You Want to Be Wealthy? Start With the Words in Your Head | Michael Bernoff #248

You want to be wealthy, Learn how to use words in your head that are triggering and everything to get yourself and others to take action, that gets me passionate to talk about. That's influence. That's manipulation in a positive way. What we need to do is not really necessarily work that much harder. We need to change what our average is, maybe about 5 or 10%. If you literally will change a few of the things you do regularly to more of the things that you want, your average shifts. That's why I say average sucks. And it's also jarring for words.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you grew up in New Jersey believing that all the good things in life were meant for other people, if you were invited to take a break from Arizona State University and enrolled at Mesa Community College, where you were introduced to personal development that made you realize you could learn your way into an above average life through communication, influence, and understanding human behavior. If you are the founder of the Human Communication Institute, global speaker and influencer and author of Average Sucks, your name can only be the incredible Michael Bernoff. Welcome.

It's the best intro I believe I've ever had in my life. Jeff. I'm listening. I'm like, who's that? Who. Who's going to be on today?

Yeah, it's fascinating. Well, I'll tell you what I have personal. You've. You've made an impact personally in one of my children's lives, and it was before I had met you, so. And you've appeared with our franchise owners here at Homefront Brands, and I could tell your style is direct, it's candid, it's kind of right in your face, and it's right on point. And I can see how so many millions of people have consumed your content and made positive changes in their life as a result of that. Here's my opener along those lines to you. Why are so many people stuck in mediocrity today?

I think. I don't think. I know. I would say if you say today, meaning the last five, 10 years, I'd say it's normalized. It's. It's behavioralized. And they've made it so complicated. Whoever they is, whatever it is is. We see these people doing these grandiose things, and for whatever reason, the majority of people in the world are comfortable with where they're at, dreaming about what it is they want, but actually not doing the things that they need to get there. Because we sensationalize people doing incredible things. Like, oh my gosh, they're amazing. And most people are asking the question, how do they do that? And I'd say less than 1% are saying, how can I actually do that? And I would say that's where the biggest problem comes in, is most people are getting enough drugs in their mind. Watching other people succeed, being told it's okay to be with where you're at, watching other people, and never really learning how to achieve whatever it is they want, whether it's personal, financial, health wise, relationship, love, life, intimacy. We can go in any direction. And it's very sad that most people are conditioned to want to be like other people than, rather than be the full version of themselves.

I love the word sensationalize. I loved how you use it there. I hadn't really used that word in this context, but that's what it is, isn't it? We're just watching things scroll across our Instagram, scroll across our television. All of the success that other people are having, and we're doing it from our couch or we're doing it from our car, and we're not taking the actions. But I can understand it in a way because there's just a wash of messaging that comes in on social media and we've lost confidence in our traditional media, so we don't really know what's true. So everything seems to be an illusion. And inside of an illusion, it's. It's like that dream where you're running in mud. Like, what am I, am I really going to. If I start taking an action, am I really going to get anywhere? Is that part of the problem?

Yeah. So the, there's just misinformation out there. And the misinformation is not even like your misinformation with the media and politics. I'm even just talking parents giving advice to their kids. I'm gonna go backtrack here real quick. I have really great parents, really do engineer, dad, mom's a teacher. I see rich people, I see healthy people. I see people dating people that I wish I was dating in high school. And I would ask them questions like, well, how do they do it? And when it came to, like, finances, they would say, work hard, be a good person. And I literally believed them. And I really attempted that when I went in business. Work hard, take actions, be a good person. What I didn't realize was that's only part of it. The other part of it is my perception how I see me and how I frame other people to see me, meaning that it isn't about creating an illusion. It's that I have a perception of me that does a certain thing. That guy that does better at something, me, he's got a perception of him. How do I change my perception of me in a real context? And how do I get you to see me differently so you respond to me differently? Because that's really what life is. I mean, if you want to achieve the things you want, you've got to get the world and people to respond differently to you. Which means not only do you have to do different things, you have to put out a different perception.

That would, that would resonate if you weren't like a coder and you were building a product, an app, all to yourself. I think the guy that built the Plenty of fish app was $10 million in ARR before he hired his first employee. But everybody, all the rest of us need other people.

Yep.

We, we're. We are just wrapped up in other people. Other people. We give leverage to other people in terms of jobs or employment. We give power to other people in terms of caring too much about what they think. So it only stands to reason that if we can manage our communication in such a way that we're constantly creating leverage or we're getting closer to the impact or the goal that we're looking for, then it would, it would raise.

Our average, which it would change everything. If you remember these words. I start off all my events with these very simple words is the way that we communicate with ourselves to ourselves, communicates how we respond to ourselves. So it indicates, like, how I talk to me about me is how I'm going to respond to me. How I communicate, how I see me is how I'm gonna respond to me. And what's crazy is how I communicate with me is also gonna indicate how you actually respond back to me. So how I use my words to explain my life, my problems, my desires, my dreams is really how you're gonna treat me. And it's how we're gonna develop our relationship. It's whether it's gonna be serving both ways or I'm gonna be that annoying person that is gonna be needy that you're not really gonna help. So I would say most people have never stopped to think that the way that they communicate with themselves about themselves, about their life, their problems, their struggles, their desires and dreams is impacting how the world is treating them.

You meet somebody at a conference, much like we met, we had a thin line connection to a shared event.

Yep.

What do you want to accomplish in the first three minutes? Of meeting somebody.

The biggest. The biggest thing. It's not that I even want to accomplish thing. I want to know my outcome. So I've got a very, very simple system that I use, and it sounds simple as this. I want to make certain to show up as valuable as possible for myself and other people. So I've got a very simple system. Number one is I ask myself, what state am I in? Meaning very quickly, like, what state am I in? Am I frustrated? Am I annoyed? Am I bothered? Am I pissed off? Am I happy? Am I overzealous? Like, I've been in events before where I needed to do a presentation to people, and they just came out of a meditation, Jeff. And I'm all fired up. Like, I'm on. I don't even drink Red Bull, but I'm like, I'm a 90 Red Bulls high. Okay, Acting. And they just came out of meditation. I didn't check my state, and I really didn't do too good. That was about 15 years ago. Number one is, what state am I in? Number two is, what state are they in? Like, where are they really at? So if I'm meeting with someone and let's just say you. You want to market something to somebody, you're a mortgage guy, what state am I in? I'm excited, I'm happy. I want to help this person. What state are they in? Pissed off, bothered, and confused. They have to be here. Most people don't ever recognize that. Second thing, what is my outcome? Well, a lot of us have an outcome like, I want to sell this thing to somebody, or I want them to date me, or I want to be rich or whatever it is. I got to also know your outcome. So what I do, Jeff, I've trained my mind, and I'm going to throw a very simple phrase at you is I don't train people to think different thoughts. I train people to think differently. And what I mean by that is the way we need to think about communication is it's not what you say, it's the response that you get. So, again, I'll repeat that again. It's not what I say. It's the response that I get. So if I'm meeting you, I'm like, I got to quickly check, what state am I in? What state is Jeff in? What is my outcome? What is their outcome? And with that said, if you want to call it manipulating the relationship, I'll call it this. How do I make it as great for Jeff as possible? Meaning how do I be the best me that he needs me to be right now. And I would tell you, nine out of 10 people would never even have had that thought.

I just said when we first met, you were. I was taken aback a little bit about how intensely focused you were on our conversation. And maybe that was trying to figure out maybe you have a half a dozen boxes that you want to put people in in terms of outcomes. Right. So it's like, okay, is this a potential client? It's a potential friend, Is this a potential referral partner? Is this just a good networking person that I can get to? What. You have these different. What are some of the outcomes that you have on a con? I walked up to you and I thanked you for helping my son through a very difficult time in his life and also giving him some tools to get a. To. To be successful in a job fair, going for some very important job interviews that he was going to. I asked him. He did give us permission to talk about this. So if we. If we ever get around to it. Of course, I don't want to, you know, call him out too much. He says, I'm sure he's. Michael's got other things. Oh, I'm. Michael does have other things, but he's.

An important part of our conversation. It's how we met, and he's.

He's your child. Yeah. So that. That was it. But what are. What are some of the outcomes when you meet a peer or a business person at an event like that? How would you. What boxes would you put them into?

Good question. So let me ask. Let me re. Ask you a simple question, because I don't believe I've had ever anybody be direct and say that to me. You said, how do most people communicate? If you said it stood out what I was doing, what does the average person do? Just so I know what I'm dealing with or what I'm doing, I'll then answer your question in a second. I just wanted to understand because I remember where we met and then you was intently listening. What was the experience you had? And then I'll give you my answer.

Foreign. It's a mixed bag, I think, which is probably the reason your business is so good. That communication is unintentional and unmanaged. So most people are. Most people are going to have a go to. And this is how the. Oh, how are you? And, you know, they're. They're.

Gonna.

You're gonna make an inference about them on their tonality. Are they warm? First of all, what's. Yeah, what's the. What's Their tonality and what's their warmth? Right. Are they. Are they coming off as, like, kind and generous and just kind of in the moment there? Are they patient, hurried? Are they dismissive of you? Some people are going to come off like that. And.

