MBA1068 Must Read: A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston

Hey O. Welcome to the $100 MBA Show. Because you know business is not just about ideas, it's about how to implement them. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online. And today's episode is a must read episode on our must read episodes. I share with you a book that I've read that has influenced me as an entrepreneur. I'll share with you its takeaways and why you should read it too. Today's must read is A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston. You may know Bryan Cranston from the hit show Breaking Bad. He was the lead role. He played Walter White or AKA Heisenberg. And yes, I know what you're thinking. What does a Hollywood actor have to do with business? Well, that's what I'm gonna share with you today. A Life in Parts is his autobiography. It's a series of small stories, things that have happened to him during his life, the different roles he played growing up, his journey and his challenges along the way in becoming a great actor. Some of the life lessons he shares in this book are great tips, are great strategies for us to implement in our business. Bryan Cranston is a great storyteller, but he's also a student of life and I want to share with you some of the lessons he shares in this book, why I loved it so much and how you can implement some of the things that I learned in this book in your business today. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Today's episode of the $100 MBA show is supported by Earth Classmail. If you run a business, you need a business address, but it doesn't mean you need to open up a business office. You can work from home and Earth Classmail can hook you up with a business address and scan all your mail and upload it to your account in the cloud so you can check all your physical mail anytime, anywhere. I love it. I love it. I love it. And we use EarthClassMail because we love it so much. And EarthClassMail wants to hook you up with a free month to get started. Just go to earthclassmail.com MBA month. Again, it's earthclassmail.com MBAMONTH Use coupon code MBAMONTH again. A life in Parts by Bryan Cranston is a very unique autobiography. I really like the way he laid out this biography, each chapter is a story, a snapshot of a time in his life. And he starts very young when he's a kid. And as you go through the book, he moves up to adolescence till he's a young adult and of course, as he starts to become an actor. And the first lesson I want to share with you right off the bat that I got from this book, something that you learn as you go through the book is how long and how much work it took him to become a good actor, become somebody that people know. I mean, when you go through this book, you realize how many hardships he had to go through just to get to this point. Hardships within the business, also hardships within himself. The self doubt that we all have as entrepreneurs existed for him as an actor. But he actually shares the moment he decided he's going to become an actor. In fact, he was choosing between becoming an actor and becoming a police officer. Now, I don't want to ruin the details of the story, but basically he got to the point where he realized, I rather enjoy what I do and try to become good at it than do something I'm good at and try to enjoy it. I never heard it framed that way. I really never heard somebody say in that way. You always hear people like, do what you love. But that preference of, hey, I'm going to do something I enjoy and try to become good at it so I could become successful at it then, versus the opposite of just doing something that comes easy to me, something that I'm good at and hope that I enjoy it. Now, there's so much in that statement. Number one, he recognizes the fact that this is gonna be hard, right? To become good at something is very hard. To become one of the best is very hard. So he recognizes the fact that, hey, I'm gonna do something I enjoy and the hard work will be becoming good at that thing I enjoy. So as entrepreneurs, when you choose the business you're going to run, when you have a great idea, ask yourself, am I gonna enjoy this process? Am I gonn having this business? One of the questions I like to propose to people that I'm mentoring is I say ask yourself this question, what does this business look like when it's a success? Picture yourself when this business is a success. Do you want this business? Do you want to work in this business every single day? Do you want to have hundreds of employees, if not thousands? So first start with enjoyment. First start with pick something, do something that you enjoy. Once you've found that, then figure out how to become one of the best work towards that. I love that equation. It really, really realigns things in your head. And it's a great reminder now along the journey of him becoming an actor. You know, he didn't just become Walter White in Breaking Bad, by the way, Breaking Bad is seen as one of the best TV shows ever. Like, top 10 on everybody's list. All the critics say it's one of the best written, one of the best acted shows of all time. So Bryan Cranston didn't just land the lead role in that show overnight. He shares with you his journey of how he struggled to even just become a decent actor. And for a period of time, he was doing soap operas. Now, in