How to Develop Your Leadership Influence, with Brandon Steiner

Brandon, a huge welcome to the Lead on Purpose podcast.

Well, thank you. It's great to be here. You know, I love talking about leadership, and we can't get enough leadership right now in the world we're living in.

So.

You're right, spot on with this conversation and the many you have with other great thought leaders.

Yeah, well, absolutely. Well, your name came up very recently with a thought leader, with our friend Scott o'. Neill. And he talks so highly of you, of what you've done, what you've achieved and. And where you started. So I want to get right into it. The one thing that when I seen it, it just really caught my mind was the book, you got to have balls. So tell me about why you wrote the book and why the title.

Well, you know, I wrote that book just to explain a little bit about the path. I mean, most people want to know, you know, most people want the glory, but they don't want to know the story. And, you know, listen, it's always curious when you see somebody who's had some success, you know, you want that success, too, but really what you really want is the process. You want to go grab this story, not grab that glory. And you gotta have balls with my mother's favorite line. You know, my mother was a relentless. Always pushed me to say, never settle. Be relentless. Go after what you want and don't settle for success. Success can be very mediocre. You know, be extraordinary. Be the best at what you do when you're the best. That's what having balls is about. It's about going after, not the status quo, but if it's not broke, break it kind of mentality. And we'd always walk around to different businesses. My mother would say, see this business, it's got no backbone. It's got no soul. They got no balls here. You know what I mean? They're just settling. Look at this. Look at the sign outside the store. Look at the way these people are dressed. Look at the place is messy. You know, that kind of thing. And so it was great grooming as a young kid, you know, to maybe have these discussions with my mom, who was a great businesswoman. And, you know, back in the 60s and 70s, weren't a lot of great business women. That wasn't like a thing like it is now. Like, there's so many great business women that just wasn't an accepted thing. And my mother wanted no part of that. She was a just a very entrepreneurial businesswoman and was always able to share her marketing thoughts with me and Always prompt me to think about situations myself. So that's kind of where you gotta have balls. Which is how I built my last company up and how it all kind of came together and how it started when I was 10 years old. So.

I love that book. I've written three books, but I love that book just because if you're an entrepreneur and a salesperson out there, it is hard. Entrepreneurship is not hard. It's just hard to get in the mindset. People say, can you be born an entrepreneur? Can you be born a leader? Yes, you can be, but you don't have to be. You can. Easily, easily, easily. Everyone could be a leader.

And for those people, everyone could be an entrepreneur. For those people that are going, yeah, Brandon, that's cool. But, you know, you've done this and you've done that, but they don't believe in themselves. What can you tell them about your beginnings and that you just. Leadership wasn't handed to you on a platter?

I think, you know, I think the most important thing on leadership, what people have to understand is that, you know, leader, that when you look at the word leader, you know, know it's an Indonesian word. You know, Lee is, is really a pathfinder. You know, Lee is path and there is finder. So it comes from the original word pathfinder. And pathfinders were people that would get ahead of the group and kind of lead that group into safe waters, safe territory. I look at leadership as that, you know, being able to find your way. If you're going into the forest, you wouldn't just go into the forest alone. You'd make sure you were equipped. You make sure you going ahead with the right people to take care of in case it was a bear, a rattlesnake, birds, you know, dangerous plants, whatever it is, you want to make sure you have the right people around you to make sure you can create a path. But the game was to get through the forest on the other side. When I look at leadership, I think it really comes down to two things. One, how do you take what you have and make it better? How do you take what's broken and fix it so, you know, it's simple, simple business leadership. Take what's broken, fix it, find what you're doing well, make it better. And then most importantly, getting back to the leadership and being a pathfinder. Why? I think everyone could be a leader, which is any act of kindness. Anything you do to make someone better, anything you can do to help another person. Which is 50% of the reasons why we're on this planet is to help each other. The other 50% is to get better. So when I think about leadership, it's really about common sense. And what I say, if you want to increase your leadership, increase your empathy and compassion, get out of your head and think about others. And how do you do that is by trying to understand what other people are thinking and try to understand what other people are feeling. As much as important is for you to what you're thinking and what you're feeling. So back to, you know, there's only two reasons why we're here. To get better and to help each other. We're the only species on the planet. On the planet, a dog, a zebra, a bear, a goldfish, bears, and none of them can get better. We're the only species that can improve and get better. That's not a feeling, by the way, that's a fact. Okay, you're never going to come downstairs. Your dog would have fed itself, walked itself, and is reading New York Times in the corner. You look over to the fish tank, your goldfish is going to be doing backflips. It's never going to happen. So you have to understand, if you're not trying to get your company and trying to get your family and try to get better yourself, you've missed 50% of the reason why you're even here on this planet. I mean, it's that simple. So leadership is being a pathfinder. It's using common sense, putting yourself in someone else's shoes by feeling what other people are feeling, thinking what other people are thinking. You get in other people's shoes and you understand what they need, what they may be feeling, and as a leader, what you can do for them to feel better, do better. That's what great leaders do. Now, obviously, you want to be a master of your craft, master of your own life first, which is what some people struggle on. But when you've mastered the business, the craft you're in, you're in a position to be a great leader because you can then understand what other people are feeling and then lead them to be able to do better, do more, feel better. That's what great leaders do, a combination of those things. But you must first realize, turn up your common sense, which is turning up your empathy and compassion. Fix what's broken, take a look at what you're doing and figure out how to do it better. That will excite people. And most importantly, we're here to help each other as an overall common denominator. So you can always show Any sign of helping one another, helping another human being, helping your classmate, your teammate, your worker next door to you, that is signs of leadership. Any act of that is good leadership. Which is why I feel everyone could be a leader, not just the person in the corner office. And I wish. And what we're desperate need of is more leadership. In communities, in schools, in business, we need more leadership. Not just people looking to make a dash to make as much money as they can, but to make as much of an impact and a difference as they can. Sorry, I went on a little rant there.

