Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 22: Brant Menswar: Author of Black Sheep

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to episode number 22 of our brand new podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, I interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and to live a better life. In this episode, I have the pleasure to interview author Brant Mensah. Aside from being an award-winning musician and a real-life rock star, How cool is that? Brandt is the CEO of Rockstar Impact. He's a podcast host. He's a critically acclaimed author, and he's also a sought-after motivational speaker. Brandt is passionate. He's engaging, and he's transformational. And from the moment that we met a couple months ago, I knew that we were destined to work together in some way, shape, or form because our energy and our missions are just too similar. You'll learn more about our official collaboration during today's episode. Our conversation today is all about Brandt's new book, Black Sheep: Unleash the Extraordinary, Awe-Inspiring, Undiscovered You. And you'll find that Brandt is focused on helping his audience identify their core values and to live lives full of deliberate intention. Deliberate intention— those are 2 very special words, and you'll learn more about those in just a second. So without further ado, please enjoy this amazing conversation with author Brandt Meier. Mr. Brant Mensahar, thank you for joining the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. For those in the audience that don't know who you are, can you introduce yourself to everybody?

Sure, brother. I am a former rock star, spent the last 20 years in the music business with 2 different bands, 2 different record deals. I started with a band called Fort Pastor and left that band and formed a new band called Big Kettle Drum. And for the last 10-plus years or so, I've toured around the world with Big Kettle Drum and transitioned I transitioned about 4 or 5 years ago off of that stage to the speaking stage. And that was sort of around a moment in my life that I had to make a change. And so when I did, I've sort of dove headfirst into the conference speaking world as a keynote speaker these days.

One of the things that I love about you the minute that we connected is that I feel we have a very similar energy. You're very upbeat, you're very positive, you're very articulate, and you just love to communicate to your audience. And so where did that come from? When did that start?

Well, I care about impact a lot. And for me, you know, as a songwriter, you learn that your words matter. And it was an interesting journey between sort of writing songs to writing books. Because when you write songs, the sort of theme is, if I can say it in 5 words, don't use 10. Right, that's sort of what you have when you write a song. But when you write books, it's— if it takes 20 words, use 20 words, because you don't have the other sort of things at your disposal to, to get people emotionally involved in what you're doing. And so that was a big learn for me as I started to write books, that it was like, gosh, I actually have to explain exactly what I mean and not leave it to the audience to determine what they mean, as I do with Normally when writing a song.

That's very interesting. Yeah, because when a reader is reading physical words or written words on a paper, there's no voice inflection, there's no band sitting behind you, it's just up to their interpretation. So you need to be really clear. And I, I have about 5 years of sales experience and I've read 100 sales books and they always say be a surgeon with your words. Surgeons don't make extra cuts. While performing surgery. So don't use extra words during the sales process. But in a sales process, you get to speak to the audience and you get to use voice inflection and things like that. So it's really interesting.

There's one of my buddies named Phil Jones who wrote a book called Exactly What to Say, which has sold like over half a million copies to this point. It's an amazing book, but it's about what you just spoke on, which is don't waste your words. Be exact with what you want to say and be careful with what you want to say because it helps guide the conversation.

And now you're an author. Black Sheep comes out on September 29th. Yeah. And I read the book and I loved it. So I'd love to have you start off by explaining, when did you decide to write a book? Why did you decide to write a book? And who is this book written for? Now, those are 3 separate questions, but I think they can all sort of boil into one.

