Robin Sharma Interview: How to Be a Great Leader!

So when it comes to leadership, do you think anyone can be a leader? And if so, what does it take? And what are some of the biggest ideas behind being a great leader?

So, yes, I believe everyone can be a leader because you have a choice. When you walk out in the world every day, you can either be a victim or you can be a leader. And that's really what I've spent the past 15 years on. And the leader who had no title is all about that, which is you can lead without a title. The world says you need to be a prime minister, a president, a billionaire, an mba, a CEO, and then you're a leader. And that is just such a myth that causes people to betray the leader that lies within them. And so leadership is less about a title, less about the size of your office, less about how much money you have. It's much more a way of thinking, a way of being. And like I say, it's just the opposite of being a victim. So anyone can walk out in the world, regardless of what they do or where they live, and start thinking, feeling, and behaving like a leader. And you can see a victim a mile away. It's like you can hear it in their words. You know, I went to the dentist three days ago, and, you know, I just. There was someone in the office, and there's no judgment, but just by his words, it was like, oh, I tried to do this, but I couldn't. I can't do this. Oh, the weather's bad, whatever. And I've been at this so long, he was suggesting his beliefs because your words reveal your beliefs. And so the victim is all about, I can't. And it's because of this. And they give away their power. Someone once said, the number one way we give away our power is thinking we don't have any. And so the leader is very different. The leader is all about, I can. The language of possibility. I mean, words are so incredibly powerful. And so that's the opportunity everyone on the planet has today, which is to stop giving away their power, stop blaming the world around you. And as Gandhi said, walk out in the world and be the change you want to see in the world. And that's just what being a leader is all about.

Okay, so for stepping up for people to step up, one of the things that I've observed with just so many people over the years, if people really are a victim, if something really bad happened to them, if they were robbed, if they were raped, if they were molested, if they were embezzled from if they were hurt, if they were oppressed. I mean, there's all kinds of things. If someone genuinely was a victim, and then as they, you know, they develop themselves to either be defined by it or, you know, take whatever their past is and use it as a raw ingredient to hopefully learn lessons and build further. There's a certain level of conditioning where someone gets into the mode of being a complainer or being a victim. What do you suggest to people? Because I think people become blind to hearing it. Like, they can hear what you're saying and say, okay, yeah, I kind of get that. And they have all this subconscious conditioning that they wake up every day and they bitch and they complain. What do you suggest someone in that mode does? I mean, how do you flip that switch? I mean, that's what I love about your 5:00am Club. It's conditioning. I mean, it's rituals. It's things that you do, and those things develop you. But if someone is watching this or listening to this, going, but, Robin, you don't really understand my life because they're still in that place where they can't hear it, what would you say to them?

Well, you know, there's so much in your question. And the first thing I would say is, look, I was in Johannesburg a little while ago, and I went through the airport, and I went into the men's room or washroom or bathroom, however you want to call it. And so I walked into the men's room, and the first thing I hear is, welcome to my office. And this was the janitor at the Johannesburg men's room.

That's funny.

Who janiturized, or I'll make up a word, cleaned the men's, the toilets, like Mozart composed music. Now, that man has no money. That man probably has very little education. That man is judged by the world as having an unimportant job. And that man is a hero. Could be a hero to millions of people. Why? Because he actually saw himself as an ambassador to South Africa. And his passion was palpable. And his visceral commitment to doing work at the highest level was like, you don't see, even from the CEOs. And all I'm saying is even the person with the broken heart, the person who's down on their knees, whether they see it or not, they have a choice to rise above their circumstances and leadership. And humanity is a testament to the people who have done it. I mean, you read the. You look at Mandela, 27 years in imprisonment. When his son died, he wasn't allowed to attend the Funeral of his own son. He said that was one of the great pains of his own, of his life. And what did he do? The victim looks at something like that, torture, and says, I am broken. And they give up. And they close their heart, they close their mind, they close their creativity, and they blame the rest of their life on what happened to them. But Mandela, what he chose to do was to use it as an opportunity. Because actually, the things that break your heart, if you choose, can open your heart. Fear. The world says fear is bad. Fear is only an opportunity for bravery training. And what he did was he used those 27 years of torture to open himself mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually to the point where when he was released and became the president of South Africa, he invited his jailer to sit in the front row at his inauguration. And he was asked why. And he said, because if I don't, I'd still be in prison. And that's a long way of saying, but, you know, we do make excuses because we are very good at self deception. Because if we actually had to face the responsibility of playing with our bigness in the world, we'd have to let go of our addiction to our excuses and leave what's safe. Am I making sense?

No, totally. No, you totally make sense.

You'd have to leave what's safe. I mean, we are addicted to crisis. Sometimes it makes no sense. We are addicted to pain. And we have to actually leave the pain to go out to the possibility of pleasure and joy and greatness. And believe it or not, that frightens us. So we make these excuses and then we blame people. Oh, Joe or Robin. I don't like the way he looks. He speaks differently. But subconsciously, as you're suggesting, those are just our protective mechanisms to avoid owning.