Brilliant.

I love it. I kind of had that. You know, I had that kind of pent up in me on a Friday, but I wanted to get that out.

Well, what I hear there, Brandon, is that leadership is definitely not a destination. It's an ongoing journey.

Absolutely. And you got to think about whether you want to have a journey or a career. You know, if you want to have a career, it's okay. Nothing wrong with it. But a journey is like a sailboat out in the water. You know, you're not sure which the turns and twists, but you're able to have radical acceptance. I think it's really important as a leader to have radical acceptance. You know, the CEO of Twitter said this, I think a few months ago, I was listening to something he said. You know, in life, there's a lot of fires burning. You can't put them all out. You know, radical acceptance means you can't always make a difference or make an impact on everything. You got to pick out your spots and you got to accept some things for the way they are. That's smart leadership, you know, as well, you know, so radical acceptance is something most people don't talk about because, you know, why would you accept something that you're not happy about? Because you maybe can't fix it or you can't make a difference on it, so why mess with it? And I think a lot of leadership gets off track by. We saw our president here, Trump, who was. Who really did not have any. Any conception about radical acceptance. He fought and battled everything, every day, all day. And he got caught up in so much minutia with so many things that he couldn't make an impact on difference. And it took him away from the important issues. And as a leader, it ended up costing him the election, amongst other things. But you can learn from that. You can learn from all leaders, good and bad. And one of the most important things you can learn is prioritization and perspective.

Beautiful. And in terms of figuring out what your priorities are. Because often leaders. I work with several different CEOs and leaders that talk about, I've got to deal with email and I've got to deal with staff retention and culture and sales and marketing. How do you just get in on a Monday morning and go, you know what? This is the priority. This is the one thing we got to focus in on.

Well, I'm a big fan of, you know, if you have more than two, possibly three priorities in a day, you're probably got no priorities and you probably headed, you know, you probably headed to a shitstorm anyway. And I think, you know, you got to have an MVP list. Most valuable priorities. I call my MVP list. And the way you create your MVP list is with most people have a to do list. I have my not to do list. The stronger your not to do list is, the stronger your MVP list will come together. And I think you got to know who's important and you got to know what's important and what's important, who's important. You got to do what's important, who's important every day. If you're not doing what's important for who's important and don't have really locked down focus of those two most important priorities doesn't mean you can't get more accomplished. But if you got more than two priorities, just go to a bar, just drink, eat some gummies, because you might as well at least have a party.

Because you heard it here first, guys.

Exactly. So I'm a big fan of minimizing the amount of priorities. Most of us wake up in the morning and we're like, oh my God, there's no way I'm going to get all this shit done. And then you go to bed and go, oh my God, I can't be anything I forgot to do. It's just not a good feeling. I mean, why would you do that to yourself? So, you know, prioritization and your MVP list, most valuable priorities is a critical tool in managing and having too many priorities and expecting all those priorities to get done is really just. Is really a direct.