And how did I come off? You.

You came off as intensely focused on what we were talking about. And. And also you're tall, by the way, which, you know, it's. It's. I'm six two, and I was looking up at you, which is not that common for me, so it doesn't hurt.

To have that advantage.

Yeah. I mean, that's. Yeah, yeah. And. And I think you can use that in a couple of different ways if you want. You can be. You can either be arming or disarming with it. But, yeah, you know, you came off as very intentional. You were engaged in the conversation. You were businesslike, but also like, well, why don't we grab something to eat? Which that's. That's another thing, too. For some reason, you know, you're at the buffet, right? And you have a choice. The person. Is the person that I'm talking to in line going to be someone that I go eat with? Are they going to be somebody that I say, I'll talk to you later, and you go eat with somebody else? Right. So you. You said, hey, why don't we. Let's eat together? So I'm like, oh, that was great. And that made me feel good that, you know, you wanted to meet. And then we sat down and we had a nice conversation over lunch, and you had a business thing to go to, and I said, I'm going to get a coffee. Can I get you one? The other thing you did is you accepted. Yeah, you accepted the coffee. So I'm a giver, and you made me feel good by giving you a coffee. I got my special order that I get, and when I gave it to you, like, that's really good. What is that? Yeah. Quad espresso, iced venti cup, splash of coconut milk, powdered cinnamon, $4.17. But it's a Starbucks hack. But it's a great drink, so. And the whole experience with you was above average.

Thank you. So this is. It's been a long time since I put the. I would say the program in place. And what I mean by the program in place is one of my desires is really to accept the fact that most people have a neuropathway inside of their brain where everything looks about the same. They get up. They do the same thing every day. So how Do I create an experience that that is slightly different than what they expect? How do I make it memorable? And it's not like I'm sitting here analyzing this. This is decades ago that I developed this in my mind, and then I've just continued to perpetuate with evidence that it works. Is my desire when I meet people is to really just decipher very quickly, where do I want this conversation to go? I'm very not interested in small talk. I'm not one of those guys that wants to talk about your golf game the entire lunch. It doesn't interest me. I'm not a guy that likes going to weddings and sitting next to your brother's best friend's cousin's uncle at some table. I'd rather just be with my family during those times. I'm not a small talk guy. So when I meet people, the number one thing is, how can I stand out in this person's mind and start creating what's called a new neural pathway? Because it's no different than when somebody meets somebody in business. Like, what are the traditional things people say? Like, if you knock on someone's door, you talk to them, hey, how are you? How you doing today? I was just in the neighborhood. If you sound anything, like anything they heard before, you wind up in that box. You wind up in the boxes. Their ex husband, their ex wife, and you shouldn't be in that box, Right? So my job is, how do I stand out, be relatively different without being extremely. A carnival show. And that's one of my first things that I do. Like, how can I create a unique situation where someone goes, this is interesting because at the end of the day, sales or business or relationships is you got to get people's attention. You got to make them aware that you might know something they don't know. I want to offer value to somebody, and then I want to create interest and really have a desire to continue a relationship. That's where most relationships fail, too, is you got to get someone's attention. You got to make them aware that I might have something of value to you. And then I want to make you interested in what I'm talking about. If you can't get those three things down, straight back from Glengarry Glen Ross. I don't even want to teach you the next part. Right. But that is where I would say my mind is. I want to say something and see how receptive you are to who I actually am and not put on a show for you. So I'm going to say some Crazy shit. And I'm going to say it sometimes. And there are certain people that are not interested and. Or certain people that go for the close right away, like, hey, Jeff, you seem like a great guy. Let's do business. Well, now you're annoying. So I don't know if that answers your question, but that is how my mind is working. I bet we go deeper. I can get even more.

Do you ever get a reaction where people just are not into the intensity or the forward nature of your conversation? Of course. And they just. What, What. What is their reaction? They just go away.

I mean, I get people. I intimidate people. I intimidate a lot of people. Intimidates the right word. But I'm not. My wife had explained that to me. Number one is I'm larger than some. I'm very nice person, I'm very kind, but I'm. I'm larger than a lot of people. I also know that there's that and then there's their own insecurities that come out. So if someone's not interested. I look at life as timing. It's just not the right time. Maybe I said something that didn't work, but I don't really care because I learned a long time ago. And it's interesting, my friend Chase Hughes has been covering this a lot recently, but I learned a lot about one of the ways we're controlled as people is our need to be liked and our need to feel connected to somebody. And that is a good thing, but it's also a way that we're controlled. So if I'm too connected with the outcome, then I'm going to position myself in a very weak way with you. So I've learned to care so much that I don't care at all. And it's meaning, like I care so much about relationships and people that I can't care if now's the timing, it's just not so that. That's one of my frames that I take on as I care so much that I don't care at all.

I've seen you engage, gauge an audience and work cold with some people, I guess crowd work, for lack of a better term. And you knock people right off their pins right away. Is that.

Yep.

Is that for the purpose of other people observing it, or is that just core to you getting to the bottom of driving change really quick?

Well, I guess I'm impatient. I become more impatient over the years. I don't want to put on a show, want to get there quickly. Change happens faster than Slower. When a person physically gets over traumas or challenges that I help people get through, when they finally do it, it's instant. So one of the reasons I go very quick at people is I want to check the leverage point. Now, you'll also watch me back out. If I'm going to go real quick to see how fast we can go. And then if for some reason they put up all the resistance, I may push one more time and then I'll back out. But I also know that people want to move quickly. And sometimes they need their pattern broken. So I'll just walk in and I'll come out. People quickly. It depends what's going on. Somebody says to me, hey, Michael, will you show me this? I said, do you really want to know where? You're just asking because I want to know if you're someone that's going to get this quickly or I'm going to be talking to you for an hour. You pick. They've never heard that their entire life. And remember this, when somebody. I do a lot of hypnotic work, and I don't mean like dance like a chicken. I mean reframing of people's psychological positions for fighters and working with people in the movie business. People that do speeches, people that have had horrible things happen, and now they got to get on stage and talk. And one of the things that I. That I've recognized with people is that if something is new, like, oh, my God, I've never experienced this before. What's happening? It's shocking. They say, this is new. What should I do? And they actually. All the resistance goes down and they're like, all right, well, I'll give this guy a try, even if they don't mean to. So part of it is coming in fast and hard, which most people are not willing to do. Not always. In all situations, you gotta know what you're doing with. If you're doing this, you're playing with. Communication and bomb detection are two things you can't take back. You can't make it back a spoken word. If you cut the wrong wire, everybody blows up. So communication does not have a second chance to resay that thing again. You can say something else, but we got to get good at this. Which means you got to learn you're going to screw up, you're going to blow a few things up.

What's the role of emotion inside of effective communication? The way you frame that, bomb detection and communication. I immediately went to thinking about when I got emotional and said the wrong thing thing and set it in the moment, it was clearly an emotional or defensive or ego driven type response. It wasn't appropriate. It certainly wasn't helpful. How do you manage emotion inside of effective communication when you're dancing around the edges and maybe jabbing and probing a little bit.

And if you remember, the whole thing with the emotions comes back to there's. Emotions is a confusing word for people. A lot of times I think emotions is crying or sad or happiness. There's also your personal beliefs and your identity that sometimes people attack the sooner you disguard. And I could talk a little about fog a little later, but as soon as you discard, like you're dealing with someone that's difficult to work with, you've got to realize that there's emotions. This conversation has nothing to do with anything that's happened prior. It only has to do with what's actually happening now. So when an emotion comes up, 9 times out of 10 has nothing to do with today. All emotions live in the past. Zero emotions live now, period.

You're getting historical.

What's the truth? Right?

Yeah.

Well, think about this for a second. Somebody goes, I don't like your shirt. Well, the only reason that bothers you is because the last time somebody said they didn't like your shirt or whatever reason is when you were in fifth grade and you got teased and picked on, somebody just recalibrated what happened prior. So that person does not know your history unless they're looking to use it against you. So if you study what's called transactional analysis, they explain that emotions. Are you familiar with transactional analysis?

Yeah, through Sandler sales.

It's fantastic. So, yeah, the way it works is a really great book everybody should read called Scripts People Live. And it's a wonderful book. And there's games people play. They're both books, both great. But all emotions typically come from not to adults having a conversation, adult having a conversation with a child. And what I mean by that is if you find yourself falling into the childish mode, you, you've got to work on being an adult again. So that's how I calibrate that for myself. So emotions do come up. We get heated, we get mad, I raise my voice. There is no exact formula. I mean, I got to deal with later today. Jeff, we're building a house. I got to talk to one of the subs. We're going to have a conversation. I know how far I can push that. I also know when you're dealing with Disneyland, if they're not doing what you need, you will raise your voice. You will tell them how it's going to be at that hotel. You will straighten them out because they want to make you happy. So you've got to play with that. But also remember, it's a game, and we're acting. It's not a permanent emotion. It's an act. And you've got to learn how to do it as an actor, not as someone that's deeply emotional.

