Les Brown's 3 Secrets to Escaping Mediocrity – How to Unlock Your Greatness Today!

So in Michael's book, he has a book called Average Sucks. And he's a great speaker and he's a trainer and he's a coach and he's really good at many things. And in the book, he talks about food. And I was using this as a metaphor towards real sincereness versus faking it. Right. And so the way he talks about food is there's food that is addiction, which would be donuts and sugar and fat and just like unhealthy food. The second would be entertainment, which is what most restaurants would be. And then there's nutrition. And I look at people that way too. There's speakers and there's coaches and there's marketers that are, you know, they're not good talkers. It tastes good, but it's, you know, it's kind of like a shit cake.

Can I ask you a question, please, of your mind?

Go ahead.

Your book is entitled, what's your first name?

Average Sucks.

Michael Bernhoff.

Michael. Yep. You said Average sucks. Yep.

Not sex. Sex.

Yeah.

Sometimes people.

I will be praying for you, Michael. Michael, Wanna ask you a question. Yeah. When you go back and look at your life, you're four or five, who is somebody that you admired that, that really impacted how you see yourself?

How I see myself?

Yes. Who? Somebody that you saw, that you admired, that you say, wow, they made you feel safe, made you feel good. And because of their character, because of how they treated you, because of their example, they influenced you in becoming the person that you are now. Who's that person? I've had a ton of them. I would say I'm talking about when you're around 5 or 6. You're around 5 or 6 years old? Yeah. Who was the closest person you, your reference group literally had? I was at a family event and there was a cousin.

It was one time. It was a one time meeting.

It was a cousin came in for.

A funeral and literally just said something to me. He said, you don't have to always listen to everything your parents say. You can be anything that you want to be. And I remember hearing this at a weird age.

He's about eight years older than me.

And he said this to me. And I remember those words to this day. I had a couple interactions with this gentleman.

Okay, hold just a minute.

Yep.

Pump your brakes. Now I want you to listen to different ladies and gentlemen. I want you to shake someone's hand on your right and left and say, you can be anything you want to be. Do that right now, please. That's good.

You can Be anything you want to be.

That's good.

Ladies and gentlemen. I went to a funeral and they said, coincidences. God's way of staying anonymous. And I ran into a cousin of mine and he said that to me. He said, you can be anything that you want to be. I was going through an experience at this time trying to find my footing in life. How many of you had some moments in your life trying to make sense of and say, what is this all about? You remember those moments when you question yourself. And he affirmed me. And so I want to share with you some things I learned from my cousin. Now that's good. That goes different than average sucks because you're assuming that I'm average or he's average. We're not so you blocking a lot of people. But when you say you can be anything you want to be, Maslow said the, the number one thing that people want is self actualization. So now you're affirming people and things I learned from my cousin. You now are in that category. People go online to find out information. How did you get to where you are and what did you learn from your cousin? You want to create the want to that they want to know. What did you learn from your cousin? Because you got some secrets that you learned that allowed you to become the person that you are now. To die to who you were, to give birth to who you are now. And you've decided that you can be anything you want to do. His words when he spoke to you, that went to your heart. And you carried it all these years. He didn't say to you, average sucks. And so the reason I ask you that question, I work with people to get what's in your heart. Average sucks. That's a head thing. You can be anything you want to be. People need to know that in the face of the pandemic, in the face of artificial intelligence, in the face of the statistics that over 350 million people that will be unemployed because of artificial intelligence, you'll say you can be anything you want to be. I'm not saying that there will be 350 million people who will lose their jobs. My cousin taught me that 350 million people lose their jobs. 300 million people have been freed up so they can become entrepreneurs to control their own destiny. It was one said by one philosopher that things may happen to you and things may happen around you, but the things that really count are the things that happen in you. You can do anything you want to do. You can create your own economy. This is A new place of accelerated change, overwhelmin complexity, and tremendous competition. You've got greatness in you. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. My cousin was right. And because of those words he spoke to me, I redefined myself. Because of what he said to me, my life was never the same again. Because of what my cousin said to me, I decided to become an ambassador in life and encourage people to pursue their dreams rather than live their fears.

Solid.

Okay.

I like it.

And then I think marketing and all.

Our market research, that's a whole other conversation. So.

But do you see what I did with that? Yeah, I like that. How many? Do you see the difference? Raise your hand if you see the difference in what I'm talking about. Yes.

You know, I got a funny story.

For you after this.

Well, here's just to bring it up. Andre, don't go away. So the power of relationships. So how many years ago now was it, Andre, that Michael Bernoff and Cameron Herold and then John Rulin said, you know, to you, you need to meet this dude. I happen to be in. So do you know Andre Norman by chance?

Yes.

Okay.

It's a black thing.

Yeah, it's a black guy. We ought to bring all the black people together.

But it's something different.

So, I mean, it seems to me. So we're recording this conversation, it seems to me that all these incarcerated individuals that you're in charge of this program to putting, you know, content on 650,000 tablets that are in prisons for people that are incarcerated, would be very valuable for them to hear a conversation like this.

1,000%.

Yeah. Because, you know, when you're in a position like that, the thing that incarceration does for most people is they usually don't come out better, they usually come out worse. And they now have a. They now have an identity of a convict. They have an identity that I fucked up. I'm a loser, whatever. The interesting thing on the stats are there's 2.2 million people incarcerated in the United States. We're the highest incarcerating country in the world. 25% of the world's prisoners are in the United States. And 80 to 90% of everyone arrested or thrown in jail, drugs and alcohol were involved. And 40% of people that are, you know, incarcerated committed some sort of violent crime, which is a different discussion. 60% have not. So there's a lot of addicted people that are incarcerated. And putting people into a punitive system, you can't punish pain out of People is really damaging. And it's not just the incarcerated people. The 2.2 million people for everybody person incarcerated, there's a whole family unit and relationships that are attached to that person. So there's a very. There's an opportunity to change that person so that they can get out and become an Andre Norman, because many people do not. And I would have never met Andre if it wasn't for Michael or Cameron or John. So it's a relationship thing. And when I heard his story, you know, I was like, I want to be helpful to this individual. And it was supposed to be for, like, five months. It's now been five years. That's crazy. And he's saved lives, and we've done a lot of stuff. And here we are with people with skills and talents and abilities, everyone here. And through a mechanism here, he's now in a position where I think by the end of this year, there'll be like a million tablets that delivers education and content to people. And that's one of the things he's in charge of. And so. And he's an incredible speaker. If he would have not at some point figured out, I want to go and address people, I want to teach them. You don't have to go down the path I did. It is all through speaking, just like Joel Weldon. I mean, speaking is the vehicle, it is the mechanism to getting messages and inspiration out to people. And you can make a lot of money doing it. But, you know, that conversation you had with my friend Rick is worth a lot. That guy is a multimillionaire. He is rich as hell. It wasn't about money. It was about what it did for his mindset, you know, and so the ability to speak and influence and persuade goes way beyond a business. I mean, it's what you can either, you know, Hitler was a powerful orator. You know, it's what you do with it that makes the difference.

Hitler is doing something we're witnessing now. People who have great presentation skills are able to create an experience. It's one thing to speak and people hear you. It's something else. When you speak, people feel you. That's a different dynamic. So he was a master communicator. The people that make that transformation is like Norman. It was not just the speaking. Norman died. If a man to gain his life, he must lose his life. Norman who went to prison, he was liberated when he got out, even before they released him, because he got a new identity. Once your life has a new identity, people that we work with, the people that are part of our team, the people that we are aligning ourselves with for some social good. Once you have a different mindset, that gives your life a sense of purpose. And once your life has a sense of purpose, then that gives your life a sense of direction. So now Norman is an asset to society rather than liability. Robert Kennedy said, if we cannot save the many that are poor, we truly cannot save the few that are rich. So when we look at the smash in graphs and all the killings that are taking place, we're watching the throes of a dying beast. Something has happened. And the only way that we can take this on, cultures of violence, cultures of other. You know, when you can put traps together and immigrants, it's one thing to talk about preventing people from coming here, but creating traps in water so they would drown in their children. That's not who we are as a country. We are the greatest country on the planet. And so that cultures are created by words. And the reason that I'm committed to training people how to communicate and to create peace, I said, I'll give you peace, perfect peace. Whose mind is stayed on the harmony. When we have harmony with ourselves and our spirituality, our family, our relationships and the purpose of our lives and joy, stuff's going to be happening. Life would be happening. But when you have a sense of spiritual strength, you are able to handle it. You know, Jesus, he walked on water, but he went out there in a boat. And so you have to have something that when life be lifeened that you can hold onto, that allows you to say, I'm gonna be all right, you know, and this is what you're doing now. And the relationships that people are building here, one goose can fly 75% further in formation with other geese than it can ever fly by itself. And so the relationships and the sharing that people have and building relationships, building a new reference group. They did this 85 year study at Harvard University and they, the people who were successful had a reference group of about five to seven people that they connected with, they identified with that they had goals and dreams and held each other accountable. The same things that you're talking about right now. This is extraordinary. This is what the Genius network is. Something that needs to be replicated all across this country and around the world. Because politicians won't do it and religious leaders won't do it. They keep us divided by politics and religion, keep us at each other's throats. What you're doing is that you have one agenda and that agenda is greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. You have the power to create peace. We have the power to turn to each other rather than turn on each other. We have the power to leave a legacy and for generations yet unborn. That's what the Genius Network is all about.

