Episode #600 - Embracing Your Adversity with Steffany Hanlen, CEO of Skatetech Group of Companies

Welcome to this edition of the Million Dollar Mastermind podcast. This is where we pick the brains of high achievers from all walks of life and get their hard earned real world insights on winning. I'm your host, Larry Wydell.

It's the kind of thing where you'll see, like if it's a golfer, a young golfer and he's got his coach playing with him, you know, the coach will be throwing, you know, balls at him, you know, be coughing loudly, you know, he's up there, you know, delicate hut he'll walk up right behind him and stand right next to him and lean over and look, you know, anything? I remember things always go, yeah, the things that go wrong are impossible to. You can't prepare for all of them. No, you know, we did show jumping and you'd be in the ring and these horses kind of, you know, some of them are very spooky and you get. Everything's just perfect. Just about like you say, to go over the last fence to go the last run, and then some dumbass open an umbrella right up at the right, right on the right next to the railing and they just pop open an umbrella as you're getting ready to go over the fence. And you can imagine a horse not used to seeing an umbrella up that close, just pop open out of the sky or birds, you know, you're going on the end of the ring and you go around and then all of a sudden a flock. You're not like one or two flock of birds, you know, like. And so you just have to train for things like that, the obvious things, you know, this is what we, we talk about is like the obvious things and the. You can train for the common things that screw up. And that puts you in a position to where when the surprising other kind of bizarro things that happen, one in a million years you're not as starless like, huh, I expected this to happen, you know, you just keep on going, you know. And so while the experience that you gained. What do you like about speaking?

Oh, actually I don't like speaking. I love the impact that the speaking has. I actually had to overcome certain things in my. Grow in my, in my youth in order to actually be able to read, be able to speak, be able to put sentences together. So the journey that I went on was I didn't know I was going to end up as a professional speaker, but I started to go to different events where I knew that I could do a better job than that person or I knew that I had a message Or I knew that I had a contribution, so I really had to dig deep and overcome that fear of. I mean, I was great. I could talk all day long, but to put myself in front of a crowd, I realized that I had done that in front of hockey players, in front of giant men from all over the world, and I was speaking to them. So I just said, well, if that's. If I can do that, I can do this. So the first time I got on stage, it was in 2006 in front of 800 people at a real estate investment network event. And I just froze. But then I realized that if these are just hockey players or if these are just, you know, people that are want my message, then why wouldn't I just find one person to speak to? And that's how I got into it. And that's when I started to realize then I would see people nodding, and then I would see people putting their phones away, and then I would look at another person and then they'd be nodding. And I was like, I love this because it was about me overcoming my own stuff and then watching people and connecting. And. You know what it feels like, Larry, is that when somebody's. I call it. When they're. When their face opens up.

Yeah.

And they can actually receive what I'm saying. To me, that's. That's the moment. That's my Stanley cup, that's my Olympic gold medal, is when I know I've actually. So that's what I love about speaking.

And is your message. You say your message. What is the essence of the message? Do you. And how much do you tailor it for different groups or different. I guess you're speaking to realtors a lot. But what is your message that you. Would you say in a nutshell.

It's funny, actually, it's not realtors, it's real. Real estate investors and people. That mortgage broker. Like everybody sort of. That's around the world of real estate that I mind. That are kind of going into an environment. If you're. If I'm. If I'm going to drill down what my. What my. The essence of my message is, is to ultimately identify what it is, what problems you're solving for people and how you're going to do it in a way that aligns with your values. Because I know what it's like to be sold stuff and from somebody that is trying to pitch me an igloo in California, and that sounds like the best thing they've ever done, and I kind of get sucked into it. But to me, that's also a level of personal alignment, not necessarily integrity, because that word I find gets bantered around. But personal alignment with if you know what you're doing and you know you're solving a problem for somebody and you believe in what you're saying and what you're selling, then there's really no place else to go. People will either buy what you're selling or they will just go somewhere else. And that's okay. And that's okay.

Yeah. And what are you trying. What behaviors are you trying to change when you speak to them? Like, just trying to get them to consider that, use a different framework for approaching what they're doing or their behaviors are trying to change. In other words, do you think they're a bunch of crooks already and you're trying to get them to change your evil ways or to think about it in another level of client satisfaction?

