Mindset May With Gordon MacFarlane Performance-Mindset-Coach

Welcome to the Mike Hartman Show. Mike is a performance coach and former Stanley cup champion with the New York Rangers. Topics on this show are focused around stories, mindset and champions. Mike will also go into details about helping you with your pain points and struggles and finding motivational solutions on how to have the mindset of a champion. Now, here's your host, Mike Hartman.

Welcome to another episode today. My guest is Gord McFarlane and this is Mindset May. So we're going to continue the series of mindset. And the greatest thing about that is, Gord, you have that right in your, you know, right into your business. You're Gord McFarland's a mindset coach. Share that with us.

Correct? Yeah, My, my title is performance mindset coach, and I help organizations and of all kinds of people to help them communicate more effectively, to build better relationships and have more success in everything they do.

Well, I always say that life is built on relationships. And I'm sure, I don't know, I can't speak for your hockey career, but I know within mind I still talk to people I've talked to 30, 40 years ago. I don't want to give my age away.

Well, there's no question that, you know, relationships is the foundation of everything we do. You know, what I do as a performance mindset coach is I help people to provide clarity and communication. So one of the first things I ask them is, what business are you in? I want to get some clarity from them on what business they're in. And they usually tell me, well, I'm, I'm in engineering or I'm in sports or I'm this. And, well, it's not. That's what you, that's, that's not who you are, really. That's kind of what you do. But I say that, you know, most of us think we're engineers or hockey coaches or baseball coaches or teachers. We're actually in the people business. And so if we're really good at connecting with people, I think our ability to relate to them is going to be a lot stronger. But it's all about communication, really, about connecting with people and building rapport and trust. That's the foundation of all good relationships, is communication, trust and rapport.

It sure is. And just to backtrack a little bit, I'd love for you to share a little bit about your story. I know you have every, like I would say, and in fact, a good friend once told me this, that every good story has a struggle. And I recall talking to you, I think maybe a Few months ago. And you told me a little bit about your story, what, what your great. Your grade school teacher said to you when you were very young.

Yeah. Being a rather distracted young man and still distracted as an adult, I've. I guess what you know is adult add, Attention deficit disorder. High school was tough for me. Grade school was tough for me. I had a difficult time paying attention. And because of that, you know, I was born in 1958. So growing up in the 60s and 70, we didn't have all of the understanding of what behavior traits are. Add, adhd, autism, and all these things. You know, I was just labeled. I was labeled as a difficult child and that I was going to need remedial help in learning. I was learning disabled was the title they gave me. It was on all my report cards. Going home Gordon is learning disabled. So I was in remedial math, remedial English, remedial French, and remedial. You know, all the different remedial subjects they were. And they kind of labeled me as, well, slow and stupid. And so I never thought that I could really amount to much. And that kind of stayed with me. And of course, you know, you get. You kind of carry that weight with you. But lo and behold, I was able to find someone who actually believed in me and saw something in me and said, hey, Gord, you've got the gift of the gab. I wasn't really sure what that meant because my mom and dad always said the gift of the gab was a negative thing. And so I always saw that as a potential negative. Oh my gosh, I've got the gift of the gab. I don't think that's any good. But this guy who is a life insurance guy who was helping me kind of have some forced savings because I was starting to make some money at my first job. And he said, gord, you probably need some, some life insurance and some whole life and a forced savings plan. So he got me involved in whole life policy. His name was Gord as well, Gord Shipley. But he opened my eyes up to the strength that I had in sales. He said, you're a good talker. You know how to communicate. He says, you'd probably be a good sales guy. I'm going to hook you up with someone. He did me a favor and he connected me with someone. I like graphic arts. I'm a graphic designer. And so this guy had a graphic art studio and he needed a sales guy and so he hired me and I really liked doing that. Two years later, A printing company picked up on me and said, hey, why don't you come work for us? We'll get you trained. And so they put me in Xerox selling skills. And all of a sudden I started to realize that, you know, what I thought might have been a curse and not being able to learn was actually a gift, that my communication was an actual gift. Many years later, not many years, I guess about five years later, I went into something called Dale Carnegie and, and it was the human relations approach to selling. And that's when things took off for me. I did really well in that class. There were 66 people in the class. I was a finalist in the sales talk championship. And so much so they liked what I, what I was about. They invited me back and I became an instructor with the Dale Carnegie organization and I was hooked. I was a lifelong learner from that point on in terms of understanding how I could be the better version of myself. And just kept on growing, kept on learning to this point right now where I'm a certified human behavior consultant and master trainer. I've got, you know, many, many awards and sales, a million dollar round table in sales. I wrote a book called Become a Person of, of Influence. My grade, you know, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10. Teacher told me that I would never amount to anything. But I'm an international best selling author. I have clients all over North America, around the world in fact, and it's, it's been a great journey. So I've, I've made something out of nothing, so to speak. And I didn't really let their, their words get to me. I just kind of believed that I had something that I could develop and I went ahead and did it.