Yeah. The hook in Sandler is leave your inner child in the car.

I never heard that before. I love that. Get the book scripts. People live. Jeff, you'll love it. It explains, like, the 50 games that we play as people. You're going to see, like, I got you. SOB Is one of the best games. It explains, like, how you bait people into different games. The Sandler cover that.

Not in that exact way.

It'll be funny. It's like you're playing. You don't realize you're playing a game with someone. Like, you're like, oh, my God, I'm in someone's game right now. And it requires three people. It requires a victim, somebody to victimize somebody, and a savior. And it only requires two people, but they play two different roles. So somebody allows you to victimize them so you can save them or vice versa.

And.

And we switch roles in the middle of a conversation. So you've just got to ask yourself, like, what role do I want to be in this person's life?

You familiar with Robert Green?

I have all his books. I don't. I. I don't read them well for some reason, but I own them.

God, a lot of words, not a lot of pictures, but 48 laws of power.

I own three people. Keep buying. I have, like, 10 copies of that in my office. Yeah.

Yeah. I got that for each of my kids for Christmas this year. So they're all getting 48 laws of power, and all of their significant others or spouses, where applicable, are getting mastery.

Great.

And then, you know, Jack went through the breakup, so I think I'm going to give him the art of seduction.

I was about to. If you didn't say it. The best thing about it is you'll learn when you're being to do, especially as a young man, There's a lot of women out there that were trained by their mothers, their fathers, how to do that incorrectly, and vice versa. There's a lot of seduction that happens to you that you get baited into becoming a child. And the last thing your son needs to be is be a baby in his relationship. So if you read the book in reverse, and I read that one, you will, he will learn how to not be seduced, but actually how to seduce in a good way. Not negatively, positively.

Well, so you know, you could. Was it Neil, Neil Strauss that wrote the game?

Yep.

And you could, I mean you could say that you're reading that on how to pick up women or for women, how to pick up men, mostly men picking up women. It's the, it's the secret society of pickup artists. However, applies directly to business, it applies directly to communication. It's how to break the ice, how to be interesting. How did we just start this conversation? What do you do in the first three minutes? Well, I mean that's a fascinating book and it's a true story and it's got Britney Spears and all the people in it and so it's just crazy to read. But at the, at the end of it, whether it's neuro linguistic programming, which I know that you're, you're an expert practitioner in, or it's TA or whether it's these things, it's, it's all about seducing the other person to get to. And I would say with good intent for them, you know, it's manipulation or seduction with good intent to get them an outcome that they're looking for then in whatever way that you can help them achieve it. So for me in franchising it's, it's about the outcome. It's about one day down the road you're going to sell your business to somebody and you're going to get a bigger bag of money for it than you started with. So what are all the thousand and one things that you need to do to build a business that's transactable inside of that? Well, you first have to start it in a scrum and you need to learn the business because if you don't know the business well, then you'll never know if people are doing it well. And then now you have to build a team. Now you've got to build a community out there of people that are going to refer you. Now you've got to do all the technical things. Now you probably need to understand some finance and accounting and you need to be able to understand what you're building and why you're building it so that people are going to want to build, buy it. So really all of these things are just manipulations that to help them achieve an outcome that's to get a bigger bag of money when they go to sell a profitable business. Some Years down the road and the, the. And how much of all of what I just. Is there any piece of what I just said that doesn't have to do with people?

Everything is people. I mean the whole world is. I've got. I got a sign downstairs that says your future hinges on your ability to communicate with yourself and others. And everything in life is people. In order to get anything you want, it's going to require the help of somebody else. I'll give you an example. Loan at a bank. You have to influence the bank to give you the money. The influence is either you had to influence yourself to have good credit or have good money prior or you've got to be friends with somebody to make a sale. There's a level of influence to fall in love, to have a child. Everything comes down. There's never been anything that has never had with that communication. I'll be also the first to tell you the most violent, the violent subject matter in the world is communication. More than guns. I will tell you there's never been anybody that's been killed by a gun that words weren't spoken first either to themselves or someone else. You can't even pick up a firearm without talking to yourself. Pick up firearm inside your head. So you guys, I want you to think that through. Those of you listen to what I just said, words have killed more people than weapons ever have words prior than the weapon. And the reason I'm saying that is they're violent, but they're also used to break things that are happening. So we need to violent. The type of violence I'm talking about is the violence that Martin Luther King and a Gandhi used. And pause and think about that. They were violently not okay with the way the world was like violently not okay in their mind, peaceful in the world. But they wanted to destroy what was to build what could be. So sometimes we need to use a little violence in our heads and go. I am disgusted with the way that I'm acting. I'm that food, I could eat that, but I'm poisoning my body. Versus really being a person that's being kind and gentle. And I would say what's screwing up society. Jeff, today is grammatically correct communication versus effective communication. I will tell you grammar will get you a degree and a job for $49,000 a year or an editor for 80 grand a year or maybe make 500 grand a year. You want to be wealthy. Learn how to use words in your head that are violent, that are just that are. That are triggering and everything to get Yourself and others to take action that gets me passionate to talk about. That's influence, that's manipulation in a positive way.

People that are listening have to want to change or improve their communication styles to build a better life for themselves. I believe, or it's been, it's been my experience in my life that I've needed to subtract to add. And what I mean by that is before I can chase anything worthwhile, I've got to create space for, for it. How do you coach people? You, you were talking earlier and, and we'll get to, you've got programs, you've got events. I know personal people that have gone to some of your events have some of the best they've ever been to and you've had tens or hundreds of thousands of people through them, whatever, and we'll, we'll talk about that. But you're one on one coaching your co. You're, you're, you've got somebody, they're a top martial arts person, they're a rapper, they're an actor, they're, they're, they're a high influence, high risk, high reward type person that operates kind of out on the edge. How do you talk to them? What's, what do you, what can you give them that they can increase? And then how do they create space in their very busy life to be able to implement some of the things that, that you teach them?

Well, the implementation of any of this stuff doesn't take much time and effort at all. It's not a time thing. It's again a shifting in perspective. The biggest limiting belief that we need to get rid of. When talking about getting rid of anything right off the bat is the, the biggest issue people have is the invisible outcome. What I call, and the invisible outcome is like, I like when your eyes light up like that. What's that? I'll write that down. Invisible outcome is the outcome that you don't know that you're operating from that is controlling the majority of what you do. Because most of our current actions are based on what we've already thought about years ago. Like, and here is the number one limiting belief of all high functioning people. Because I train high functioning, highly effective people on, forgive me, highly functional people that are driven on how to be highly effective and highly efficient. That's two very different things. So a high achiever is not highly efficient. They're a driver, they're a doer. I want people to be highly efficient and highly effective. Those are two very different things. The least amount of words to get the biggest amount of result possible, period. So when we talk about limiting beliefs, what to get rid of the biggest thing we got to get rid of in our schedule, because once you get rid of a belief, you then get rid of everything that was attached to it. This is the most fascinating thing in the world. So I'm going to play with you real quick, Jeff, and ask you this. Do you know what the most destructive belief that stops you from being the best you can be is? There's just. It's. We've done so much research on this, and whenever I make an absolute, this will create arguments, which is always good for the podcast. I got 1.2 million views on a thing the other day just telling people the worst thing to say to your kids. And it was fascinating. I got also 85,000 followers, and about 200 people told me to screw off. But whatever, it doesn't really matter. So just take a guess at it. What would you think the worst belief of all the people we know in our groups that are making $100 million, $50 million billionaires? Like, what do you believe the worst belief that we could have as a human being that would stop us from being successful?

Just Maybe it's like 10, I can't do it or I don't deserve it.

You would think that now those most high achievers are past that. They're past. They'll fight through that. Here is the worst belief we could ever have that we need to get rid of, especially if you want to be coached or work with people. And it goes like this. I know what I'm doing.

Brilliant. Yeah, absolutely.

I want to tell you why. Because if I say I know what I'm doing or I know how to do it, then I already would have done it. Now you might know kind of what it looks like. Jeff, I'm not a car guy at all. I know nothing about cars. But let's say I get on my wife's Tesla. That's Tesla X to play. It's fast, right? And I get next to a guy in a Lambo. He takes off. He. He goes to the track on the weekends. I. I blow past him for the first couple seconds, then he blows past me. You might think that both of us are doing the same thing they're doing at the Indy 500. We're not. We are not. So when we think we're doing what the highly performance people are doing, we're not. So my first thing I've got to get a new client to realize is they actually know A lot of things. They're actually great people. But if they actually knew how to get themselves to do what they want and what it was and to follow through and to be consistent, they don't need me. I'm useless to them. So that is the most hidden belief that all of us have, is I'm already great. I know what I'm doing and I know what I'm doing. And if you just said, I know what I'm doing and I know how to do it. The funny thing is you don't, you know, pieces of it. And once we eliminate that, we go, okay, maybe, I don't know. Time starts freeing up in our mind because we don't have to hold on to the story we're holding onto. Most of our time that we have in our busy schedules are these stupid things, the phone. And number two is how often we want to tell the story of we know what we're doing and that we know what's going on, versus being interested in new ways of doing things. The second we stop needing to be right and needing to prove things to people and needing to fit in, we get back unlimited amounts of time in our day.

