CW 100: Leadership & Communication with Dr. Jeff Myers Author of ‘Secrets of Great Communicators’ & ‘Understanding the Times’

Welcome to Creating wealth with Jason Hartman, President of Platinum Properties Investor Network in Costa Mesa, California. During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven't thought of before. And a new slant on investing fresh, new approaches to America's best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self made multimillionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He's been a successful investor for 20 years and currently owns properties in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason's footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it. And now here's your host, Jason Hartman with the complete solution for real estate investors.

This is Jason Hartman and welcome to the Creating wealth show. This is show number 100. 100. This is our hundredth show. It's kind of a milestone for us. We've got a whole bunch more shows that we've already recorded and we will be posting soon. So keep listening in. And for those of you new listeners, be sure to listen to our core content. And the way to find core content is you need to go to jasonhartman.com and click on New Listeners. Start here and then you can see all of the core content podcasts. That's a great place to start for new listeners. For our regular listeners and some of you I know have listened to every show two or three times. We really appreciate you sticking with us and we will continue to endeavor to provide you the best, most current information on making your financial life better and better and safer in these turbulent times. I am in Phoenix right now via cell phone, so I apologize for the poor quality. It will just be for the intro portion of the show. I have attended for the last two days Harry Dent's Demographic School. It has been a very interesting two days. I've learned a lot, a lot that I will share with you on future shows and a lot of things that really prove our theories about the way things will be unfolding about this financial crisis that we're in, about how debt is a very good strategy in terms of fighting what we think will be some very significant inflation coming in the future. We spent the last two days talking about municipalities and states and their financial problems and government entitlements and what that means with the S curve of innovation and the demographic waves that are affecting the economy not only in the United States, but around the world. So it's been a very interesting two days. Also, I was fortunate enough to be able to hang out with Harry Dent one on one last night we went out for dinner and drinks and got to know him personally and really pick his brain and learn a lot about his business and his forecasting and you know, some of the different predictions and what has been right, what has been wrong and why. And that was just a really great evening last night to be able to do that one on one. Be sure to join us for our event, our Creating wealth in Today's Economy event. This is Advanced Strategies for Wealth creation that's on June 6th at our office in Costa Mesa, California. And remember, if you have to jump on an airplane to come to any of our events, we will comp you in for free. You and the guest for free. The only one this excludes is the Masters Weekend. I should say that. But for creating wealth you can join us free if you need to jump on a plane. If not, it's a very nominal fee. So be sure to register for that@jasonhartman.com and click on the Events section. Also, many of you have asked about the product we talked about before our Loan Modification Special Report and Loan Modification Kit. The website is up so go and take a look at the DIY. DIY of course is for do it yourself. The diyloanmodification.com that's the diyloanmodification.com and this is a Do it yourself loan modification program that can save you about 2,900 bucks on your loan modification because a lot of These firms charge $3,000, $3,500 and a lot of you can do it yourself. I was successful in modifying eight of my loans myself. So check out the diyloanmodification.com and take advantage of those products you can purchase on that website. Also, we've had great response for our Mobile Home Boot camp coming up in San Angelo, Texas in the middle of June. And this is an event that my friend Corey is putting on and again, we have never ever promoted anybody else's events ever before and those of you regular listeners know this. But I want you to join me in Texas for this event in mid June. It's at the Properties and it's all about mobile home investing. Now with mobile home investing you can start small, you can start in the middle or you can start big. You can purchase single mobile home that are foreclosed upon, sell them at a profit, carry notes on them, develop long term income from them or immediate profits. I'm talking about here just a few thousand dollars to start. You can buy Small mobile home parks, you can buy big mobile home parks. So this works for every size investor and it's just a really great opportunity. Now our show today that was prerecorded a few weeks ago is with a guest, Jeff Myers. Now you know, for those of you regular listeners, you know that every 10th show we do a non financial topic or a non real estate topic. And this topic is about a legacy. Jeff wrote a book and we kind of discovered him by accident. When I asked my assistant to get my friend Jeff Myers, who is a real estate market forecaster on the show, well, she went onto Google and found another Jeff Myers. And this actually sort of happened by accident. But he did a book called Passing the Baton, which is about leadership. It's about legacy. And for our 100th show, I just thought it was a nice interesting topic. Again, not a financial topic, but one that is certainly valuable in life and it always translates into finance in one way or another. So listen in to my interview with Jeff Myers and we look forward to seeing you on show number 101 very soon. Thanks for listening. Here is the interview with Jeff Myers.