Road to disappointment. Not feeling really good and confidence is king and having a good track record and knowing what's and who's important is ultimately what gets you through the day in a big way.

Powerful stuff. And a kid who came it is bloody amazing when you think about it like that. It is so true and yet we often neglect it. We get caught up in all the other craziness.

I knew today exactly what I had to get done because it was two or three things. And if anything else got done, great. But those two or three things by hook or crook is going to get done.

Did you do that?

I know when I put my head down, I got the most important things for the most of the people done. And I wasn't going to let some of those other little fires get in the way of these most important fires. You can't put out all the fires. So stop. If you're a leader out there listening, stop trying to put out all the fires. It's not going to work. You know, it's the important fires. Let's start with the ones with your families and. And then the one with your most important employees. Start with those buyers.

That's amazing.

And then get the rest of your important clients.

That's amazing. And I want to talk a little bit for those who are listening right now. You started off as a kid in Brooklyn from scratch, ended up buying Yankee Stadium, growing a multimillion dollar business, in fact, several multi million dollar businesses. How does that happen? Like many kids that started off from scratch, that didn't happen for them. What's different about your thinking, your decision making and your personal leadership?

Boy, it's a great question. It's a complicated one. And I think when I think about how you get from point A to point B, I think it always starts at the beginning. And the best way is start making sure that you get your story straight at the beginning. Because there's always great learning lessons, particularly when you're growing up. So about how you want to accept those lessons and look at them. I grew up extremely poor. 539 Kings highway was not a very sexy address. I lived over a guac kosher butcher where, you know, they killed the chickens right on my window every morning. I lived over a store, very, very small apartment, on welfare most of that time. And, you know, I remember going in and going. I remember I've been working since I'm 10 years old. So that's how it got started. And.

I don't recommend that people should have kids go to work at 10 years old, literally on their own without any parental supervision, finding work and hustling. I mean, that's just a rare thing. And I felt like I needed to do that. But I remember going to see my mom and say, I needed a career change. I want to do something different. I needed more free time and I was working way too hard. She's like, you're 12, you kidding me? And I said, yeah, but I want to be free. After School and I'm working every day after school and on Saturdays. So I opened up this paper route and there was a sign on the window that said, whoever opens up the most accounts win a box of candy bars. Which was like, wow, that's huge. I got to win that. So I'm knocking on doors and I'm trying to open up accounts at 29 dailies and 34 Sundays. And finally I get to this older woman, she's got to be close to 80. And I said, man, would you get the paper deliver? She's absolutely not. I said, it's the same price for me as a Corner store. It's 8 cents. Yeah, but then I got to tip you. Now I've been out already for almost a week. I hadn't opened up an account. I go home, I say, mom, we got to move out of this neighborhood. This neighborhood sucks. The people are cheap. These people are no good. They don't even understand what you know, what it takes, how hard I'm working. My mother says, sit down. I'm going to tell you this only once. Stop selling. Start serving. Start solving. Be a solution based business person and get out of your own head. You want to be an entrepreneur, you got to start thinking to understand what other people are thinking, what other people need. I know you want to open up accounts, but what do they need? So I go back, I'm knocking on doors and at 10 o' clock at night, literally I knock on this woman's door. She thought there was a fire. Are you crazy knocking on my man? Just give me a minute. If there's a rental downpour, a snowstorm, ice on the ground, heat wave, a woman such yourself shouldn't be out. I will deliver the paper, Never be late, 7:30am And I'll bring you milk and bagels every Wednesday and Sunday. You would do that for me? I said I was concerned. I mean, sure enough, I'm delivering more milk and bagels. I went to 199dailies, 234 Sundays, 12 box of candy bars. And you know, I love that story. And the question I ask anybody listening is are you really listening to your customers? Are you trying to solve a problem? Are you really trying to serve them with what they need? Are you serving them what you want to sell them? Because it's a big difference. But the most important thing that's most impressive about that story as a 12 year old, the level of empathy and compassion that I was able to think about because this woman was not just any ordinary woman. She turned Me onto the whole neighborhood. And that's the thing I tell people. You never know when your life is going to dramatically change by one transaction. One sale. You only need to make sometimes one sale and it can change everything. Most people don't think that. They think they're going to make a million sales, but it really comes down to sometimes meeting one person which could be your wife or husband. One sale. I made one sale. This woman. Two boxes of candy bars. I was ready. King of Saudi Arabia, man, after those two boxes of candy bars. But you know, at the end of the day, I learned a very valuable lesson, which was compassion and empathy, common sense. What's an 80 year old woman going to do when the weather's bad? And for a 12 year old that's amazing. And that's what led me and what I've been doing for the last 50 years. I meet a Derek Jeter, I'm not thinking. Most people when they meet a celebrity or a big account, they're thinking about what they can get. I'm thinking about what I could give, what I could serve, what I could do for them that they can't do for themselves. What value can I provide? And value is what you could do for someone that they cannot do for themselves. That's value. Nobody wants to talk about value because it doesn't always get to the bottom line. Some of the things you have to do for someone, but ultimately when you're valuable, nobody's getting rid of you. So when I meet a Derek Jeter who's a valuable commodity, I know he's going to end up being Jeter. But I'm helping with this turn too. I'm helping to raise money. I knew the foundation was important. You try to find things for people that they need and try to be a solution based business person and do what you can, as much as you can for as many people as you can, as often as you can and expect nothing back. So when you go into that game of providing value, it's not with one hand to help and one hand to get something back, it's doing what you can to help.

