How To Win Twice (Performance Beyond the Win) ft. Michael Bernoff

We all set goals, push hard, and work towards that big moment when everything finally comes together. But here's the real question: what happens after you win? Because for many high achievers, success can quietly become a stopping point instead of a launching pad. Today's talk is about learning how to think and perform beyond achievement and how the highest performers mentally position themselves two moves past their biggest goals. Michael Bernoff helps people understand how the mind truly drives performance. Not just by focusing on results, but by learning to see, hear, and feel life beyond them. When you mentally experience success past the finish line, decisions become clearer, performance becomes easier, and momentum accelerates. As founder of the Human Communications Institute, Michael has worked with entrepreneurs, leaders, and peak performers around the world, including many right here in Genius Network, teaching them how to master the conversations that shape results both internally and externally. Today, Michael will show you how elite athletes and top performers future pace beyond their why people often plateau after achieving success, plateau after achieving success, and how this same framework can help you break through stuck marketing, revenue ceilings, sales challenges, and even the relationships you want to create. Michael's talk is titled Winning Twice: Performance Beyond the Win. Please join me in welcoming the man who will teach you how to win not once but twice, my friend Michael Bernoff.

You got a new word in there.

Yeah, man.

Thank you, Joe. Thank you, sir.

Appreciate it.

All right, 10 minutes going. I want to make this really, really simple for all of you. I'm only looking for you guys to walk out with one simple win today. How many of you can count to one? One? Say it, one? One little win. So pay attention, look for the win, and work to get it. So today's talk is really about that subject matter that most people look for, they want, they get excited about. It's the same reason that during lunch today I whipped out my phone. I love the people I was sitting with, and I said, I have to watch what's going on right now. Having a daughter who's a committed figure skater and the Olympics on right now, I immediately separated from everything and why hundreds of millions of people all over the world watch people do incredible things. Now let me ask all of you a question. How many of you love to be around people that are winning? How many of you know what I'm talking about? Winning is such an incredible thing. When we saw the incredible video earlier about winning and watching that company share winning, that's all most people want to be around. But why is it that most people love to win, but very few people actually know how to win? And when I talk about the word winning right now and how to actually create winning for you, this conversation is designed to do 3 very simple things: to give you the win, where you're going to get an opportunity to win more often; number 2, your clients, where they're going to be able to win more often; and number 3, if you pay close attention, your future self is going to get a major win from this one little simple exercise that I'm going to share with you. So when I thought about what I was going to cover today, I know it's the idea is a 10-minute talk. I figured I would just have a conversation with you instead about something that I found that's worked over the years. It's worked with my clients, it's worked with my kids, it's worked with myself, and I've proven it enough to know that a lot of people will get on not this stage but other stages and just share a bunch of shit they saw online. This is something that's proven track record from a UFC client that came to me. And he walked into my office, and I don't know if you ever get a chance to work with UFC fighters, but UFC fighters, when they come down to work with you, they've got one goal. They want to win the match. And when the guy came to me, he shared this idea with me that he was intimidated about what was going on. And what I recognized is most people have two conflicting things going on at once. They have the idea to win, and they have a natural tendency to fall short of what they're capable of. I know we don't want to admit it, especially in a room like this, yet how many of you have had a big desire, a big goal, a big win that you wanted for a year, and at the end of the year you still fell short? Let's be honest. I'll raise my hand first. Think about it. We are in one of the highest level rooms in the world, and 99% of us fall short on a regular basis. Why is that? It's because the majority of us have not really planned ourselves for what we want. So when the guy came to me and he said to me, Michael, I got a big match coming up, I'm super excited about this, something happened in our conversation that took him from doing okay in the match before to being one of the top 10 takedowns ever in UFC. Recently my daughter came to me, same technique, she came to me, said, Michael, or calls me dad, the other one's Michael, my oldest is Michael, Tara calls me Michael, and my little one calls me dad or sometimes goon because I'm big, hockey player, and If you have a kid call you goon, it's a good thing. And what's interesting is they came to me and said, I really want to figure out how to do this move. And what I recognized is most people have a win of something they want. And I looked at her and I said this one little thing to her, and instantly, within a couple days, she was able to do that technique on the ice. What I recognized is most of us do this a lot in business, but we forget how important it is to do in the things that we do. How many of you have heard of future pacing before? Anyone, future pacing? Oh, we use it for marketing, we use it to selling, we use it for the cheapest things in the world. But when most people come to an event and they want to learn how to market to others, but very few of us have learned how to actually market ourselves to ourselves of what's actually possible. So I'll give you the quick version of future pacing. Future pacing is the simple idea, and every one of you should write this down 'cause you're smart, is the ability to presuppose in advance that something is going to occur and to actually build a neural pathway for people. So what if it isn't that people don't know how to win? What if it is that they don't actually have a pathway for actually doing it? I watched, sadly, a couple of Olympians just the other day. I watched their training and I watched what their coach did. There were two groups of skaters. One group I could tell that the coach actually got them to get to the Olympics. And that was their win. And I watched another group that they were actually going to perform well when they got there. And I want you to think of the difference. Crying will happen for both. One will cry because they didn't finish what they started. The other one will cry because they did what they said they were actually going to do. People will follow anybody across the world to watch them win, but very few people know how to make winning happen for people. So let's talk about how winning works. Winning starts in the mind prior to happening in reality. But most people think they're just going to win in reality. So I'm going to give you a little something that you guys can use if you guys like making money.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video and I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description or you can wait till the end of this video or you can simply go to JoePolish.com/freebook. And you can get a copy there.