the acting world, being a soap actor is not that glamorous. It's kind of seen as like, you know, people that really can't act do soap operas. But he didn't see it that way. He saw it as great training as. And he learned so much in the process. He had such a positive outlook, and he understood in the moment, in the grind, that this is what I have to do to get where I want to go. I got to earn my stripes. I got to start somewhere. I can't complain that, you know, this is not as sexy or as glamorous or as, you know, high profile as I'd like it to be. And the same thing goes in business. If you're starting a podcast, a YouTube channel, a blog, a newsletter, we all start with zero. Zero subscribers, zero listeners, zero views on our blog, zero email subscribers to our list. And we work our way up. It takes time. You got to earn your stripes. You're just not going to be one of the top blogs, shows, podcasts, marketers, businesses overnight. Recognizing that fact is half the battle. Understanding that this is what you have to do to get to where you want to go is so important in your journey. And I love how he shared how he recognized that in his journey. Now again, he also shares moments in the show Breaking Bad, which made him the absolute star he is now. If you don't know, Bryan Cranston actually was a star in a comedy show called Malcolm in the Middle. And that was a very successful show on tv. And he played a completely different role, but Breaking Bad was a completely different level. But when he saw the script to Breaking Bad and he got the part, he realized in that moment, this is my opportunity. I have to do everything I can to nail it, to nail my performance, to do the best I can, and to really just take this show to the next level with how I portray this character. Now, we all didn't know this because obviously they shoot this show way before we actually see it. But after the first season released, everybody knew that Breaking Bad was incredible. He knew in that moment, I gotta make the most of this opportunity. It's not gonna come again. It's like a once in a lifetime opportunity. And that happens to us as entrepreneurs all the time. But we don't realize it. When you have a great product and you're building a great team and you know in your gut that this thing, it could be amazing. You gotta do everything you can to make sure this product launches and does well. It's like Eminem, 8 mile, you know, they got one shot, one opportunity, right? You gotta really make it happen. You got to realize the stakes. You're not going to get opportunities like this every single day. So you got to focus and do everything you can. Dedicate your time, your effort, your money into that project so you can make it the most successful as possible. And lo and behold, Bryan Cranston, when that first season was released, he really owned that role. He won the Emmy for best lead actor in a drama in the first season. And in fact, he won that award three times in a show that ran for five seasons. So three out of five seasons, he beat every, every other show as the best lead actor. So not only did he nail it at the start and he seized the opportunity. He didn't rest on his laurels. He struck the iron wobbles hot and he kept on getting better and better and kept on winning. In fact, one of the three best lead actors under drama awards he got was for season five. The last season he did. It's not like he's like, oh, I'm just mail it in. You know, it's the last season. No, he nailed it and ended it with a bang because he knew that a success here would lead to a success in the next stage of his career. And that really rings true in business. If you make sure that you're successful, especially towards the end of a project, you might sell this company, you might get bought out, the company might evolve, you might launch a sister product or a new product after that point. And you want to use your performance, you want to use that success in your business to. To leverage the success of the next one. And it did. This performance parlayed into becoming one of the leads in a huge success in Amazon, Amazon prime show called Sneaky Pete. One of the things I learned about Bryan Cranston in this autobiography is how self aware he is, how much he reflects about his own life and his own development. He's not ashamed to share some of the mistakes he's made in his life, in his personal life and in his, you know, professional life. But one of the things you learn really quickly is how he never repeats mistakes. He kind of really thinks about the things he's done in his life, the challenges he's had, and how to avoid them in the future. I think many of us as humans, as entrepreneurs, we don't spend enough time reflecting on our life, reflecting on our journey. We don't do enough what I call thinking. We don't spend time just to think and to reflect. And I really think there should be time scheduled in your calendar at least once a quarter where you just spend an hour, one hour. If you can't do once a corner, at least every six months. And it doesn't have to be some scheduled time where you just sit down in a room by yourself and you think about what happened the last three months or last six months. It could be during a commute, it could be on a flight. Allow yourself to be alone in your thoughts and to reflect on how did things go? Where did