Yeah. What's the phrase? Your need to be, your need to be right. Oh, the need for something to be true should trump your need for you to be right.

Yes.

Or something in that nature like that.

You want to make it true, but it's really. You want to be right. It's crazy.

Yeah, it's right, but it's not true. But you'll defend it. I mean, I'll tell you. And this, if you want to go all the way to the end of it, observationally, the worst people that I can't work with, I can't do anything with, I can't get them to move, are people that have the personality traits of being ignorant and arrogant at the same time. I am an idiot. I haven't read a book. I haven't thought about this. I'm hanging on to a belief that came from here, and I will argue this stupid thing to the death.

You've heard the spider monkey story, right?

I don't think so.

I don't know how this is true or not, but I've heard this years ago when I was about 20 years old.

Is it with a quarter in the coconut? With the fist?

It's something like that. It's the spider monkey basically gabs peanuts, and they're so fast, and they can't get them to catch. They put the peanuts on the outside of the Cage. And they put it through the cage.

Yeah.

And they're so fast. And then the hand gets caught in the cage and they bash it in the head and they serve it as a delicacy or whatever. And they, yeah, they buy holding onto their beliefs. Same as the quarter stories. So we. My biggest shift that I make for people, and this is where I scare people, unless they're in one of my events, is the ability to admit that you were wrong. And it's such a painful thing. People will go, people will stay on the wrong diets, they will not get cancer, they will not get treatment over diseases for this. They will stay in wrong relationships. It's very, very sad. So willing to be okay, failing. I had a client years ago, right, and couldn't. Martial arts guy, one of the top judo guys in the country and couldn't figure out how to get out of this relationship. This woman treats me horrible, blah, blah, blah. Why can't I leave? Why can't I leave? Why can't I leave? Oh my God, she treats me bad, treats my son bad. What am I doing? I'm so tough. And he goes home. He's a wimp, right? Took me like two days of the event to figure out the problem because none of it made any sense. Because what he was telling me, he was so influential. I was actually listening to him and I believed him. And then I looked him in the eyes and go, you know what your problem? And he goes, what? I go, it's not even a problem. What you're programming is you're not good at losing and taking a loss. He goes, you're right, it's painful. What if this is a loss? What if you just got to admit this didn't work? Take a loss. Take a loss on your balance sheet. Take a loss. I know you've had to do this, Jeff, in your companies. I've done this in my companies. Take a loss with getting rid of programs, taking a loss of like other stuff. We've got to learn how to take a loss in our lives. And very few people are good. You have to be just as good at winning as good at losing. Which means every once in a while we got to take a loss. So that guy goes, I got it. I've got to admit, I'm going to lose here. I cannot win this. I don't want to put in the effort to win. I'm not able to win. So the guy takes a loss, realizes it isn't right, goes about his life. It's kind of funny. They got Back together about two years later. It's great. They're married, have kids, they got figured it out. But he had to take a loss to stop doing it the way he was doing it. And I think that's a pain point for people. They're not willing to take a loss. We're jumping all over the place. Add style. I'm enjoying this. Yeah.

So did he need your coaching or did she need it more?

Yeah, he did. He worked one on one afterwards. I helped him with that. So back to the coaching person. How I work with them is, number one is I find out where that belief lives. Whether they believe they know what they're doing or not, or they're completely open and find out that. And then immediately once we locate that, we've got to be very clear what it is they want. If they are not clear with what they're looking to achieve for me, I do not work with them because highly ambitious, non outcome driven people that are unmotivated or impossible to work with. So I'm looking for people that know what they want. Fear public speaking. I have a speech about to do. I want to increase my sales, help me sell this thing. But if they don't have a direction of where we're going. I'm not a guidance counselor. I'm not here to help you decide. That's a man or woman that has inability to be confident in a decision they want. I cannot work with them, nor am I able to.

That's interesting because when I've thought about hiring a coach and I play it forward as to what the conversation's gonna be like, I get to that point and I realize that I'm not. That I'm not always sure. I'm like, well, if. And then it gets back to me. If I just decide what I want to do, I know how to go get it. I already know. And then you just. It's just a matter of taking action or taking something, making. It's usually, usually when I consider going to get coaching, it's because there's a decision that I'm avoiding.

Yes, well, there's the decision I'm avoiding and then there's. I'm willing, not willing to decide what I want. So people will hire me and they're like, hey, I want to get X, Y or Z. And I'll get excited about helping them get X, Y or Z. Very simple. Like, you know, Michael, I just don't feel right. I'm not sure why I'm here. I mean, I'll dig for a little Bit with that person, but that's not the client. I take on my events that comes up. I mean, but I have to be clear. Like, I want to make a relationship work better. I want my husband to love me again. I want my. My wife to be proud of me. Whatever it is, I. As long as we've got a direction, we can work on it. But here's the deal. They do know what the problem is. They're not willing to say it, and I'm not going to force them to say it. Once they admit it, we can do something big.

Let's talk about labels.

Yep.

Why is naming it so important?

I mean, everything's a label. It.

It.

The label creates the emotion. So people say to me all the time, like, Michael, what's more, during a movie or a film, like, what's worse, visual or auditory? Like, where does the fear come from? Or where does the emotion come from? And everyone thinks it's the high def, the 4K. Here's the answer. It's always the words. Because when you watch a movie and you see a horror movie, like, and you see someone getting killed, in order for that to feel, we have to go in our brain and go, what is that? And we have to use words to describe it. So words and labels control everything that we do. So I watch people, they talked about this at church the other day where they said the word love. A lot of people, and I've been talking this for years, we apply love. And it was funny. Like, the pastor brought literally in something I've been saying forever. It was so cool. And he said, we use the word love on things like Starbucks. We use love on things like our business. We use love on things like, oh, I love this. And then we're wondering why we don't have anything left for our family. So we've got to figure out what things actually mean. Like, you've heard me talk about food before, and I will say, if you're addicted to something, you call it addiction. You're probably gonna get stuck with it. But if you call it I love cheesecake, you're gonna want it the rest of your life. If you call it yummy or tasty or poison, it'll be different. But the problem is the label that we use. Like, have you ever, Jeff, had someone tell you sales is hard?

Sure.

It's a label, right?

No. Wait a minute. You hate that word.

I don't like it. I don't hate the word sure on your own show, but sure is kind of like, go screw yourself.

Yeah. Yes, yes, Michael, I've heard people say that.

Yes. It's funny when people say it's hard. So is bending steel with our teeth, right? And the way our minds work, we go, sales is hard. What else is hard? Bending steel with my teeth and doing calculus. Sales must be like calculus and bending steel with our teeth. You think I'm kidding? I'm not. If you label it correctly, you'd say, actually, sales is harder than I'd like it to be, and it's something I have to get better at. The person that labels it that way has a better chance of getting better. The simplest harder versus hard is a different box inside the brain.

I labeled alcohol as poison, and my drinking dropped 90%.

You know my favorite thing to tell people to do when they go to happy hour or whatever it is, they go, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to poison my body for the next two hours and wake up not feeling good tomorrow, but let me order a drink. The second you start looking at it the way, like, you're going to be like, why am I doing this? Yeah, why am I bothering?

Right? It's, it's.

You say, this is my favorite thing. I love it. Well, they're gonna freaking do it all the time, right?

Yeah.

Good for you, man. Be proud of that. That's a big decision.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, we're. You, you have to give up things. I mean, I, I. What are you willing to subtract from your life to get the things that you want to get? What's. What are the things that are getting in the way? The big things, the little things. And, you know, I have the, the closer we get to the end, I mean, life's like a roll of toilet paper. I mean, the closer we get to the end, the faster it seems to go. And as I get to 57, going on 58 next year, then I realize that, man, I have, I have a finite number of quality years left, and I haven't accomplished everything that I've wanted to accomplish. I haven't helped all the people I want to help. So I extend, I want to extend my usefulness. So what are all the things that are getting in the way of. I can do two things. I can either give myself more time and I can start doing the peptides and working out and taking. Make. Go to the cardiologist and get the scans and reduce alcohol and intake and all of the things and, or I can be more efficient, more effective in the time that I have. So that's Like a double whammy.

I would do both those things, wouldn't you?

Right.