The responsibility of our brilliance, identity, leadership. Okay, that's the title of your book. And you say, in order to lead others, you must lead yourself. You've talked about being control, you talked about your thoughts. I want to just dig a little deeper. What does it mean to lead yourself and what are the results of leading yourself? Because we hear a lot about leadership. Right now is a really important time where the entrepreneurs that you're talking to right now are a lot of people from Genius Network. I mean, literally millions of people follow the people that are in this group and look to them for leadership. So I wanted to, you know, in order to lead yourself, you know, and then leading others. Like to get your thoughts that.

Yeah, 21st century says you have to be a self directed learner. You have to be a lifelong learner. This is kind of the you economy and you have to focus on you and develop you so that you're prepared for the technology, technological revolutionary change that's happening right now. You have to be a learner and you got to stay on the cutting edge. It's almost impossible to do that. The way the system is set up, you know, it's like I've talked about before. We, you know, we have an educational system where we memorize, take tests, repeat information, back your label with the grade, two weeks later we forget the information. So there is no learning for the most part. And then we're just kind of working every single day, doing the same thing over and over every day. So if you don't create some self mastery, if you don't know who you are, if you're not focused on what you love and what your purpose is in life, you're pretty much out of it. I don't know how you're going to do it. It's almost impossible to do it unless you are building and growing and getting out of that fixed mindset. You have to have a growth mindset. You got to be able to be a better person today than you were yesterday. And the only way you can do that is to be able to source information and access information that's relevant to your development. So you have to take control of your own lifelong learning process. And again, you have to be able to understand the value of education and information and how do you apply that information from a cognitive level. You know, you got to be, you know, constantly thinking about how to, how to, how to make yourself better, how to improve your life, be the best person you can possibly be.

Yeah.

So then the leadership is, that's what it is. It's authenticity. You know, before you can actually become a leader, if you want to become a leader, you first have to become a leader of yourself. And again, you got to be able to change the learning system around, which is what I teach through this nine step success process is how to learn and how to build and how to grow.

You know, just because we're limited in time. Steadman, what's the best place for them to start? Just reading your book first? Or how would people that really do want to learn your whole process? Because I know it's extensive. Where should they go? Is there anything online you want to direct them to or just tell them to read your book?

I have a nine step success process, but you got to read a lot of books.

Yep.

Steve Covey you know, Brian, Tracy, you know, all the books you can get your hands on. If you're dealing with trauma and you're dealing with pain and you want to unpeel the onion, then what you have to go is you got to go internally to figure out again, how do you actually do that? And sometimes socially, I mean, it takes a long time to work on yourself. It takes a lifetime to be able to do that. And it's an internal issue. So if you can read and learn about who you are, what you're capable of, and then find something that you really, really care about that makes you happy, find your purpose, that's your foundation for growth and development that's going to help you change. You know, you do what you do because you love it.

Yeah.

And it's changed your life. And you've been able to organize a global marketplace around it. And you're thinking every day how to become better. And you are changing your environment based on who you are. Those pictures in the back of you are a reflection of who you are as a person. And so to be able to build a whole world around Joe, man, that's got to make you happy and also keep you out of trouble.

Probably more of a keep me out of trouble than anything else. You know, what a lot of people say is like, God, why do you spend all this time helping with addiction and all this? And you don't sell anything, and you've spent so much time and money funding it and everything. I'm like, well, you know, it's actually a really good way to help with my own sobriety and stuff. When you are serving others at that level mean, it just really kind of helps you keep in check.

Well, the beautiful thing is you're strong and you're smart and you're a hard worker and you're a thinker and you're a reader. And to be able, you know, and you've learned a lot throughout the years to be able to take all of that and lead other people and help other people, it doesn't get any better than that. And that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be stronger, better, smarter, faster every single day because you have the opportunity and because we live in America, the greatest country in the world.

I want to ask you a couple things. So you talked about it earlier. I want to go a little deeper on it is how can people ultimately get clear on what they really want in life? And you have six steps for getting clarity. So can you kind of go through some of them?

Yeah. I mean, to me, the first piece of clarity and it's a really big deal is again, this process of unbelieving, of looking at your life and examining why you believe, what you believe, where your beliefs come from, basically. So it's an awareness of where your beliefs come from, examining a little bit about why that is, and then making a conscious choice whether to continue to believe those things or not believe those things. Because we know that whatever you're believing is what's produced your, you know, created your actions. And now your results are the other fruit on the tree, if you will. And so recognizing that and then in the process, this is really important is letting go, is being able to learn the process of letting go. So, I mean, I love when I'm. When I'm teaching to refer people to books because books are great. It's a great way to learn in your own environment, right? My environment's usually like a hot tub. And one of the books I love is the Sedona Method. Hal Dwoskin, and he's part of the Transformational Leadership Council.