Sure. So, you know, as a speaker on the circuit, it's pretty important that you have a book if you want to get to the next sort of echelon of fee structure where you want people to add it. Zero to what you're doing. You have to become an authority on something. And so for the last, you know, 7 or 8 years, I've been heavily involved in sort of the behavioral science of collaboration and core values and purpose. And so this book sort of was, was born out of some of that research. Number one, I decided to write this book specifically about core values and purpose about 2 years ago. And, you know, it was born out of a very difficult time in 2012 for me and my family. My oldest son, Theo, when he was 14 years old, was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer, and he required a bone marrow transplant in order to survive. And so it was during that time that we spent 263 straight days at Florida Hospital for Children in Orlando. with him battling. And we came to this point in his struggle where he had 2 separate things happening at the same time that created a zero-sum game. So he got the, the transplant that he needed, but he developed something called graft-versus-host disease, which is where the marrow that's inserted in the body doesn't recognize the environment from which it's been sort of inserted into, and so it begins to attack. So the way that they treat it is they super suppress the immune system. so that the body won't fight. And that's what they did. And when they did that, unfortunately, he contracted this deadly fungus while he was in the hospital. And the way that you treated the fungus was to super boost the immune system to give it a shot at sort of fighting it back. And so these 2 things happening with opposite treatments created a zero-sum game, and they were both killing him. And so one afternoon after 200-plus days, my wife and I were called into the parents' lounge. And there was a row of doctors sitting in there and they said, we are so sorry, but there's nothing else that we can do. And so we don't think he's going to make it through the night. You should probably call who you need to call. And so I'm faced with this scenario. We were shocked. We were not expecting— we knew he wasn't doing well, but we weren't at that point where we thought that it was desperate. And so, you know, what do you do? The doctors tell you to do something, you do it. So I grabbed my wife's hand, we walked back to our son's room. We grabbed his younger brother, you know, and we sat on the edge of the bed and, and we tried to find the words to say goodbye. And that moment, as you can imagine, as a parent, is, is awful, right? But that moment in general shook me to my core. And I found myself flailing for trying to find the words to speak. And so, you know, I, I have this conversation with my son. He says, I'm going to miss you, Daddy, which, which destroys you, right? And, and you're sitting there and you don't know what to do. And so, you know, I call my parents, I call my younger brother who lives in New Hampshire. He's, he's 1,500 miles away. I'm like, you're not going to have time to make it. So if you're going to say your goodbyes, you need to do it now. And so he He does. He's incredibly distraught, as you can imagine. But that night, my brother, sort of feeling helpless, decides he's going to sit on his couch in his living room and he is going to sort of send out this Hail Mary video. And so he, he never says a word. He just holds up these poster boards that sort of explain the scenario, right? And so it's my nephew's dying. Here's what's happening. This is what he has. This is what he's taking. This is why they're stuck. He never, he never actually speaks. He simply plays the song Fix You by Coldplay, and from start to finish. And when that song's done, he's done. And he takes that video and he uploads it to YouTube. So I'm sitting on the edge of the bed all night long. Theo makes it through the night. And the next morning, my phone is ringing off the hook. And I'm trying to ignore it. One of the things that you'll find in the book is the importance of being present. And I wanted to be present for as long as I possibly could, for however long I had left with him. And so I'm ignoring it and I'm ignoring it and a couple hours go by and by the time I finally reach for my phone, it's hot from vibrating all morning. And I look at my phone and I see that I've got all these numbers and names from people that I don't know. And what I didn't realize is that video that my brother had made and uploaded to YouTube had been seen over 500,000 times by the time I grabbed that phone and I started to get messages from people from all over the world. And some of them were doctors. And one of them happened to be a doctor at MD Anderson in Houston. And he said, hey, listen, there's an alternate treatment that I don't know that you guys are aware of. And I would love to talk to your doctor about it. It may help the situation. And so, you know, he saw the video. And so we said, okay, fantastic. And then I got a call from Dr. Tim Johnson from Good Morning America. And he said, hey, I saw this video. You tell your doctor anyone he wants to speak to, just get me a list and I'll try to make it happen in the next 24 hours. So we made a list of a doctor in Boston at Dana-Farber, and there was a research scientist at Cornell University, and the 4 doctors put their heads together and they came up with this batshit crazy plan to try to save Theo's life. And it worked. And so we went from say your goodbyes to we think we've got this beat in 24 hours. And while the, the fairy tale ending is amazing, I spent years going to bed every night with the same question, which was, I wonder if he thinks I gave up on him. And so that sort of struggle for me Is is why I wrote this book. Is that when you know life brings you the biggest storm you could possibly face, you better know what you care about the most. You better know what your non-negotiables are because if you don't, you allow your feelings to take over and your feelings are awful at trying to manage good decisions. But unfortunately, that's what I was left with, and I got sucked up into that tornado and made a bunch of incredibly horrible decisions. And what I realize now is if I would have done this work to discover my non-negotiables, these black sheep values that I call them. The conversation I had with him would have been completely, completely different. And I wouldn't have lost sleep for 5 years after that conversation.

One of my mentors, Evan Carmichael, he always says your purpose comes from your pain. And pain is a purifying source sometimes for people. And so what an incredible story. And now you're transitioning into the title Black Sheep. You just mentioned it a couple of times. But why did you choose the title Black Sheep? And what does a black sheep represent to you?

So I was, I was 47 years old, Nick, when I finally was told why black sheep are not valued like the rest of the flock, because I had no idea.

By the way, it shocked me. Sorry to cut you off. But when I read that right in the beginning, I'm like, I need to tell everybody about this.

I had no idea. Well, you know, we have experienced hundreds of years of demonizing being a black sheep or what a black sheep is, this outcast and this, this person who doesn't fit in. And the truth is that the reason that farmers don't value black sheep like the rest of the flock is a black sheep's wool cannot be dyed. So every black sheep is in effect 100% authentically original and cannot be changed into something that it isn't. So when I read that, I'm like, oh my gosh, I mean, there are so many people that I know, including myself, who have been made to feel like a black sheep at some point in their life. And it's not always— it's not always the traditional outcast, doesn't fit in. It's the goth kid in high school. It's the music they listen to. It's the choices they make. They move away from the family, whatever it might be. I found just as many people who were so successful at what they've done that they've separated themselves from the pack. And so they have become a black sheep due to their success. And, and as I read that, I'm like, gosh, you know what? Is that not what our goal in life should be, to be who we were uniquely created to be? I mean, that to me is, is, is a life well lived if I achieve that. And so I started to look into it and realized that we all have what I call a flock of 5. black sheep values, and that these are these deeply held personal core values that no matter how much someone wants to try to influence you or change you, they simply cannot be moved. And our goal should be to discover what those are.

Mm-hmm. And then for a reader who's interested in picking up this book right now, they understand what a black sheep is. They understand why it's important to identify the non-negotiables. What's the first step? What's the first thing that you do in the book to help people identify these?

