friend, are just, we can't again, and Lee and I do this often. My, uh, Kirsten knows this when she books something for time together. She'll be like, oh, we got you 20 minutes with Lee. I'm like, we're going to take 2 hours and we're probably still going to be like, I got to run because Lori's going to come in and be pulling on you or something else is going to go on that scenario. And we're at that moment and we didn't even begin to touch on this stuff. So, Angela, pop up how people get in touch with Lee. He does some amazing things. He's working on both wealth. You can actually be fortunate to get him as a coach in Strategic Coach, which is always a cool thing. We've had some people do that, but you can find him on LinkedIn, his Empowered Wealth and the Rivers. And I got to tell you that no matter where you are on your journey, Lee Brower in your corner is about one of the best people you can ever, ever have in your corner. And he downplays it and he doesn't know how many times he has impacted. Candice and I were going through something. I think it was like 2009, 2010, about $1 billion in servicing at the time with real estate. And we're having some questions like, oh, maybe we should call Lee Brower. I think it was like 2010, maybe 2012. It was a one of those times. And it was just, you know, so those times when you have those questions, but more so, it's about when you stay in contact and look to how you pay it forward. And paying it forward is what we use in the word instead of wealth. A lot of times what we talk about is impact. And, you know, how are we going to make, how are we going to create impact in what we do? How is this going to actually serve the people that we're serving. So, if we take a check from somebody, I take so much, like, responsibility on because we've got to deliver more than what we're getting paid about that. And it's because we want to have that actually last. And that's why we love what we do with our founders, because in many cases, founders and founder organizations are what make just tremendous impact in the world.

Yes, they do. And that's why I want to help all the Jack Grouse of the world, because they are impact generators. My particular bridge is if it doesn't create positive generational impact, I don't do it. But I help people see how they can do it because they've never thought about it before.

Well, you also talked about, and this was probably 20+ years ago, you talked about when you guys created, changed your family vacations to actually going somewhere to do something, to going somewhere to make an impact. And you didn't necessarily use those words, but I remember it because I came home and Candice was probably, well, it had to be even more than 20 years ago, but it was like, okay, guys, our vacations are always going to be involved in how can we do something that we enjoy, but also then at some point— and what is marvelous, how many grandkids do you have now?

It's like 21. I was gonna say, I sometimes wish I had 4 so I could spoil them, but this way I get to spread positive, positive generational impact.

I didn't expect that number to come out. That's a lot.

It's like Amway circles. You just keep like, then we go and we go like this. But it is, it is so cool because you and I have talked about this. It's so cool when you see your kids being parents and you see it passing on, and that's the best thing. And then you see the kids doing that themselves when they're starting to share it out there.

Yeah, no, it's a blessing.

Hey, Brower, my, my very good friend, I thank you so much for taking time out of your day and joining us here, uh, at our Lunch and Learn. So, we do this on Wednesdays. And of course, and you may not know this, Lee, these ladies have this really super cool show. It's called WTF, Women Talk Finance, Women Talk Finance, and they talk so much more than finance. But it's really been the impact about, you know, how do they give back? And they have just incredible guests out there. And I'm their cheerleader. I have yet to be on the show, but they—

Do you wear pants when you cheerlead?

But it's Women Talk Finance, and it's another part that we bring from the Founder's Office. And at the Founder's Office, we are founder-centric. We help the founders really identify that they are probably within something that everybody else sees. They're in that founder's isolation paradox. They're living it and they don't even know it in most cases. So, we help them see, you know, it zeros out. Yeah, it zeros out, right? And how do we make that? So this is how you can get in touch with me. Now you can get in touch with Jackie and Candace, who she won't answer anyway on the—

it's true.

Hey, listen, I've had so much fun just talking to you guys. And so thank you for letting me share. And I mean, nobody knew what we were going to talk about, but I know that— I hope it helps you make an even greater impact because I see the good that you're doing. And I thank you.

Thank you.

Anything I can do to help you guys, I'm in.

So, well, likewise, likewise, back at you, my friend. We'll see you again soon. And, uh, to our audience, we'll see you next week. Have a great week. And as me and my other good friend, uh, Joel Weldon says, make it a great day.

Yeah, good.