I guess for me, going in, I believe in my heart 100%, is everybody's doing the best they can, very best they can at all times. I believe that. So I go in with that level of respect and that level of trust that everybody is doing. That's my first presupposition. If I go in with that and then I. They feel that level of. Of acceptance and respect, then I find people drop their guards. Especially people that maybe are in an alignment or out of alignment with what they're trying to sell or they're scammers or they're. Whatever they know. I don't need to point that out.

Yeah.

So what. What I've learned from the world of sport is that when. When you have a goal and when you want something and you want it really, really, really bad, and the question is, what are you willing to do to get what you want? If the answer is not whatever it takes, then I can't work with them because as they get to know themselves and they start to change their own habits and get results by changing certain things. Because you can't, you know, it can't unbake a cake, but you can certainly use a different recipe if you want a different cake. Yeah, but what I was finding at the beginning with athletes is that they just wanted to use the same cake all the time and use the same recipe and then expect, like, it's the definition of insanity as we go along. But to help them unwind maybe the stories that they're telling themselves at the beginning of our work together and to see what's true and what's not true, maybe it's true last year or 10 years ago. But what if it's not true today? So if we can get. If I can in a speaking event or a one on one with an athlete or a small group workshop, if I can create a space for people to say, okay, this is true for me today, this is what I value today. These are my guiding values today in line with what I want. There's a way shorter line to excellence than there is if you're just trying to keep trying things on this work. Let's try this. Let's run to this workshop. Let's go follow that guru. Let's. Let's read that book. Well, how about you just slow down?

Yeah.

Figure out who you are today and start again.

Okay. What will people get when they go to your. If they're curious about going to your podcast, what will you tell them that they will get from going and listening to your podcast?

Oh, my gosh. Okay, first of all, I'm hilariously funny.

Okay.

No, my husband and I have a very good banter. We've been together 30 years. I think we married 27 this summer. So we know each other well. We're good partners, we're good friends, but we also challenge each other. So we're having a conversation about something that's kind of current, maybe current affairs, something that's going on, but we don't come at it in a way that is telling you what to do. You know, here's the five steps to do this and here's that. But if we pick, we pick a topic every, every Sunday and we say, okay, let's dig into this, let's dig into. Confirmation bias is one of our most recent topics. So what we do is we go back and forth and we uncover and unpack what it could be, what it is, what it is for him, what it is for me, where we've seen it out in the world. So what we're doing is we're stretching conversations about what's going on currently in our world and offering insights and maybe a little bit of humor and a way of looking at things that maybe aren't mainstream. Because, A, I don't watch mainstream TV, so I haven't for 25 years. So I don't really know what's going on in the world. But I know what's going on in my world and what works in the world that I'm in called world class sport. And with my H and W clients, they. They're not watching the news either because they're too busy trying to figure out what it is that they're doing next. So in our podcast we pick a topic, we disseminate it, we maybe redefine it and then we look at how it can be used and useful going forward just for us everyday people.

Okay, fantastic. You want to. I'm going to give you the final word as we wrap this thing up that you want to give to those that were have been listening along with us.

Well, thanks for sticking around this long. First of all, gratitude and for you, the questions, it's really made me think. And as far as the last word, I think from a champions journey, you know, mindset matters kind of conversation is to really figure out what it is that is important to you today and to connect that to your values and connect that to your purpose. Because if we don't know our why the what's in the house, they just really don't matter. It just becomes a scramble and life's too short. You know, excellence is a straight line. Life isn't.

Yeah. And the thing is you got to be unapologetic about it. You can't be defensive about it. It comes from inside you and there's no reason for you not to feel entitled to tap into that. You can do that, you can do that and you can start moving in that direction. And the quicker you do, the quicker you're going to find you start having more positive feelings about your life. And that's going to put you in a frame of mind to be a whole lot more fun to be around for the rest of us too.

Oh yeah, and if it's not fun, Larry, I'm not doing it.

There you go. Hey, thanks so much for being on and look forward to hearing great things about the growth of your business in the future.

Well, thanks so much and I look forward to following along with your journey as well.

Alright, thanks so much. Goodbye.

Goodbye.

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