Well, you sure did. And just to go back, was that the how to Win Friends and Influence Others that Dale Carnegie?

Yeah, yeah, that's, that was the premise of their study. They have two courses, they have a public speaking course and they had a sales course. The sales course was the Human Relations Approach to Selling. But the foundation was the book how to Win Friends and Influence People. And so I devoured that book. It was one of my favorite readings and I've read it many, many times since. Foundational stuff written, you know, book written in the 30s and 40s is still applicable today because it's all about people. It's all about people, connections, people relatability. And with my understanding and training and knowledge and personalities now taking communication, connecting it to personalities and creating, you know, these ideal environments for people to run in. It was a, it was A masterful connection because as a, as a athletic coach and a business owner, obviously having employees and athletes to work with and of course a family. I have four daughters and my wife's a girl too. So I swim in a sea of estrogen. So all these people in my life, we needed to be able to communicate effectively with them. So all this, all the different types of training that I've received from all these wonderful places has really sort of mapped out a really neat direction for me in life. And so I couldn't be happier.

Well, it sure has. And I know, I know a lot about you. We talk quite a bit and it's funny, my father said, and my mother, they said, we want you to read this book. It was one of the first books, if you call personal development books, Dale Carnegie that I, that I read. And then the second one, he says, I want you to read the Millionaire Next Door. So I read those books when I, when I was young. And that's great. Gord, you have a, you have a really good background, a strong background. You have passion. Was it motivation for you being told that you're not smart enough?

That's a great question, Mike. I think it was at the time because of my personality. I like to be liked and I like to have fun. I'm a people person, but I'm also a driver, determined, decisive doer. I'm a D type personality and they disc model of human behavior. But I have a lot of influencer in me. So to, to be told that I wasn't going to be smart or I wasn't going to amount to much, it kind of, it kind of, it kind of struck me a little. It. I'm going to be honest that I, I wasn't happy about that, that moniker, that title, that they put on me, but I wasn't going to let it keep me down. I felt that I had something that, that I could offer the world and the people around me. And it was a struggle. I got, I got into a lot of trouble in different places and you know, trying to find attention and a direction. But I finally did find my way and I think getting married was a. My lovely bride. We've been married 36 years, been together for 38. So she's been a real stabilizing force in my life. And you know, I have a faith that I, that I rely on, that keeps me steadfast and it keeps me basically grounded in a moral sense. So I don't, I try not to get off on a tangent. But more than that, you Know, I think all the training that I received from all these different wonderful organizations, Personality Insights and Dale Carnegie and Xerox and even the people I worked with, and I was part of an MLM in the Amway business. I learned so much about interacting with people and building organizations and, you know, foundational teams and how to. How to connect with people that weren't like you. You know, I just. I'm a. I'm an optimistic guy. I see the glasses half full, not half empty. And so if there's a possibility, I'm all over it, like, really, like a duck on a June bug. I really do like to move forward and be progressive. And I don't take no for an answer in a lot of ways, but I think success is available for anybody who decides to get it or take it. It's available for anyone. We're, you know, North America is one of the greatest areas where we can learn to grow and become anything we choose to be. The sky's the limit, really. I think it's only limited to your imagination.

That is so true. But we. We get along, we talk quite a bit, and I'm a. I'm a high D. So usually they say two high Ds can't work together that well because they're always clashing heads, but I don't see that.