I went through Sedona Method in the early 90s.

Amazing, right? It's incredible. And when you realize that you can release stuff and you release shit and shit thoughts and all the stuff that comes out of that, you have so much more clarity to be able to create a vision which is the next thing know it's the next step is, you know, when you have a clearer view of what you believe or what you want to believe even, and why you believe what you have believed, and you make a choice to maybe not believe some or unbelieve some of those things, you get to create a new vision for your life. And you know, any CEO, anybody that's managing or running teams knows that you have to have a big vision that other people can be excited 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 joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

But that starts with you. You're not going to enroll anybody else in your vision until you know what.

Your vision is exactly. And you got to have one. And I mean, it doesn't need to be perfect, but. But there's. The fact is there's so many people if you don't Create your own value system, then you spend your life adopting other people's. And a lot of.

Could you repeat that?

Yeah. If you don't develop your own value. Human happiness comes from developing your own value system, not adopting someone else's. Because if you and most people, they'll read a book and they'll try to take that author's stuff and make it their own versus taking it and applying it and developing their own value system with it. And it's you're not ever you. If you don't develop your own philosophy, if you don't apply it to your own life, your own situations, your own desires, and then you end up living someone else's life. So it's develop your own value system.

I think that's powerful.

Yeah, it's worked well for me. I think about it all the time. What are some of the results you've seen people achieve after utilizing the tools that you basically teach and pivot?

That's really the coolest part of this is that we've seen people that have created massive money success in business and things. And that's usually what people say they want. It's the first question kind of what would your life be like if you had no worries about money? And then all of a sudden they're happy, they're healthy, they have great relationships, that kind of thing. So they're after the money. And there's nothing wrong with that. But what I've seen is that in addition to people producing wealth, what they've really been able to produce is a more peaceful life, a happier life, a more on purpose life. The kind of a life where you don't worry about money at all anyway. And it's not because you don't care about it. It's because money flows, is a result that flows out of the way. You're showing up differently when you're a purpose driven person. When your intention is to serve, not to take. Money is a fruit that hangs on that tree, the root. It's the roots that create the fruits. And it's the root of that intention to serve and to help others and make the world better, or to relieve pain or whatever it is that you know you're going to be able to use your special gifts to add value.

Right.

That just produces a fruit that's called fulfillment. You know, and I love where Tony Robbins, early on when I started to read and listen to him, he'd say, you know, success without fulfillment feels like failure.

Right?

And I, you know, that was me he was talking directly to Me when I was a lawyer and I'm going, holy shit. So I've got plenty of money, you know, I've got power, authority and all that kind of stuff. And yet I'm fucking miserable. Why am I so unhappy? Well, because the key to happiness was missing from the equation.

Right?

Right. So one of the great results that come from people reading a book like hopefully like Pivot, but coming to a training and being in a space, a heart centered, you know, heart centered space for their own personal development is that they're going to discover the truths about themselves. And some of those truths will shock, you know, they'll be shocking, it will be shocking to them when they discover what they really, really want in life. And more often than not, it's not really a money driven thing.

You know what's funny is when I was dead broke, carpet cleaner, living off credit cards and I would read Think and Grow Rich and the Power of Positive Thinking and many of the classic personal development books, it wasn't until I learned marketing and some strategies where I was able to actually make money and I became a millionaire by the time I was 30. And I still, at the time I was thinking, man, if I just have the money, that will solve so much of the shit. Not realizing that money actually allows you to buy some pretty bad vices.

Money's a magnifier. I heard somebody say, isn't it true?

It is true.

If you're a shit, more money can make you even a bigger shit.

Oh yeah, yeah. I've seen it happen at so many levels. And so what's interesting though, and again, I am never a person to poo poo money. I mean, if you don't have money, you don't have food, you can't, you, you can't get medical care. I mean, when people say money can't buy happiness, I think they're crazy because there's a lot of things that make me happy that I can buy with money. However, like Jim Rohn says, you can't hire someone to do your push ups for you. Money's not going to buy you true peace of mind or relationships. It'll give you access to things, but how you interact with it is a really important thing. So I'm never a person to poo poo money. Money's really valuable in a certain context. Taken in the wrong way though, it could lead to a lot of self destruction. That's what you see happen with lottery winners. You know, two years within winning the lottery, they're usually in worse debt than they were before they ever won it.

Exactly. And here's one little addition to that or plus to that, which is that we dive in our training. We dive into why you want money to begin with. Because if you do truly want a lot more money, often that simple shift in that 5 degree change in your direction has to do with your motivation for money.

Right.