It's my pleasure to welcome Jeff Myers to the show. He is the author of a book entitled Handoff and his company is Passing the Baton International. Jeff, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Jason. Good to be with you.

It's great to have you on. What was your inspiration to write Handoff?

Jason, you know the times, and that's what we're looking at. We realize that the year 2015 is the peak year of retirement for the baby boom generation. And this generation, for whatever reason, self absorption, lack of concern or just general business, has not been able to pass the baton of leadership to the next generation. And so we're now in a place where large companies, government, churches and so forth have a leadership vacuum. We're finding, for example, that in businesses today, 40% of businesses have no leadership succession plan. So you've got these, you've got These leaders and 50%, by the way, of Fortune 500 executives said they plan to retire within the next two years. Now, obviously if the economy goes south, they're not going to do that, but they do intend to retire within the next couple of years. And if 40% of these businesses have no leadership succession Plan and only 25% of businesses have any plan to replace people below the vice president level, the writing is on the wall, wouldn't you say?

Yeah, it definitely is. Now, you know, one of the things, though, it's always sort of fashionable to think in A way that, you know, these times are so much different than the past, Jeff. And how do we know this is any different from the past? I mean, you know, 30 years ago, did companies, were they more prepared for this, passing the baton, if you will, did they have better succession plans then compared to today?

Number of things are different here. First of all, some of the companies did have better succession plans. Certainly at education and the church there were better succession plans. But the nature of business has changed so much. Things are moving so much more rapidly and the population is growing that there's much more at stake. So let me give you an example. One of our consultants we work with is a consultant to a very large oil company, hundreds of thousands of employees all over the world. And he told me, for example, on these oil rigs that are out in the Gulf of Mexico, he said, you know, these oil rigs used to, the oil rig operator used to be a guy who was, say, in his 50s, 25, 30 years of experience in the oil field business. And here's what's happening now because these guys are retiring and they've not successfully trained anybody else to replace them. You've got a 27 year old guy with three years of experience operating a billion dollar oil rig. So it's a number of factors. The coming generation is a lot smaller and so there are more positions to fill. The nature of business has changed. I think the dynamic is different, which makes this a much bigger concern than it was even 30 years ago.

Yeah, good point. You know, Jeff, when you look at just the pure demographic issue, you look at the baby boomers, about 76 million Americans, and they're retiring, they're phasing out. You look at Generation X, which is about 46 million, I believe, and then Gen Y, which is really large, about 80 million, the largest one of all. But Gen Y is too young. You know, it's really about Gen X taking over. So just from a pure numbers standpoint point, we're looking at just a little more than half the size. And then of course, a whole different mentality, a whole different upbringing. I mean, Gen X was the generation of the latchkey kids and the divorcing parents, and it was so different. But Gen Y, it kind of the pendulum shifted back, didn't it?

Yeah, I think it did. There is a generation Y is a little bit larger and that's what a lot of people are holding onto. But again, people have to be trained. You have to walk with them. You know, if you look at the great leaders through history, how did they do it. They had a lot of lieutenants who just went with them everywhere they went. They didn't just see what they were doing, but they had a chance to participate. You know, in the handoff book, we say, take a look, for example, at Jesus. Everybody knows Jesus had disciples, but what they don't realize is everywhere he went for three years, he took these guys with him, and then he continued to push challenges in their direction. What would you say to this person? What you would. What would you do with this person? Here? Here's a person who's sick. What do you think we should do? Here are 5,000 people who need to be fed. How do you think we're going to feed them? He continually asked them those kinds of questions, but the same thing would always be true in our life situation, wherever we happen to be. So I think it's probably a, you know, it's a good time to look back at all the great. The great leaders through time.

Tell us, Jeff, about the characteristics and what challenges today's young people face in terms of Gen X and Gen Y compared to the baby boomers in the 60s.