That's incredible.

People are moved by that. And when I think back the amount of bagels I delivered in milk, and that's swagger, man. But you know, it's like, but what I love about that story is that common sense. I wasn't born with that. You know, my mother pushed me. But to even think about what it's like as a 12 year old to be an 80 year old.

And the dangers of you know, what it's like for an 80 year old to go out in bad, bad weather. I mean, damn, that's really smart. And that's what I really, really hope that the people listening to this will get from this story is like, are you really thinking about the people you're dealing with from their view, from their emotional state? And that's how you win, and that's how you win big.

That's just gold for you. That's listening right now. I hope you guys are writing that down because it's not about focusing on sales, what you're saying there. Brandon. It's about focusing on empathy, focusing on the customer, focusing on. And the sale takes care of itself.

Chris. Empathy. The definition of empathy is to put yourself in a common person's shoes, which I'm really saying, just if you want to have more sales and more entrepreneurism, increase your common sense, get into the common person's shoes and get out of your freaking head and get into other people's heads. I'm so externally distracted from an empathy standpoint. I'm always thinking about everything that I see around me and what it feels like to be. Whenever I call somebody on the phone immediately, like, where are you? What's it like there? I want to be in your head. And it's a better way for me to understand, like where you are and who you are.

So great. And the word that keeps coming to mind as you say, what you just said is influence. And I don't mean that in a coercive way at all. Leadership in an influencing way. So for people who want to develop authentic influence in a really empathic way, how do, how do we develop influence as leaders?

Trust. I think that, you know, people have to understand as a leader is that most people think if I have the best product, I'll have the best business. And listen, I think having a really good product is one of the three most essential parts of owning and running and leading a business. You got to have a great product. If I buy a bottle of water, you don't want to buy the bottle of water. This entire fish swimming in it. Right. You know, you want to make sure that it's efficient, it's effective. You want to be able to get the water when you want the water where it's supposed to be, whatever. But what people don't understand is that people don't come back. They will not. You don't get customer loyalty just because you had a good product. Ah, the answer to your question is to get that kind of Loyalty and get that kind of influence. People have to like you and you got to be nice and they got to trust you. So people will buy your product because it's a good product, but they don't necessarily be loyal to your product unless they trust you and they like you and you're nice to them. And this is where a lot of companies fall off the wagon. Yeah, you got a great product, but have you ever talked to the person on the phone that is selling your product? The minute I get an opportunity to go somewhere else, I'm going. So if you want loyalty and influence with your customers, then you have to be nice to them, you have to treat them well, and you have to create trust. Because relationships, and the better ones anyway are all based on trust and likability. If I don't like you and I don't trust you, the first opportunity I have, I would jump off your ship, buy somewhere else. So as much as I want to have the best product and want to be efficient, I want to be effective with my products. I want people to like me. I want people to trust me because I want their loyalty so when other competitors come up, they're not going to slide over so easily.

That's beautiful. And with your business. So let's. Can we talk about sports memorabilia for a second?

Of course.

Tell me about sports memorabilia. If I was going to be in your company, I was going to work for you. What would keep me working for Brandon and not going somewhere else?

