Top 5 Neuroscience SECRETS to Achieve Success in 2025!

To be able to look at yourself without ego, it requires massive amounts of self awareness. In leadership, self awareness is the number one tool. It's the first skill set in leadership training. It's the first skill because if you remove self awareness, you have disconnection and you live in a very different world. And so being able to really build that self awareness requires also a sense of humility and understanding that there might be something I don't see. So how do I gather and take a look at myself? Sit at the edge of your bed, look in the mirror, and ask yourself a tough question like, am I a good person? Did I do my best today? Did I put everything I had into this project? Am I a good husband? Am I a good father? And can you sit there and just ask yourself that honest question?

Welcome to one and only Renee Rodriguez. Dude, what's going on, man?

Hey, it's exciting to be here. Thanks for. For having me on the show, bro.

I'm excited to talk to you. It's funny, you don't meet many folks who go so deep in the neuroscience world to understand human behavior and how the kind of operates. And one of the things I'd love to talk understand more is kind of like, how did you develop a hunger for this field of study to begin with?

Well, it began with a question my mom asked me 30, 31 years ago now. Wow. Long time ago. She said, renee, look around this room and tell me what everyone has in common. And when I looked around, I couldn't figure it out. And she said, everyone has a brain. And when you understand how the brain works, everything becomes easier. And it was solidified when I was in. I wasn't good at school. I didn't like it. I was a basketball player. But I went to my first psychology class, and my psychology teacher brought in a musician, a magician, to talk about sensation and perception and how magic was a play on our perception of the world. And I was immediately locked like, he. I didn't think school could be fun one because I hated it, but. But now this magician comes in and just blows our mind. And I'm like, okay, if this can be school, I can learn something. I'm this engaged. I'm in. And so those two pieces sort of came together to create this massive passion.

Yeah, dude. You know, a lot of times when it comes down to discovering the passion, there's a learning curve in uncovering the passion. Right. So when you take it, but when you kind of look at it from that perspective.

You know, with your mom sharing kind of Giving the. The wisdom to kind of kickstart. I call that a bit of the awakening. What are some of the top three or four steps that you did initially to really begin more perspective and understanding and kind of develop the maturity in that in the field?

Oh, I went to school for it. I was. I was. I just. I decided I was going to go to school for behavioral neuroscience. And that's what I went deep into that. And as I went into. Deep into that, you started realizing, like, there were. There's two sort of sides to it. One that was more popular, which would been the research side. And as you get deep into the research, you realize that I was actually more engaged in the application side of it. And so how do I set and get really people focused on the application? Like, what does it mean to X? What does it mean to Y? And how do we take this to sales? How do I take this to influence, to problem solving, to conflict resolution? How do I use it to help with relationships? How do I do it to be a better communicator, better leader? And as I got older, the questions got bigger. But my. My passion for wanting to find the application is what never shifted. And that's where I sort of found my niche, was I could talk with the researchers, I had friends with the researchers, but I wasn't the guy that wanted to be nose deep. I needed to understand the research. But I said, you know what? I'm gonna go out here, I'm gonna keep a foot out the door, and I'll keep a foot inside the door, but here's how we're gonna use this. And so I would challenge them to say, okay, so what does that mean? What does that mean? What does that mean? Then I go out and apply it for years, and I come back and say, here's what I found. And they'd be like, oh, my God, we never knew you could do that, but did you know about this? And they'd give me a little bit more research on it, and then I'd study, then I'd go and apply it, and I go and apply it, and I'd keep doing more and more and more. And so then as that would go, then the deeper I got in it, and so the deeper I got in it, the more applications I had, and it just. It just kind of tumbles on itself. And it doesn't stop because the research is constant. It just keeps coming and it keeps coming, but it gets more and more fun.

A lot of things that I've been discovering recently, specifically so I Love human behavior. I love what makes us tick above anything else. Like, I've as someone from my own personal journey of having a pretty difficult upbringing to walking through a pretty difficult building of a business and things of that nature, learning things on the fly, not having a high school diploma and all this kind of stuff as I kind of did it, so much has come down to trying to isolate specific roadblocks.

Are there specific maybe four or five key roadblocks that you see in human behavior on a consistent basis that tend to be a bit more of a blanket trigger for us all outside of just the isolic that are, you know, happened by environment?

Well, I think there's a couple different things. I don't think we're intentional enough about learning from our past. And the I can't tell you how many times I work with clients to say, hey, we're going to stop and we're just going to take a look backwards for a little bit, and we're looking at current results and what's your happening in your life? And then we're going to look at what drives those results, which is your behaviors. And then we're going to look at what belief systems drove the behaviors. So beliefs drive behavior, which generate results. And when you take that look backwards, you start realizing one, here are the things that worked really well in my life, and here are the behaviors that were positive that led to that. And then you go, man, and this was the belief system that drove the behaviors. The hard part, though, saying, here's what I got that I didn't like in my life. The disappointments. Here are the negative behaviors that I did to achieve them. And the tough question was, what must I have believed to have behaved in that silly way?

Yeah.