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 joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. Thank you.

You're welcome. Gracias.

So, yeah, go ahead, Devin. Throw. Hey, Les.

I had the honor of going to.

Breakfast with him and Evan this morning, you know, and a lot of people.

Have talked about, you know, his audio, you know, and my favorite people to.

Listen to are people whose audio matches their video, right? Like, who they're being. And one thing that stood out, there were people who would just. We were leaving. They wouldn't let them leave.

Just come up to them.

And I just watched and I watched how you treated people. And when you talk about coming from.

The heart reaches the heart, you know.

It really occurred to me that you make the people you're with feel like.

They'Re the most important person in the room. And that was such a great. I just want to acknowledge you for.

That because it was such.

It was more powerful than anything you said.

And he was dropping Jewels, y'.

All.

He was dropping Jewels. But, like, it was really a great example of how, like, your audio matching.

Your video of really making a difference. And I want to thank you. Thank you. I say to speakers, who you are when you don't have the microphone is more important when you have it, because you could tell a lot about a person's character based upon how they treat people that they consider unimportant.

That's right.

Okay. But there's something here that this place where we are in history, we're here for a reason. And we were preserved for such a time as this friend of mine, he went out to give his walk with his dog, and he came back, and his wife, who had left in the house, whose work on the computer was, boom, dead, fell forward on the computer. So there are things that many times we take for granted. We're still here. And I believe that you were chosen as much as you have chosen this work. You were chosen for this work. There are some of you that there are people in your world, they really don't know you, even though they might be family or close. There's a story in the Bible where they said Jesus came to town. And this lady who was physically afflicted, she said, lord, have mercy on me. And the next line said, he saw her. There's some people when you have a big dream, they don't see you. They can't see you doing that. All my family members and friends, none of them saw this Les Brown, they didn't see. But this Mike Williams, who's like you, he saw me. And I was so grateful that he saw me. I talked to him yesterday and said, I can't thank you enough that you saw me and you called me out. And I say to you, those of you that are here, things don't just happen. They happen. Just you. I'm just telling you what I know. I'm 78 years old. I've been on the planet 78 years young. I've been on the planet for a long time. You have a calling. Most people die at age 25 and don't get buried until they're 60, 65. There's something in you that say, I can do more. Socrates said, a man's reaches to supersede his grass, or what are the heavens for? There's something in you saying, I'm not really. I'm not going to settle for where I am. I want to do something else with my life. I need to be around some people who think like me and have this expanded vision of making a greater impact. I know that there's something in me. And I'm going to rob this cemetery of the gift that God has placed in me. Life is God's gift to us and how we live our lives. It's our gift to God. And I want to make my gift an extraordinary gift. There's something in you that keeps you up at night that won't let you settle for a life of mediocrity. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

So what does it mean to be hungry? We got a copy of your book for everyone here, don't we? I think we do, right?

Yeah.

So if we could pass those out, that would be awesome. You know, we can leave them on everyone's desk when we break. It's okay.

Or whatever. Grab them.

Why not? Why not just give them? Everybody.

I saw a commercial.

Thank you.

With Tony Robbins, who is just an extraordinary dude. It's an infomercial called Personal Power.

Yep.

I still have the old personal power tapes out.

Okay? So I sent a letter in my VHS to Guntherenko. And they sent me a letter back saying, you have an inspiring story, but you're black, right? And we don't believe that a black person would appeal to America or the world. So I wrote him back. This is before texting. I said, thank you for reminding me that I'm black. I never would have known that if you had told me. I said, I see you from the top. I want to show you something, Mike. I want to show you something.

Mike.

Dudley, pull up this statistic. Mike. I want to show you. So they spent a million dollars every hour. But that was one of the best things they could have done. To reject me was the best thing. It was a blessing. So look at those numbers. They spent a million dollars every hour. I'll show you the power of story and changing people's lives. Look at the ranking, okay? The power story. And so that when, as a result of them saying no, Brian Tracy said, your comfort zone is your danger zone, I could have very easily said, I'll never be able to compete with people like Tony Robbins and Zig Ziglar and Wayne Dyer and all these other guys. I don't have that kind of money. I have the complexion of rejection, not the complexion of connection. I won't be able to do it. So when I talk to you about the power of story. So those numbers speak for itself. The Bible said, judge a tree by the fruit it bears. So now people say, well, it's in your DNA.

Well, I guess that would beg the question then. All right, so how do people work with you?

Well, I have a training going on at September 29th. The last on doing. The last one I'm doing this year in Atlanta is called Master the Mic. And it's a limited number of people. And what I'm excited about is, like, these speakers. Now, they're coming from me. I mean, at least half of them are better than I am. If you're a good coach, all of your students will be better than you. You know, they're challenging me. They'd say, we're coming for you. So it's so exciting. But what I do, people speak the whole time they're there. Within 30 minutes, they're up, speaking.

How long is it, the training?

Three days.

Three days.

Okay, three days. Intense. Intense. Sir, what is your name with a blue shirt?

Melo. Yes. Randy Long.

Randy Long. Yes. How much time do we have? Well done. We're done, but I do apologize. Let's end this no, no, no, no.

Let's go for another five, ten minutes.

Okay. Well, I was going to. I was going to ask Randy some questions, and I was going to show you, Randy, what you have in you. But we'll talk privately afterwards. Okay.

Look forward to it.

All right. Thank you.

Thank you, brother.

But I believe that we're called to do this. People need your story. There's some people that's going to hear me. Some people are going to hear you, but there are some people. They're going to hear you. There's something about you that will cause them to rethink their lives and decide. I can handle this. We make decisions, and our decisions make us. And you have the power in you. You were chosen for this work. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

All right, so a couple. Couple things, then we'll wrap.

So, yeah, they go to lesbrown.com lesbrown.com okay, master the mic. And if they're interested in one on one coaching, which is very intense with me, one on one is. It's. Email me les brown77mail.com lesbrown77mail.com okay, awesome. Seven is my lucky number. Yes, sir. And say that you had the Genius Network.

So the speech that you gave, you've given many speeches. The one in front of 80,000 people. I sent that link out to everyone via email. Not everyone's watching, but I waited till I posted on Facebook a couple days ago. And then I. To the Genius network private group. And then I had Eunice and my team. I think Gina did it, sent it out via text. And some of you have watched it. You talk about this in your book before you went on stage to present to 80,000 people. That's probably pretty nerve wracking for most people. What was going through your mind?

First of all, I ran to the bathroom seven times. And they called Mike. Yes, they called Mike Williams, said, listen, Dexter Yeager is stalling. They need to bring less up now. So I'd lock myself in the restroom because the guy said, what is it like to speak to 80,000 people? I said, I don't know. I'm here for a banquet room here. And just show me where the banquet room. No. Are you Les Brown? I said, yes. He said, come over here a minute. And he said, look over there. Yeah, that's who you're speaking to. There are 80,000 people waiting for you to come on stage.

I said, oh, my God.

I took off. I said, I got to go to the bathroom. I said, but it's number one. So Mike came and he said. I could hear them saying, go get his mentor. He'll listen to his mentor. Because they were knocking on the door to come out, and I wouldn't come out, you know? I said. He said, browning, what's up? I said, mike, I can't hear the voices. Say what? I said, I can't hear the voices, Mike. Brownie, you're scared, aren't you? I said, Yes. I said, 80,000 people out there. I've never spoken to an audience that large before. He said, brownie, are you listening to me? I said, yes. He said, they're waiting to see you. You're not waiting to see them. You got a message for them. This is your moment. I say, I can't think, Mike. I just can't think. I've been trying to pull it up. I can't think. My heart is beating fast. He said, brownie, do it for your mother. You know how she's gonna feel to say. My boy spoke in the Georgia Dome. Do it for your mother. He interrupted my thinking. I said, don't use my mama on me. You know, I don't play the dozens. I go to the store, I get 11 eggs. Said, no, I don't get a dozen eggs. I just get 11, you know? So he said, come out, Brownie, and make your mother proud. And when I came out, I was walking toward the stage. And it's the importance of having someone who know you better than you know yourself. He said, brownie, you got this, man. I said, I do, Mike.

Yeah.