So there's a couple of things, right? So the first thing you got to do is understand and accept the fact that if you can't tell me what your 4 or 5 or 6 non-negotiables are, then you're winging it. And as a control freak, that was the hardest thing for me to accept. And it's insulting, to be honest with you.

It's—

I wanted to flip myself off after I wrote it because I'm like, it just, it doesn't feel good. It rubs me the wrong way. But the truth is, if you can't tell me what these things are, then you are not using them in your decision-making process, which means you are winging it. You are at best are trying to be intentional, but intentionality doesn't get it done. And so for me, the very first thing I tell people to do is I've got an assessment online that's just an easy sort of shallow dive into the core values pool. And it's about 125 commonly held core values. And what it does is it just helps you narrow down that bucket. So step 1 of this process, which you've been through, is just go ahead and select any word that really resonates with you. So you're looking through these values, you see accountability, you go like, oh yeah, I like that word. Achievement. Oh, I like that word. Success. Yeah. OK. Empathy. All right. And so What, what we found over the last 2 years is that the average person selects over 30 words when they are selecting words that are really important to them. And that's where the struggle and the challenge begins, because as humans, we want to try to honor those things that matter most to us. And so we try to honor 30-plus different things on a daily basis. And inevitably, we set ourselves up for failure because it's just impossible to do that on a daily basis. Even if you did 29 of 30, if you're like me, you're like, That one that got away just pissed me off and now I can't focus. Right. And so this helps you sort of take it from whatever that refined bucket of what's important to you down to your flock of 5. And so that's sort of the first step to get to our initial, what we believe is our flock of 5. But we both know at this point that that doesn't mean that they're real.

When I went through the process, I don't know if you have the numbers, but I think I started with Maybe 60, 50 to 60 that I selected. I selected like half of them. Yeah, because there are a lot of words that, that you want to identify with. And so do you find that a lot of people identify words that aren't necessarily theirs, that they actually don't really relate to and they don't display in their day-to-day life?

Yes. And so what you are talking about is what I like to call you're caring for other people's sheep. And so, so this concept, especially depending on how you were raised, right, you may, you may have come from a family that you were required to care for a sibling or for a parent, or you're just so used to serving others that you end up caring for these sheep like they're your own. And what the book teaches you is there's a big difference between feeding someone else's sheep and caring for someone else's sheep. I have no problem with somebody feeding someone else's sheep. Just make sure you leave it with its owner.

Yeah.

Don't take it back with you because you're taking food off of your own table. And that is sort of how this all works is that your goal every day are to feed these sheep, are to feed the things that matter most to you with deliberate intention. And when you do that, they're happy and they make you happy and you live this life of fulfillment. But when you don't or when you spend your time caring for other people's sheep, You know, what I like to tell people is if you have 4 kids and you decide to only feed 2, how's that going to work for you? How long is it before they are revolting and screaming and causing a massive scene? Well, what do you think happens when you don't feed the values that are most important to you? They do the same thing in your life. They disrupt your life. And that's why we want to make sure that we feed our sheep first. It's that airplane Right. When the mask comes down, put your mask on first before you put the mask on anybody else. And it's the same way. You need to feed your sheep first.

Now, before we dive into your flock of 5 or 6 and my flock of 5, I'd love to have you talk a little bit more about deliberate intention because that word has popped up a couple of times. And in the book, you have a metaphor about driving, I believe, that's related to this. And I'd love to have you explain that to everybody.

It's 2 years ago, uh, Big Kettle Drum. We weren't planning on recording a new record, but we had this opportunity to record with Bob Dylan's band. And so we're like, you know, you don't say no to that, right? So, so we said, okay, let's go ahead and do this. And we decided we were going to record it in Los Angeles, which we had recorded the previous 5 or 6 records in Nashville. So it was a different experience for us. But, um, Carla Olson, who is a very famous producer agreed to produce the record. And so she lives out in LA, so we were like, okay, we're going to LA. So we decided we were going to drive from Orlando to LA to record. So we did, and we had this amazing experience. And after about a week's worth of recording, we're driving back to Orlando from Los Angeles, and it's about 6 o'clock in the morning. You know, we've been driving all night long. We— I think we crossed the, the New Mexico state border, and there's nobody on the road, and we're just zoned out driving. And all of a sudden I see blue lights in my rearview mirror and I'm going, what is happening? I know that I wasn't speeding. I'm like, is there a taillight out? I don't know. Did we, did we let the drummer out of the trunk? I don't know what was happening at that moment. But what— the cop pulls me over and he comes up to the window and he says, do you know you were traveling in the left-hand lane? And I'm like, so? He said, it's against the law in this state to drive in the left-hand lane unless you're passing. And so I said, look, man, I'm from Florida. We, we don't have laws. We drive wherever we want to. And he, he did not find that funny, by the way, at all. But he explained to me what the law was. I professed my ignorance. He wrote me a warning and let me off, thank God. But I got in that right-hand lane and I stayed in that right-hand lane all the way back to Florida. And so the point of the story is this, is that I was being intentional. I knew where I was going. I was headed back to Orlando.