And that is a really hard one. But when you can understand that now, you can approach change in a very different way to saying, okay, what is the belief system that has to shift? And is that current belief system serving me? Once you build awareness to it, it becomes easier to change when you're not aware from it. It's really difficult because we start approaching behavior change from a behavioral level, which only creates resistance. But when you approach behavior change from a belief system level, the behavior becomes a lot easier because the driver of that behavior changes. So I don't think we learn enough from our past. And if you really just dig it, you can sort of follow this breadcrumb backwards. And the other piece is something that you talked about too, is I don't think we don't understand the importance of psychological safety. Enough. It is at the cornerstone as to why people accept or resist change or new ideas or innovation. And our brains are designed first to keep us safe physically. But the challenge is that the way it measures physical safety is through stress response cortisol. And so physical danger can trigger a stress response, but so can emotional danger, so can ridicule, humiliation, fear of missing out, fear of losing a job, financial stress, none of which will physically kill you, but can trigger the same stress response in the brain, triggering the brain to go into the fight flight, freeze response against now not feeling safe or now in a modern term, psychologically safe. And so they need to understand that process.

Well, I know for me, when I. So I've done a lot of work trying to look at my past, right. Of obviously prayer, meditation, journaling. In fact, one of the things that I asked myself when I wrote my first book back in 2014, been a long time ago, that literally was treadmill and was literally typing like one giant run on sentence. It turned into like four chapters. And it started with one question, and it was, what does it take to change the essence of a man? And I was asking that question of myself in the moment because at that particular time I had built a, you know, it's probably then maybe a 20 or $25 million company by all intensive purposes outside looking in. We had a great reputation in marketplace. We had a robust sales pipeline. We were doing the right things largely with the team, with the exception of my executive team. And, you know, going back to triggers and behavior patterns and things of that nature, I discovered pretty quickly that I was, I was personally leading out of fear and insecurity because I felt a lot lower than the people that I had hired to be my executive team. They had, you know, they had, you know, CPAs and all kinds of things in the back ends of the names. And here I was, the high school dropout that had a ged. Right. So it was an automatic, like a bit of a.

Fiority compress. Yeah. And yes, imposter syndrome. There's all those types of things kind of rolled into it. And when I asked like myself the question of what does it take to change the essence of a man, One of the things that I came up with was looking at my past with honest eyes.

Yeah.

Because I feel like a lot of times when we go and look at our past to that, to that point, one of the things that we do is we look at our past with the lens of condemnation and judgment and shame and guilt. And I would, I should have not Done this, but I. All this kind of stuff. How do we. So that leads to the question. The question is, is how do we get to a place where we can view our past with honest open eyes when we don't take so much emotional turmoil with us, we can do something with it. What does the neuroscience say?

Such a good question. What the. The. For me. And, and you said it. To be able to look at yourself without ego, which is really the honest way, right. Is it requires massive amounts of self awareness. And in leadership, self awareness is the number one tool. It's the first skill set in leadership training. It's the first skill because if you remove self awareness, you have disconnection and you live in a very different world. You live in a very different world. And so being able to really build that self awareness requires also a sense of humility and understanding that there might be something I don't see. So how do I gather and take a look at myself? Dr. Jordan Peterson has a great tool, very simple. Sit at the edge of your bed, look in the mirror and ask yourself a tough question like, am I a good person? Did I do my best today that I put everything I had into this project? Am I a good husband, my good father? And can you sit there and just ask yourself that honest question and try to remove yourself? And I suggest people do that by themselves. They don't announce it, they don't talk about the results on social media because just the fact that you're incorporating other people already triggers parts of the brain that might pull in that ego. And so for me, it's, can you have that honest conversation by yourself? The other piece too is there's a lot to be learned from haters. It's a really interesting thing.

I take everything they say with a grain of salt, but I do take it. I wonder and I say, is there any truth to this? Because somebody who doesn't like you isn't trying to impress you. And so they might tell you the things you don't want to hear. And so could there be a kernel of truth in this? And you know, could I learn something from it? Now, I also don't take it so far. The same way that I, I don't take, you know what, my audience that doesn't know me and the compliments they give me, I take it and I listen to, I appreciate it. But I also don't let it go too far as well. There's a, there's kind of a neutral mindset involved in that, you know, where I want to listen But I want to listen from the perspective of where am I adding the most value and how do I continue to serve the world? Not how do I, how great am I, and how many lives am I changing? Those are great things to hear, but I don't hold on to them too much.

Yeah.

I hold on to them to saying, okay, so there's a positive outcome here. Where did I help them and how can I do more of that?

Yeah.

And the reason for me is because.

Like my good friend Dave Meltzer says, there's two types of people. Either people that are humble or they're about to be.

And I want to. I want to be humble before I'm forced to be. I have been forced to be humble so many times.

Proud, proud supporter of the big 4x4 mark on my head. God is good. Kidding me with that one.

So, yeah, absolutely. And so I think if we can. If we can find a way to humble ourselves before life does it, it's a much easier thing because life will say, okay, if you haven't figured this out yet, let me just give you this lesson. And it hurts, typically. So I think it's a lot of those things. Kind of a long answer, but I think, I think we got somewhere in there.

No, and I think it's a great answer. I mean, it's the honest answer. And, you know.

It'S interesting to me because most people, including myself, at one time, didn't want to do the work. I didn't want to go back and look at the past, didn't want to look at the present. Would. Would much have preferred to stay ambiguous or oblivious to the entire world around me and kind of operate from my own lens. Right. And throughout the course of the years, one of the things I've realized is those that are hungering for learning, find it. Those are hungry for self development or.

Amplification, acceleration, whatever word you want to use, find it. And so much of that has to do with, you know, just intent. Right. Is there any kind of specific science in the neuroscience pathway that deals with how attention shapes thought, beliefs, action?