Mainly because there is no day alike. I mean, I've come up with some ideas that are completely disruptive. I mean, there's. We have no idea what we're doing. I was just thinking this the other day is like, you know, at the beginning of the year, you set your list of goals. Like, one of my goals is to try to accomplish something based on the fact I have no idea what that is and I have no idea what I'm doing. And that's like, weird. Like, I'm like, you know, one of my wife's like, you have any New Year's resolutions? I said, yeah, I'm trying to try to figure out something that I have no idea what that is, even how I'm going to do it. And that's kind of where collectible exchange is. Like, we're going after ebay's business. We have a huge marketplace where you can put your memorabilia up and sell it. And we have 150,000 items on there. And then alongside of that is 80 micro sites of athletes where you can buy product directly from them. And the way I come up with that is I knew athletes wanted to sell direct to consumers. And I'm thinking, there's all these customers I've sold millions of collectibles to, and I'm figuring out, I know that at some point they're going to need to sell their stuff, where they're going to do it. They need a place they can trust and a place they can feel comfortable with, and it's not ebay. So where else do you go sell your collectibles? And I'm hoping it's going to be on Collectible Exchange or Athlete Direct, if you're an athlete. So, you know, for me, it's like, I'm okay with the discomfort. I'm okay saying on this, I don't know what I'm doing. If you're working for me, you need to be comfortable with the fact that tomorrow is going to be a new day, and most days are not the same. And that's not for everyone. And that's. If you're working for me, if you really wanted to get in a straight line, if you think you were taking the local train in your neighborhood to get to work, then my company's not going to be for you. We're like a sailboat out in the middle of the water, and every day the wind is blowing all these different ways, and we're just trying to. We're just trying to stay afloat, man. And I love it because I feel like I'm 20 again. I'm building a new business.

I have no idea if this is going to work. I know there's a need. I think it's a solution to a lot of people that have seen with a lot of collectibles that don't really have a platform to sell it. And what's interesting is I've been studying the two greatest platforms that we know of, which is Amazon and Alibaba. And when I thought about this, when I started building my site, I'm like, I don't want to be like Amazon. I don't want to control everything. I've already done that. My last company at Steiner, and I'm not with Steiner anymore, I want to be like Alibaba. I want to go to all the greatest collectors that are all over the world, whether it's Australian football, Russian hockey, Japanese baseball, European soccer, American football. And I want you to be able to go on the site and see all these things. That's my goal. Alibaba is not a platform that makes things they're a platform that enables all the greatest and all these different categories to collaborate and sell their product so they could do what they do and I could be here creating and market and build the best platform. So Collectible Exchange is such a myriad of great collectors that I've been able to lure onto my site. My job is to market SEO, digital market and bring the traffic so people can see all these great things. Instead of like my old company, I was kind of forcing them to buy. The things that I created to me, I completely disrupted for all those. You keep a score out there. I've completely disrupted everything I built for the last 30 years and saying that's not good enough anymore. That's not really what people want. They want more diversity, they want more creative, more limited edition stuff. And I'm going to give that to you. And I've created a completely different kind of platform than ever beforehand, which, by the way, is very messed up. And at some point I got to get my head examined for doing this because a lot of people thought when I created my last company was pretty good, but I think this is better.

I love that. I really admire that. And when I was thinking before the call, I was like, the one question I really want to ask Brandon is how do you go through different decades of life and professionally still maintain passion and purpose and meaning? And you're just explaining it right there. Like you want to just level up, you want to disrupt, you want to keep passionate about what you're doing. It's amazing.

I think the key is, it's just my opinion, but I think the key to getting through the different levels and different ups and downs and transitions in life is it doesn't really matter where you are. What matters is what you want to accept. And what also matters is what you're radically willing to accept. I mean, there are some things that you can't make a difference at. You can change, and you got to radically accept those things. And there's things that you know you can fix, there's things you can make an impact and a difference, and those are things that you got to go and get it done. And if you start getting caught up and thinking you can change everything, you're going to get upset about everything and you let everything get to you. It's going to be very difficult for you to get through all those different levels of life and keep going and growing. And then the last thing is sometimes in order to earn more, you got to learn more. Sometimes you got to step back and go, you know, you ain't that smart. You better put on your learning shoes and hopefully that's more often than not. I've always been. I was a horrible student, ate at school, managed to get through, got my accounting degree, went to Syracuse, loved it. But I really learned the importance of learning. And I think if you want to earn more, you got to learn more. And I've always been a curious learner. So if you want to get through the different phases, you got to turn the volume up on your curiosity and you got to be open to learning. I don't care what degree you have, what position you got, if you're not learning, you're probably not at your height. So that's how you get through the different phases. In my mind, it's radically accepting a bunch of things that you know you can make an impact on, things you can't change. Like I said earlier, let some of the fires burn out. But more importantly, the things you can make a difference and the things you do want to put your heart and soul into, go for it. As long as you know you can fix it now. So it doesn't matter where you're at, my friend, what matters, what you want to accept and what you're willing to allow and put on the side and not get yourself crazy about phenomenal and.