But that's a. That's another good point, Mike. I think, you know, when you look at synergy, right, we talk about synergy all the time. And you. You and I are hockey guys. You played at a much higher level than I did, but both being hockey guys and D personalities, we both kind of like the same thing. But I think what connects us is our values. You and I value very much the same things. And I think when people have similar personalities, and you're right, they could clash, they could butt heads. But I think you and I together, we really have the ability to do things together because we value so much the same. Our moral standing, our values are aligned very well. And when you have good alignment in your values, the sky's the limit, really, quite frankly, when you can synergize with another person that has the same values you do, that's pretty cool, pretty dynamic.

That's so true. So I'm going to go into the mindset, work with you a little bit now. And. Well, one thing we didn't. Wait, we didn't mention. Come on, you're modest. You sold 32,000 copies of your book to the organization. And you don't have to mention the organization, but I thought that was amazing. Like, come on, you wake up and someone says, hey, we want 32,000 copies of your book. How about that?

Yeah, it's a great story I shared with you the other day. And we were talking about it because you've got so many cool topics you talk about on your, on your podcast and like I do on my podcast, and we, you know, we, we look at the possibilities. And as I got into my training with Dr. Rome as a personality consultant and specialist and master trainer, I did have a book inside of me because I was doing some sales training outside of Dale Carnegie, and everybody kept asking me, well, do you have a book? You know, do you have training material that we can follow you, you can use? So I was always being told, well, Gord, if you're going to be a good sales trainer, you need to kind of have a system that you can present and work on. And so when I got certified in the disc model, I thought, man, this is perfect because I can use my sales foundation. You know, being a million dollar round table sales guy, I have a lot of success in how to, you know, break the ice and get in and get sales and so on. Excuse me. And so I thought, well, I'm going to ask Dr. Rome if I could, you know, finish writing my book and attach the disc model of human behavior to it. And he said, sure. And lo and behold, just a few weeks later, probably five, six weeks later, I had a manuscript on his desk and he published a book for me. And so I thought, well, this is great. I'm going to be an author, right? I'm going to get royalties and all this kind of stuff. No, it takes a lot to move a book. This was a private business publication. It wasn't on Amazon, it wasn't at Barnes and Noble, it wasn't at Chapters in Canada. So I had to find a way to kind of get it out there. And so Dr. Rome said, just leave it with me. I'm going to talk to a few of my friends. And I remember being in a conference in 1991, and I saw this guy by the name of Charlie Tremendous Jones, big six foot four, motivational speaker, author, multiple books. And I met him out in the concourse and I bought his book. And he always told stories. He said, tell a story to make a point and make a point to tell a story. And he says, remember, everyone has a story inside of them. They just have to get it released. And so I took that to heart. And when my book was released, I never really realized that this Guy would be a very important piece of my life going forward. And so when we published a book in 2000, one, very short years ago, four short years ago later, sorry, in 2004, 2005, I get a phone call, and it was from Charlie Jones. And I thought someone was playing a joke at me because they knew I was a big fan of his. But no, it was Charlie Tremendous Jones calling me on my phone. And he said, I'd like to talk to you about an offer I received for your book. I said, okay, I'm listening. He said, we have an organization that has a book of the month club, and they Want to buy 32,500 copies of your book. And I'm thinking, Cha Ching, Cha Ching, because they were 12.99. And he said, the only caveat here is they only want to pay $2 a book. I'm going. I was so disappointed. I'm thinking, this is my cash cow. I could probably make some money on a book that I wrote. And nobody knows who Gord MacFarlane is, but here's someone that was interested in the title, Become a Person of Influence Using the Disc Model of Human Behavior. Because they had bought books by Dr. Robert Rome before. And I said, wow, Charlie, $2 a book? I'm not going to make very much money on that. He said, well, it's not really about the book, actually. He says, well. And he said this. He just said, well, listen, do you trust me? I said, charlie, I don't even know you. He says, fair enough, fair enough. He says, do you trust Dr. Rome? I said, yeah, absolutely, I do. He's my mentor. He's my coach. And he said, well, of the nine books that I helped him distribute, I'm. I'm part kind of like a book agent for him. I've sold over a million copies in almost every one of those books to this organization. I said, okay, go to it. Let's sell them for two bucks and see what's happened. He said, look, just trust me. He says, you're not going to. You're not going to believe what's going to happen. So lo and behold, we sell the books. $2 a book, and I made a little bit of money. Not bad. It was pretty good. I was pretty happy, you know, but now, still kind of thinking, man. Imagine if it was 1299, 32,500 bucks. It would have been a good payday. Two weeks later, I get a call from a guy from New Jersey, and he has an organization of leaders. And he says, hey, we'd like you to come and speak to our leaders. Would you be able to do that? And we got your book, and it's part of our Book of the Month club, and we'd like you to have, you know, a FaceTime with some of our leaders in a. In a small conference. So I said, well, I'm actually going to be in New Jersey. And so they invited me to a leadership meeting, and I showed them what I could do and what my model was and what I trained in. And lo and behold, this organization hired me for the next 18 months doing seminars and trainings, and literally all over the world. I was in Europe and England and all over North America, mostly in the Eastern seaboard and Central United States and Canada, but I was in Asia, Singapore, I was in Malaysia, I was in Thailand and Japan and Korea. So the money Charlie says to me, he says, well, no, you didn't really make money on the sale of the book, but guess what? The book made you some money. Because I never made any less than $5,000 every single weekend for the next 18 months. So it was pretty powerful. Like every weekend I was working for this organization, speaking and training. So you don't make money on the book. You make money on the message, you make money on the story. So that's pretty cool and kind of tells you that, you know, you never know, right? If you just put in the work and, and, and provide a good answer and solve a problem for people, you never know who's going to come knocking. So it's a pretty cool story.