That's one of my favorite topics. It's, you know, to go back to what you said. If those are looking for, for help, Find it. Those are looking for positive. Find it. It's also true. Those are looking for negative. Find it. Those are looking for betrayal. Find it. Those are looking for liars. Find it. You'll find what you look for. Why? So there's a part of the brain called the reticular activating system. It. It is responsible for what we pay attention to. Now think about how powerful that is. What you pay attention to really determines your perceptions, and your perception determines your reality. And so if I can control attention, I can control reality, your understanding of social reality, your understanding of the world. And so if my reticular activating system is focused on seeing the good, I'm going to see good everywhere. If I'm focused on seeing the bad, I'm going to see bad everywhere. Because they both exist everywhere. Every human has good and bad. Every human has positive things and negative things. Every buman has made mistakes. It's everywhere. And so we can literally shift that based on what we do. And now there are other things that trigger it from the external world. You go out and you buy a car and you think you're the only one with this white Ford pickup truck. And all of a sudden you get on the road and you realize, everybody's got a white Ford pickup truck. What happened? Well, your reticular activating system is now seeing it more often. So it's, it's predisposed and so it's catching it. It's the value of what the job of a leader is, is to use inspiration to see opportunity. As we go in here, this is what's going to happen. A good football coach is going to say, here's what's going to happen. We're going to do an onside kick and we're going to be so aggressive that we're going to catch that ball. We're going to get a touchback. It's the. It's being able to really set the vision of what's going on, because vision then sets the category in the brain to start seeing that opportunity. It also depends on listening to podcasts like this, because when you listen to a podcast, you're. You're priming your reticular activating system for whatever the content is. That's why we have to really be careful what we're consuming, because it's priming our brain to see more or less of it, depending on what we're doing. And so for me, surrounding yourself with really good people, people that love opportunity, guess what? I'm going to start seeing more opportunity. People that have good relationships. Guess what? I'm going to start seeing ways to have better relationships. People that are really good with money, Guess what I'm going to start doing? Ways to make more money. People that are healthier. I'm going to eat healthier people that it shapes everything in terms of how we see it and what we pay attention to. And so one, we have to manage what we are paying attention to. So self awareness. What am I paying attention to? Okay, two, a good reflection of that, by the way, is your social media feed. If you're like, it's so negative. No, what you've clicked on is negative. So it's feeding you. Your feed is actually a mirror of you, unfortunately. Yeah, yeah, it's an unfortunate. Well, I don't like what I'm seeing. Well, then maybe you don't like what you're doing. So then change it. You can go through and change that literally in minutes. Unsee, unsee, unsee, Click on things. Don't show, don't show, don't show. And all of a sudden you start seeing and then start clicking on things that work. And all of a sudden you start doing that. And I mean, this is just a simple, tangible way of looking at it. But who you listen to, how you talk to, the friends, are they taking you closer to or further from all of these things? Impact. Are you watching too much of the news? Because the news understands this research and is using every ounce of what they have to capture our attention. And usually it's done through some sort of negativity bias. Meaning if they're going to show us negativity because our brains are biased to see it.

Yeah.

And we're going to pay attention to it. So yeah, there's tons of information around out there.

That brings another question to my mind, which is centering around the topic of authenticity. Right. I think most of us would probably say we're operating an authentic way, but if you look under the, under the hook, the covers, you find that you're really doing things that, and even consuming things that really don't serve you or you're, you know, you're not being authentic to your core, if that makes any sense.

From your perspective, what defines authenticity and how do we use it?

One of the things I like to say is authenticity requires no preparation. It does require courage though, to hit, play or share with what's exactly going on right now. So if someone's nervous, most of you know, if I'm teaching a speaker to be more authentic on stage, then you say, okay, what are you feeling? Well, I'm nervous. Well, then don't go up on stage and say, I'm really excited to be here. To go up and stage and say, you know what, guys, this event is so important to me that I was actually nervous coming on stage. I'm nervous now, but it's really feeling invigorating. The fact that I can still be here. So now all of a sudden I gave it a name, I named it. It was actually started with something was real. It was super real. Somebody's trembling as they're holding a glass saying they're excited, they're we're paying attention to the tremble, not the words. Somebody is trembling a glass and say guys this is not easy for me to do. And I'm acknowledging what's going on. There's an authentic congruency there because a lot of what's happening, authenticity comes through congruency. And congruency is about when your words and your tone match your body and the physical non verbals match the verbal. And when that congruency happens it's somebody's you know, saying I'm really, you know, thank you so much for having me here. Really excited to be here. But okay, well tell your voice that it's like resonate. Yeah, it doesn't resonate there. This is an incongruency there. But the, the authenticity comes from being able to hit play real time on what's going on.

There's so many different directions I want to go with that and only because authenticity is one of the things that I see most people not doing well. Plus if we're living someone else's life based on somebody else's bias and thoughts and objections or you know, kind of just their perception of who we should become. And then you brought up speaking and I love speaking so I, I'm a speaker myself and, and travel and speak time to time and one of the things that I noticed even recently as I went to a. A very large live event, very well known live event has like 6000 people in attendance and you know I'm. I typically when I, when I go in to an immersive experience for an event I'll typically pay the, the premium ticket to have you know, more access and I, because I catch a lot more that way spending time one on one time with people. And one of the guys that spoke was incredibly gifted speak incredibly gifted business strategy like he is. He is so talented at what he did. He helped a company just exit for 500 plus million not long ago just because of his involvement from pulling pieces together, you know, making, taking the vision, bringing it down and carving it up and stuff like that. Even though he had the credibility, even though he had.

The attributes, he had the content. I noticed that when he went on stage he was rapid firing his presentation. He was. Which told me he was nervous.

Yeah.

You know.