Yeah, it's a great question. In the handoff book, which you can find on the website on passingbaton.org, i have a whole chapter on that issue, and we call it why the next generation is so hard to reach. The issue, really, Jason, is what we call psychic numbing. When people have a major issue to face and it's too big, they can't imagine how they would face it. They just repress truth and ignore the problems that are too big, great to solve. So it's not apathy that is the problem in this generation. It's psychic numbing. And you say, well, you know, every generation has had its problems, but. Yes, but they haven't been 247 on the television, right?

Yeah.

You know, a lot of what we face today, a lot of the anxiety people feel, is not just the anxiety of bad things happening, but the anxiety of bad things happening combined with a 247 news cycle that says, don't stop watching. We've got to continually pound this into you every minute of every day. So you have a generation of kids who actually have higher scores on neuroticism tests than any previous generation.

You know, I hear what you're saying, but I've just got to think, playing the devil's advocate here for a moment, Jeff, that it must be about the resiliency of, you know, the human condition. Because if you look back at the baby boomers, I mean, in the 60s, at their sort of most formative years, they were into sex, drugs and rock and roll. And I'm not saying they turned out okay, but necessarily. But you know, I mean, they became, you know, productive members of society by and large. Of course, the news is much more pervasive now. And it's just in your face at any given moment, advertising and what Madison Avenue has done to help destroy culture and values. You know, you can certainly argue that it's in our face, no question about it. And there's certainly more of a skepticism than there used to be and I think a cynicism probably. But, you know, every generation sort of has its thing, doesn't it?

Well, I guess it's true that every generation has its issues. And we look at, we look at each, we look at the baby boom generation and see the Woodstock and the sex and drugs and rock and roll and all of that stuff. But remember that that was all revolutionary. That was all novel. It's not anymore all of the things that were. That were no new and interesting, exciting and just a little bit forbidden to the point where it was worth paying attention to. It's no longer that. It's no longer forbidden. They're no longer the mores there that say, yeah, you really ought to be careful of this or that. And so I think what ends up happening is it's the difference between somebody who experiments with drugs and somebody who has always had access to drugs. Person who has always had access to drugs has a different kind of drug problem. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. So what you're saying is maybe the baby boomers in the 60s and the early 70s were, you know, having their sort of sowing their wild oats. They were doing their taboo things that, you know, to some extent people might argue that people kind of need to do to sort of grow up. But then they got over it. And now the difference is it is everywhere. It's totally pervasive. Where that was maybe only number one half of the population of, of that age in the country at that time. The sort of anti establishment Woodstock, hippie type of thing. And it was new and novel, whereas now it's just. It's everywhere. Is that, is that what you're everywhere? Yeah, so.

So the factors that are still soul destroying about it, people were able to kind of skirt the edge of it. But now, like you said, I mean, the Average person sees 3,000 commercial messages a day. They're just completely inundated all the time. And I'll tell you, Jason, here's I think what happens. And you know, and I like to watch the news. Actually, I don't watch it very much. I listen to it on my satellite radio when I'm driving that way I feel like at least I haven't wasted the time. At least I've gone someplace. But when I listen to it, I'm realizing, you know, there's a problem with the 247 news cycle because they say, you know, here's a there was a hurricane in such and such a country or so, and so had an earthquake, earthquake. And thousands of people died. And when we come back, we're going to talk about whether Britney Spears is going to get custody of her kids again.

Yeah, it is numbing. There's no question it's numbing.

How do you decide what's important? Because it's just one frivolous thing mixed in with something that's really, really bad and serious. And after a while, it tends to dumb down your ability to make decisions about what is right and what is wrong. We go through this in a whole chapter in the handoff book because you've got to understand this. If you intend to pass your values on to the next generation, you've got to know what that next generation is like.