So when you're. You brought up Jim Rohn, so he's got a great quote on this, which is the bigger the why, the easier the how, you know, the how, the dreaded hows as Mike Dooley would call them. Right. That's the problem that stops people because they're not really. They're not solid on their why. Yeah, it's just one little thing. But it's a major shift for folks.

And see the reason, it's useful. From my experience, and I can only speak from my experience the reason, you know, people say to me all the time, why do you still go to seminars? Why do you read all these books? I mean, you, you know, because I've read over a thousand business books. I've got an incredible library. I've been to more events and things than most people that I know. The reason that I do it is not because I'm. There's something I haven't yet learned learn. It's just the whole process to me is kind of like working out. I mean, you don't just go and have a great workout and you're healthy or you eat one healthy meal and all of a sudden it's handled. It's just part of life. It's just something that I do and it keeps me in an engaged state. To me, it's just part of a process. And you live that way. And when I live that way, life works better. It just does. So it's one of those things that I do. And the thing about money is when someone is broke and they don't have their financial needs, like they literally can't pay their rent, as an example, or they're deeply in debt, it's very hard for them to say, hey, you're going to get the peace of mind. You're going to do this, you're going to do that. I'll tell you when I learned from Dan Sullivan that there's five different ways you get paid for something. I used to read all these books in the beginning of my career of how much is my time worth per hour? Am I spending my time making, broken down to the minute, how much you want to make? And I would always beat myself up because I would find myself focusing on activities that didn't always bring in the highest level of money. And some they didn't bring in any money, but they were just interesting to me. But I would always layer this compared to the stuff that I was reading about. Every minute of your working out day needs to be focused on the return. And it wasn't until my friend Dan Sullivan shared with me this thing called an opportunity filter where there's five ways you get paid. The first way is reward, you get paid with money. The second is appreciation. Another way you get paid is utilization. People utilize you. Another way you get paid is people refer you. And another way you get paid is people. It enhances you as a person. And until I actually realize that, for me, whenever I'm working with a person person on a project, it has to, my number one criteria is, does it enhance me? Second, do people utilize me? I mean, I do not like giving advice, especially proven business strategies to someone that says they want them, could transform their business with them and they don't use it.

Don't throw your pearls to swine.

Exactly. It's the Emerson quote, you know, you ask for a new idea when you haven't used the first one that I gave you. So when people don't utilize it, the, the third is people appreciate me. The fourth do they refer me. And fifth, do they pay me. So I like getting paid. I do want money. However, that's only one way of getting rewarded. I go into my life now saying, okay, is this person, is this person elf easy, lucrative and fun or are they half hard, annoying, lame and frustrating? So you can have an elf business or a half business and I really think about stuff that way. And I'll tell you, operating that way brings me a hell of a lot of peace of mind and it keeps me out of a lot of success traps. Because when people get successful, success traps are harder to get out of than failure traps. Because when you're down and out and all you have to do is go up, I mean, you literally could try anything. Exactly. But when you have built a business or a career, let's say where you're good at it and you're making money, but it's draining the life force out of you, it's actually hard to give that shit up. I mean, you're not even aware of it. So that's why getting perspectives from the outside, that's why I'm always saying, read a book, read this book. It will change your perspective, it will give you strategies. The more that you're into personal development, love it or hate it. And certainly there's a lot of shit out there. There's a ton of people that are pontificating.

Nonsense disemposes, for sure.

Yeah.

You know, however, you know, the more you do this, the more, you know, this works for me, and this doesn't. Because some things work for some people and don't work for others. But the point is, it is. It is a journey. So let me ask you. I'm rambling here.

I just don't think there's any limit to it. So, like you said, I'm a lifelong learner and constantly reading, and it really is because there's a. I believe that to be a great teacher, which, as we said, to learn something is to teach something. So here's the circular nature of this, right? In order to be a great teacher, you must be a great student. And the day you stop being a great student, you stop being a great teacher. So then you stop learning. What's the essential tools to keep evolving? So you just basically kind of shrivel up and die at that point or.

Something, or you start to suck more than you were. Like, there's a lot of authors that I know and a lot of speakers that we, when they were hungry and they were first starting out, I think were far better than they are. Once they got the ego, once they've got the fame, once they got the notoriety. The ones that I admire the most, I've done a whole podcast episode with Dan Kennedy, who I've worked with for many, many years, the grumpy marketer. And Dan, we would talk about, when you're first starting out in your career, you get paid for what you do. And hopefully your what is good. Like, whatever you put out into the world, it creates value for other people. It's good. And if you do a really good job at what you put out there, then you become a who. And then you start getting paid for who you are. So a lot of people that become famous, they spend more time who ing than they do what ing. When you become a who, but your what that you're putting out there is still incredibly valuable or preferably keeps getting better and better and better. That's why a guy like my friend Tony Robbins, I mean, we're both friends with Tony. I mean, he has had incredible longevity because that freaking guy just works his ass off. He puts really good stuff out there. And so, you know, I mean, he's just, you know, he's Tony. And so the thing is, part of it Is I really look at who's the what and then who's the who. And if you actually get to the point where you start. Start resting on your laurels because you've gotten some waves on wind in your favor, that's the time to actually even look at. Okay, let's make sure I'm doubling up here because I actually think life is. You're on track, and then you get thrown off track, and then you kind of move yourself back on track. But some people, they've got momentum, and then they just like. Because I'll look at a lot of my clients when their business was really working well and they were kicking ass and taking names, and then they'll start getting into some messes. And if you simply ask them some questions, kind of what you said earlier, I mean, Socratic selling is more. Way more valuable than layering on all kinds of benefits. Simply ask people questions. If you actually inquire into people, well, what were you doing when life was working well for you? And they'll tell you, and what are you not doing? That you used to. What I've learned being in. In this business is a lot of times we're just a glorified reminder service.