How does that resonate with an audience's subconscious? What does that do to them? Why does it, why, why can that roadblock or someone, especially if you're making an offer at the end of a presentation, as we kind of move into a little more of a sales piece, how does that, how does that play out? Because I, I felt like, hey, I know this guy. I've heard his content. He's phenomenal. He's normally super comfortable, but in this particular case, rattling off his, you know, his presence.

Well, I think one is the realization that doesn't matter what you've done. We all feel nerves, and that's okay. So unfortunately, audiences will judge that. Should they? No. But do they? Yes. And so we can't deal with shoulds and shouldn't. But I also know people that are really nervous still being extremely impactful. Now, when the nerves turn into speed, it just becomes harder to grasp. Now what you'll find too is somebody has, you know, millions and millions of dollars or they're famous in some way, shape or form. People give them some grace. They, they, they're okay with it. Not all of us have that luxury, though. In fact, most of us don't. We don't have that luxury. We don't. We can't fall back on our social media following or the, you know, vanity metrics that, you know, make us famous because some number says something or that we're known for something. Most of us don't have that luxury. Most of us have to be able to rely on how do we show up in those moments to be able to do it. And so does it, it, you know, the nerves. One, this is the thing I tell people. The butterflies will never go away, but you can teach them to fly in formation. And so just even that analogy helps me go, okay, so one, I don't have to be scared of the nerves. That's the first one. They're normal. I have them have them every time I speak. It's a normal thing. In fact, it's a good thing. So I have a different relationship with my nerves. One, I know they serve a purpose. Two, I listen to them saying, okay, what's going on? Is it because I didn't prepare? Well, then it's justified. Yeah, and shame on me for not preparing or. But most often unprepared. I spoke 239 days last year, so a lot of prep. Yeah, but I'm still nervous.

Why?

Well, maybe I'm trying to be impressive. Ah, my ego's in the game. All right, so most of my time is really spent about taming the ego so that I can go. Instead of trying to impress people, I try to just express what it is that I believe.

Yeah.

And if I've done the work, that becomes a lot easier. And so the nerves don't go away, but get them to fly in formation really just means that you're going to be able to realize that they serve a purpose and name it, call it out, deal with it. Guys, this is not an easy presentation today. If I'm emotional, sometimes I. Come on. This is an emotional one because this means so much to me. And all of those are fair things to say.

Yeah. It's one of the things that I heard when I. When I. I've probably been speaking maybe, well, three or four years, you know, getting reps under my belt. And so much of that early on was, I would call it craving the stage. So for a long time. And you want to be like your mentors or the people that you aspire to be, who all in my time were, you know, very well known speakers and things of that nature. So, you know, you're kind of taking a little bit of them. A little bit of them, a little bit of them. And over time, you test kind of is this, am I more like them? Et cetera. And then I realized that I didn't need to be like any of them. I just need to be myself. One and two. One of the other things that was super transformational for me that I heard from a friend who watched me speak one time, he said, stephen, you could be an amazing speaker if you did one thing different. And I was like, he said, if you could focus more on what they need to hear versus what you want to say.

Right. So that was that ego piece, and that was a very transformational subject matter. So even now, I might go and prepare for maybe three or four points. Right. Three or four. Really? You know, these are. If I can. If I. One thing, three or four things, I'm going to leave them with. Right. But then I go in with an. With an open heart and an open mind. And I. I don't know if I'm sure you do this, speak as much as you do, but you kind of. You can kind of feel the energy from the audience.

Yeah.

Which kind of helps you kind of detour a little bit. So you, like, you go with a framework, but then you fill in the gaps with an authentic approach about what they need to hear.

Yes.

Do you find that being super successful for audiences, not just for retaining the knowledge and Retaining the things that you're sharing, but also getting buy in or getting the audience to lean in towards.

You as a speaker.

100%. I think you perfectly articulated that.

It's.

You have to have the framework and the structure and the work, but then you have to leave space for the energy. And the energy may take you in a different approach that you didn't go. And if you're willing to listen to that, meaning there's a stressed energy, they're not as engaged. You know, if they're low energy for some reason, maybe they're scared because they're in a merger and acquisition or the market's there, or they're stressed because interest rates are down and they need to call their clients back and. Or maybe interest rates went up and they're about to lose some deals. When you can be attuned to all of those different elements, you're able to shift and, and ebb and flow with them. And there is a connection that happens between the speaker and the audience. I mean, it's proven. It's through what we call neural coupling. And so when the, when the speaker, you know, shares a story, let's say the speaker shares bullet points. When there's bullet points, two parts of the brain are triggered with little teeny little specks in the brain called Broca's area and Wernicke's area. The job of Broca's area and Wernicke's area are to decipher language. And that's it. I read that. Great. So if I read bullets, two little tiny specks in the brain light up. But if you tell a story, your brain lights up like a Christmas tree and a spec scan and a functional MRI scan, but also the listener's brain lights up in the exact same way, in essence mirroring each other. And the outcome of that is neurocoupling. And so neurocoupling, the outcome of that is rapport.

Yeah.

And so storytelling creates that environment. And so when I can be there to express what I believe to the audience and be there to serve the audience, like you said, which is what do they need to hear? And if I can express what that versus just me sharing the story that I always share, because that's what it is, you'll see a lot of speakers and a lot of the famous ones are like, I tell me, oh, they give the same speech. I said, well, think about it this way. You're paying that hundred thousand dollars for a movie and you're going to get the exact same movie Every single time. The same mannerisms, the same tonal drops and inflections, the same points of excitement, the same crouches with the audience whispers, you're going to get that. And it's a movie and it's replicable and it's a really darn good movie. It doesn't mean it's custom to the audience though. And so there. It's a different kind of value proposition, if you will. And, but when you're there to really hone in and really connect with the audience, you might share a story that you didn't plan to, but it just was the needed thing to say. Just like you would go into a happy hour, you don't plan out happy hour. You're there to listen, absorb the energy and go with the flow.