I—

that was where I needed to get to. I knew my destination. But I wasn't acting with deliberate intention. I was zoned out, headed in the right direction, but I was in the wrong lane. And that's how I feel like most of us live our lives. If we are fortunate enough to be headed in the right direction, we're in the wrong lane. We're not actually functioning with deliberate intention. We're not making deliberate decisions based on the rules. We are simply winging it and hoping that we arrive at our destination.

Mm-hmm. I think that's a really fun metaphor. And I've told that metaphor to a couple people because a lot of us, you know, we have some sort of general woozy direction in life. And we think as long as we're making some sort of undefined progress, that we'll feel good about it. But then people ask you about your purpose, like you're talking about, and if you don't have your non-negotiable set, It's very difficult to answer that with authority. And so now let's dive into your Black Sheep. What are your Black Sheep and why did you pick them?

So my Black Sheep values are creativity, hope, impact, empathy, family, and authenticity. So I have 6 and I know your mathletes are screaming already. Yes, I know there is an extra, but I'm a rock star. We do everything to excess. And so that we just—

I had—

I needed an extra for me to function. And it's not unusual to have somebody have actually one more or one less than 5, to be honest. But for me, I had to go back to the things that, that has happened to me over the course of my life, because our core values have been developed over the course of our lives and they rarely change outside of a catastrophic event. So as you said, even with Evan earlier, sometimes our purpose is born out of pain and sometimes our black sheep values are born out of really horrible experiences. So it's not just a peak experience like Maslow would describe where we've had this amazing sort of experience that we lean into. Sometimes they're born out of something that we never want to have happen again or that we say, I never want to be like that person who hurt me when I was younger. And so, as we sort of dive into our past, we start to see the things that matter most to us. And I can give you 10, 12, 15, 20 different examples as to why these things matter to me from the time that I was a little kid to today. And the fact that they show up organically, whether I like them or not, just confirms to me that these are the real Black Sheep values, my real non-negotiables, and not aspirational sheep or who I want to be but not necessarily who I am.

Well, I love that you picked 6 because you're a rock star. And that's sort of— it's a good credo to have that sits behind your 6. And it's funny, Owen at Unleash the Knowledge on Instagram, after he read the book, he said, Brent picked 6. I'm picking 6 too.

And, and to be honest, why don't you share your 5? And I'm telling you, you've got a 6th in there as well that you haven't identified yet.

All right, let's jump in. So my first is progress. My second is freedom. My third is adventure. My fourth is gratitude. And my fifth is family. And so before we jumped on this, we were talking a little bit. You said you had one for me that I missed, and I'd love to hear what it is.

So over the last couple of weeks of getting to know you, I have been really blown away by your desire for impact. It's not just progress, it's not just learning, it's not just adventure. For you, you're doing things with deliberate intention. The app that you created has deliberate intention behind it, and what you care about is not people downloading the app. What you care about is the impact that the app has on people's ability to retain the information that they read when they are reading their books and can they recall them to be able to use in a powerful way in their life? And so what's interesting to me is I went back and I looked at all of your words and impact wasn't even one of the words you selected as your initial pool of things that are important to you, which I found very interesting because my opinion of you since day one of us connecting has been you care about impact as much as anyone I've ever seen. And your behavior, what you put out, the way you conduct yourself is all around having the desired impact that you want in your life on others, whether that's personally like this or whether that's putting out a post, whether that's sharing a box opening, whether that's doing a question and answer period for people. You are very careful about the words that you choose. And if, if you feel like it's not going to have the type of impact that I believe you desire, you either don't address it or you tell them that it's for another time, or you do it in a deeper dive later on. And so I found it incredibly interesting that impact was not one of your 5. But if it's not, I guarantee you in the tracking process, we would find evidence of impact on a daily basis with you.

It's a very interesting observation. I think it's spot on. I have some sort of undefined insecurity about the word impact, and I think it actually stems from a lack of empathy that I had very early on in my life. So my sort of story, and the Bookmakers family is generally familiar with this, but I came from a place in my late teens, early 20s where I was full of insecurities and pressures. I felt all of the pressure to conform to the 9 to 5 and climb the corporate ladder and say the right thing and do the right thing and look the right way. And I also had a lot of ego. You know, a lot of my decision-making was stemming from that insecurity and from a place of ego. And so I used to be— everybody used to tell me I had very low empathy. I had very— I didn't care about anybody else. You know, I just cared about my version of the society's pressures.

Mm-hmm.

And I know that a lot of empathy is a learned skill. And over the last couple of years, through consistently providing value and receiving feedback and letting that feedback sort of warm my heart have absolutely improved my empathy skills. But I still, I still might have some sort of insecurity, I think, that stems from that time in my life. And maybe that's why I don't talk about impact, because I don't want other people who know me from back then to say, you don't care about impact. You know, that's not really you. But I think it has changed a lot in the last couple of years. And you're 100% right in that the number one thing that I love the most about Book Thinkers is when somebody asks me for a book recommendation and I ask them a couple follow-up questions and I find the right book. It's like a book soulmate or matchmaking. And they read it and they come back and they tell me what a brilliant impact it's had on their life. And so impact is a word that pops up all the time. And I will add that to my 6th and I should start to embrace that, I think. I think that's really important.