No kidding.

You just have to remind. There's some humility right there. You just remind people you used to do this and you stopped and, you.

Know, there are no gurus. I don't even. I don't know. It's not offensive to me, but I just. The word is just an interesting word to me.

Oh, yeah. I don't like. I don't like the guru. Cause I can't imagine, like, me even thinking of myself that way.

No, because that. It's almost like, there you go. I know something. I know that. And I think that's at least one nail in the coffin when you think you know something.

Exactly.

Exactly. 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 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, you know, 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, 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 them? 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 Asprey or Jim do or certain people. You kind of have to try to establish boundaries, but you're always good.

Okay, great. 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. Okay, so here's the thing about leadership. Like, leadership, you absolutely must have, like, 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 will 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. 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's free book 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, right? But this one we all have to learn. And so when we're going to learn this, this effective interaction is all about this. 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 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 make 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 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 make a new decision. But the thing is, at the end of the day, that decision has to be good with both of you. Because 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, he gave some great advice this morning actually.

Yeah, he did. Every quarter he actually says something useful.

That's awesome.

Yes. Just kidding. I don't leave up on it. So. All right, well. So Annie.

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? 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. Um, 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 write, 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 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 feel a threat, when they're stressed. 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.

So I'm going to cover five simple but insanely powerful tools to multiply your capabilities as a results leader. Here's what we're going to cover. Where your market hangs out online. What questions your market has like for Google, how to make social videos using AI in a snap, how to find cheap staff in the Philippines who are incredible and loyal. And finally, what motivates and triggers you, your loved ones, your staff, pretty much everybody you care about. The first tool is going to going to unveil for us what your market's favorite social accounts, podcasts and websites are. It's called SparkToro. Not only can you put in a keyword that would be something popular with your audience, your ideal customer prospect, but you could also put in the URL of your website, you could put in your social profile, you could put in a competitor social profile or website and then you'll learn what social accounts they follow, what websites they visit, podcasts they listen to, YouTube channels they subscribe to, hashtags they use, and so much more. Let's have a look. Can you guys see my screen with the SparkToro results already displayed? Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Perfect. So this is Joe's social following. I put in his Twitter, but I could have put in his YouTube or his Facebook and it's all connected up into one mega profile for you. So we don't have to check on multiple accounts. So this is 12,000 different people who follow you across all social platforms. And what you'll find is that a lot of these folks that they're following are people that you're friends with, that are in masterminds with you, that are going to the same events, etc. But then there'll be people who are hidden gems that you wouldn't have thought of, people you hadn't even heard of before. So there are a lot of folks who you overlap with quite heavily between your audience and theirs, like Jeff Walker, Product Launch formula, Ryan Deiss, digitalmarketer.com, brian Tracy. But then there are other folks that you probably won't have even heard of before potentially. So this is great for identifying folks to have on your podcast, to be on their podcast, to be collaborating on a joint YouTube video, etc. Etc. So let's look at some websites now that your social media following are visiting in addition to your own website. So they're visiting seth Godin's blog, for example, kimgarst.com etc. What podcasts are they listening to? Polyhood. I don't know what that one is, but we'll leave that to the imagination. And then YouTube channels, and it sorts by default into the percentage of audience. But if you sorted by subscribers, it you might find, for example, Casey Neistat in the list. And Casey, if you haven't heard of him, is a huge YouTuber. He's got a massive following. And to do a Collab, that's what YouTubers call it, a collab with Casey Joe, that would be huge that you would blow up. So just an FYI, you should check out Casey and these are some of the hashtags that you're fans and followers are using in their own posts. Sales, for example, hashtag sales. They're using certain keywords in their profile bios, such as marketer and strategist and speaker. The words they're using in their shares on social media, where they're located, cities, states, etc. This is all just a click away. So think of using this as insight for for example, targeting Facebook audiences. So you might already be targeting, let's say fans and followers, people who like Brian Tracy. But what about Casey Neistat, et cetera, et cetera. So that's a premium freemium