That's a great lesson to learn because everybody wants that immediate gratification, that immediate success, especially nowadays, they want, oh, okay, boy, I'm going to do this. What am I going to get in return? Where what you did is, and I share this with people, you never know where it's going to take you. One of my friends, without saying his name, said, well, I'll do your podcast, and I will say his name. It's Bob Langley. They were good friends. He played in Ottawa, where you're from. And Bob said, well, I don't know if I really want to do the podcast at this point. Let's wait a little bit. I said, you never know what could happen. Well, he does the podcast, and a company called him to do possibly do a book deal about his story. And you just never know what's going to happen. You can't look at that immediate gratification. And that's where the mindset comes in. You have to be mentally tough. You have to be mentally Tough.

So I'm resilient too, eh, Mike?

Yeah, resiliency. It's just, it's not immediately. I work with people in corporate America, then they turn entrepreneur and they're so used to that paycheck. And they're so used to, wait, how come I'm not getting paid? And you and I talked about direct sales or network marketing. It's a lot of work up front in the front end and then you get rewarded at the back end. Where some people say, oh, it's been two weeks, where's the money? Am I going to get my money back? And that mindset isn't going to get you anywhere. It's like it's not going to get you anywhere, you know as well as I. So I used to call like you have this three point emphasis methodology. I used to call it this, these three pillars. But I'm going to start with number one. And I'm just going to let you finish. I'm going to say the word communicate.

To connect.

To connect. Connect. You. So you talk a lot about communication and how important it is. The next thing is you talk about which I truly believe it's so important is, is building confidence.

Yeah, that's a multifaceted area. But I believe confidence is seeing yourself in the light of your potential.

And then, and then you have perform, understanding how to tap into your empower like yourself or a business or the athlete's full potential.

Yeah, to me, performance and potential tie together, but it's, it's actually tapping into your superpower. Everybody has what I call an ingrained superpower in their DNA and it's to tap that power because tapping that power gives you confidence. So that's my belief and that's what I try to do with all my athletes and all my business owners and managers.

Well, you're very modest. I've known you for some time. You and I talk quite a bit as we're going to be doing some things together. We're doing some things now together. And it's funny how I found you because we're in Facebook together and we do the same things. Like it was crazy and I wasn't copying yours, you weren't copying mine. And I said, wow, this guy, he's a hockey guy too. And we think a lot alike. And not that my thinking is correct or I'm not. Everyone doesn't need to know that, hey, Mike's, you know, but you and I think we're aligned. You know, we're so aligned with so many things. And, and one Thing you're modest about is. I don't want to talk about. You've worked with. Look, you've taken teams to, to win championships, and I know a lot comes from you. It takes a lot to win a championship. I know that. But share that a little bit with us because you've taken teams from. Not even supposed to make it out of the playoffs to, to winning a championship. Share that with us.