Listen, there are 2 things here that I want to point out. So first of all, sort of your past and what you have What you grew up with. So you were a wrestler, you're incredibly competitive, you know, all of those things factor into how you perceived the world back then. Okay. So I grew up a highly competitive athlete and planned on playing professional baseball. That was my goal. And I got hurt. And so I had to, I had to pivot. But, you know, my early life was very much the same. It wasn't necessarily that I lacked empathy. It's that I wanted to destroy my competition. And not Not just win, I wanted to win embarrassingly much, right, and make people not ever want to challenge me again. And that level of competition really affected my ability to empathize, right? It wasn't that I didn't care, it's that I wanted to win more than I cared about how you felt about something. And as I've gotten older, I've been able to sort of readjust that, and Empathy is actually one of my 6 now. But that also comes from studying. Living a year on a pediatric cancer floor and understanding what reality looks like, right? The other thing I'm going to say is this. Because we don't do this work, because we never do the deep dive to basically define these non-negotiables in our lives, most of the people that I work with— say most, a lot of the people that I work with, for whatever particular reason, don't necessarily like themselves all that much. And it happens quite frequently. And it's because of reasons like you just described, which was, this is who you used to be, right? But you were winging it back then.

Oh, absolutely.

And so there's a massive, massive difference between who you are now and who you were then. And so when you do this work and you come and you say, here are my 5 or 6, I know for a fact that if we did this work together and I was coaching you at the— it's a 5-week process. At the end of 5 weeks, I promise you the 5 that you start with are not the 5 that you end with. And it's because 2 or 3 of them you are so in tune with. You've lived with them your whole life. They are— you can give me 20 examples for each and you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I see it every single day. But 2 or 3 of them are aspirational sheep. They're who you want to be. But they're not who you are. And so what ends up happening is sometimes when we get really upset with ourselves or we feel insecure about about saying that this is something that I care about now, is because we have these aspirational sheep that we're looking at and we're claiming them as our own. But when you go to find proof, there is zero proof. They do not show up because they are not real. So the question that I ask people in that scenario is.

This.

How do you know that the person that you don't like is actually you? Because if you're trying to track things that aren't real, maybe it's the stuff that's not real that you don't like. And so that's why this work is so important to get to the truth of what these Black Sheep values are so that you can begin to use them to act with deliberate intention to get a different type of result.

I love that. And as I've, as I've gotten to know you over the last couple weeks, and as I've started to take in a lot of your content, that's one of the things that I realized is that we're— we misalign these sheep. And oftentimes on the other side of really uncovering what they are, now you're free, you know, now, now you're in control of your non-negotiables. And obviously there are a million different benefits to doing that. But Thank you for bringing that up. And thank you for mentioning that. And so let's transition to, for people who go through this process, and they identify their flock of 5, what is the next step to identify whether or not these are actually theirs? Like, like, kind of like the conversation that we just had, but for people who don't have access to you?

Sure. So, so there is a tracking process, I call it counting sheep, right? Not, not the kind that puts you to sleep, but the kind where we're looking For evidence. So here is what I like to tell everybody, is that if you have proof, you don't need belief. So trying to get yourself to believe something, um, can be incredibly difficult. Acknowledging proof is really easy, right?

Mm-hmm.

And so we have to find proof. So what happens after you sort of come to your initial flock of 5 is I send you— it's free for everybody, you can download it from, from the website. It's a worksheet or a workbook that is a 2-week process of tracking these values. So at the end of each night before you go to bed, the instructions tell you exactly what to do, which is go dig back through your day in your head and look at your flock of 5 and notate evidence. Number 1, did it show up? Number 2, what was the scenario that it showed up? And number 3, With whom did it show up? So those are the 3 things that we want to know. Number 1, if it's not showing up, chances are it's not a black sheep value. Number 2, what was the scenario that surrounded it, right? So what was it born out of? Was it born out of a conversation? Was it born out of a planned, you know, something in your calendar? And then finally, with whom? The reason that we want to know with whom is that for some of us, we have limited access to other people. And so if one person is responsible for you feeding all your sheep and something happens to that relationship, it can be incredibly dangerous, right? So you have to sort of acknowledge that your sheep are being fed in a variety of places and not just with one person. And so you're going to go through that. And so at the end of a week, you're going to look and we'll look sort of together and say, okay, here, here are the ones that showed up regularly. No problem. I know they're real. Here are ones that I felt like I sort of am cramming a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't really fit. I couldn't find that particular, that particular instance. And so what we do is we look at defining what you mean by the values that you chose. And so you have a few, Nick, that, that I would highly encourage you defining because they're very subjective. So a word like freedom is a huge word, right?

Yeah.

And so what freedom means to you might not mean the same to me. And so it's really important that you define what that means for yourself so that you can find evidence of it when you look. Because if you just are winging it and like, yeah, freedom is it. Well, freedom— is freedom patriotism? Is freedom the ability for you to make a decision when you want to? Is freedom, you know, not living in a communist regime? Is freedom— I mean, there are so many different ways that you can go with freedom that what you find is that the more you try to define it and get really specific with it and try to eliminate the subjectivity, oftentimes you end up shifting to another word. So maybe the word is independence.

Hmm.