Yeah.

Period. And, and if you've done the work, it can happen in speaking too.

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One.

I think that's a great technique. And I love. If you notice, if you're watching this, I hope you noticed his. His tone and his smile and how welcoming his question was. Right. It was. The style in which he did that was. Was perfect. I mean, there's just a. It's such a simple detail, but that's what makes a great speaker, is that ability to make me feel comfortable and be like, yeah, I remember that. And it's. It's not talking down to me. We're having a conversation. It almost feels like I'm the only one in the audience.

So.

Excellent. Excellent.

Thank you.

So what's interesting about storytelling is that we daydream about 50% of our waking hours. And so it's a really interesting concept. So why do we daydream? Well, we daydream to run scenarios. We're running scenarios of if this, then that. And why do we need to run scenarios so we're better prepared for the world. How do we categorize those scenarios? We categorize those in narratives, little mini stories, beginning, middles and ends. And so when you look at that, we use narrative as a construct of reality. So why is storytelling. There's two times that we don't daydream. One, if someone's holding a gun to our head, we're in a lifetime situation. We're very Present, we're not thinking off to the future. Second time is when someone tells a story. And the reason we stop daydreaming is because that person telling the story is daydreaming for us. And so then we go, okay, so what happens when they daydream? Well, we use the daydreams as constructs of reality. And if I'm allowing you to daydream for me, that means I'm allowing you to build a narrative that helps me construct my reality. So, in essence, your storytelling is shifting the way that I view the world instantly.

Yeah.

And what's fascinating about storytelling is that we don't know the difference between your story and our own. Case in point, have you ever cried during a movie?

Oh, a thousand times.

A thousand times. And so I tell people all the time, I said, I hate to break it to you, but those are actors.

It didn't really happen. It was lights, camera, action, and they're faking it. But in our brain logically knows that. But emotionally, it's real, which is why we cry. We take on the role of the protagonist in every story that we see. I mean, we're the main character. When someone dies or the mother dies, it's our mother that died. Somebody wins a championship, we won the championship. And so that's why we loved Rocky, because it was the people's champ, Rocky1. And we felt like we won. And so you look at all that and you say, okay, that power of storytelling to connect and do all those things, it really comes down to our ability to be able to share the details of that and if we can share the detail. And there's a difference between bullet pointing and storytelling. I bring people on stage all the time to tell a story, and they go, yep. My mother, she was a single mom, worked a lot, was always gone, but she always taught me the importance of being good to people. Yeah, well, that's a bull. Those are bullet points.

Dry. I think a little dry.

Yeah. Well, those are bullet points versus a story would be. I'll never forget my mother one. You know, she's a single mom, so she was always working. And, you know, I knew that because, you know, she wasn't around. She didn't get a chance to make it to some of my games. And. And she would always tell me just how hard it was for her to miss it. But, you know, at the same time, I also knew that she had to work. But I'll tell you this, the times that she was there, nothing else existed. I remember this one time she took me to the store. And all of a sudden, this is stories. I mean, that's a story. Story there details instead of bullet points. And so the only way to realize that is to record yourself and listen to it. Was that a story or the bullets? Big, big difference.

Yeah. Well, if you take. If you take the bullet points, my question would be, so you got the bullet. You got bullet point A, bullet point B, bullet point C. I typically say, what did I actually see in the moment? What was actually feeling in the moment? And then how can this feeling and what I'm seeing in the moment be communicated in a way that invites people into the story?

So that's kind of my great, great framework. I love it. I hope the audience has heard that, because that's a really easy one to follow. I love that.

Oh, thank you. The other thing that I stumbled on by completely by accident. So early days, when I was a speaker, I used to admire TD Jakes a lot, right? So TD Jake, fantastic speaker, but he embellishes a lot. Meaning he not necessarily facts, but embellish his, like. And God said, you know, it kind of goes into the oratory. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So he, like, soaks it in. So the first time I ever went and spoke, I spoke for the USO of North Carolina.

And an event that we were putting on called Light up the Darkness, it was an anti suicide event kind of thing because, you know, suicide prevention is part of my. My. My past story and stuff like that. And, you know, so I go in there and I'm kind of doing all this kind of stuff, and I'm going through the motions, and I go out on stage and I. And I go to intimidate or imitate TD Jakes to a degree with a story. And so as I'm going up through there, my. My spouse at the time told me, she goes, that didn't really, like, seem like you. Like, that seemed like very, like, theatrical, very actorish kind of thing. And I was like, well, yeah. She goes, that was just way too much. Way too much. And I was like, well, okay. So then I try something different the next time out. And I discovered that every story, I don't know how I discovered it by accident when you could find it publicly has a story arc. It has highs and lows, right? So typically when the speaker comes out, the energy's super high. They share a store that takes. That takes you low or typically down a little bit to kind of feel something, feel some tension, feel some conflict. And then as you're coming up, you might crack A joke to kind of elevate the thing back up again. Maybe you share a point somewhere around there or back down the other corner, and the cycle kind of repeats itself. It. The reason I asked that question, or make this. Make that statement is because I'm curious, from your perspective, have you seen story arcs that do a whole lot better in the subconscious and the neuroscience of the brain from one to another? Like, you know, because some people come out, they're all super high energy. It's like super. Like just a rocket ship. Some people come out and there's kind of even kill. Then it goes. It goes, you know, pretty straight down. Like, what have you seen that's been the most successful in supporting the audience and even opening their hearts towards offer May you may be having. At the end of the end of the talk.