They will never forget this. I said, okay. And when they gave me the microphone, something said, the fear just left me and said. I could hear his voice saying, you got this. And I looked at the audience, and there's a. To me, all of us have been in situations where we go to a place within ourselves and we surprise ourselves. How many of you have ever had moments? You say, I can't believe I did that. That's exactly when I've only. I've never seen the speech completely because I'm very critical of myself. But I said to myself, my heart was beating. I said. He said, I got this. He said, I got this. And so I started watching and listening to them as they were listening to me. I want you to write down, listen to the listening. A lot of people, when you have a memorized script, you got to pay attention to what you have memorized. But if you got a framework in which you can go, it's possible, it's necessary, it's you. It's hard. It's worth it. It's done. Then you can put stories and quotes and statistics and humor and passion and energy within that and be able to master the audience and command a standing ovation and transform people's lives. That was the first time that I earned six figures after giving a speech. But I spoke for T Harv Eckert seminar of the century. I think that's a more powerful speech. So $410,000 worth of products.

I was there.

Oh, so you saw that?

Oh, yeah. I spoke for 10 minutes there. That was.

Yeah.

No, it's great.

It's powerful.

I have a daughter. I have a daughter. Her name's Eloise. She's just turned 14. And I have a son. His name's Axel. He's 12. And our youngest is Lila. She's nine. We're a little worried about her. Little like her mom, little go getter, right? So 15 years ago, when my wife dawn was pregnant with our first with Eloise, 15 years ago, and our kids were all 10 pounders, right? So my wife's belly was out to there that far. And we lived in Beverly Hills at the time. So if you live in Beverly Hills and your belly's out to there, this is what happens to you. Everywhere you go in Beverly Hills, whether you go into the coffee shop or you go to have some dinner, or you go grocery shopping, every person runs up to you on the streets of Beverly Hills and points at your belly like this. And these people, everyone sprints up to us. And dawn and I are like, what? And they go, where is this child going to preschool? And my wife and I were like, we don't know. We just. We haven't even met her yet. No, no, no, no, no, no. You have to have this child in the right preschool today, because if you don't, she'll never get into the right elementary school and she'll never go to the right college, she'll never go to the right high school. Basically, you'll be raising a loser. And my wife and I, we didn't want to raise a loser, right? So this is what we do. We get on this preschool train craziness in Beverly Hills, Santa Monica, Brentwood, and we start interviewing and we start going to these preschools. And the first nine preschools turn us down, and each one was more expensive than the last. And Eloise is born, right? And the 10th preschool accepted us, and we were so happy with ourselves, right? And then we meet Eloise, and we're like, eloise, guess What? You're gonna be going to this preschool in four years. But we started paying for that preschool that day, right? So for four years, dawn and I are paying this preschool that we're not even at yet. Finally, four years goes by. Eloise is old enough to go to preschool, right? So dawn and I pull up in the car and we get Eloise out of her car seat. And a lot of you, I'm sure, have done this where you push your little boy or girl behind the other side of the gate and you watch them walk into the preschool. And dawn and I were waving and we were crying, and Eloise didn't even really seem to care. She just walked right in, right? But what I noticed about this preschool was that we were the only parents there.

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 the this video or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Every other kid was being dropped off by a nanny and a town car. So, you know, if you have kids this age, I don't know what it is about kids this age, but why is it that every single weekend, some kid in Eloise's preschool has a birthday? Every weekend, every weekend there's a new birthday party for us to go to from Eloise's classmates, right? So we go and all these parties are exactly the same. They drive me a little crazy, right? We put Axel and Eloise, we put them in the car seats, right? And dawn and I, we drive to the fancy neighborhood and we park on the fancy street and we take the kids out on the fancy street and then we, we walk in, right, to the fancy house. And I say hi to the fancy family, right? And I don't know how to talk to them or anything, so I just walk straight out to the backyard. And these backyards aren't like the ones you and me grew up in. These things, like, open up, right? And remember our, like, the slides and the swings that we used to play on? Remember those rusty ass chain link? They didn't have any of that. No rust. It was wood, it was sand. It was beautiful. And then you walk in and Madonna would be right there. And then Paula Abdul's giving dance lessons right over there. Pinatas. It'd be unbelievable. So I don't know what to do right at these things. So I just always walk straight out to the yard, and I find a little uncomfortable spot right about here, every party, every weekend. Because every other dad who has a kid at this preschool is an entertainment agent or an entertainment lawyer. And this is what they do. They all get in a huddle right about here, and they all talk and brag about how they got their client to walk down the red carpet and on the COVID of People magazine. So I don't know how to contribute to that, right? So I just make my way right over here to my little uncomfortable spot and hang out right here. So here comes the weekend. Guess what? What a shocker. Birthday party. And we pack up the kids, and we're gonna go, okay? So we pack up Eloise and Axel in the car seats, drive to the fancy neighborhood, park on the fancy street. I walk in, hi to the fancy family, and I go straight out, just like I always do, passing the huddle right there, and find my little spot in the grass right about here. And I'm just looking around, watching the kids. Eloise is over there in the sand, and Axel is over here in the shrubs right now, he's got to be like, two and a half at this point, right? He's covered in mud, and you can't see his face because his head is down in the shrubs like this. All you can see is his butt sticking up out of the shrubs, covered in mud. So I'm just watching Axel, watching Eloise in my little uncomfortable spot, and all of a sudden, Axel pops his head out of the shrubs and comes sprinting at me full speed with something in his hands. And this something is a little white plastic football covered in mud. And I said, okay, this is my kind of party. Finally, Axel comes running up to me and goes like this, dad. And he wants to play catch. So I say, okay, Axel, throw me the ball. So he throws me the ball, I catch it, and I throw it back to Axel. He catches it, throws it back to me. I throw it back to Axel. He catches it right back to me. Catch and throw. And on that throw, Axel dropped the ball. And I said, axel, don't let the ball touch the ground. And he said, oh. Oh, yeah, dad. Oh, yeah. He picks the ball up, and we continued to play catch. Well, right when I said that, this whole huddle did this. And they elected one of these guys to come have a little chat with me. And I could see him coming a mile away, but I pretended like I didn't see him, so I just kept playing catch. With Axel like this, and here he comes. And I know exactly what he's gonna say, because we're in Santa Monica. He comes right up to my ear, and this is what he does. Excuse me. Excuse me, sir. What did you just say to that boy? I said, that boy is my son. And I told him, don't let the ball touch the ground.

Really?

And why would you say that to that boy? I said, that boy is my son. And I say that to him because that's a rule in our house. We don't let the ball touch the ground.

Really?

And why would that be a rule in your house? I said, well, that's a rule in my house, because that was a rule in my house growing up. See, my dad got me and my brother a football for every Christmas, right? And my brother had to throw me that ball a thousand times a day. And I had to catch that ball a thousand times a day. And me and my brother figured out that if that ball never touched the ground for that whole year, it would last to the next Christmas because my dad wasn't getting a new one if we ruined that one. That's why it's a rule in my house. Really? And how did that work out for you? I was so happy he asked that question. I said, it worked out pretty good. Me and my brother both played in the NFL. And he said, really? And as he turned around to go report back to the huddle, I say to Axel, axel, pick up that ball. We're taking it home. This family doesn't need it. And we start walking out of the backyard. Say, eloise, over here, sweetheart. Over here. We're leaving. And we go into the house. I go, and Dawn's in there. She's talking to all the moms. I said, sweetheart, guess what? We're out. Let's go. And we go right out to the car, and I load the kids up in the car and we start driving home, right? And as I'm driving home, I'm squeezing the steering wheel like this, and my wife is next to me. She says, sweetheart. Bo, what happened? What's the matter? And I just said, we're moving. And we got home and we packed up. We moved to a section of town outside of town which was a little more accepting of excellence. I am not comfortable with my life in the hands of amateurs. I am not comfortable with my kids in the charge of people who see mediocrity is as high as you can go. We don't let the ball touch the ground. Now, back when we first started this. When Axel was two and a half, it touched the ground all the time. Right now he's 12. Now he's 12. We can be out there for two and a half, three hours. It doesn't touch the ground. And the standard is set for all his friends, everybody who's on his team. What do you think? The kind of teams he's going to be on for the rest of his life? They have to play to the standard or they just eliminate themselves. You get me? Can we play like that in here? Like with complete. Here's the problem. What if these dudes. What if these dudes right here held the standards that we have right here? What if they held the same standard that me and Axel hold? What kind of movies could you and me go to every weekend when there's nothing to go see? Why do you think that is? Why do you think you turn to your spouse and you go, sweetheart, let's.

Go see a movie?

I love movies.

Go be inspired. Why are there none to go see? They make thousands a year. This is why. This is why. Mediocrity. They love it. They promote it. I got nothing to do with it. So can we, in this room, play like that for the next three days? Like we are the standard bearer? Right?

Cool. What you're saying about being connected, I. I mean that to me, connection is the most critical element. I'm actually going to launch a podcast called I Love Connection. And that's sort of like my code word for helping people with addiction, because the opposite of addiction is connection. And so when you're talking with someone, you're either in communication or you're trying to escape. I mean, you're either there or you're not. And some people, they aren't very connected with. With themselves. And if they're not very connected with themselves or a purpose or something, then they're trying to escape out of their own skin. The problem is, it's hard to escape out of your own skin because you're there with you even if you hate yourself. And so it's a very interesting thing to see tons of people in. So you're considered a leader in the personal development space. I mean, what's the biggest audience you ever spoke to?