Maybe the word is creativity. You know, you just don't know until you start to track it and see if you can find it. And so when you do that, there's a couple of ways that, that things move forward from there. We either confirm and say, yes, this is looking really good. Let's track it for one more week. Or we do something that I call leveling up. And that means, like, if you told me if a few of your black sheep that you listed, you have family, but if you also had community or faith or relationships, I would tell you that none of those are your black sheep value. Your black sheep value is connection. And you just gave me 4 different ways of which you experience connection.

Mm-hmm.

And so when we level up to a larger word that includes all of the things— see, our values live in a matrix system, right? So it's sort of like when you get the right one at the top, you actually end up feeding all the ones underneath it that are similar or related to it. And so the idea with this is, can we get to the largest one in the hierarchy so that you are able to cover your bases when you try to find proof of what what they are. The last thing would be maybe you're self-sabotaging, just like you described with impact. The fact that impact, you're not recognizing it is because you're self-sabotaging and not allowing it to come to the forefront. And so we have to go back and look. And as you just were vulnerable and explained that there were some things in your past that challenged you from letting that be, but that doesn't change whether or not it's actually a black sheep value. You just need to acknowledge it. And so that comes with proof. And so that's what we try to do.

When I'm looking at mine now, having had this conversation and reflecting on, okay, did these show up in my week with your worksheet? Freedom and adventure to me, I think could level up to independence because both of those, I mean, I do get a lot of thrill out of adventure and travel specifically, but it's the freedom to go and experience these things and to open myself up And the independent, you know, it's the independence I think that might sit on top of those 2. Yeah, what a fun, what a fun way to do this.

And to be honest with you, it may even be discovery. I mean, from knowing what I know of you, you're not doing adventure for the sake of adventure. You're doing it to discover something, right? So maybe discovery is the actual top sheep that, that takes care of freedom and takes care of independence and adventure and all those things. But the reason that you're doing it is because you really care about the discovery and the process of either yourself or of information in general. I mean, look at how many— you can't read the amount that you read and tell me that something like discovery doesn't matter to you. Why would you be doing it if you weren't, right? So that's why this is such a difficult process, and you can start to understand why the 5 that you start with are usually not the 5 that you end with.

Yeah, it's a beautiful way to put it. And I— you res— you know, it's funny, as somebody going through this process right now in front of everybody, you resonate with all of the different words in different ways. And I look at discovery and I think, okay, when I travel, which to me is freedom and adventure and independence, when I'm traveling, there's a line from Vagabonding by Ralph Potts where he says, discover whole new continents within yourself. Sort of like discover a whole new continent like Columbus or whatever.

Yeah.

But yeah, and I love that process. I mean, my first time solo traveling, it was an extremely uncomfortable process because I was discovering, you know, new things that really made me uncomfortable, and I was discovering a new culture and a new language and new foods. And that's what really got me going, and that's why I tell those stories. It was a discovery process.

Well, the other way to sort of confirm beyond tracking is to look at our favorites, right? And that's the second part of the book that really is just fun, to be honest, and it's a process that really is easy to access and shed some light on the reason that you have favorites. So we all have favorites because our head and our hearts connect. And when our head and our hearts connect, it engages our limbic brain. It's what allows us to remember lyrics from our favorite songs or quotes from our favorite movies. And it's where all of our emotional long-term memory is stored, right? So, so our values are born in and live in our hearts, but But we have all these experiences that are in our heads that we've had from the moment we were born. And so when those 2 things connect powerfully, that's when you know that these are the things that are your non-negotiables. And so I always recommend to start with your, your favorite movies. So if you sit there and go, what's one of your top 3 favorite movies of all time? Like, what would be one of yours, Nick? What's one of your top 3 favorite movies of all time?

One of my top 3 is Fight Club. Witch.

Of course it is. So, so interesting enough, on a side note, the 2 most popular answers I've gotten over the last 2 years, and I've asked this to probably 50,000 people at the different conferences that I've spoken to. Number one is Shawshank Redemption. And number 2 is Princess Bride.

I have to stop you real quick. Yeah, Princess Bride has been my family's anthem since the time I was born.

So inconceivable, right?

Yes. Yeah, my dad— or told my dad at a dinner about that after I had read it in your book, and he laughed and he said, oh, that's amazing, because my family will have whole conversations just quoting that movie too.

It is, right? And so, so what I have people do is, you know, in, in a minute or less, give me the summary of what the movie is. And what we focus on during that time is the words that you choose. So the words that you would choose to describe Fight Club is going to leave breadcrumbs back to these Flock of Five that you have selected. Right. And if they don't, then we're going to look for what's the discrepancy. You know, is it, is it that you're not recognizing these things? But typically when you look. Right. So So the interesting part here of all the ones that you've selected, I mean, I could make an argument in Fight Club for every single one of these things that they are a common theme, right?

Yes, absolutely you could.