All the things I would do, all the things I mean, and the way I focus on the habits that we don't want. Like, it's a languaging thing. Some of you listening to this right now, you may be thinking, like, okay, sounds good. But playing with this in your head is not like playing in the reality. I have a rule of, like, 16. I can't get into them right now, but 16 rules that highly effective communicators use. And rule number 16 is, in order to understand, you have to act, which means you don't understand us right now. You're hearing us. You're hearing it, you're thinking about it. You're analyzing. Go say this to yourself and give it a shot for a week. And if you don't like it at the end of the week, never do it again. But I would say, like, there's a lot of habits we picked up. Like our big little. Our little problem that's big is this is our phone. I will tell you that 90% of your day is at one moment. You're. I'm just throwing numbers out there. You're looking at it, you're thinking about it, you're analyzing it. You're losing two to three hours every day. All of us are indirectly on that thing, whether we realize it or not. And you might want to admit, like, there are some things that were useful in my life at one time that I just don't really need anymore that are just. I don't want to say old habits, but they were patterns that I used in the past. So instead of saying I sabotaged myself, I picked up a pattern when I was younger to go drink and hang out with friends. Very useful back then. It's not wrong. It's just I'm a different stage of my life. And when you start saying that word stage, like step 13 of AA should be, I used to live differently because I didn't have the choices and abilities and strengths I have now. Less that I'm addicted, more I didn't understand, I didn't know. And I'm learning more about myself. And it's not useful anymore. When we start talking that way with ourselves, we start building a different future for ourselves. And that's. I get excited about talking about that because once you change the way you language things and label, really, it's massive what it does.

And it is so much about season of. Seasons of life. I heard a psychologist the other day a very Popular psychologist saying, I don't think young people drink enough. And I was like, well, that's a hot unpopular take. And I'm not sure that I agree with that. And he went on to say that he thinks that kids now get into social media, they stay in their house, they live their life through their phones, or they're using alternative things to change their state like gummies or marijuana, which again, that's not gonna put, that's gonna put you deeper into your couch and deeper into Uber Eats. And, you know, people need to go out where other people are, put their down, have a couple of social lubricants and engage with other people. And if you think about your young life and the people that you have in your life and all the great stories that you have that you probably tell your wonderful daughters occasionally, maybe not yet, but there's going to be some aspect of where you took a chance, you went on a limb and maybe there was a couple drinks involved. So, you know, as a young person drinking a couple of three beers over a time period where you're out an event with 20 other people and, or playing games or things like that, you can make a case that, you know, that's not going to. That is worse than the, that is better than the alternative of using other mind altering drugs and staying at home and, you know, getting scrolling on Instagram. So it was kind of a hot take. I'm not, I'm not endorsing that take, but, but it was a, it was a bit of a hot take.

But it's kind of interesting because I understand what they mean by that. He's basically saying in order to get your oxytocin fill, which is connection with people. At least when you drink, we talk, and when you stay at home and you're on your phone, your brain doesn't work as well.

Yeah, but alcohol is also connected to every single negative outcome that I've had in my life.

Yeah, I'm not a fan. I get what he means. I mean, you probably can do that with. I think he means go to events, be part of things, socialize. Yes, but I get it. I'm not advocating. But yeah, Jeff, that's an interesting take right there. And I will tell you, if you ever do want to make it in social media, have the courage to put things out there like that, because that is the only thing that, when I say the only thing that is the only thing that is going to get you massive connection with people is to take a stance like that.

Yeah. Adversity. We've spent the last hundred years air conditioning ourselves finding now we don't even have to go to the store to get things. We can get things delivered between three and ten o'clock today. All we have to do is press a button on our phone and it'll show up for us. Everything that we've done has been, every advance, every technology has been to make our lives easier, more comfortable with less adversity. Why is adversity so important? You talk about it in your average sucks book.

Yep. So adversity is necessary. And I'm just going to tell you if you want to grow a muscle, you've got to destroy a muscle. If you, you have to go through some level, to the level I can't speak per person. So somebody may get adversity because they were, they went at 17, 18 years old, they enrolled in the Marines, they got enlisted, they went over to Afghanistan, they come back, that might be their adversity. Someone else adversity may be me, where I didn't have any as a kid. Well, I had a little adversity, got picked on and teased as a kid. I was shy, nobody wants to believe that one, but I was very shy as a kid, didn't have enough adversity. So I wanted the business for myself, which is selected adversity. So you're going to need some level of adversity to grow because when we go to change our lives, the way it works is you're either going to be less than 3% of the population or decide and do people. Jeff, I already know that you're not. This, even though you might think you are a decide and do person is just I decide, I'm going to make a decision and I'm going to go do it. And that's how I've always been. It's less than 3% of the population, 97% of us wait until things hurt enough, bad enough internally or externally that we're willing to make a change. We don't want to let our kids down, we don't want to let down our team. We don't want to look bad publicly, whatever it is. So 97% of the world, and I've done stats on this like very few people are just decide and do. 97% they will do something when things get bad enough that they feel like they have to change. So adversity, you don't need to cold plunge every morning and seek out that adversity. It's not necessary. You can if you want. It's not necessary. You don't have to go on 100 mile hike, that is, you don't have to, it doesn't have to be David Goggins level. But I also just want to just let you know that adversity is the gateway to what you want. So I'll give you a prime example. If you say to yourself, I want to make more money, I don't know if God or whatever you believe in is going to say sounds great. And the next morning and wake up your phone line is not going to work or something's going to happen. How you deal with the adversity that shows up or the adversity you select is, is whether you level up in the game and you wind up being the Big Mario. Do do do do do. And now you're the Big Mario. And the Big Mario can get doubled on in half the time. But adversity is the gateway. So in the old days adversity was normal part of life. Like you watch Little House on the Prairie, adversity was just part of the show. Like every episode somebody dies, goes blind.

Half the people had polio, everyone got it.

So now adversity's, it's so safe that, that we don't have, you don't even need a lot of adversity. Like I remember Jeff, like playing baseball when I was a kid. Did you play baseball growing up?

Yeah, until fifth grade. I struck out in an all star game and quit. Never went back.

Okay. That's what happens to us as people. I around sixth grade didn't make the majors. Like the minors. The majors. And my birthday is October. I get one more year of the minors. Kind of embarrassing. Never was good enough to play the majors. There's no club teams back then and boom. Done out.

Look, if you can't hit a curveball by 12, you're out.

Yeah. Now that doesn't mean you're really out. That means you got to get your shit together and you got to figure that out.

That's right.

Adversity. Don't welcome it, invite it, build an appropriate relationship with it. But don't go look for extra adversity you don't need. That's where people get addicted to it. I think that's where they get it wrong. Where they seek out adversity to feel important versus you're going to get it regardless. So I'd get going. Keep your eyes open, it's coming. But don't go seek out extra adversity. You don't need it.

That's a, that's a hot Take. Because I have often wondered if I do that, if I. If sometimes I let things go to a point to where it becomes a conflict. And I'm really good in a scrum, in a firefight like that. And I never feel more alive than when I'm in that situation. And I don't think I do it intentionally say, but. But I also do think that I know that I'm comfortable battling my way out, so I'm more prone to let something happen. I'm not fearful enough of it, not getting there.

So I would say that's a pattern we have. It's like a motivation strategy. I do it a little one does it where, like, we create a problem right before we need to be motivated. Like, I'm just going to take a wild guess. March 2020, when the world did whatever that ridiculous thing that it did. Dude, where. You've never been that on in your life, have you? Like, you went to war. I was. I was my best. I knew exactly what to do and exactly. I wasn't listening to anybody. I was going to do what I was going to do. I was built for that. You know what I'm saying? And everyone else took a nap. And I'm like. I was doing three courses a day every other week. Do you know what I'm saying?

Yeah.

I mean, I was like, I. You couldn't stop me. I thrived in it. The problem with that is actually, there's no problem with that. That's one way to live. But that's not the only way to get where you want to go. You shouldn't seek out more than you need.

Right. Right.

I can go deeper on that if you want, but wherever you want to take this.

I'd like to talk about the book Average Sucks. And I had this. I'm sure it's stolen from somewhere, but I would tell people that average was one data point above. You suck.

I never heard that, but I love it. I'm gonna borrow that. I'll give Jeff credit. First five times, then I'm stealing it.

Yeah, that's fine. Well, I'm. I'm sure I heard it somewhere else, but that was. I mean, I. I have that in my presentations. It's like, do you really want to be average? And I had these basketball coaches growing up who were influential in my life goal card. They were way ahead of their time in terms of the psychological aspect. I mean, we would practice free throws laying on our back in a dark room, and our free throw percentage would go up more than if we had Practice on with a live ball and a live rim. Yep. And we were, I mean, a bunch of, I mean, anyway, 22 and 3, everybody was between 62 and 64 motion offense, full court, man to man, defense, never played his own. And it just, and we, we just, we, we were all defense and all strategy and, and incredible team and, and I learned so much from these guys. But they would say every day you have the right to be mediocre. And you know, but not here, you know, you have the right. That's what they would, I would, they would be saying that when we were dying, running sprints and running these gassers they would call them, where you go to the free throw line and back and all of the things. And so, you know, mediocrity to me has since they put that in my head because has always been in my target. So when I saw your book Average Sucks, I was fascinated to read it. I went through it and you talk about labels, adversity, you talk about admitting what you want to yourself. You talk about motivation. But you know, really what, you know, reframe average. For the listeners today, what's your definition of average and why does it suck so bad?