About 10, 11,000.

Yeah, but you're doing this all the time. I mean, you're in front of people all the time. And so a lot of people will look up at a guy like you and say, God, I wish I could do that. I mean, that's. You know, you have to be so talented backstage. You Know, everyone sees the front stage, but backstage, there's a lot of shit involved in running a speaking business. There's a lot of stuff. There's a lot of logistics involved in doing events and having done events for many, many years. You know, when attendees show up, everybody does the additions, but no one does the subtraction. They count how many people are in the room, how much money the person's making, this and that, not realizing that there's a lot involved in that. How often do you go up on stage scared or questioning yourself? Even as many years as you've been doing this? What is like the secret lives of a transformational leader? What. What really are the challenges for you.

And what you do, you know? Thank you so much for that. I think that's going to be a valuable question to pull the curtain back.

Just a little bit.

So, first of all, I think it's interesting to note that I'm not the gregarious one in my personal life. I mean, I like to joke and kid and have fun as much as possible, but I don't seek to be the center of attention when we're at a point party. In fact, usually it's my wife that will walk up to me and she'll put her arm around me or something, because my love language is physical touch. So she'll come over and she'll just.

Touch me and go, you good?

I'm like, yes, I'm good. But I'm more of an intimacy person. So I like to be in a small group of people. And when I'm around a lot of people, yeah, then I'm not the most comfortable. But the beauty of this is that if that were me, if that's how I went, approached a talk or approached a training for three people or 3,000 people, I'd be done. I'd be done before I began. And that's because I'm making it about me. And so back to yoga. A dear friend, long ago, when I was going to go out to Singapore to speak to 5,6000 people for the very first time, she said, I want you to. We'll work through some yoga together. That's just something you can do to kind of relax yourself a little bit, you know, the day of and all that kind of thing, she said, and I'm going to share this term with you. And she said, om na Maha. And she said, loosely, it translates to, it's not about me. And so now I will say from that moment forward, as much as I could easily get into my head and My nerves and all the things energetically that could, you know, are not right or could rule wrong. Like you said, there's, you know, filling a room, if you're filling a room, it's, it's a full time thing. It's, it's unbelievable. Or you're being invited to someone else's room, you know what they're going through. So the pressure on you is even more so because you know how agonizing it was to get people to freaking take action. You know, getting to say yes to something but then to actually show up in their own lives is a major, major thing. Right, right. And more I think it's harder and harder every day, which, which is something maybe we'll get a chance to talk about. But they show up and now you gotta serve them. It's like, well, don't screw it up. Don't be an idiot. So I've heard a lot of stories of people that they trip on stage and they look like a fool and all that kind of thing. And yes, I've made a gazillion mistakes on stage and I've screwed up countless different ways. But the difference for me is that when I start, and I always start with Om Na Maha, that it's not about me, that when I screw something up, I don't try to hide it from the audience, I don't pretend it didn't happen. I just go, holy smokes, did you just see what I just did? I mean, I don't even know what to say about that. How about I just start again or whatever? Because they see you totally.

And if you try to act so damn polished, you don't come across as being a real human.

No, it's good you're not human.

Right.

But, but that's the thing I want, I really would love folks to know is that even though death and the public speaking are like two greatest fears and all that kind of thing, speaking to an audience of people large or small, has everything to do with your intention.

Yeah.

And so if you're going to give a presentation to your board of directors or to your small mastermind group or whoever it is, or do you know the people you want to ask for money to invest in your business, you got to check in with what's your true intention there. If it's about them and somehow the opportunity is going to impact their lives for the better, you just rise. I get beyond myself.

No, it is true. It actually, when you come at it from that intention, you become a more caring, capable person. I mean, I really think you do.

It's your true self. Yeah, it's back to that, who are you really?

And to take people from their lower selves to their higher selves. I actually take it so far as thinking the mechanism to do that is selling. You know, I asked my buddy Dan Sullivan what's the definition of selling several years ago and you know, he just said these words and I wrote it down when he said it. He said, getting someone intellectually engaged and a bigger future that's good for them and getting them to emotionally take action to achieve that result. And so I wrote down getting people to engage in a bigger future that's good for them and get them emotionally engaged to take action to achieve that result. So I even did this video called Is Selling Evil? Which is online, it's been viewed thousands and thousands of times. The 3 minute and 50 second video someone types into Google is selling evil. And it's my whole little spill on selling when I was asked the question is selling evil? During the filming of this documentary. And so it was some B roll footage that never made it into the documentary. And what I talked about is that the key word is good for them because you can get someone intellectually engaged in a bigger future that's not good for them. I mean, cigarette companies do it, fast food companies do it, Hitler did it. I mean, there's lots of ways that you can persuade people, but it is a sales job. And I've asked audiences if you have a friend that you really care about, they're in trouble, they're dating someone that is very toxic, or they're going down a path that you know is going to make them miserable or something that's going to endanger their children or their health or it's just not a really good decision. You know, what would you do? I mean, when you're talking with them, what are some of the things that you would do? Oh, I would ask them questions, I would challenge them, I'd be empathetic, I would listen, I'd be caring, I'd get them this, I'd be supportive. There's all these things that people would do when they're trying to care for somebody. And I said, okay, well, so what you're doing is you're actually selling someone, you're actually persuading them, you're influencing them because you care about them. Now take that into a business environment. When you're operating in that way, you're going to be doing the same sort of thing. Right? And so the question is, how do you actually access all these wonderful qualities when you're trying to influence and persuade someone that you care about. How do you do it? And someone will find, well, you do it by selling. Exactly. So if you're selling and that brings out these very. Who are you? In the best of terms when you're selling, not when you're trying to talk someone into something that they don't want, that isn't good for them, that's manipulative. But when you really care about someone, all these wonderful qualities come out and people will go, yeah, I never thought about selling, selling that way. And so, well, if you know that that's going to happen, then how often should you be selling and someone would be like, well, all the time, like, Exactly. But the number one sales job you have to do first and foremost before you can be effective at persuading an audience or persuading someone else, your children, is you have to sell yourself. And so every morning you get up and you either everything that comes out of my mouth, your mouth, anyone's mouth, is either going to design to a tr. Track them or repel them. And in some cases, repelling is actually a smart thing to do. There are certain people you don't want into your world. There are certain situations you don't want into your world. So the question is, how do you do that? And the reason I'm bringing this up is because you don't just get up on stage and talk to people. You actually sell people. I mean, you are there to actually put them into some sort of personal development or something, some sort of place that's going to hopefully produce a better version of themselves.

The next domino.

Yeah, exactly. And some people that requires a certain level of persuasion and a certain level of getting them to see pain and realize that if you don't make this shift, if you don't go into this place, not much is going to change. And so I wanted to actually talk with you about. Because you had to first do that to yourself. I mean, when you go back to the hospital and you walk out and you said, thank you. I mean, something shifted there. And there was, you know, there was some, I need to do something different. And what you had to do is you had to say no to a career that you had been conditioned and learned a lot about and you had to walk away from it.

Yes.

And that's really hard to do. You know, like Jim Collins, you know, good to great is all the enemy of the good is. Enemy of the great is the good. And there I've Always loved the line. Be willing to destroy anything in your life that's not excellent. And there are stages where you have to be like, you know, just saying no. Sometimes you have to just blow shit up. So what was it for you and how do you most effectively do that to someone else?

Yeah, that's beautiful. I want to kind of riff on some of the things you just said, because he said so many great things there. I mean, sales is 101. You want to be successful in business and in life, you need to be able to sell. Now you can use the word sale. Sometimes we use a euphemism. We say enrollment, you know, enrollment conversation. You want to get your kids to brush their teeth. It's an enrollment. You want to get the do their homeworks. Enrollment. You want to have sex. It's an enrollment conversation. A little bit different enrollment conversation. Right, but it's an enrollment conversation. You're selling somebody on something. And I think one of the greatest shortcuts, because I think it's kind of cool if we give some little nuggets here of shortcuts for people that you can get into that heart space. That's the term I typically use, is when you say you're going to show up for a friend and empathize and listen and coach and hold up a mirror and all the good stuff you do. If you are really a great friend, not just enable them, but be a great friend to them, you're really in your heart space. And that heart space for a person who's not your great friend yet is education. So to me, if you just teach, you just go into teaching mode, that it puts you in that place. It's a shortcut. How can I teach them something? So here's your problem. I'm going to teach you about your problem, but actually, you tell me what your problem is, right? You can ask, what's the biggest challenge you're having right now in your business or in your personal life? Right. They'll tell you, you know, what's the solution? Because Socrates said all learning is remembering. So you just, you know, all new information comes from out there. You could be the genius if you want to be. But the fact of the matter is, they're probably going to have more of the answers than you think anyway. So just ask them, right, exactly. What's the solution? You know, what are some of the things that might help you to shift from that problem to that solution? Again, you can just educate them in the process as you are enrolling them as you're Selling them. I actually like telling them that's exactly what we're doing. You know, there's going to be something here that's going to be of interest to you. We'll get to that when it's time. But in the moment, I'd like to just share with you the sales process and how this works and how it works. So it's reciprocal. So there's a benefit to both of us in engaging in this way and how you can learn something valuable as you're also about to take action to change your life. Right, right. And that when you. When you kind of pull the curtain back a bit, little, little bit, and you share that, that's what you're about, and that's what you're doing. You're authentic. You're being in your heart, you're teaching. There's an education to it. And at the same time, you're enrolling them. That is, you're selling them. Right. So that just trips me, you know, like, that's just great, I think, as a shortcut. And then you said that you first, you have to start with yourself. Right, right. Enroll yourself.