And so that's how you start to confirm it and know that you're on the right path. If you picked a movie that was completely not in alignment here, then we know that you're loaded with aspirational sheep, right? There's not a lot of truth in here yet, and there's a reason for that. We just have to get to why you're not comfortable sharing the truth even with yourself. And that's the thing that I think is a misconception. Like, I feel like in Instagram culture right now, everybody is like, yeah, I'm going to put on this face. I'm going to take 20 pictures to get the one that's perfect and post it on there. And that's what it's going to be. And it's sort of easy that we think, gosh, at least I can be honest with myself and I don't have to live this facade out to everybody that follows me. But the truth is, it's much more difficult to be honest with yourself because you have to live with yourself. And that is why we often find all of these aspirational sheep in people's initial flock of 5, is because they're just not ready to have that difficult conversation with themselves yet.

That's a beautiful way of putting it. And speaking of Instagram, I mean, when Book Thinkers started on Instagram, I didn't want to put my face on the camera because I was very— I was scared of the judgment, you know, you— and I had very poor speaking skills even just a couple of years ago. I mean, very poor speaking skills. I couldn't articulate a thought if you gave me an hour to do it. And but through repetition and progress, which is one of my words, just slow baby steps in the right direction, getting behind the camera, you can't get to your 100th video without your first 99. And it's the same in public speaking. You need to get more comfortable and you need to desensitize yourself through repetition and make progress. And I love— yeah.

And the other thing that people don't get from a content creation perspective is the stuff that really resonates when you go back and look are loaded with your Black Sheep values because authenticity resonates at a different frequency. And so when you really start to learn what matters most to you and you lead with those things, that's what changes for you for people to actually gravitate. And this is the sort of the end of the farmer story, right? So while farmers don't, they don't value black sheep like they value the rest of the flock, they certainly do value them, but just in a different way, right? So farmers keep 1 black sheep for every 100 white sheep in their care and they keep them as a marker. So every morning a sheep farmer gets up, he looks out over his flock. If he's got 500 sheep in his care, he should see 5 black sheep. If he doesn't see 5 black sheep, he knows something is wrong, right? It's famine, it's disease, it's wolves, it's whatever it is. But it's their ability to stand out from the 495 other things that look exactly the same that gets the farmer's first look. And when you are trying to do content creation, When you lead with your black sheep values, what you're doing is separating yourselves from the 495 other people that are doing exactly what you're doing and trying to get other people's attention. If you don't lead with what makes you unique, then there's no way for you to stand out from the flock. And so that to me becomes whether you're in sales, whether you're in content creation, digital marketing, whatever that might be. When I work with organizations and they tell me what their organization values are, half the time I'm calling bullshit on them because there's no evidence, right? So show me the proof that that is the case. And, and that's what we do is we look, are you leading with the things that are truly your black sheep values? Because if you are, you're going to get your clients' first look, you're going to get your employees' first look, you're going to get your family's first look. And that to me should be everyone's goal. I want to be everybody's first look. When you have Questions about your values. Nick, I want to be your first look, man. And the only way for me to do that is to lead with my authentic 5 or 6 things that, that separate me from everybody else on the planet. And that's why I want everyone to do this work, is because there's never been a more important time in history for us to, to define what matters most. I don't care if it's political. I don't care if you're a mask wearer or not a mask wearer. I don't care if you believe the virus is a hoax. The fact is your actions should be guided by your non-negotiables. And when they're not, they're guided by your emotions and that's when all the troubles start.

What you said at the beginning of that that really resonated with me, and I think this will help me articulate things moving forward about content creation specifically, and I get a million questions about that, so I know some people in the audience today probably want to hear a little bit more about it Is that there's a difference between documenting and creating. When you just document, your black sheep will pop up because you're documenting what resonates with you instead of trying to create what does the audience want to hear today. You know, you read a book and then I say, okay, what is going to sound really nice versus what actually resonated with me? And when I made that shift, when I started to create video content about what resonated with me and I started to share personal stories and why this worked and why it was a highlight. You could see my black sheep in these videos nowadays, like you mentioned.

And what you're doing is you're allowing— so here's the thing, black sheep recognize other black sheep, man. And so when they start going and they see that stuff, they gravitate towards it because it seems— it looks familiar, right? And so all of these people that have defined these things, when they see it, they want to be near it because it's familiar to them and And it's something that feels good and it's feeding their sheep by you doing that. And that to me becomes why you should want to always lead with it. So it doesn't matter, Gary Vee's sort of, I'm gonna document everything. Yes, as long as you're living your life with deliberate intention, document away. But if you're not, you're gonna send mixed messages when you try to lead with your black sheep in a curated post as opposed to look at me screwing off over here and you don't see any evidence of the things that I'm telling you matter most to me.

Black sheep recognize black sheep. I really like that. And so for people that want to learn a little bit more about this, they want to go through the process with you, they want to do what we just did. Yeah, we're putting together the Rock Your Flock Leading with Deliberate Intention 5-week course. And so that's a good place for other black sheep to come and sit down and meet some other cool people. Let's talk about that for a minute.