tool actually from my co author of the first two editions of this big book, the Art of SEO. His name is Rand Fishkin, also the founder of Moz So he created this amazing tool and he wrote this blog post on how to use your first 10 free SparkTour searches. You get 10 free searches per month. It only gives you a certain set of results you're not going to see like piles and piles of YouTube accounts for example, but you'll be able to get some really great data from that. So that is my first tool. Next is a tool called Answer the Public. Answer the Public gives you insight into your market's questions and concerns that they're asking Google. And here's how it works. It scrapes the Google suggest results. As you're typing, Google does this autocomplete thing. Well, it scrapes all that data. So let's see how that works. I already put in the keyword Paleo into the tool. Has this really beautiful visualization, but it's not real handy to use because I have to crack, kind of crack my neck here to see it. So I go into Data View. And by the way, all of this is easily exportable out of this tool, which again is freemium. So you get some free data with this tool and for a small like $10 a month premium subscription, you get to unlock a lot more features. So download the CSV file and you can see people are asking questions of Google like are Paleo pancakes healthy? When does Paleo not work? Where should I start with Paleo? These are all just phenomenal questions that you could answer in your FAQs page. You could put this into your editorial calendar and use this for that content diamond that Rory was talking about in the previous presentation. You can use all this to create an 80% video, is what Marcus Sheridan refers to as a sales video that answers most 80% of your prospects questions. And this is just an incredible insightful tool. Again, you get lots of free data with that tool. So that's tool number two. Number three, create professional videos using AI in seconds or minutes at least. And the tool for that is called lumen5lumen5.com here's how it works. So let's say you get an email because you just posted a blog post or in my case a podcast episode with all the show notes and it tells me view my video it's already created using an AI. Next thing I know, I go in here, click that link, that button and it's created based on this long form blog post. That's the entire transcript of my episode. Turned it into like concise and summarized content using an AI. And the AI also picks great imagery, stock video, stock photography, all royalty free, part of the the platform. And then I can change any of it or I can just keep it the same. Like I might want to move this guy's head over to the right more and down so that the text that's part of the image is out of view. Hit publish, and boom. Now I have an almost instantaneously made video. So that's pretty darn amazing. That's. That's tool number three. Tool number four is having your own headhunter in the Philippines. Now, I have a team in the Philippines and this headhunting firm, it's more of a service than it is a tool. But virtual Staff Finder, for a fee of about $500, will bring you three qualified candidates that they have thoroughly vetted background checks. They've checked their Internet speed, their typing speed, their English proficiency, all that. And you can have them do other assessments as well. Like I have all of them do disc and demartini values determination process or hierarchy. So then they've been vetted, they've been interviewed, and the top three candidates get presented to me on a silver platter. And then I can have my team or myself interview them, see who I want to hire. If I don't like any of them, I tell them, go back to the well, start all over again, bring me three more. And that's all included for the 500 bucks. Pretty amazing. And then tool number five. I just love this one. Many of you are probably already familiar with it because you're in Strategic Coach, but you get to learn what your unconscious motivators and triggers are, things that put you into your shadow self. And you get to learn this about others like your loved one. If you have your partner take this assessment as well, your staff should all take this assessment. It's called Print. Print Assessment, Print Survey. Joe, I know you're a fan of it. I just interviewed Deborah Levine, co creator of Print, and this was on the Get Yourself Optimized podcast. The episode airs on June 11th. I'm really excited for it. There's so many gold nuggets in that episode. Please listen to that episode. You can get it@getyourselfoptimized.com or your favorite podcatcher. And she very graciously offered to let us use the special offer code that she provided Strategic Coach, which gives us $100 off. So it's $150 instead of 250 and a whole bunch of training videos that go with it that are super invaluable that are not normally included. So that's@printsurvey.com special offer with an access code of P8768 and I will put this stuff into the chat. I did drop into the chat the PowerPoint presentation URL so you can download this whole PowerPoint but I'll individually include all the links to all these different tools as soon as I'm done with my presentation. Now let me show you what this tool, what this particular assessment tool looks like. So if I were to go into my print assessment, I'm a two major, eight minor. What that means is that I need to be appreciated. I feel I need to be appreciated and needed. So that's remember this is unconscious. It's like the iceberg where underneath the surface is where most of the, you know, the bulk of it is, right? So under the surface the unconscious is what's driving a lot of my behaviors. So to be needed and appreciated and then to be strong and self reliant is number two. That's my minor. And based on that it knows what my shadow self is, what my best self is and what my triggers are. So let me show you what some of my triggers are. Please don't do this in the Q and A. For example, if you were to.

Not.