Right.

How do you. How do you change anybody else's life?

Life.

How do you do anything different tomorrow than you did yesterday or today if you're not able to start off? By getting leverage over you.

Right, exactly. Getting leverage over you. It's a great term.

Yeah. So to me, one of the cool things I love in the book, and I say this to people, is that the power of your life, excuse me, quality of your life is equal to the quality of your rituals and the things that you do consciously, repetitively, that you practice, that this is what's going to determine the ongoing elevation of your consciousness and your own personal unfolding. And so that starts with how you wake up and, you know, so you can go through a whole day's worth of rituals and things, but, you know, just what is it that you do to begin your day and when, you know, when does the enrollment start? When do you start selling you on you. I was with Stedman Graham the other night for the little party to launch Pivot, which was great. And he gave a great talk. And one of the things he said, that's the most challenging in the world, where he's constantly, through his philanthropic activities, coming across young people that are really challenged and are coming from challenged circumstances, where they live and how they've grown up and who their parents have been, etc. And a lot of addiction, a lot of poverty, a lot of discrimination. And things like that. And he said that the key to elevating yourself out of those circumstances, the way he was able to elevate himself out of circumstances where he was born in that same sort of situation, was knowing thyself. Like it sucked. It's that know thyself thing. But to, to really explore who you are until you have some sense of that, so you have a beat on who you are, it's impossible be authentic with anybody else. Which means you're never going to be good at selling because people can smell it. They can smell it when there's a fraud, right?

Yeah, totally. And when you're second guessing yourself all the time, it's very hard to be engaged and connected and influential because you're constantly second guessing yourself. And one of the reasons that people don't go to higher levels is they do such a shitty job of persuading themselves and influencing themselves. And what you're saying with rituals. I personally think rituals are everything. I mean, I saw this on the back of a guy's T shirt in the airport several years ago. It said Winners find ways. And it, it had something to do with some sports jersey. And I was like, that's a really great line. And I checked to see if the URL was available and it actually was. So I registered Winners find Ways. And at this point I've still never done anything with it. But I love the term and I've thought about it a lot. Because losers find ways also. Now I don't mean like a loser person as a human, it's just if your life isn't working, there are certain things and certain rituals that you're doing that are causing it to not work work. And if your life is working, there are certain things that you do in a way that's making it work. I don't believe in good habits or bad habits. Not to debate semantics, it's just that I understand what people mean when saying I've got really bad habits. I mean, I can point to things that I've done or might be currently doing that aren't the highest and best use of my time, it can be done more effectively. And that's what sort of stuff. But it's like if you wake up every day and you guzzle five cups of coffee, smoke a pack of cigarettes, yell at your wife or your husband, kick your dog and just have a really shitty attitude. You've developed really great habits about eating fast food, drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes. I mean, you've really developed that. So when people have things that I can look at people's lives like that are just a mess and reverse engineer what it is they're doing that's causing it to show up. That way I can look back in my life when it was just not working very well, and I could look and see. Well, obviously, because I was doing certain things in a certain way. And you can wake up and turn it all around. I mean, it may not be easy, but it is. Absolutely. That's why it's so great to see someone that has made a transfer transformation, because most people don't. But in reality, there's not a lot of real complications to some of the successes now. Some successes, yeah. There's a lot involved. There's a lot of effort. But I mean, sometimes if someone just changes their sleep, it can transform their life.

Sometimes it's so simple that it would shock, you know, shocking. It's shocking. It's shocking how simple some of these changes can be for folks. Because for the most part, people think they're not happy, it's not the way I want and all that kind of thing, but yet they still play the refrain in their mind that they know what's best for them, that I know that kind of thing. And I sometimes say, you know, everybody in this room is an expert. How many of you believe you're an expert? Right? And, you know, a few hands. And I say, no, no, no, everybody's hands goes up. So you're an expert. And here's why you're an expert. Because you're an expert at getting exactly the same whatever results you've got in your life. You're an expert at it. You're an expert at how to have the relationships you have. You're an expert at how to have the body you have. You're an expert at how to have the business you've got. You're all experts at it. Yeah. Oh, and I say, and the thing about it is that it really is just learning something new, being open to turning around those words. I know that. And saying instead, my greatest obstacle in life is not even learning, you know, learning more. It's unlearning. Some of the things that I think are true, that I believe, and that's truly shocking, is how people will hold on so desperately to their beliefs, to their precious beliefs, which they often don't even realize are not even their own beliefs. They're someone else's. They're their parents, their grandparents, whatever. It's collective DNA of generations or whatever. And they hold on to those beliefs like they're a life preserver and it's the rock that's dragging them to the bottom.

Yeah, absolutely. Completely agree. What's funny with Genius Network, my high level group for entrepreneurs, I focus more. It's sort of a trick that I play with on really successful people because the type of clients that, you know, I have clients at all different levels, but the ones that I actually take money from are usually very successful running multi million dollar companies. And we give them strategies, we give them all kinds of things to look at, talk about their challenges or opportunities, the messes in their life. One of my favorite tools though is the not to do list, which we have a not to do list. We have a not now list, which you may have great ideas, but it may not be great right now. And the thing that's hard to share with people that are pursuing more ideas and more strategies and always want to learn is that unlearning is infinitely more valuable than learning because it's the shit that we need to unlearn that will make the most difference in your life. And I interviewed this guy about a year and a half ago on addiction named Roy Nelson, in his 70s, and he wrote a book called Love Notes from Hell. And we were talking in the interview about people that are in recovery because he'll help addicts, people at the very worst level that just have not been able to make any headway from rehab centers and all kinds of stuff. And he says one of the challenges with the way that some people pursue personal development is they're trying to learn stuff. But if you don't discard, if you don't clean out the stuff that you know, it's like putting whipped cream on top of dog shit.

Yeah.

And he goes, and if you don't clean out the dog shit, you can't enjoy the cream. And that's how a lot of people pursue. I mean, you send an asshole to a personal empowerment seminar, you're going to have an empowered asshole. And so until you can get to the core of what's really going on, then that's how you do it. So I want to talk about pivot.

So you do that, you strip away those layers because. And not to be. I mean, I'm from New York, right? So it's not, I don't have an edge. To me, we are all the same on the inside. And I mean, at the core, there's just one thing true, there's one basic truth about ourselves. But some people have some scar tissue and to get at that, it takes some doing. And There's a lot of layers of crap, you know, layers of programming, of abuse, of, you know, all kinds of abuse, self abuse, abuse that came from other people. There's lots of mine files that kind of have to be opened up, you know those dark closets that have to be opened and light has to come into them, fresh air has to come into them. Yeah, and that's, that's a process. It's not.

Yeah, well, it's, it's, well it's a serious process. And so like to talk about, let's say like the comments of, you know, you send an asshole to an empowerment seminary of an empowered asshole. Now it doesn't mean that is a terrible human being. It's just the way that they're actually showing up. And the hardest shells hide the tenderest meat. I mean, one thing that being an addict has given me is tremendous amount of empathy when I see people screwing up their lives. Because most people don't wake up every day and want to figure out how to have life, not work.

Isn't that interesting? They don't put their feet on the floor and go, you know, today I'm going to be a man. Manipulative.

No.

Integrity, loser. Or I'm going to be abusive and unkind to everybody I meet and have shit thoughts all day long. I mean, nobody wakes up in the morning, puts their feet on the floor and says that.

Right, exactly.

They all start out with great intentions. And it's funny because the results that people have speak so loudly that their intentions kind of fade away in the light of what they've produced so far in their life. Because that says what's been going on. I mean, their best thinking. All the outcomes in their life have produced the results. All the outcomes were produced by their best thinking so far. Which is, it's a moment of humility. Because everything that's shown up has been the result of your best thinking.

No.

Or did you just at some point go, no, no, I'm going to produce these results intentionally so that they cause me pain, they cause others pain, they cause me suffering and struggle. No, we all set out every wanted to be rich, happy, healthy, all those things. And yet you got this mixed bag of things that shows up and you go, okay, how'd that get there?