Well, so every movie that we've ever watched and we've liked followed a story arc, typically around the hero's journey. And the hero's journey is extremely complex. I don't suggest you get too far into it. But the simplified version of it is that it's highs and lows, like kind of what you said. There's the rise and then the fall of the hero, and then the crawl out, that turn to hope, to get back out of it. And it happens multiple times. And, you know, there's all sorts of things. Like, you know, you get into the. The. What's called creating that ordinary world. And we move into this call to adventure. And they go out there and they. They ref. Refusal of the call. They don't want to go to it. But then they meet this mentor and they cross this threshold. They're getting into it and they get tested and all these things are happening. They meet enemies and then they approach it. And this death and the rebirth and the reward and the road back and the resurrection and the return to the. To the elixir. All these things that happen which are complex. But think about, like Rocky. If you were to remove conflict and the downs of Rocky, oh, this guy used to be a bill collector. He decided he wanted to get into fighting, so he became heavyweight champion of the world. And he beat the toughest guys in the world. It's pretty awesome. It was a horrible movie. Horrible movie. No, he did this and he falls and then does. And he almost loses his wife. And then, you know, then he gets beat. And then Mickey dies, and then his best friend Apollo dies.

All the training that he does when the weird places like hanging from rafters.

And like, that's the crawl back, right? But usually that crawl back, those montages happen after something really hard happened.

Correct.

And so we fall in love in the story, you know, the, the falls and the rise and the fall. The rise and the fall. And I always do this. I should map it out. And if you can't, if you don't share the fall, there's nowhere for me to connect. And too many speakers do. This BS approach of life was like this. And it's just this rise to success. And you know, ever since I was a kid and, and I, you'll, the, you'll get admiration from people, but you won't get connection from people. And you get admiration because, man, that's really cool. Your life was so perfect. But I'm not perfect at all. So that's good for you. Well, one, it's also a lie. And here's why perfection is the least of human traits, human qualities. Why when somebody is perfect, what do we call them? We call them something not human. We call them a robot. You're perfect guy. The guy's like a robot, meaning he's not human. And what are we saying then? Humans are full of error. Humans are full of failure, mistakes. And the less that we show, the less human we become, the more mistakes, kinks in the armor falls, failures that we share, the more we can connect with our audience. And the beautiful thing is that we pick up our audiences, we meet them down in those trenches, and we can show them way out. And so I'd much rather, you know, somebody who's gained weight and lost and lost it. I'd rather learn from them than somebody who's had a six pack since they were a kid. They don't know my journey. Somebody who made money, lost it and got it back. I wanted to learn from them what'd they do versus somebody that got money from the beginning. You know, and so we want to know the ups and the downs and the losses. And leaders, they need to share those difficult times because otherwise we got nothing to connect to.

Yeah, well, you also, you know, one of the things I realized is you can't be a guide and a guru at the same time.

Yeah.

And, you know, and in order to be a guide, you have to be humble, you have to be vulnerable. You got to be transparent. Only gurus act like they got it all figured out, like nothing bad has ever happened to them and stuff like that. And I actually think from what I'm seeing in the world right now, there was probably the peak of the Guru 20, 20, 2021, 2019, where the folks in the marketing world that were the gurus were, you know, getting all the doting support and stuff like that. And then something transitioned around 2020, 2021, the COVID time frame. Ish. Where all of a sudden people wanted the real and the authentic. And I can only assume it's because been invited into a story, you know, that. That point of connection you talked about, you know, and. But the one thing I've realized in my subconscious is it took me a while to get over the threshold of even wanting to be vulnerable in the fear of being judged.

Right.

And the fear of, like, share. And then I. Then all of a sudden, I started being vulnerable, started being transparent over sharing sometimes in true reality. And that seemed to bring audiences my way and people that I could connect with. Why is that happening?

Well, so vulnerability is one. Is a paradox. And it's. It's. It's a superpower. We've heard that before. But why? Well, it's a paradox. There's. There's the experience of vulnerability of like, my personal experience of being vulnerable, and then there's how you experience me being vulnerable. So my experience being vulnerable, I feel exposed and weak.

Okay.

But you watching me be vulnerable, I look courageous and strong.

Yeah.

And so it's like somebody that goes out into battle with no gun and no armor and is just standing there completely vulnerable is seen as extremely powerful. We've seen in the movies, the guy comes out, no gun, he's just sitting there. And that strength is crazy. But now the feeling of that is, I could die in a second. So this is a paradigm. They both exist from two different perspectives. And so if I'm sitting here sharing a story as a leader or as a salesperson, there's, you know, difficulty. Or as a parent, it feels exposing weak, but the person's going, man, like, it took a lot to share that.

Yeah.

So my respect level goes up for you, but my connection goes deeper. It's also a way of creating safety because you're connecting actually at the limbic system level, where now there's a connection and a bond because we shared a difficult experience together.

Yeah.

So it is. It's one of the most powerful tools there is.

Well, and that's another thing. You know, we've touched on safety a few times. You know, as we kind of been going through the conversation, safety is becoming a bit more important, a bit more of a word that I'm seeing. I'm hearing the word safety pop up in different podcasts and different relationships. I hear it pop up more Age perspective. Why do you think the, the, the term and the feeling or the desire to be safe is being communicated at a higher level nowadays? And kind of from that perspective, how do we really begin to create that safe environment not just with our audiences, not just within our businesses, but also in relationships?