Talking about great leaders and having someone that is out there as a bit of a role model. You're obviously deep into sports, you're passionate about sports. Who in your mind is one of the greatest leaders in sport of all time that really inspires you?

Well, you know, what's interesting about the leaders is obviously you need to be a master of your craft. So you have to be a really good player player. And you don't have to be the best player, but a good player. But it's a player that wants to have success for their teammates, that wants the people around them to succeed as much as they want to succeed. You can't be jealous. You can't look at a player who's really great. They're not a great leader if they're not enjoying the success of others. So, you know, I haven't met every great leader. I've met every great athlete, although I've met quite a few of them. I mean, Mark Messi is one of my favorites. He's wrote a great book on leadership. And the reason I love Mark is he's just a high level of empathy. He always thinks of others and enjoys other people's success as much as he enjoys his own. And if you watch him when he played hockey. You watch when a goal got scored. You can never tell if he scored or whatever his teammates did. He had as much joy and excitement. You can never tell who scored the goal. So I always thought he was a great, great leader.

There's a lot of good leaders out there. It's difficult for them to show those stripes because so much media attention that twists and turn different things. But I think when you see teams win, you see with Golden State, with Steph Curry, it's waving his towel. When Klay Thompson supporting him, you know, great leader, you know, a guy that is enjoying. You know, you drop in 30, drop in 20. But he's really more importantly in the winning and his players and. And around them doing better. Those are the people that I watch and really enjoy. I thought, I think, you know, he's like one of my favorite leaders up and coming young, And I think LeBron is a lot that way too.

But.

Can you detract the attention from yourself and push it onto others when needed, when necessary to boost others up is a great sign of leadership. It's really hard to do it today in sports because the expectations are so high, especially for the higher paid athletes. But those are a couple of my favorites. You know, always love Muhammad Ali. I mean, not enough gets talked about him, his radical, his leadership, his giving, selflessness, traveling the world. I mean, amazing. Got to work with him for about seven or eight years and really just always learned a ton from him every time I was with him.

So if you think about that, because to me, that's incredible that you got that opportunity to kind of rub shoulders and learn from him, be with him. What was one of your greatest takeaways from Muhammad Ali?

I mean, my greatest takeaways from Muhammad Ali was that he was more interested in serving. Always when he was in public, he realized he was a public figure and what the give was. And he never came up short from an entertainment standpoint, whether it be sitting there, signing autographs, going into communities, neighborhoods. He was never afraid to disrupt and do what he felt was right. And when talking with him, it was always very, very generous with the details about, you know, what his missions were and what his journey was. And as a guy traveling a couple hundred days a year with Parkinson's, so I think there's a lot of joy in trying to make the world a better place. I think. I think sometimes people underestimate, you know, the collaboration. You know, they. They were all better than some of us. You know, we're better as a whole than we are Individually, when I see people trying to make the whole world a little better, it's moving, you know, it's pretty cool. I mean, that's one of the things I love about Warren Buffett. I mean, to go give away $70 billion to Bill Gates, who thinks who could probably do a better job with his money and helping people, that really moves me. Like, that's a collective. I don't want to attract a lot of attention from my name on everything. I'm like, I want to have the biggest impact. I love making money. Let Bill Gates, who, him and his wife are really focusing on trying to make a difference in the world. Let me get behind that. Those are great role models in my mind. You know, Oprah, you know, I mean, Oprah's been a great role model of mine. I love her leadership skills, her ability to articulate how to help other people. I think a lot of people struggle with how to help, how they can be helped, how they can make a difference. And constantly putting great leaders on her shows, showing how you can make a difference with these little things has been. She's been a huge, huge difference maker.