Acknowledge or appreciate my efforts. But see if I know these things about myself then I know to be on high alert about not getting triggered by them. And this was amazing. Deborah and her husband, the other co creator of Print have their trigger pages on their on their refrigerator. So it's a constant reminder not to tracing. So so those are my five tools. And oh I also have a great episode of Joe that aired on my other show Marketing Speak last month. So definitely there's so much gold in that episode too. I highly recommend that one. So again, SparkToro answer the public Lumen 5 virtual staff, Finder and print survey. Each of these will change your life. I could do a 10 minute talk on each of them. They are powerful and I think they're 250k ideas each. Thank you very much.

You said is you really can't motivate anybody else. It's a lot easier to select enthusiastic people. And once you create a conscious culture, it selects for its own kind, which is interesting. A company has an immune system and the people that don't fit into the culture, the immune system begins to select them out and get rid of them. So what should entrepreneurs look for and do in order to better select talent instead of instead of trying to motivate people? And what can entrepreneurs do to cultivate and encourage self selecting?

Cultures. Cultures.

Well, of course we can inspire people. So I don't want to say you can't motivate anybody. You can inspire people. But I consider it kind of like a bucket with holes in it. If people are dependent on you to fill them up with energy, and it's all going to leak out. So they eventually have to be able to create their own energy. So, again, I kind of talked about it already. You've got to create a culture that really allows human beings to be creative and flourish, where they feel a sense of purpose, they have a sense of meaning, they have a sense of belonging that they're cared for, people they care about, and that they can have some fun in the workplace where they can be fully human. We need to create workplaces where humans can be fully human, in a sense, their highest potential of being a human. So I've always had that perspective, and I've tried to model it, and then I try to instill the values and get the culture. I spend a lot of time thinking about the culture. I sometimes think it's like a gardener. You got to look around. If there's a few weeds that you got to pull out, you got to pull them out. There are other things you need to plant. And if you're the entrepreneur of your business, what you'll find out as your business grows, that the business begins to take on a lot of your own personality. The things that are good about you and the things that are not so good about you, and they just unconsciously model on the leader. It's just the way it works. Just like kids model on their parents and then later their peer group. That's what we are, human beings. We copy each other. So once you realize that, then you got to get your own shit together. Because one of the things that I learned in leadership is that when I got stuck somewhere in my own life, oftentimes the company got stuck, too. And when I got unstuck, that let the company move forward. So personal growth is very important. It really is. And it used to be seen as sort of narcissistic. We focused on that. Now you grow not just for yourself, but you grow for your whole organization. So one of my goals is to continue to learn and grow until the day I die.

So you're very transparent about many issues, and sometimes it makes people mad or they criticize you. And the company can even become Whole Foods can become the subject of resistance or boycotts. And so what can entrepreneurs here learn from you about handling criticism, dealing with the media, and dialoguing with people who may disagree with their perspectives.

Well, it's a tough question for me because, I mean, I tell the joke that I failed media training in Whole Foods Markets three separate times. In media training, they always teach you.

To.

Look, decide what you want to say, and then just whatever they ask you, just bridge to it. Just bridge to. But person asks me a question, I try to answer it truthfully and honestly and authentically. And that gets me in trouble sometimes. And I don't even care about people attacking me personally. Welcome to attack me. I don't care. But they attack my baby. They attack Whole Foods and they try to hurt Whole Foods. And for those of you that are parents, you know, nothing upsets you more than having your kids attacked and beat up by bullies. So I've learned the hard way that I cannot be as open, particularly about politics in this society as I once was. I wrote an op ed piece in the Wall street journal back in 2009 that led about Whole Foods alternative to Obamacare, and it led to massive boycotts. 350,000 people signed a petition to boycott Whole Foods Market. There were petitions in our stores. There was thousands of letters that were sent to the board of directors demanding that I be fired. So we live in this incredibly interesting society now where if you say things that people don't like, they just smear you and they attack you. And it's made me. I don't want to say it's made a chilling effect, but I'm a little bit more careful about giving my at least my political opinions in public.

At.

Least till I retire. Then I'm going to go on a rampage.

This is something that, you know, when we have a guest like you for a show like this, we put out promotional materials to tell you, come to listen. And here is just a taste of what you're going to get. And we use these things we call fascinations and teasers that are going to bring people in. Now, this is the one I've been waiting to ask you. Yes. How can someone become a better leader, a better influencer, and a better lover? I know this is the one everybody came here for. So we wait, we get weird. We've been salting the communication. We've been getting to this point. And now the big the payoff.

Well, here's the. Here's the secret that I believe. And I've been yet to be convinced that I'm wrong. You have to start backwards.

Okay?