It might be because your reticular activating system is interested in it and seeing it everywhere now.

I mean, that's, that's a good. That's it. That's, that's, that's quite true.

Yeah. I mean, I wrote, I wrote about it in my book. I've been studying psychological safety for over 30 years. And so it's been around a long time. It's. We didn't call it psychological safety back then, we just call it safety, you know, creating a safe environment. What does that mean? Well, back then we would say structure, order, predictability. And if you can create structure, order, predictability, I can then engage. But psychological safety is really, can I share what I'm really feeling without fear of ridicule or punishment? And so safe environment is where people can speak the truth without ridicule, without punishment. And that is the ultimate test of a culture. That's the ultimate test of a leader. Do people feel safe around you? And if I can feel psychologically safe, I will share more information. And I want my people that are front line with the customer to feel as safe as possible to share anything.

Yeah.

Because what happens is, is if people don't feel safe, they stop sharing information. If as a leader, the worst day of that leader's life is when people start telling that leader the truth. Because what happens is they get bad information. And because they're not getting shared the truth, they have to develop their own truth. And there's a term for that, it's called La La Land. Leaders that don't get the truth spoken to them, they're in a different world.

Yeah.

And that La La Land is where disconnected leaders go to die because they're just so disconnected because you can't tell them the truth. So I work with a lot of mega celebrities and athletes. And what's interesting about a celebrity is interesting, but a mega celebrity, there are so few people, if any, that will tell them the hard truth. And so they literally live in this alternate reality of everybody saying yes to them. And you wonder where the narcissism comes from because no one has confronted them. And then you meet somebody like me or maybe even like you that says, you know, I don't really care about your status. Here's what's going on. And they're like. And if it's done in a private environment, if you're dealing with a narcissist, it has to be privately. And they feel safe admitting that. They go, yeah, man, finally someone's telling me what I needed to hear. Or you get a mega celebrity that is like, there's too many. Yes. People around me. And they have a very select few people that are strong enough to tell them the truth. But it's. It's really hard when. When people don't get that sense of truth and that sense of safety. But safety comes down in customers. That's. The job of a salesperson, is to make the person feel safe to do business with you. It's a job of leadership. People feel safe. Recruiters to feel safe to parents for kids to feel safe. Teachers for students to feel safe. Not physically, by the way.

Yeah.

Now, in today's, you know, shooter world. Yeah. Physical is a piece that's. That's the first step. But assuming they got the safety. Physical safety down, how do you make someone feel safe and in the organization? Research has shown that businesses that failed had the answers to solve the problems, to fix that. Why? They went under in the organization for three years prior to them going under.

Yeah.

But they didn't have an environment that was safe enough to bring them to the surface.

Wow.

Sad.

Yeah. You know, I was also thinking too, like, okay, so my brain. I'm adhd, so sometimes my brain wants to go six different places at once. So I'm going to select the middle.

Go for it.

This time is.

You are not necessarily in an environment where you feel authentically safe, Meaning you, you are the yes person, but you want to step into being the person that brings truth and awareness to whatever the environment is.

How do we.

Move forward in basically telling the truth? I would say tell truth in love. Right. So to the best of your ability, share the truth, but do it so do so in love kind of concept. But how do we do that when there's so much fear of retribution?

Well, you have to utilize the tool to get the tool. You have to create safety to get safety. Right. So I might say, well, I might speak to the truth in a way that makes you feel unsafe.

Yeah.

So it's a. It's oxymoronic. Well, I want to feel safe, so I'm going to speak the truth. Well, sometimes the way we tell people the truth is difficult. Like for example, in Covid, we had to come up with what I call a neuro sequence, A quick way For a leader to communicate a difficult idea in the midst of people dying and people scared and confused. So what leaders would say after they were kind of. They were just kind of over this Covid thing and I need people to come freaking back to work. And they'd come out and say, guys, you know what, I get it. Well, we got to get back to work. Customers still need us. And all it would do is, you know, you've got people in the audience with people, you know, parents that may have died, grandparents that have died, people that are sick, they're scared of their health issues, their immune compromise, whatever it is, didn't matter your political belief on that. It was just there was a portion of your audience that felt that. And so we came up with a very simple sequence. Empathy, transparency and authority. And following that sequence, instead of saying, guys, we need to get back to the customer, which would be the authority. That would be authority first.

Yeah.

Start with empathy. So guys, I know this is a crazy time. Empathy, this is. I know some of you in the audience here have had family members that have been passed, some people that are probably sick, some people that are scared and hopefully pray to God they don't get sick. Yeah, transparency. And I gotta admit, I too have been swayed by the media, I've been swayed by the fear and it's been consuming for me too. And I've lost sight of what was most important. But here's one thing I know for sure. Authority is that we still, in the face of all of this, we still have to serve our customers. We still have to show up here in the office. We still have to find a way to bring our best foot forward. Right? So empathy, transparency and authority. If I change that sequence, it doesn't land the same.

Yeah, man, that is absolutely genius. I think everybody should literally play that back. Go ahead and pull out their Otter app or whatever is going to be they're transcribing and like turn that into a bit of a. A bit of a script of sorts, right? A bit of a way to kind of communicate that. Because I think that's genius, honestly, as a leader, especially where I started at early days, you know, just a one man operation with a nail and a hammer back in the day to then, you know, by the time I exited, I think we had 400 team members across three states, something like that.