you kind of mess up? Where are some things you can improve on? You don't have to talk out loud. You don't have to write anything down. You could just think about it for a moment. Some of us find this very hard to do because, hey, you're not alone a lot. Maybe you have a family, maybe you work with your significant other. Maybe you're just super busy and around people all the time. It's okay to say to somebody, hey, I just need some time just to think for a little bit. I'm not ignoring you. I just need a moment for myself. And that's just a signal that, hey, I'm not mad, I'm not upset. You can put on your music or your podcast or whatever. I'm going to sit here and think. I'm going to look outside this window right now and just lose myself in thought. And that's okay. And in Brian's life, he allows time for that. He goes on road trips, he goes on sabbaticals, he has some me time. It's totally okay if you just spend an hour and have a meal by yourself, go have breakfast by yourself and enjoy your meal while thinking and reflecting upon your last six months or your last three months and just taking some mental notes about what went wrong. Why did it go wrong? How can you do better next time? Guys, I got more on today's must read episode. But before that, let me give love to today's sponsor. You're not the average investor, so why settle for the same old average investing? Now, there's a smarter way to manage your money. It's called Betterment. 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Of course investing involves risk, but in my opinion, if you don't invest your money and you just let inflation do its damage on your savings, that's just not a good idea. And as a $100 MBA listener, you can get up to one year managed free by visiting betterment.commba that's betterment.commba Betterment Outsmart Average. One of the other things I learned in today's must read A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston is, is in order to be a great actor, you have to have immense control over your emotions as an actor. You gotta be able to tap into certain emotions at certain times, put it on, really feel what you're supposed to feel. But at the same time, you're gonna hop to a next scene and those are not the feelings anymore. You gotta switch your feelings. You gotta switch your emotions. At the end of the day, when you're off the set, you can't continue to be that character. You have to be yourself. And this is something that Bryan Cranston shares throughout the book. One of the things that hit me like a light bulb moment when I was younger, you know, reading this book was, wow, you have to have some serious emotional intelligence. You have to have a lot of control over your emotions as an entrepreneur, too. When people say that entrepreneurship is an emotional roller coaster, they are not lying. You're Gonna have ups and downs and hills and valleys and bumps along the way. And you gotta be even keel in some way. You can't get over passionate about everything. You can't get so angry about everything. You gotta be a little clinical. But at the same time, you have to tap into certain emotions. When you have to, when you're trying to rally your troops, when you're trying to motivate your team, when you're trying to communicate your vision, when you're selling your product. But you can't be over emotional when you get rejected, when you have a problem in your business, when you're dealing with a challenge or an IRA customer. Being mindful of that, being mindful of the fact that you have to be in control of your emotions in every situation in order to be successful as an entrepreneur really, really is helpful. Look at all the great entrepreneurs out there. They really know how to use their emotions to their advantage. They actually manipulate their own emotions so they can actually get the most out of themselves and get the most out of their teams. One last thing about this book, if you have the chance, I would grab this book on Audible. Bryan Cranston does the audio narration of this book and he's fantastic. Of course he's an actor. You can grab it on Audible. And Audible has been a sponsor of the $100 MBA. So you can get two free Audible books when you sign up over@Audible.com MBA that wraps up today's must read episode. I hope you enjoyed it. I really loved this book. A Life in Parts by Bryan Cranston. I highly recommend you pick it up. It's super deep. It's a wonderful story. His life, his journey is a fantastic one and there's so much you get out of it. I know it's not the typical business book, but there's lots to learn from other people's successes. That's it for me today, guys. But before I go, I want to leave you with this. Success leaves clues. So if you find somebody successful like Bryan Cranston, they don't have to be in the same business, in the same genre as you. They leave clues on how they become successful, what habits, what traits, what strategies did they use in order to become successful? You could pick up these traits, you could pick up these clues and use them in your own life, in your own business. People that just are dismissive and say, say, I'm not an actor, I don't need to learn anything from this guy. They are losing out on opportunities. Opportunities that you and I can pick up on and have an advantage. Alright, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care, Sam.