First, to be a better lover in your home, be a better communicator with Your loved one, whoever your partner is, your spouse, your kids. But let's just go with spouse or partner if you can. So I believe you only have. You have only so much bandwidth in your brain. And I'm just going to go off of my experience. This is just what I felt and how I came up with this idea was obviously I came from not just one divorce, but both of my parents have been divorced twice. And so I've seen that. Right. And so when I got into the. You asked earlier, like, kind of, what was that pivot moment? The real pivot moment for me was when I decided to get married to my wife and we both sat down and I've known her since I was five, so we've. We've literally known each other whole lives. She saw what my parents went through and what I went through, but we sat down and said, how are we not going to do that? Right. Like, my parents taught me a lot of things not to do, which I'm so grateful for. Right. It was very traumatic as a kid. But I joke with my parents at this point all the time. I've made a ton of money off of your divorce, so thank you. It's like a good thing. But I. So we sat down and we said, what are the systems, literally systems and processes we're going to put into our relationship so that doesn't happen? What are our core values that go beyond, I'll be honest with you, you know, or, you know, we love each other, so we started creating those. Well, as a entrepreneur, you've got a lot of stuff going on in your head. You only have bandwidth for so much. We talk about frustration, overwhelm. Well, that's where it comes from. If I'm not happy in my relationship, it is the underlining factor. Everything else I do. If I had a fight with my wife in the morning and I'm sorry. Well, you guys talk about this enough in Genius Network. This is a big shock. But excuse my. For everybody, if I haven't had sex with my wife in over a week and we just had an argument, I go to the office and the underlying things going on in my brain that's taking up bandwidth. Even if I say, well, my office is my escape place or this is where I keep my focus, it's there. It underlines everything I do. If I'm not happy with my wife and I go to work, something small is going to piss me off with my team members. Something small is going to annoy me with a client. And so if I'm not happy there, then it affects everything else. So the opposite has to be true as well. So if I'm happy in my relationship, if I'm focused on creating a better relationship between my wife and my kids, and then I'm going to not have to. That frees up so much more bandwidth to be creative, to be focused, to be in flow, to be attentive, to be present. And so if I can master that, then I can go and master this over here. And so I always start with lover. So focus on lover again. I'll go back to that saying, there's nothing will no success outside the home will compensate for failure in it. My first and most important relationship is that with my spouse. Even my kids know this. Since my kids were little, I would sit them down and say, I love you, I would die for you. I do anything for you. But your mom is number one. You will never divide us because like now I'm an empty nester and it's just the two of us. So I needed to make sure that that was good for the rest of my life. Yeah, right. Like I go to the end with her, not you. Like you're going to find somebody else, abandon me. So that is the first piece. Then when it comes to all the other things, it makes it so much easier if you live in that space. I can an integrity walk into one of these offices and say, I am here to help you have a better relationship with yourself first, then your team members and then your patients. Well, yourself includes your spouse or your loved one or your partner. And so I can walk in integrity and say that. And they take me seriously. I talk freely about how much I enjoy and love my wife. I talk about also where I'm an idiot in my relationship, but I'm working on it. Like we used to start off, we used to have marriage seminars that we would do that were based on they were for hiring entrepreneurs. And I would start off every single one. I'd stand up on stage and I'd say, how many guys want to hear about the fight Shannon and I had last night? Or how many guys want to hear about our most recent argument? And the reason is because we're like normal people, we argue, but we understand the power of that. So if I can focus on lover, then I can focus on a relationship when it comes to my and my influence and then leadership. It's just a backwards scenario.

That's fascinating. That's good. And then you mentioned then taking that and kind of now shifting it outward to your relationship with your with your clients, with your.

That's right.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

What's some.

As a leader, I. So one of the core values I have, my relationship, is radical transparency. Okay. We don't have honesty. We have radical transparency. And my business ownership, I say the same thing with my business owners. So the first thing you have to be is be a hundred percent authentic with who you are, authentic with your team members and love them enough to say no or to say goodbye. So what I mean by that is there's a lot of people that hold on to people in their businesses as employers, as employees, because they feel bad because they, you know, deep down that person's a good person.

Oh, yeah.

They've been here so long.

Yeah.

However, they're not being honest and they're not being in integrity with that person. This is that. This is the test. I always say I do this from the stage. I say, doctors, if you walk in in the morning and you see Sally and Sally walks by you and you say, good morning, Sally. And she says, good morning, Doctor. And you think in your head, man, I wish you would quit, that is your cue that you're out of integrity and you need to let her go. It's not that she's doing anything wrong. Maybe Sally does want to come to work 10 minutes late. Maybe Sally does like the drama. Maybe Sally is somebody who is insubordinate. That doesn't make Sally wrong. And that's what we do as leaders, is we tend to make them wrong. But true leadership is saying, huh, you know what? They're not wrong for wanting those things. I want to help them not want those things, but they're not wrong. They're just not the right fit for our business or we're not the right fit for them, so we love them into another job and love them enough to say goodbye. That starts. That's where all leadership starts, is that authenticity of that. And then you can build upon empathy, you can build upon having a good vision and culture for your business. But if you can't be authentic and real and create that safe environment, then it's never going to be. Never going to work out the way you want.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now. Come on. Thank you. Watch them.