Yeah, that's, you know, it's, it's funny, Mike. You know, you and I have had many, many great conversations for multiple hours at a time, in fact, and we, we're going to do some great work together. I'm looking forward to the synergy of our two mindsets. You being a strategist, me being a coach. And I think there's a lot of synergy there, there. But, you know, when you talk about helping people, winning champions, that was my main focus when we started. You know, I had a partner and we talked about what are we going to do with this coaching, you know, coaching program, coaching to connect and performance mindset training. I said, ah, we're going to help them win championships and we're going to help companies be profitable and successful and, and produce more. And, you know, it's funny, Mike. You know, you go with an intent, and I think there's two focuses when you move forward. There's intentionality and there's deliberation. You know, when you have an intent or you can be deliberate. We had an intent for sure, but I think the deliberate mark was made for us. And we didn't really necessarily find that. It found us. And so we asked people for testimonials because I think testimonials are very popular, very powerful for companies that want to sell their services. Because it's very hard to meet. For me to come up and say, hey, Mike, you need to buy my services because I'm really good. Well, that doesn't fly with a lot of people. You have to earn the right to be deemed good or excellent. So we allow our clients to speak for us. And so we do that through testimonials, and we do that through results. So for me, it was really about asking our clients, hey, would you take a moment? And if you liked what we did for you, would you mind providing a testimonial? Well, here's what happened, Mike. You know, our clients were saying, you know, this coaching to connect, performance mindset training, the personalities changed my life. I've got a better relationship with my son. I have a better relationship with my family. I Can communicate more effectively with my kids and my colleagues. And I just find I have less stress, I have more sense of, of purpose. I know who I am, I know what my calling is. Now I'm in the right spot, I'm in the wrong spot. I've readjusted my alignment and we were getting all of these totally different testimonials from winning championships and making money. So we changed our marketing strategy. We talked about, you know, my, my approach to helping people is changing lives and making a difference. You decide what that's going to be.

Be.

I'm going to help you understand your God given ability to be who you are. But I want you to shine in your superpower. I want you to be able to shine in your superpower. So when I help you discover your personality, you're going to know who you are to raise your self awareness. You're going to know who other people are so you can all become better teams, better connectors, better relationships. And that's where the secret is, is about helping other people find their secret, their superpower. Then Zig Ziglar said, right, you know Zig, if you help enough other people get what they want want, you'll get what you want. And that seems to be what's happened Mike. You know, I find guys like you, we synergize our efforts. A lot of good things have happened when you help other people grow. And that was the intent, was just to help people grow. And I, I. Good things happen. Good things happen. Good people come to you.

I couldn't agree with you more, Gordon. Where can our, you know, we're gonna do other things together but where can people get in touch with you? Your website or LinkedIn?

Well thanks Mike. I appreciate the plug. I know that you and I are going to be doing some really cool things I'm really proud of actually. I really like the idea that you and I came up with of Leadership University. We want to help leaders excel and we're offering basically a free zoom webinar. You and I together, we're co hosting that. I'm really excited about getting that started. You know, Leadership University, we're going to provide twice a month we're going to provide free leadership training with the purpose of potentially through your company Hartman Academy to get some, some leadership certification done or leadership course completed for them to help them to become better leaders. So that's one thing that I'm pretty proud of developing with you. I think it's going to be a lot of fun as we come together and do our program together. But if people want to get in touch with me, they can reach me at performance mindset coach.com performancemindsetcoach.com and I'd be happy to help them and guide them into, you know, personal understanding of their of their superpower or maybe an organizational structure as well. But that's what you and I do together and we provide, you know, a future, a direction to win championships, win people to people championships, but also when people to better relationships with one another.

Well, Gord, thank you for being here. Great insight.

Thanks man.

Great knowledge and looking forward to even doing more with you. Gord McFarland, thank you.

Thanks, Mike. Appreciate being here.

Thank you for listening to this episode of the Mike Hartman Show. If you're enjoying what you've heard so far, please feel free to rate, subscribe and leave a review on your preferred podcast listening platform. We really appreciate that effort. We'll catch you in the next episode of the Mike Hartman Show.

Sam.