I gotta tell you, Jeff, I mean, I get pretty cynical about it sometimes in business. It is amazing to me how, and I kind of hate to almost put this out there because it sort of becomes self fulfilling if you're not careful. But it is really amazing to me how how many people out in the marketplace, in the business world just don't seem to know the difference between right and wrong. They take, they will just take with seemingly no conscience at all. You know, is that it seems like it was much different than that even, you know, when I came of age and entered the business world, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s, it wasn't like it is today. It seems like it's definitely getting worse. I mean, there were people that, you know, you knew in the business world then that would, you know, take the advantage and, you know, do the wrong thing. But now it just seems to be like all this, you know, kind of just take what you can get type of attitude. And certainly my listeners to this show know how I feel about our public markets in terms of Wall Street, I mean, that is just a criminal enterprise beyond belief. Any thoughts on to how that's changed and why that's changed? I mean, we talked about the media. What else?

Yeah, well, it has changed in Some ways, Jason, it's a values shift. I pay a lot of attention to a guy named George Barnum who is a pollster, but he mainly surveys religious people. Okay. So he's really looking at people who have a foundation of values. And I'm not saying that people who are outside of the church have no foundation of values, but you're more likely to get people who say, yeah, my life is supposed to be based on values.

Right.

So that's who he's looking at. And he says that the percentage of people who will agree that there are absolute truths is going down every year.

Yeah, moral relativism. Yeah, moral relativism, absolutely.

Yeah, that's right. So he's saying an absolute truth doesn't mean that you're imposing your ideas on everybody else. It just says that there are certain things that are true across all time and across all cultures. That if you're in business, you should be honest. If you're negotiating, you should go for win win or whatever those things would happen to be. There are fewer and fewer people every year who agree to those things. So the consensus is going down. And without consensus, it's very difficult to develop community. You know, we use the word conscience a lot, but conscience comes from two Latin words, consiere, which means to know together. So if there's less and less that we know together, then we have less and less of a sense of what you might call public morality. And so people, you know, that's why people on Wall street felt like they could get away with everything. They're like, nope, nobody's watching. There doesn't seem to be any public morality. Nobody's going to hold me to account. And the people I'm working for love the fact that I can give them so, you know, quote, unquote, great profits. And so I'm going to just continue to do this.

And then you look at the media adding fuel to that fire like crazy because it glorifies these people. You know, we look at the Forbes 400 richest people, and I'm just making a general statement. I mean, criminal activity with lobbyists and lawyers and accountants that shade the numbers and manipulate things and financial engineers and so forth, isn't it?

You know what, Jason? Here's one of the issues that we're concerned about as an organization. We're obviously a non profit educational organization. Our focus is mentoring and coaching. But here's one of the issues that really concerns me is that as much as these guys are crooks, they have a very well developed system for cultivating Their next generation, they have internships, they have summer programs, programming. They know how to go to the top colleges and recruit the top graduates and bring them into their system. And unless the good guys develop systems like that, it's just going to continue to go on.

So how do the good guys develop those systems?

I think we have to do a number of things. First of all, we have to recognize that it's a problem. And that's, you know, a lot of what we're doing is just kind of calling out saying, hey, look folks, this is really an issue. But the second thing is you develop a strategy. Where do you want this generation to be that they are not now?

Just in.

Okay, so you start with your, say, a business. Okay. In my business, I want my business to be someplace I know I have to get the next generation to do that. I'm looking at the young people who are around me. Where do I want them to be that they, they are not now?

So in business they would call that a gap analysis. You know, where, where are you now? Where do you want to be? Where's. That's the gap. That's the chasm we need to cross. How do we. And then you at least know there's a problem, right?

That's exactly right. But I'm suggesting do the same thing with the people who are on your team, rather than just the, the content of the ideas, the strategy, the tactics and so forth. So where are our people? So we've got this generation says, I've got these people working for me who are between the ages of 23 and 40. Where are they not now that they need to be. And then we've gone through this recently in our own organization. I realized that some of the people have, you know, they kind of taken on a sort of a checklist mentality. I'll come in, I'll check the things off my list, I'll do my job. And I had to sit down with some of them recently and say, I didn't hire you because you can check things off of a list. Anybody can check things off of a list. I hired you because of the, the brain that you bring to the situation. So at the beginning of every week I want to, we're going to sit down, we're going to say, okay, how do we advance the cause of passing Bhutan International the most between now and 5pm on Friday? And so the whole team now is thinking together about how we're going to do that. And the younger people, the older people, everybody together is having to work through that issue. I know that I can't teach leadership per se, but I believe that people can learn leadership, so I'm letting them work, walk alongside of me as we go through that process.