How many of you like making money? Okay, so first it's gonna get you to make money, and second it's gonna get you to live a better quality of life. So here's what I'd recognize. I don't know what you sell, nor can I really decide how to position this for you, but I want you to use this. The one thing I will tell you, the first time you use it, you'll probably be shitty at doing it. The second time you use it, you'll get decent at it. The third time, you'll start to get a little better, on your way to being great. But here's the simple technique. What I've learned to say to people is this. What I said to that fighter is this, very simply, "So what you're saying is you want to win." Think of that word for a second. Everybody likes to win. So you're saying what you want to do is win. I also realized that most people never actually want to lose. So as you're sitting there waiting for me to give you the exact words, It goes something like this. For those of you ready with a pen in hand, ready with a script, it goes something like this. Do you know the second biggest win you're gonna get from doing this? See, what's amazing is when you tell somebody the statement, do you know the second biggest win, it presupposes that there's a win prior. Now you and I both know that the win prior is going to be them actually buying your product or doing what, you got how many, yeah, you already just made 100 grand. Okay, in 10 seconds, send it to your team. But the purpose is, do you know the second biggest win? See, when I said to my daughter, you're working on that double axel that you're working on doing. Got it. So everyone wants— thinks the win is doing the double axel. The win is not doing the double axel. The winning is the one moment afterwards. Most people don't pay attention to the second afterwards. All they pay attention is going up to the line. Now pay attention to the psychology of people. If 99% of the people fall short of what they're capable of, that means we need to go slightly past what we're asking for in conversation to get ourselves on board. So let's go over this one more time for other people in sales, and then I'm gonna show you guys how you can use this yourself and still be done in the allotted amount of time and have my conversation with Joel. Now, here's what I was gonna say to all of you, and I want you to pay attention. When you meet with somebody, you want to say to them and show them what it is you have, and then you're going to say to them the simple statement, "Do you know the second biggest win that you're going to get from this?" The second you lay it out, the second biggest win could be that after you do this, you'll be confident. After you listen to Evan Carmichael and you start doing what I'm about to do, which uses, uses abilities online, you're not going to have to go out there and promote yourself anymore. I know for a fact when Michael talked to me about website and he was sharing about branding, he said, "Michael, the second you get your brand right, use the same technique on me, not only is it going to be easier to hire, people are going to understand what you do. No different than what you shared just a couple seconds ago. So if you take somebody a second past that, it gives them the big win. But here's the part where it goes for you. Every one of you have plans of things that you want to achieve. Every one of you have goals that you think you have in your mind, things that you're looking to do. But what if the challenge wasn't the idea that you have, wasn't the goal that you have, wasn't that it wasn't big enough, what if it wasn't clear enough for one second afterwards? Because if 99% of us stop short of what we're capable of, what if we just had to go one more step? So the difference is, I'd share with Whitney, if it was, we were bodybuilding and we were looking good and we were doing a competition, we wouldn't want to talk about what happens when you get the trophy, what happens when you get the award, What happens 3 seconds afterwards? That is what we're going for. That is the feeling we're looking for. So if you ever want to get people on your team motivated, you want to get yourself inspired, we've got to ask them the magic question: Do you know the second biggest win? Because people in my world don't just get one win, we get two with every single thing that we do. I said to myself before I went up on stage, here's the deal, Number one, I will have come up and done a talk and been able to share with people. But the second biggest win is when I'm done, I'll have had the opportunity to be better at what it is that I was doing. As simple as that is, most of us are not giving ourselves the opportunity to grow based on human psychology, what makes us do the things we need. So when you sit down with your salespeople or you sit down with your team or your kids and you ask them the question, hey listen, I know you've got that spelling test today, I know you've got a calculus, I know you got finals coming up on whatever it is you're doing. After you do well on the test, what is the next big win you're gonna get today? What's fascinating is they focus on the bigger one and they assume the other one is done. The more we assume the first one is finished, the faster we will actually not be disempowered by it. I challenge all of you to win. I'm excited about it. Time's up. Joel, you're up. Thank you.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead, they're over here. Do it now. Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.