Agreed. 100% globally. And as a leader yourself, when you've been struggling, maybe when you've made some poor decisions, you're under the weather, who do you go to to help you move through? And who holds you to a higher standard in your life?

Well, this is often, by the way, I mean, if you're not screwing up and feeling that way, especially as a leader, I mean, you know, you're always a little paranoid. You're always doubting some of the mist. You know, you're always reviewing. I don't like to get stuck in these, in these, you know, these holes. But, you know, as a leader, you're going to make a lot of mistakes. You know, I keep a young group around me. I have a generation C. I'm a big fan of what I see in young kids these days. So I'm always talking to young kids about what's going on in their view. My wife is always my. My. She's my. She's the policeman. I mean, she's the one. She's just. She doesn't sugarcoat it. So a lot of times, I mean, it's always difficult. Anybody who's married knows this, that, you know, your wife is going to be right probably in the high 90 percentile. Very difficult to live with a person who's always freaking right. But, you know, truth of the matter is, you know, women are a lot smarter than men and I think for me, you know, having lived with my wife now for 35 years, you know, I mean, you know, when I want the truth and I want the reality check, she's going to give it to me. She's my accountability police. So, you know, I knew when I saw my wife, I met my wife when I was 17. I knew that, you know, first time I saw it coming down the hill. We met at summer camp. I knew this was the woman I wanted to argue with rest of my life. And there's no question that, like, you know, a very smart woman. And I'm always careful when she does tell me her opinion, because even if I differ on it, I really weigh in hard on it because most likely she's going to be right.

That's brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. And I want to. Just before we wrap up, I guess the question I really want to ask is if you were talking to your kids and this was the last thing you could say to them before you left Earth, and they were asking the question, hey, dad, how do we go through life and lead it on purpose, what would your answer be to that?

What I would say is, make an impact, make a difference. You know, do what you love doing and take it to the level where you can make an impact, make a difference. Because when you get to be great at something or extraordinary at something, you didn't have the doors fly open to make an impact. Use that power, use that influence to make an impact and make a difference and have fun. You know, I probably wish I had a little more fun. I'm not the most fun guy, I think, you know, I've had plenty of fun, but I've probably been pretty much more on the serious side than the fun side. So I remind my kids, like, have a little extra fun for the fun, maybe that I kind of avoided a little bit and getting so serious about leadership and about business. But have a little fun, but, you know, make an impact, make a difference, and don't be afraid to help out the person next to you. You know, make, you know, make sure that part of your journey is about making this world a little better than when you found it. I think it's such an important thing. The message I sell a lot of people in my coaching, in my leadership classes, that you can only go into a company with one mission, which is to make that company better than when you found it. Okay, Your industry should be better because we're in it. And you remember above and beyond. On top of that, you are here to help. So not everything is A bottom line, line item, how much we making? You know, part of the deal is as you strive towards extraordinary and big success is to do good. When you do good, it'll lead you to doing well. Most people think well, I do well, make a little more money, then I'll do some good. No, no, no, no, no, no. I would say to my kids, focus on doing as much good as you can and the more good you do, it'll lead you even doing more well when it comes to your own fitness, your own health, your business. Do good, incorporate good into your life, into your day. Help other people be generous and it'll lead you to doing well.

That's so beautiful. And for those of you who are listening right now, do good. Get out there and do good. It's such a simple yet power. And Brandon, I just want to say a huge thank you for what you do. For everyone around you that you lead in your family, in your community and your businesses. What you do is inspirational and I'm so glad that we actually got a chance to connect.

Well, thank you. I'm a big LinkedIn guy by the way. So message me on LinkedIn, follow me on LinkedIn and on collectible exchange or you go to cxstuff.com, i'm giving away my book free. All you have to do is pay for the shipping. If you want to get a signed copy of any one of the three books, I'm always happy to share it. Please just message me or go to see stuff.com and you can pick up a copy of the book. If you have anything you want to sell, Collectible Exchange is your place. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Hopefully this helps for the people out there and hopefully we can all add a little leadership into our life starting tomorrow.

I love it. And I'll make sure to put all that in the show notes for everyone so they can get in touch with you. Get a copy of your book and get go and check out your website. Hey guys, if you enjoyed the content today, please smash that subscribe button below. And if you want to become part of my community, I've got an amazing free Facebook group. Please come and join us. The link is in the description below. And also if you've got any questions about today's session, I'd love to know. Just comment below and I'll be sure to get back to you guys. Have the most amazing day.