You know, let's talk a little bit about mentoring, if we can. What exactly is mentoring in the way passing the baton looks at it? You know, what are the opening lines of communication? To be a mentor, to get a mentor. What is there to it?

Yeah, let's take those as two separate questions. The idea of being a mentor goes all the way back to Odysseus in the Odyssey. Mentor was the name of the character who walked along side of him and sort of protected him. So the name, the word mentor means a guiding friend and advisor, not a peer quite. But not a boss person either. That's really the idea of mentoring. And so a person who's going to be a mentor, we believe, and this is how we teach it in our organization. This is different than the way mentoring is usually taught. We teach it from a coaching mindset. So we're asking those who would be mentors to do three things. Number one, learn to listen. Really well. Learn to listen. I was at a major meeting of decision makers about a month ago. It was incredible. I was sitting at a table with very successful people. One guy was a New York City venture capitalist sitting across from a young man who's probably 25, very creative and resourceful, but, you know, he's still kind of working his way up. And the guy who's 25 said, you know, here's something that I see going on. And the older guy from New York would say, I know exactly what you mean. And then he would say something that was totally the opposite of what the young man had just said. And so I kind of came in because I'm kind of in the middle of those. You know, I'm a generation Xer, but a little older generation Xer. So I came in between them and said, you know, what's going on here? You don't understand what he's saying because you haven't really listened to him. You guys are. You guys need to learn a new language to communicate across these two generations. So listening well is huge.

And so. So on the listening subject, before you leave, that I just want to mention to our listeners, there's a difference between hearing and listening. And what you're saying, Jeff, involves, I think you want to say, the art of active listening, of paraphrasing back, closing the feedback loop, making sure the person understands what you're saying. If you're talking. And then likewise in reverse, if you're the listener paraphrasing back and closing that feedback loop. So is this what you meant, questions like that, to just draw the person out and get them to clarify and confirm?

Yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly where we're headed with this. And the biggest stumbling block people have, Jason, in listening, because this is what I teach as a, you know, this is my profession as a college professor. I'm teaching MBA students communication skills. And sometimes that's tricky.

But.

But the biggest barrier that people have is they don't listen because they're trying to think of what they're going to say next.

Right. And they want to sound smart. And so they're worried more about what they're going to say than what they're going to hear.

Exactly. So it's not really listening, it's pausing, you know, while the other person talks until they take a breath. Then you can jump in and say something that would impress them. But the whole idea of really listening, active listening, engaged listening is a term that I like to use. And the second thing is asking questions. What we're teaching people to do is stop giving advice and start asking questions in the handoff book, which if you're interested, if folks are interested in this at all, they've got to get a copy of this book because they can read it in two hours. But it will give them so much insight. We have a chapter in there called how to Shut up and Start Having an influence. There are 14 powerful questions that you can use to give people, allow people to move toward breakthroughs. If you are a mentor and they are a mentee, that are very simple, very straightforward, and you can ask them. So instead of telling them what to do and giving advice, ask questions. And once you learn how to ask the right kinds of questions, you realize that people learn to think on their own. You are developing them into leaders rather than just into followers.

Thank you for listening to the Creating wealth show. This is Jason Hartman, your host and we appreciate you following the show. We have many, many episodes, hundreds of episodes, and some of the older episodes have been archived and placed in our members section. And that applies to this one. So we include a sample that's about 25 minutes long. And then for the rest of the show, you can go to our members section@jasonhartman.com Many of the other shows are still in their full length, complete version. However, some of the shows like this one, are in our members section where you can hear the show in its entirety. And again, you just need to go to jasonhartman.com and you can get the full show there in the Members section, plus a whole bunch of other great members benefits and resources, whether it be documents, forms, contracts, articles, other video and audio content. Just a great resource. So be sure to join as well member@jasonhartman.com and thanks again for listening to the Creating wealth show.

This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews. Please visit www.hartmanmedia.com or email mediaartmanmedia.com Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate or business professional for individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own and the host is acting on behalf of Platinum Properties Investor Network, Inc. Exclusively.