Yeah, I got the shirt on average sucks. If you're watching this and I want you to listen, I wear this almost every day of the week. And you get stopped at the airport so quickly, it's amazing. I mean, people, the people that like it, they're like, oh yeah, I like that shirt. I'm like, well, do you know what it means? And I get this four to five times a day everywhere I go. No question. It's in my license plate, in my car. People like it. When I'm getting in my car, very few people give me a hard time. Average is not your comparison to yourself versus other people. It is comparison to what it is is possible for you. So when I say to someone like, well, do you know what it means? Like, oh yeah, be better than others, man, go for it. I said, no, no, no. I say you're average and that's the problem. And they think I'm talking about them. But every one of us has an average in our lives. There's the average amount of times we go on vacation, the average amount of times we go to that website, the average amount of money we spend, the average in your bank account, the average in your returns, the average in your growth. We have built a model for ourselves that is very intelligent. It's based on our unconscious mind programming that one of the beliefs of the unconscious Mind is, I want to make this as easy as possible for you. And I really take you literally. So when you say, this is great, that's another limiting belief we have going, this is great. Your unconscious mind goes, he says, this is great. Let's continue to create this for him. And then you wonder why you can't get past something is 10 years ago you said making a million dollars is great. Now you can't figure out why you can't do 10. Because you used the word great on it and you're all excited and you said, it can never get better. And your unconscious mind did that. So what average is it is the pattern and the program that we are in. And if you want to test, if you're in it, check your screen time over the last year. Check your website over the last year. Where you go restaurants, there's an average. Restaurants I go. The average bill that I spend at a restaurant, the seven places I go, we all have an average. And is your average what you want or what you do? And in that question, Jeff, we get the answer, Is your average what you want or is your average what you do? And most people would say, my average is what I do and it's not what I want. Then it has to suck. Because if you're okay with it, well, then you'd be okay. What you want is what you're doing. They're not in proportion. So what we want is over here, and our average is over here. So the cool part is what we need to do is not really necessarily work that much harder. We need to change what our average is maybe about 5 or 10%. And if we change it 5 or 10%, that's about as far as we need to change things. It's not as drastic as we need. We've got to change our average answer, our average response, our average. Like I tell people, if you would just change a couple of words, like I put up this thing again online, pissed off a lot of people, made a lot of fans. When I said, instead of telling your kids that I'm proud of you, also say you should be proud of yourself. When you add those two things, your average response changes and you build a stronger child. That's it. That's seven words, nine words. Just someone will get me on the math later. But the point is, if you literally will change a few of the things you do regularly to more of the things that you want, your average shifts. That's why I say average sucks. And it's also jarring the words. So there's my take on it.

Talking about children and relativity comparison. This is the thief of joy, they say. Do you agree with that? Because if you don't have comparison. So, I mean, look, just to reframe it, like, you're saying that our average is really against our. It's against our current state, which is our progress and our patterns and. And then against our potential, really who we can be. Because we all know. I mean, if you're Michael Jordan, you're probably like, you know what? I pushed it. If you're Kobe Bryant, I pushed it. But the rest of us, there's this huge delta between what we are and the patterns that we've created and who we could possibly be gunned to our head. We were forced to do it. And the whole definition of discretionary effort is the difference between the minimum that somebody can do to maintain their current state and the best that they could possibly ever do. And the only way you achieve the best that you could possibly ever do is discretionary. It's discretionary effort, and it's what people will give you by their own will and their own choice is, if I want to have a great company, I need to build a team with a high concentration and a high density of a players who give discretionary effort, meaning they're thinking, they're doing. They're making great plays when nobody's looking. And they do it for a variety of motivations inside of that. So. So when it gets back to, you know, our kids and comparison, like, how do we know what's possible if we're only comparing it to ourselves? And then what? Do you have any tools or tricks for parents out there for the kids? I don't know how old yours are. I'm not going to ask on the podcast, but, you know, I mean, when I was parenting, I told myself that 14 was the age of accountability. And if I hadn't put it all into them by then, then it was. It was lost. I hadn't done my job. And then between the ages of 14 and 18, I turn their life over to them. All decisions, all consequences. Because I knew at 18, my influence would be almost zero because they're leaving. So that was my theory. And in terms of raising kids and my little tools that I had to do it. Somebody like you, who's an expert in all of these things, what can you share with parents?

Yeah. So a couple years ago, I had a guy say to me, this guy named Joe. Actually, it was literally about a year ago, I was on this podcast and I was teaching this And I said, yeah, I just threw the throwaway statement. I'm like, oh, yeah, and this works with your kids? And he goes, wait, stop. And keep the podcast rolling. But stop. He goes, well, how do I motivate my kids to want to be great? Because that's our dream. I mean, as parents, they don't have to be the next Michael Jordan, the Kobe, but you want them. Like, my favorite line is. And I'll get back to that in a second. About Joe is guy said to me years ago, how tall are you? I said, I'm six foot. I thought I was six, six. I've actually grown, so I'm six foot seven. And I had no idea, like, I'd measured in a long time. I'm a little taller than I thought I was. And this guy said, how tall are you? And I said, I'm like six, six, six. And he goes, when are you going to start acting like. And I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, you act five foot five. He goes, which would be totally fine if you were five foot five, but if you're five foot five, you should act all five, five or five. You're four for one. You should act, fall four for one. But if you're five foot five, you shouldn't act four foot one. So he goes, you probably got a good five, 10, 15 inches that you need to grow. And I got bothered at first, and I realized that is our purpose of life is to grow into what we're capable of being. And it got me to realize, I don't think most people realize they're capable of being great because of their life experiences, how they see themselves, their vision, casting, whatever it else. So I'm on this podcast with this guy Joe, and I'm talking about that. And Joe goes, wait, hold on a second. How do you motivate your kids? And this will work with kids or employees or anything? And I said, motivate them to do what? Because a lot of times people will give advice like, how do you motivate? Oh, here's how to motivate. That is just awful to give people advice without context. So I said, like, motivate your kid to do what? And he goes, well, I want him to take basketball more seriously. I'm like, well, does he actually want to? And he said, I don't know. And I says, well, does he believe he could be great? And I said, well, I think so. I said, well, we probably should get past think so and find out. So I go, here's what I want you to do tomorrow morning after he's eaten, I want you to go up to him when he's not hangry, and I want you just to ask the kid the question. I gave him what to ask. And I said to him, I said, if you say to someone, I can help you or do you want help? You're actually trying to dominate them. Meaning, like, you're going to make them insecure. And most people don't realize as we communicate, we tend to make people insecure. We don't realize it. So we'd say, hey, listen, you could do better. That means I know something you don't know and make you insecure. So I said, say this to him. So he walked up to his kid, and he said this to him. I said, after he ate, all I want you to say is this. Hey, listen, if you ever want to get better at basketball, I might have a couple ideas come to me, but not now. You just come to me when you're ready. Just come to me. Pause, Wait. Have the courage to shut the f up and just change subjects. Do something else. Don't talk about it more. Even if they want to bring it up, it's not a good time right now. Joe calls me the next day after the podcast, goes, michael, Michael, Michael, I don't know whether to kill you or love you. I go, what do you mean? He goes, well, I did it with my kid. And I said that. And you know what he did this morning? A day later, he came to me, he said, daddy, I want to get better basketball now I got to get him a freaking coach. Now, why am I saying that? I'm saying that because you want to be great parents, you've got to drop a seed. Say, hey, listen, if you ever want to get better at this, like, they're doing calculus. Listen, if you ever did want to get better and it mattered for you to, like, make this easier and get better, you just come to me. Not now. And I might have a couple of ideas. Not even I have a couple ideas. I might have a couple ideas. If they don't come to you, you could drop that seed another couple weeks later. Remember I told you at breakfast a couple of months ago, if you ever want to get better at this, if they come to you on their accord, let me explain the difference. So here's the way the mind works. If I tell you, Jeff, I can make you a better salesman, I just said you're not a good salesman. I made you feel bad, and it's not good. That's not what you should say to somebody old school, Gen Xer, maybe you could say that to me. I'd say it to you, but not to your kids or to your new teammate. So what you'd say to you is, I would say, hey, Jeff, if you ever want to get better at sales, learn a couple things you don't know, let me know and just drop it, leave it, and have the courage to walk away. What that does is they come to you not out of excitement. Because a conversation based on dopamine and cortisol, cortisol's fear and dopamine is excitement. Creates a conversation to concoction. It's very low level street drugs. It's a dime bag of weed. It's no good, right? It's cheap. The good designer ones in your brain are based on love, oxytocin and serotonin. So you want your child on their own accord to go, dad, mom, I do care enough about me that I want to get better at this. And then it winds up in the right part of their mind and the change happens quickly. Most parents want to dominate their kids versus letting the kids dominate themselves.

I had a few principles raising my kids, and one of the foundations was self determination. I refused to tell them what I thought they should do.

That's great. Annoying as hell, but great.