Yeah, exactly. Well, there's a line I have to borrow this from 12 subgroups where there, there will be someone that will show up in a 12 step group that's like really fighting it, very resistant, didn't want to be there. But of course their life is out of control. So they showed up in this room with a bunch of strangers and here they are. If you follow a 12 step model of admitting that your life is unmanageable and that you need some sort of help and you have to turn it over and there will be someone that will say, well, your best thinking got you here. And they're like, well, so your best thinking is to going, going to get you out of it. So, you know, you look in the mirror every day and say, you know, good morning, let the stress begin. Or you're going to say, I'm responsible or I'm not. And so what you do with it has everything to do with it. How do you evaluate your own leadership performance?

Yeah. Okay, so first I want to kind of dispel a really big myth that's out there and that is that you could kind of hire out or you know, bring somebody in to do your leadership, right? That you could farm it out so that you can stay in your own unique ability. Okay, so, so here's the thing though. You guys chose business and business is a team sport. And so even though you're going to have your type of business that's going to be your genius, you still have to be a good athlete. Like, you still have to learn how to do the leadership part. And how I think of leadership, especially if you want your business to grow, especially if you want your business to not be dependent on you. So I think of leadership very much as interacting with others so they produce results, right? Not you interacting with others so they produce results. And that's the big, it's a big transition that needs to happen if you want the kind of business that can, you know, really grow in scale and that you can get the life you desire that you're not tied to your business. So then when we're, when I'm helping people evaluate their own leadership, that's what we're looking at is like, are you leading in a way that your team, your leaders, your people can produce results with not too much of you? I mean, certainly with support, with, you know, you've got to provide resources. There's all kinds of things you provide, but they've got to do their role that you don't have to do it for them. So if you're not doing people's job for them, chances are you're doing pretty good job with leadership. But if you are still stuck in the weeds, still, you know, still feeling like my team isn't performing well, it's like, okay, you have a Big responsibility in that because that's, you know, that's your part.

You know, how often have you had to. If ever. This is going to be a weird question and it's off the cuff. Encourage business owners, entrepreneurs, leaders or want to be leaders, people pretending to be leaders or people that are just kind of in that role because their creative mind developed this monster called their business that they had to go get therapy or they had to do something really drastic because sometimes, you know, you just have bad entrepreneurs.

Yeah, yeah. I don't think of them as bad. I think of them as unable to control their emotional reactivity. So if you have an entrepreneur that literally is, you know, is too easily upset, is kind of either lashes out or totally withdraws and retreats, you know, whatever some of those kind of self protective behaviors are, if there's too much of that, then they can't lead. And so, yeah, so, so if there's too much of that, then chances are something is riding underneath that's causing that. And I'm not a, you know, I'm not a psychotherapist. So yeah, that's not my part.

So that'll be for another discussion. Although I might smuggle a few things in here and there because, you know, I like talking about the crazy. So what are the top team frustrations and how do you overcome that? And of course you already know this, but intuitively we have this list from all of our genius network members. So can you speak to that?

Yeah, and I'll summarize it. There's basically there's a top two and it came out in this list as well as other times I've surveyed entrepreneurs. So the number one top frustration for entrepreneurs with their team is that their teams don't think big enough, that they're not strategic enough, that they don't see the big picture and that when they're working, they're not keeping that big picture in mind so that they can further that. Right. So that's the, that's kind of the number one thing that entrepreneurs can't trust their team to actually drive the big goals, drive the results? That's the first. The second big frustration is I'm just going to lump it into productivity. Did they actually use their time wisely and get some really strong work done, move those goals forward, do the proactive things that actually are going to make a big difference to achieving those goals. So I think of those two things as the, as the big frustrations.

Great.

Okay, so let me ask you about what do the most successful leaders do? Differently with their teams that other ones do not.

Yeah. Okay. So I think this is a great time for me to bring up my board, if that's okay.

Totally okay. So by the way, you don't have to ask me permission to do stuff. I know you're super well behaved, unlike Aspry or Jim do or certain people. You kind of have to try to establish boundaries, but you're always good.

Can you see my whole board? I'm still pretty small on the screen.

I can see it well.

Okay, great. Okay. Okay, great. Awesome. So here's the thing about leadership. Like leadership, you absolutely must have. These are the three things that you, you know, that are the foundation of really of good leadership. And the first is. And this is what the best leaders do differently. The first is that good leaders, they really know how to communicate their vision, their goals, and their strategy to get those goals. Okay. So when I say communicate comprehensively, I mean so that the team really understands not only the vision of where you want to be in the future, I think of this as like your purpose, but the goals are what those look like today or this year. It's like, you know, if your team doesn't understand, can't describe to you in really concrete terms what the goals are, they can't achieve them because they don't know what they're going for. And you'd be shocked at how many entrepreneurs you easily could be. One of them don't have a good perception of themselves and what they describe.

Right.

Like they're in themselves. They have a full, complete picture in their head. They don't have a good sense of like, you know, did I describe it so you could see what's in my head or did I just say a few words and assume that you would get it? And so people need to know what are those concrete goals? What do they look like? And then the strategy part is basically, how are we planning on achieving these goals? What's important? Like if we are going to, you know, double our revenue this year, great, we know about what that looks like. You want to detail it out into, you know, which product lines, Is that how you know how, which product lines, which types of revenue, et cetera. But then you're also going to need to break out the strategy for how we going to get there. And in this case, a bunch of strategy may be about marketing when you're talking about revenue increases. Right. So these three things have to be incredibly clear. And the way you know if they're clear or not is can your team describe it Back to you. Can they communicate it to an outside vendor or to their teams if they're a leader? Right, like this can't be only one way thing. It has to be that you have confidence because you've heard that they got it, that they know it. Okay, so that's first thing. Second thing is the leaders, competent leaders have really strong self leadership. And self leadership is your ability to stay in a strong thinking, non reactive place even under stress and challenge. And so this self leadership, it's the thing of where if you're not in a good place, you tank the psychological safety, you tank it for everybody. And I'm going to speak to this a little bit more. But if you're not in a good place, anybody interacting with you is going to have a really hard time also being in a good place. And in fact they're going to be with you as a CEO. They're going to be obsessed about doing what they can to get you into a good place. And when they're doing that, they've stopped focusing on the goals. So I'm going to come back to this self leadership. Okay, then the third part is when you know where you're going, what you're doing, when you yourself are in a really good place and it's safe for your team to do their roles to express themselves as they need to. Then the last part is do you have the skills to effectively interact with your team?

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 joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Because your team, this is where these are. So all of these are learned skills. I would say that, you know, we all have different natural abilities for how much work we might need to do. But this, this one especially is really learned. Like nobody has these skills automatically. Where some people have more self leadership abilities than others have more ability to stay in a calm, emotionally regulated place even under stress, pressure, threat. But this one we all have to learn. And so when we're going to learn this, this effective interaction is all about I use this acronym, ace. So when you're interacting with a team, team member, team member, leader, really anybody, you want to make sure that you a you have alignment, that goal is clear, you guys are going for the same thing and a Good leader is checking and double checking this all the time because things change. You know, the plan you had yesterday, now that you've taken one action towards it, may have changed. Makes sense. So you have to keep realigning and then the next thing is you're going to come to an agreement for what's happening. So it's like if you've got a problem, you're going to, you know, get realigned, make sure you're going for the same goal. You are going to talk about how you're going to problem solve, you're going to, you know, make a new decision. But the thing is, is at the end of the day, that decision has to be good with both of you because if you, if, if one side makes a demand and the other side is forced to agree, they're already in a place of thinking they can't do it. So we need to make sure that we negotiate with our team so that they're in a place of where we're constantly working in agreements. We have to keep remaking, renegotiating, but getting agreements. Because then when we have an agreement, we take a most effective action and the most effective action is the one that is most likely to move us towards our desired results. Does this make sense?

Yeah. This is awesome.

Okay, great.

Do you guys, Let me see, let me show hands. Do you guys like it? Yes.

Great. Okay.

I don't think Jim understood it. Do you have, do you have finger puppets or something for Jim?

Do if.

And I'm just kidding. I'm just picking on Jim. He doesn't really deserve that today. It's just me being sort of hurtful towards him, but you know.

No, he gave some great advice this morning actually.

Yeah, he did. Every quarter he actually says something useful. Yes. Just kidding. I don't leave up on it.

So.

Alright, well. So Andy. Yeah. You actually, actually answered a lot of the questions that I was going to ask you. You know, one of them was what? So let me, let me say these. Some of the things that I really, there's a lot of thought that went into because I wanted to make this as useful as possible for everyone. So what is your process for working with, thinking about entrepreneurs and their teams? You've. So, anything you want to elaborate that you didn't touch on, do that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. I promise I don't have endless sheets, but again, I'm going to.

I was like going, wow, you have this stuff pretty well thought out here.

Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, it's, you know, I've been, I've been teaching all this stuff for a long time now. I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's iterated and gotten better and better. And I, you know, listening to Brian, I was thinking for myself that it's when we can make things more simple, man, it really is easier. So that's a big part of what I've been working on these last five, six, seven years. So when I think about business, I think of business as being in two parts. And most of the world really talks about the top part, the business part. Things like, do we have good goals and strategy? Are we going to execute on them? Can we actually achieve all this? And at the bottom is the tasks, all the things we actually have to do to achieve the goals. Okay? And these are departments or functions, okay? So that's the, this is what we usually think about when we're thinking about business, like the sport of business. But we actually have something going on underneath achieving, you know, all the work we do together to achieve results. We have something going on all day, every day underneath. Because we're human. And that is, are we humans who are in secure relationship, who are each showing up, well, not emotionally reactive so that we can drop our defenses and actually focus on this? Because if we're not in a psychologically safe place, if we're in a place thinking, you know, I don't think that person has my back. Did they just throw me under the bus? Or, you know, did I, did I just get all this stuff put onto my plate and I wasn't able to negotiate and say, hey, I, you know, I need some extra resources or whatnot. I said, I said yes to something that I can't even do now. If I do that now, I'm in a place of like, oh man, I got to figure this out for myself. I have to figure out how to protect myself. I have to make sure that nobody perceives me as having blown it. And when we're in a place of being self focused, we're not business focused. This is my big, big thing that I want you guys to understand is that you're often working on all this part up here, but it will have zero results. Maybe that's a little bit exaggerated, but you know, very low results. If this part isn't in a good place because people can't take it in, they're not doing that. They're focused on themselves of like, how am I going to make sure I meet the deadline? Not because I care about the goal, but I want to make sure I meet the deadline so that I don't get yelled at or so the team doesn't think I dropped the ball. So all, you know, so I'll kind of do, you know, whatever poor quality work, meet the deadline. But now I've messed up the entire team. Can you guys see it? Like, this is incredibly important. So when I'm thinking about business, I'm thinking about all these parts, and I'm starting with this part because we can't make any progress. People can't learn down here if they're in a bad place.

Right? Yeah.

You know what I mean? My next question is, what does it mean for a team member to be a leader? How does that relate to responsibility? I mean, there's such a tie in here.

Absolutely, absolutely. And you know what? I will, I will put up my last sheet and then I promise to just talk. So here's the thing about a good, a really strong team member is that they stay out of self protection. And we need this for you too. And when I say stay out of self protection, the easiest way for you guys to know what that is is you're in self protection if you have any of these behaviors going on and really kind of inside yourself too, right? So if somebody's in blame a lot of judgment. If they're criticizing, they're defending themselves, they're rationalizing, they're denying, they're ignoring, they're resisting change, they're in pleasing mode, or they're in overwhelm. All of this stuff is really, is the place where we need to have the ability to get ourselves out of. So I know several people here talked about in the survey, hey, I want my team to do personal growth, right? Okay. So here's where I see the personal growth, hooking up with business. Because when you do the personal growth, you get a lot more emotional endurance. You get the ability to handle situations, to stay in a good place, to pause before you react, to stay out of this reactivity in more and more situations, even under stress and challenge. Can you see it? It's like this is the thing that we, you know, that we need the development of good leaders, of strong team members. We need them to be able to get themselves quickly out of any self protection, not live down here. And to do that when they first feel a threat, when there's stress, this is a process. I don't have to go through this process. But the point is that they are able to pause and get themselves on the right track, able to emotionally regulate, get out of this crap and get themselves into a good place.

People say, what's the key to success? You just had it, and there's no shortcuts. And it doesn't take any genius. Well, no offense. It just takes starting and completing your most important task. And if you'll just do that, get my book. Eat that frog. And I'm not trying to sell books because you don't get very much with a book. But the thing is, the book is now 50 languages. Can you imagine that? 50 language, two and a half million copies. And by the way, it's probably closer to 10 million because there are several countries, like Iran, that don't pay royalties, and other have published the book without telling anybody. So it's published all over the world, but they cheat you on their royalties. So it's probably 10 million copies of it have been sold. And so that's my starting point and everything else. Here's another thing, by the way, and I love what the lady was saying about values. I had a good friend, maybe you know him, his name is Mark Waldman. And Mark came to my office when we were doing our coaching program some years ago, and just. He just dropped in. He lives in Northern California, San Francisco. And he said. I said, so what's happening in your life? Is it a break? He said, well, I've come up with a new question. And he said, I'm just walking around teaching everybody, and the question is, what is my most important value in life right now? What is my most important value in life right now? And I thought, gee, that's a great question, because all of us think about values and are impressed by values. So I asked everybody in the room, what is your most important value in life right now? And he said, you have to ask this question every day, all day long, for a week, every day. Just keep asking the question. Your first answer will be love and truth and God and things like that. Just keep asking the question and keep drilling down deeper, keep drilling and drilling until you finally, the most important value pops out. And that can change your life. And so what I did is I did the same thing. I asked the question for a week, what is my most important value? And the way you can tell your values are because of your behaviors. What you do is you look at your behaviors and especially your behaviors under stress, when your behaviors in difficulty. You always demonstrate who you really are inside by what you do on the outside, when you have difficulties or challenges. So I finally concluded my most important value is what the lady said is freedom. Freedom is my Most important value. And you know something? America was established by people for whom freedom was their most important value. And it changed the entire world. There is still no country in the world for which freedom is the organizing principle. Freedom is a concern for everybody but Americans more than any other nationality.

Thank you.

Of freedom. And so therefore your job is to have freedom. How do you have freedom? Well, one of the things is you have to have enough money so that you can buy the things that you want, that you can take care of your family, that you can provide for your spouse and for your children. And when you, when you achieve freedom, more freedom, you feel happier, you have more energy, you have higher self esteem, you feel more in control. And everything that you do moves you toward having more or less freedom. So that was the turning point for me is that freedom is the key. And then I look at my family. Everything I've ever done with my four children and my wife has been to increase their freedom, give them more freedom, open doors for them, open up opportunities for them. So freedom is mine. So what is yours? That's a great question. And the way you tell is you simply look at what do you do under pressure, what do you care about more than anything else? What is really your value? And it's great question, great organizing principle for your life.

Yeah, but you know, Brian, and as you know, most genius network, most genius network members have teams, many have running multimillion dollar businesses. What is the dark side of success in the midst of building and growing? What have you noticed where things become out of control, out of hand, where people start losing it? Because as you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, because of the success they have, comes responsibility, obligations, messes, navigating things. And here we are in the middle of a pandemic. What have you found to be success traps that people have gotten themselves into that you would have any advice, suggestions or insights on either how to avoid or how to navigate if you're in the middle of it?

Well, Joe, that's a really tough question, but you and I have talked about this subject, is that what is our ultimate goal in life? Remember the old thing is write your own obituary. You want your own obituary. What do you want people to say about you when you pass on? And I went for a long walk on a beach near Brisbane in Australia some years ago and about an hour, two hours of walking and I asked myself that question. And the answer that came up for me and never changed again is that after I pass on, I want, when my children meet someone who knew me, they say oh, yeah, I knew your father. He was a really good person. That to me, was my ultimate goal in life. I knew your father, he was a good person. And I have never deviated from that. I never have done anything or said anything to anybody under any circumstances that would cause anybody to say other then he was a good person. And so you have to keep that in mind. See, this is the purpose in life. And one of the things that I learned is that success does not change you. It just makes you more of what you already are. It just makes you more of what you already are. If you're a good person, you become a better person. If you're a jerk, you become a worse jerk. If you're honest, you'll be more honest. If you're dishonest, you'll be. You'll be more dishonest. So you always have to think in terms of long term. One of the things that I found, and I've written about it extensively, I wrote a book, by the way, a couple of years ago called Get Smart. And it has 10 ways of thinking that have been developed over the ages. And basically it says that successful people think this way and in the same way of thinking, unsuccessful people think that way. The most important, which I learned from Drucker, from many others, is long term versus short term thinking is really successful people think long term. Unsuccessful people think short term. In other words, they go for advantage, opportunity, making money. They're short term thinkers. Whereas the very best people think long term. They think, where do I want to be in five years or ten years from now? What do I want people to say about me when I'm gone? And so long term thinkers, surprisingly enough, when you think and act long term, you accomplish vastly more than if you're a short term thinker.

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 joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

And the book get smart as basically 10 different ways of thinking. One of them is it comes from Daniel Kahneman, who got a Nobel Prize for it. He's an economist and a philosopher. And it was, you know, it was. What is it? Two ways of thinking.

Think fast.