Yeah, I'm so excited about this, brother. So here's the deal. You know, I just did— for the launch of the book, I did a 40-person group training once a week where we sort of went through this together and we, we got to what the real black sheep values were. You know, we, we not only identified them, but we learned how to speak them into existence, right? We learned how to choose when and where they appear in our lives to maximize that impact that we care about so much. And so, you know, you and I have had this conversation along with Ryan and Rhonda on my team and a few others. And what we decided was we're going to put together this 5-week group training that's going to be free. And typically I'm not free. Typically, and all the companies that are out there that have paid me ridiculous amount of money, I apologize, but this is more important right now for people to figure this stuff out. And so what we're going to do is this. We are going to, every Thursday in the month of October, we are going to have 2 times a day, one at 2 o'clock Eastern and one at 7 o'clock Eastern, that you can join us for an hour-long coaching call on going through this 5-week process. And so it is free. There's no charge for it. The only thing we're going to ask is 2 things. Number one, you got to buy the book because it's going to sort of be the textbook of how we're going to go through the 5 weeks. And number 2, you got to download the Book Thinkers app because that is how we're going to make notes and sort of chart our progress as we go through the 5 weeks together. Once you do those 2 things, not only will we be able to identify what you think your flock is, we'll confirm what your real flock of 5 are. And then we will start to program these into the day. And The people that have just gone through it, the 40 people that have gone through it, at the end of 5 weeks, I've got people who have quit their jobs. I have people who have experienced more success in the last 5 weeks than they have in the last 5 years. It's transformational, and I am very careful with that word. Transformation is a scary word. In business, it is a frightening, frightening word, and in your personal life. But here's, here's sort of my approach and why I think this is so important. When you accept a job to go work for whomever you're working for, you get handed this sort of employee handbook. And in that handbook, you agree to the rules that this organization puts forth for you as long as you're an employee. We have zero problem with it. We do it all the time. Sign off. Yes, here it is. This is where I'm going to abide by. If your boss came to you and said, "Here's our goals for 2021. What's your plan?" You would never look at your boss and go, "I think I'm gonna wing it." You know that that's that's the fastest way for you to be out on your ass, right? It does not happen. What do we do? No, we go. Oh, I'm glad you asked. Let me show you this spreadsheet I have, and you you go through the five gates that you've set up, and and here's how I'm gonna do it, and here are my. Timeframes of what I'm going to accomplish each one of these steps. And we put forth this elaborate thing because we want to climb to the next rung on the corporate ladder. But when it comes to our own life, what about our rules? What about the rules that come with being you? And that's what this course is going to teach you. What are your rules so that once they're established, you have a structure that freedom can live within? You see, here's the crazy part. When you don't define structure in your life, when you don't define the edge, do you know where you stay? You stay in the middle because it's safe. But everything that's amazing in life, everything that is truly innovative, is those things that are transformational. They live on the edge. And if you don't define the edge, you will never approach it because you can't see it, and fear will stop you from moving forward. So, we're going to define these edges by defining our Black Sheep values, and we're going to teach you to straddle that edge to get the most out of your life. And that's what these 5 weeks are going to do.

Well, everybody listening, if you're as pumped up as I am, you better sign up. And so, I'll put the registration, the enrolling link in the show notes, and I'll be talking about it on Instagram. Also, just shoot me a DM if you want to learn a little bit more. I'm happy to share more information. This is very exciting. Brandt just talked about some of the desired outcomes here. I'm very excited to go through that process with all of you. Dude, me too.

It's going to be amazing. It's going to be life-changing. And that are the— those are the 2 words that I care about when people talk about my work. That's what I want. I want life-changing.

I may or may not promote that you might quit your job by going through this. We'll see. I don't know if we want to get slapped with anything.

You know, we don't want to do that. No, especially with association who is co-sponsoring this. We don't want any of those association executives to quit their job. We want them to learn how to embrace who they really are and lead with the values that matter most to the organization. That's what we want.

Absolutely. Well, Black Sheep is on sale September 29th. You have basically up until then to enroll and to start participating with us. Brant, for other people who are interested in learning more about you, where should they go? What should they do?

So go to findyourblacksheep.com. That's the easiest way you can get all your information about the book, about the course, about being able to look at my speaking stuff and look at videos, whatever you want to do. All the reviews of the book are up there as well. So that's the easiest way, findyourblacksheep.com.

Awesome. And then anything else that you want to mention before we jump off today?

Listen, I just want to say thank you, brother. You know, we— it's been a whirlwind romance between our our 2 organizations and what we care about.

Yes, it has.

But, you know, I believe that that's because we are in alignment with what matters most to us. And when that happens, it's when we can move mountains. And so I can't thank you enough for trusting me in this process and also just opening up vulnerable-wise to not just yourself and what your journey is going to look like. You know, if I would have known what I know now when I was your age, I would have been a billionaire by now. And so there, there are so many things that I am so excited about that sort of this next generation coming up cares about that I want them to be crystal clear as to what matters most to them. Because that— there are people that are my age that are their bosses that still don't know what they really care about. And if you can figure this out now, that's what's going to make this world a better place 10, 15 years from now. So let's do the work together so that you guys can start to lead as to what—

Absolutely. I can't wait to continue working with you here.

You bet. Absolutely, bud.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this week's episode of BookThinkers Life-Changing Books. To discover more books, more mentors, and more resources that you can use to achieve more and live better, make sure you check out our website at www.bookthinkers.com. There you'll find links to our mobile application, more podcast episodes, our shop so you can get some Book Thinkers swag, and our socials. With that, I'm signing off and I'll see you for next week's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books.