I just wouldn't. Well, and it, but it was not intentional originally, but it was the way that I grew up, which was completely untethered from like 12 years old, completely untethered and having to figure everything out for myself. Every decision, overcoming, you know, shortfalls of, of guidance or support or things like that. And what I realized is as I got into other relationships, as I got older, I became very averse to people telling me what they thought I should do. And I. And, and the next step of that is when enough space was created or enough failure was created. Then what I did was then I started learning how to set goals and dreams for myself. And they were, and I knew how important it was that they were my goals and that they were my dreams and that they were ambitious enough and they were bold enough for me to work towards it. But it was always my decision what I did. Nobody's ever told me anything that I should do. And because of that, then it was, I was, you know, and the last thing you want to do is your kids to figure out like, you know, after four years of law school or medical school that they've spent their entire life chasing a dream that wasn't theirs, it was yours.

Interesting. And that's why it's got to be their idea to do whatever it is. And that's where we have to allow things to be, make other people's ideas. And one of the simplest things you can say is, I'm just going to drop a seed and you can do whatever you want with it. When you say that and you drop it, the most powerful thing you can ever do is walk away and give someone a chance to think. Don't do the thinking for them. So that's wonderful. So you did support. You gave them the food, but you didn't chew it for them and digest it for them, did you?

No, not at all. I mean it was. I had a simple model truth, trans Truth, triumph and self determination. I never lied to him because I just didn't know to lie to him. I just didn't know. Cat. No, the cat didn't run away. We're not making posters. I ran the son of a gun over.

Did you really run over the cat?

It did a few things. The dog's dead. You know, like there's things that happened. Right. So I mean, that actually is better.

I mean, patting that stuff. I mean, we've done. We've bought the same fish six times. And then she's like, why didn't you tell me? Because we were. This is right out of the. You've seen the movie Fight Club.

Of course. It's the first rule of my. The first rule of my mastermind is we don't talk about it.

That's awesome. One of the things he says in the movie when he's talking, I think it's with. Not Brad Pitt, who's the other character? Edward Norton. She says something like, well, I didn't. I didn't tell you the truth. He's like, well, you didn't want to. You didn't want to deal with my feelings. You didn't want to deal with me. And if you think about that, we're protecting ourselves by not telling with them because we don't want to deal with the thing. But that's us harming them. So we don't tell them the fish died because we don't want to deal with the repercussion. And that's our own insecurity versus we don't even know how they'd respond. They may bounce back just fine.

Children are just as smart as adults. They're just less experienced. They're just as observant, they're just as intuitive. Where will your kids end up if they know that anytime there's adversity or conflict that you are absolutely lying to them. Our entire relationship is based upon you lying to me to manipulate me.

Yep.

To protect me. You didn't make the team. Oh, that's for the big girls. That wasn't your team. That's why you're on this team. No, you didn't make the team because.

You'Re not good enough.

You're not good enough. You're just. You're just better.

We can work on that.

Yeah, you're a little slow. One of the greatest gifts that I ever got was from my grandmother, grandfather. He was Austrian, worked at a gas station, saved his pennies drink, Meister brow. I mean, the whole. But you know, he was an immigrant. I mean, both of my grandparents spoke Czech. That's great. You know, you know, clucking at me and all this, you know, and watching Lawrence Welk because they came from the same place or whatever. I had a polka band at my wedding as a result of all of this Polish Austrian upbringing and whatever. But he told me, he said, and I had just started playing football as a junior in high school. I was a basketball player. And he told me, he said, you're too slow. You're too slow. And I had just set the record for receptions, 56 receptions in a year, stood for 25 years. And. But I was too slow to get a scholarship. And, and he was right. But nobody, even my coaches didn't tell me. I mean, I knew that I wasn't really that straight line speed. I wasn't that straight line fast for my position, which was a wide receiver. And I knew that I had. I didn't have capabilities, I didn't have skills because I didn't play football growing up. I just was a basketball player that went out there and just figured, was trying to figure it all out. But him telling me I was too slow led me, I went, I walked onto a Division 1 school. I was uninvited back as well. Like you were at Arizona State. I was uninvited back for all the reasons. I dropped back to a junior college just like you did. And what I realized was this is. I just had a failure. And if I'm going to get out of here, I need to be faster. I need to be. I need the minimal viable speed to get a division I scholarship. So what did I do? I enrolled in. In the. I changed positions to defense, but they changed me back because they knew who I was and they could. That I knew I could catch. They're like, no, no, no, no, you're. You're going over there. And I. But I came here to learn linebacker. They said, no, you're going over there to tight end. And. But so I enrolled in taekwondo for 18 months, stretching and kicking.

Wow.

Yeah. So what. What I realized was, and this was from my high school basketball coaches, I broke it down and I wrote it on goal cards. I need flexibility, I need explosiveness, and I need strength. So those are the three ingredients to speed. And so I joined taekwondo to get the flexibility. I got in the weight room and I worked legs for the first time in my life, and I got strength. And then I did all the plyometrics, jumping off of boxes, you know, all of the things. Right. And I just got barely fast enough to get a Division 1 scholarship out to Appalachian State. But if I. Nobody, of all the people in my life, everywhere, they probably assumed that I knew that I wasn't fast enough. But the reality of it is, I didn't until my grandfather told me.

Nobody. Nobody told you the truth.

Nobody cared enough to tell me the truth.

And you weren't willing. And you have to be willing to live in that truth. So if I say to a sales guy, you're inconsistent, right?

Yeah.

He'll hear it, but then he needs to live in it. And then you lived in it and you did something with it. Like you. Whatever respect you had for that guy that told you that, you did what I would train somebody how to do, because I would say, all right, you don't need to get faster. You need these three things. Because faster is a concept, right?

Yeah, but that's why. Yeah.

Agility, endurance, Those are not ideas. Those are three things they can work on. That's. That's really powerful thought, is. It goes beyond truth, that you're willing to hear the truth, say the truth, live in it long enough, because you could have went home and tried to prove that coach wronged everybody. You knew. Couldn't you have?

Yeah, well, it was my grandfather that told me.

Oh, your grandfather told you, not the coach I got.

No, my grandfather told me he knew jack squat about sports. He just watched all my games. And he just comparatively said, you're too slow to go to play in college. That's exactly what he told me. You're too slow to play in college. And he was right. That's the thing. He was right. I mean, I could have gone to smaller school, but, like. So that. So how that manifested is I never lied to my kids about anything. I just never did. I always told them what it was because. And I. And I didn't connect the dots till years later. And then triumph is you just don't rescue them when they fail. You let them bear the consequences of their failures. And by telling them the truth about it and all of that. And then self determination, don't make. Don't teach them what to think. Teach them how to think and get out of their way. Because if it's your idea that they're gonna quit and that's like your idea.

Is not their idea.

No, no. And they all do different things. I've got an econ finance guy who. And they all got other mentors who had influence as to what they ended up doing. And I got an econ finance guy who's crushing it. And the franchise did all of our deals here. My daughter is. She's graduating NYU Law school and she's going to work for K and E. And then my son's an engineering student at Virginia Tech who you met. And you are probably his favorite mentor. I, you know, he, you know, when the, when the student's ready, the teacher appeared, you. You took however many minutes and poured into him and you changed tough on him at first. You changed his life. You changed his life in a way that I couldn't give. You gave him the advice that I couldn't possibly have given him. And I just, I can't thank you enough for that, Michael.

Well, parenting and teamwork was. It takes a village, it takes a team. And he was ready. And it was all that you did, Jeff, up until that point that allowed him to hear me, because what I said to him sounded similar to something he might have heard prior. So there was an opening, but it was maybe said in a different way by somebody different that publicly that allowed him to make the change. So I do believe that was a tag team, you and I like wwf back in the old days where you and I made that happen.

Yeah. And just for the sake of the audience, Jack had gone through a difficult breakup. He had a girlfriend he really liked and she broke up with him the day before school started. And he was devastated. It's first time. And he's very kinesthetic. Right. He's 80, he's all over the place. He's in. He, I mean, he is just very well. So like getting him to sit and listen for 30 minutes. And it was, it was that day. I. So I said, let's get up early, let's go to breakfast. And he sat there and listened to me. And he stared me in the eyes for 30 minutes. He didn't say a word. Back, and I just gave him my perspective on the whole ordeal. And then I followed up with a very specific text. I need to go back and grab it before it. Just because my wife's like that. You nailed it with that right there. But he really didn't. He didn't react to me, and I didn't know how he was. And then when he came out to the Genius Network Youth and you gave three or four hours of your time to speak to these kids and give him these tools, you asked if anybody had a problem. And he had enough courage, enough ego. His ego was. Didn't get in the way of him raising his hand and saying yes. I just got crushed by a girl that I really liked. The day before going back to school, I waited for her. She went and studied abroad, and I sat here and waited for her. And then she came back and just crushed me. And. And the other thing about it was, he knew. The big awareness was he said. The one thing he did say to me is, he goes, dad, it's the stuff that you've been telling me for the last few years, and I know that it's my fault, and there's some things that I need to change. And then you gave him some tools, one of which was just a simple band aid, was you taught him how to disappear her. What is that? Is that a labeling technique or is that something else?