I had lots of leadership trials and failures, lots of challenges, lots of hard conversations that I should have had earlier. That cost me a million bucks here, 500, like cost me money here. There cost me Great team members. Sometimes just having what I think what I've heard people refer to as unsanctioned or sanctioned incompetence, like not being able to. With, you know, knowing someone needs to have correction and course correction made. And then, you know, the team is kind of watching you don't make the course correction. Then you have a couple thoroughbreds kind of, you know, they'll exit the organization because they want to be in that leadership capacity. So as we're kind of doing that, what types of things do you see related to that.

In. Can I ask for more specific? Because I want to be able to answer that because it's a really, really powerful question. I want to get really specific on it.

Yeah, sure. So, so much, so much of everything is. Is based on mindset. Right. The right mindset, having the right.

The right for. So when I was early days leader, I wouldn't make the hard call. Right. So that sent a subconscious message to my team.

You would or would not.

They, they would not. In this particular case, it would send a subconscious message of them that did not encourage them basically that I was not going to make the hard call. They didn't have trust and credibility in me.

Got it.

And one of the things that I've done as a leader over the number of years is I'll go to my team from time to time and when I had them and I would say, hey, how am I feeling as a leader?

Right. And then if we have that safety aspect and we've got that foundation laid. Yeah, they tend to be more open and I start with unanimous or anonymous surveys first to even get some level of insight. But you know, I'm just thinking through terms of leaderships and the neuroscience and kind of where we're heading the next year, next 10 years or more with neuroscience and leadership, that kind of concept.

So, yeah, I mean, I think that when you, when you look at it from that perspective, when you're coming to them and you're setting the tone and asking for that, it's. You're setting the tone that this is an okay conversation. Hey, where am I failing? And it's a lot of what's interesting, it's in tone, right?

Yeah.

So I'm gonna look at how you said, where am I failing as a leader? I'm gonna, I'm gonna change the tone. So what do you think I'm failing as a leader?

Yeah.

And you know that the. Just the tone is not going to create a safe environment. Now somebody can say, well, they shouldn't be listening it's not about what people should or shouldn't do. It's about looking at all of the aspects of how people decide to engage or disengage. And I could stand on a high horse and say what people should or shouldn't do, or I can incorporate all of the tools needed to say how do I create the safest environment and understanding that people are human. There are some people that don't need that sort of coddling or that sort of paving the way or priming. Some people would just be like, so, all right, where am I failing? Let's get at it. People like, okay, it's this, this and that. And they're just sort of more high functioning driver personalities. That works.

Yeah.

The majority of the world doesn't function that way. Majority of the world is emotional in a good way, by the way. And the emotion world doesn't maybe doesn't feel as safe. They don't think as big. They maybe are a little bit scared and insecure, which is why not everybody is going to be the leader. Not everyone's going to be number one. Not everyone's going to be the millionaire. There are differences. And your success in life is. It really comes down to your ability to deal with those differences. And, and more importantly, I'd much rather get the truth than to stand on a high horse and tell people how they should be. I would, I would much rather get what people are actually feeling because I get better data. And when I get better data, I can make better decisions. And when I make better decisions, I get better results.

Yeah, man, I can literally talk to you for hours. I know we're coming up on time, but, you know, one of the things I, I'm very excited is I wanted you to share a little bit more about Amplify and all the things you're doing with your organization, the podcast, because it's some of those valuable insights I've heard in a really long time, to be honest with you. And a lot of my friends obviously reached out to me, became highly recommended, not only as a guest, but as a thought leader, as a speaker. Love it. And first of all, I'm grateful. Thank you for obviously spending some time with us today. But where can the audience find out more about you and kind of everything you worked on?

Well, one, thank you for having me on and I appreciate your words. The I probably the fastest way is to follow me on Instagram. I do a video every single day. In fact, right now I'm in the middle of what we call 11 part video series on mastering body language to control the room. Each day is a different lesson. Nothing being sold there. So I really designed our my Instagram to be a micro learning environment A little bit longer so they're closer to a minute, 20 seconds. So you know, kind of bordering on the long form but design in a really, really good way that you can actually implement. So that's probably the best ways. Learn with Renee. L E A A R n Renee just one e r e n e my website's meetrene.com and also wrote a book on all of this stuff. Everything we talked about, psychological safety, everything. It's an amplify influence right there. It's I love for people to obviously to buy the book. You know, Amazon, we were at number two Wall Street Journal bestseller. So it was a lot of fun, man.

I I got my copy on order so I'm just waiting for mine to show up.

Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Seriously, Rene, I can't thank you enough, brother. Your insights are incredibly valuable. You know, I, I'm in in full transference of the audience. I I before we hopped on, I was working through some family stuff at the time and he illustrated Grace like dude, we need to reschedule what we need to do. I'm like, he's like, no. I said let's go for it because we'll. I know gold will pop out. You did that. I'm very grateful for your concern even for my own. Well like my own stuff and whatnot as we're working through stuff. So. Absolutely people to know what kind of man you really are behind the thought, leadership, behind the, you know, the success that you've had. You truly have a heart to serve and anyone that's like that, I always want the audience to engage with on a more regular basis.

So thank you. Well, I appreciate you pushing forward and I really appreciate the opportunities and great questions and we need more of this stuff. So honor to be here and appreciate it.

Looking forward to more, my friend. Take care.

Thank you, sir. Take care.

I hope you liked that video and if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here.

A bad system will break a good person point. You can bring a good person in into a bad system now, but if you got a great system, you can actually bring somebody into a great system who may not be as amazing. Some people say it's this thing where it's like I want a team of a players and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. However, if you got a great system, you can actually make a C or a B or B player, and they player they could perform just based on the system that you have in place, right?