Slow, yes, Thinking. Thinking fast and slow. And what he says is basically successful people think slowly about important things in Their life. One of the things that Kahneman sort of touches on, but which I hammer, is the word consequences. And consequences, as you always ask, what are the likely consequences if I do or don't do this? And everything in life has consequences. And the true measure of how really smart you are is your ability to predict the consequences of doing something or not doing it. Milton Friedman said this, exactly this. The Nobel prize winning economist. He said, the quality of your thinking can be measured by how accurately you predict what will happen as a result. One of the greatest thinkers of history, a man named Frederick Bastiat, he said the same thing back 200 years ago. He said that the primary consequences of everything you do are good. You eat this, drink this, do this, because the primary consequences are good, or why would you do it at all? He said. But it's the secondary consequences that are more important than anything else. And your ability to accurately predict the secondary consequences of a behavior determines your whole life. And so, for example, the people who belong to the Genius network, one of the reasons that they belong, one of the things that they get, they get ideas that can affect their lives and work long term, truly superior people are long term thinkers and they make the sacrifice and they travel and they invest the time and the money. It's all aimed at long term results, consequences, what happens as a result of what you do and then what happens, and then what happens? And so that's what you and I learned right at the very beginning is we started exchanging ideas. We read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and how the mastermind was the starting point of success for so many people. And then we started doing it. And then it was sort of like a baton in a race. We handed off the baton and you took it and ran with it. And here you are.

Yeah, no, which is awesome. And let me say this though, Brian. I mean, I'm looking at your Instagram right now. So you got 756,000 followers on Instagram, you got millions of people that watch on YouTube, you've got all these books. You're the top selling audio author in the world every day. Literally. Your ideas reach millions of people every single day. And I mean, what advice would you give for the creation of the content? Because one of the things I've been thinking about a lot is people say content is king. Well, I think content is obviously valuable, but I think context is more important than content. And communication is one thing, but comprehension is another thing. Being able to put content out there, not having people comprehend it, is a whole, nother thing and you have just put out so many people's lives have been impacted and changed by your ideas. And we have many people here that would love to multiply that and to share their wisdom, their knowledge and reach people, not only for the selling and promotion of their products and services, their own companies, but literally just to impact people. So what advice would you give to be productive in that area? Because I mean, you're literally one of the most productive people on the planet in this particular area. So you obviously have a process in the system for writing books, for putting information out there. You've been doing it for many, many years. How do you do it? I mean, what if, what have you learned that if you were to be able to download here's how to get, here's how to write a book, here's how to put your ideas together, here's how, you know, I mean, because I'm, I don't know. Out of all the books, have you written any books that you wish you would have not written that you would have not put out there? Are you pretty happy with everything?

Well, I'll tell you two funny things, but I want to start with the second thing is many years ago I was writing books and I'll tell you why in just a second. And my people in my coaching classes, people in my seminars would say, well, how do you write a book and how do you write so many books and how do you have so many books? And I say, well, you just do this and you just do that and so on. And finally I said, look, I'll write it down. I'll write down my book writing system. So I wrote down 20 steps to write a book and get published. And I put it on my website, Brian Tracy.com and I say, look, if you want to learn how to write a book, go and get those 20 steps. And then my partners. You know Eric Berman, don't you?

Oh yeah, yeah, very well.

Eric has been my partner for 20 years. He said, brian, we should create a really first rate course on how to write a book and get published. Because 64% of adults dream of writing a book. They fantasize about writing a book. They plan to write a book and less than 1% will ever do it. And then less than 1% of those will ever get published. Why? And they always say the reason I is because I don't know how. I just don't know the process. So anybody here who's watching who wants to write a book, go to my website and there's a download it's called Brian's Formula on how to write a book. 20 steps, and it's free. Just go and take it. And here's the steps. Step one, step two, step three. What I call it is like a recipe. And again, it's one of the things that I learned from you and from other people in the Genius network is a recipe has a series of ingredients. And what you do is you combine the ingredients correctly. You don't cheat on this ingredient and ignore or delete this ingredient. You follow the recipe, and you get a good dish. And if you practice enough, eventually you'll be able to prepare a beautiful dish over and over again. And so, for example, when I was single, I found that I was going out to restaurants to have Caesar salad. And so I would meet a girl, and I would invite her out for dinner, and we would go to a restaurant where they served Caesar salad. And one day, and I still remember this, I noticed that the guy making the Caesar salad, and this is where they brought all the ingredients to the table, and they mixed it all up in a bowl, and they put it on your plate. And so he's mixing up the salad, and it was a very good salad, very good restaurant, good salad. And I said, how do you make this salad? He said, well, they give me a recipe and the ingredients in the kitchen, and then they just had me do it. So I come to you to come to the tableside and make it. Well, if this guy, who was not great, smart, this guy can make a delicious Caesar salad, so can I. So I decided I'm going to get a recipe, and I'm going to make a Caesar salad. And I did. But what I did is I tried to cheat is instead of using fresh romaine lettuce, I used butter lettuce. Instead of using freshly squeezed lemon juice, I used lemon juice out of a bottle. Instead of using fresh garlic, I used minced gardi from a bottle instead of this, I did that. And the salad just tasted crummy. So finally, I made this decision. I remember this because it affected everything else in my life. I made this decision. I'm going to stop screwing around. I'm going to follow a good recipe exactly, and then I'm going to work with that recipe. And I did. And now I have a recipe to make Caesar salad. I am probably, immodestly, probably the best Caesar salad maker in the world, or very close. Everybody who has ever tasted my Caesar salad say it's the best Caesar salad they ever had in their life. And it has 14 parts, 14 steps, ingredients, the way that you mix them, and so on. And I have people who beg me, please make a salad. Come to my house at Christmas and make a salad. Can I come to your house? Because once they've had my salad, they'll never be satisfied. So people say, well, how do you make your Caesar salad? I say, well, you do this and you do that and you put this and you put that and everything else. And I said, oh, what the heck, I'll just write it down. So I wrote it down because I have this passionate desire, like you, to help people. I just want to help you. I don't want to make money. I make money good. But mostly I want to make a difference in people's lives. So I said, okay, I'll just write it down. So I wrote it down and I put it on my website, briandracey.com. you go there, brian's Caesar salad recipe. And you can download it, it's free. And everybody who's ever done that, they communicate with me and they say, I made that salad. I never made a Caesar salad in my life. I followed the recipe, and everybody in my family said it was the best Caesar salad they ever had in their life. So therefore, if you like Caesar salad, go and download it. So I used to tell this story just the way I just told you. I used to tell this story in my big seminar, some of my Peter Lowe seminars with 10, 20,000 people. And I say, here's an example. And the example is that people don't follow the recipe for success. If you want to sell successfully, by the way, there's a seven steps that I have discovered and developed, which I teach a thousand different ways. I've taught more than 2 million salespeople my recipe for selling. And many of those people become millionaires. Chip Wilson is also a friend of mine, and he told me, he booked me. He told me, he said he was working as a yoga instructor in a small yoga studio in Vancouver, in Kitsilano, which is a neighborhood. And somebody put him through my course and had the course on video with workbooks and everything else. And he said he suddenly realized that there's no future being a yoga instructor. And then he looked around because we teach the superconscious mind in that course, Psychology of Achievement, he looked around and he said, the money is in yoga clothes. That's where the money is. And the quality of clothes being produced, generally speaking, was very poor. So he just came up with this idea of producing high quality yoga clothes made with high quality fabrics. Well, Put together and the rest is history. As you say, he's worth almost $5 billion today. He told me when he brought me up to speak, we spent two days together. He told me that basically these ideas made him rich. Very, very simple ideas to set a goal, work on your most important goal, unlock your creativity, and so on. He's a super guy. He's one of those guys that deserves to be successful. You're happy for his success when you talk to them. So this is. So the key is get the recipe if you want to be excellent in sales. 20% of salespeople earn 80% of the money in sales. Why? It's because there's a recipe for selling. It has seven parts, seven ingredients. If you follow the seven ingredients, what will happen is it'll come out at the other end, sale after sale after sale. And if you don't, it won't. If you want to be successful in business, you have to have a marketing plan. As our friend Dan Kennedy says, is that whatever business you're in, you're in the marketing business. And your success or failure income, the size of the house you live in, car you drive, what happens to you in life is determined by how good you are at marketing your product. And marketing is attracting qualified people who can and will buy your product or service within a reasonable period of time. And what I just told you is the result of thousands of hours of research. Marketing means attracting people who can and will buy and pay for your product or service within a reasonable period of time. And so therefore, once you learn how to market, you can market any product if it is a sellable product. So people have to learn how to market in selling. By the way, and I just give you this quickly because I produced after Psychology of Achievement, I produced a program called Psychology of Selling. And Psychology of Selling, according to their research, has made more salespeople millionaires than any other single training influence in the world. Psychology of selling. And how do you get Psychology of Selling that? You go to audible. Go to audible and there it is. And you download it. You download it on audible and listen to it. Nothing hard about that.

Well, I got. Let me do this. Don Cooper, go ahead and let me see if I can pin your video. If you can put that up on the screen again. He's got the. Let me see if I can pin. Well, I'm trying to, but Psychology of Self.

And by the way, it's in book form. And I decided it was such a big program, I decided divided into two books. One is Psychology of Selling the other is the art of closing the sale. And countless people write to me and tell me, omg, omg. It made me rich. It made me rich. You changed my life. You made me rich. I hear that so many times. You changed my life. You made me rich. It's not because I'm a genius. It's just I found the recipe and worked with the recipe.

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 click. 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.