Everything that's already occurred in our life is a series of picture sounds and feelings. So even whether an. An awful trauma, you have dealing with something from the past, anything that's not currently happening right now, which nothing's actually happening right now. So by the time you tell something to somebody, it's already in the past, is a picture, sound, and feeling. But by altering the picture and the sound, the feeling changes. So I would go, in people's minds, as silly as it is, there's a picture there, and we adjust the picture once you adjust any aspect of it. For instance, if somebody gets in a car wreck and they're scared to drive, they're not actually scared to drive. They have a picture in their head that's messing things up or a sound, right? So what I do is I have them remember it with me. And they remember their kids, they remember their situation, they remember the accident, remember whatever it was going on. And as soon as they start to describe it to me, I ask them to see it slightly different. Like. Got it. Can you see the steering wheel? Can you picture this? Imagine you were sitting in the other seat. The second you change anything, it Changes the imagery of the past. When you change the imagery, you change the emotion. Because somebody. When I work with people that are involved with first person shooter situations, or what they'd call PTSD from military or police operations, the reason they can't get over it is they're picturing it out of their own eyes. I have them imagine, then they become the spotter, and then they imagine watching it on film back at the audience, or then imagine seeing it in black and white or changing it. And when you change the filter and the picture, you adjust things. The reason they don't call it. Hi, you're about to go take out a target. There's a guy named John. He's a family of five. He's got three dogs and a puppy. They call him a target for a reason. They call it a package. They call it an operation. For very particular. Listen, when you played football, you played football too, right, Jeff?

Yes, sir.

When you played football, if you would have known, hey, it's a quarterback. His wife is going. Is your job is to sack the quarterback. By the way, his mom is going through a divorce right now and his sister has cancer. Would you tackle that guy?

No. You, you. It's a threat. It's a threat. It's a threat to the outside. It's a threat. You, you, you, you name it. A threat.

He's a number. 12. Take out number 12, right? Who is it? 12.

Yeah.

Don't give him a middle name. You don't know him. 12. The second you change that, you pull the emotion out. So I did something like that with him and boom, he had no attachment. So without the emotion, the picture changed. She was just a girl. That he had a relationship at some point in his life, that he chose somebody that wasn't right for his future. Versus she broke my heart.

If you were to go to marriage counseling to deal with an affair, what they would tell you, One might say, I want to know the details. And the therapist would say, no, you don't. You don't want to know the details. You don't want to know when. You don't want to know how many times. You don't want to know where it happened or how it first became, because you won't be able to then just get rid of the feelings. So, like, don't give yourself a picture and the sound bites to it. If you. If you know that that's going to make the feelings harder to overcome if your intent is to overcome that situation.

So most therapists, which I'm not in line with 99% of the therapists out there are some good ones out there, but I'm not in line with them because the first question they ask when someone comes to them is like, well, you know, I got a problem and I'm addicted to this, or I got a problem. And they really. They ask why? And in the answer of why, like, so why did your mom be mean to you? And then you go and you talk for an hour on their couch, and at the end of the hour, it's hours up, 300, 400 bucks later, and they come back next week, we'll talk about your mom. Reliving it does not make it better or go away. Changing your perception of it. Back to what I said originally of what happened, the truth is there was something that. The way I was looking at something was bothering me. And being able to change your perception of it, that's going to change everything. And most people have. They just don't have the skill to do it. I mean, kindergarten class, day one, should be like, show up for kindergarten. The first thing they should ask you is, what do you want for your life? How do you want to live? And they start teaching skills like, wouldn't it make sense that they had, like, how to deal with a breakup. 101, how to deal with getting fired. 202, how to deal with not making the team. 304, how to get the coach to like you. 506, you know, how to live a long time. 909, they teach us dumb things like, we should learn how to deal with ourselves in our life. Not. Not the stuff that they're teaching us in schools. It's useless.

Brian Regan, the comedian, was talking to Jerry Seinfeld and he was like, I'd be the most. He goes, wouldn't that be the greatest therapist that ever existed? You just walk in there and you tell. You tell them what's wrong, and you just say, get over it. Just get over it. Oh, okay, just get over it. Or what is up? Like that. And he's like, yeah, you guess had a line out the. You know, you just walk in, he says that to you, and you're like, oh, okay. And you walk out, line around the. Around the building. But no, that's not the way they do it. There's a.

They want to think that they're special. So they. They take advantage of this idea that human beings want to think that their problem is special.

Right?

One thing I teach at my events is that it doesn't matter what you're dealing with. Your issue is Actually just picture sounds and feelings. It's no worse than anybody else's. But you want to make. You don't get a man. I got hurt by that employee is no different than someone that got hurt by a paper cut. It's all the same level of it's not what you want. Second, you need to feel important. We make things worse than they are. That's a whole nother conversation.

Yeah. Well, look, this has gone fast and we're kind of, we're up against it here, but this has been incredible. Michael, thanks so much for being on. If you want to play, I have a curveball and a fastball for you.

Well, they're both challenging to hit, so I'll take the curveball.

Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hit you with both of them. But before we do, we didn't get a chance to talk much about your events. Tell people how to get in touch with you, direct them where to look. You've got a program coming up in the third week of April that I plan to attend and I'm going to bring some of our franchise owners there, which is a multi day event and an incredible value. But where would you direct people to go to learn more about how they can engage with you?

Yeah, a couple of things. One is find me, go on Instagram, just go on social media. I always recommend just do a little research if you want. If you're one of those people that want to tinker around, you can grab my book Average sucks, which is great. Amazon, Barnes and Nobles, whatever. This is something new. There's the book right there. If you're watching online, definitely get the book. And I wrote it to be read, not to make me sound important or look good. Like when the guy sat down with me and he said, hey, what do you want the book to do? I want it to be easy to read and make an impact. So spend 20 bucks. If you can't turn it into 200 to 2000, you did something wrong. That's my opinion. This is the thing that I was going to say is if you're seriously listening to this right now and you text me, just send me. I'm going to give you a phone number right now. And this is not my personal phone number, but my team runs this. I'm going to give you a number right now. It's 4808-0080-5148-0800-8051. All I want you to do is send me the word influence. It may send you something back. My Team will book a time for us to chat or somebody will get you what you need. If you want to know about the event, we'll send you that. I did do a special something for Jeff. I will extend that for this group. As you're listening right now, I'm gonna give you a little gift that you kind of go through Jeff. So that's one way. If you want to pay full price, you can go to my website. Up to you if you want to do that, or schedule a time. You can talk to us about it. But it's 480-800-8051. Send the word influence. And then when they ask how we met, just say the podcast. Talk about unemployable mention Jeff. And that's for serious people that either a want to come to that event or learn about coaching or work with me. Because the last thing you want to do is go to a website and not talk to an actual person. You make your own choices. You can do that. I want to help you be intelligent. So either I or my team very happy to talk to you. And if I know you through Jeff, I might even jump on the phone myself.

Awesome. That's incredible. That's 480-800-8051. Text influence, mention Jeff or the unemployable podcast and you will get the deal that you extended to our franchise group, which was incredible. I can't wait to show up out there. Hopefully I get 10 or 20 of our interested owners out there and we make a little thing of it. So going to be pushing it hard.

To change the way they communicate for the rest of their lives.

Yes. Awesome. Okay, here's the curveball. Gun to your head. You have to start a business in the next 30 days. It can't be anything that you're currently doing. Where is the opportunity that you see in the market right now if you had to start a business that you're not currently doing.

Does it have to be something I understand at all?

Anything you want.

Okay.

Could be something somebody else is doing. You do. Yeah, sure, all you want.

I mean, I would. I would quickly. I'd quickly go into real estate. I'd quickly fix and flip things. And the reason why I'd say that that's a good one is it allows you to get in with all the trades which you and I have talked about before. It would do three things. It would a, it would force me to understand as a start and a finish of the project, I can continue to do it or don't afterwards. It would Involve me with multitudes of different trades which would expand my network and exp the people that I know in trades, no other trades. And it has a potential that I know from evidence that it could bring me 10,000 to $200,000, depending the size of the flip, and I can decide if I want to do it afterwards and I get the leverage of the bank. So there's a few folds is one is proof of concept. I've seen it work. But I love the idea of meeting all the trades, from the roofing to the solar to the. To the drywall. I would force me to build my network. So it would be like win money, but, man, I'd wind up with 400 people that want to get to know me because they want my business. And it would. Then I could find out the next deal, and then maybe from there I'd go into roofing or I'd go into something else. But that is the first thing where I feel like I would get paid to learn, understand, and grow my network.

Beautifully said. Last question. You've got one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life. What would that be?

Accept the power of your own influence. You're already influencing people, every single one of you already. What are you influencing them to do? So you're already influential. How much are you using it to get what you want and help other people get what they want? Accept the power of your own influence. Period. It's a command.

Perfectly said. Thank you so much, Michael.

Appreciate it. Jeff, this has been a pleasure. I could talk with you for days. So thank you for being here. And if you made it this far, everybody, not only are you in great hands with Jeff and the unemployable podcast, you really, really are somebody that's headed in incredible places. So it's an honor to spend time with you.

That's been great. It's been great. I'm Jeff Duden. We've been here with the incredible Michael Bernoff on the unemployable podcast. Thanks for listening.