Brian Wright survived a life-threatening H1N1 infection in 2014 that taught him aggressive gratitude and the importance of relationships. He built Success Profiles by creating content once and repurposing it across radio, Facebook, magazines, and books. Wright believes writing a book establishes authority and unlocks speaking and coaching opportunities.
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All right everyone, welcome back to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host Tyler Wagner, and today I have Brian Wright with us. He's the host of Success Profiles Radio, publisher of Success Profiles magazine, and a ghostwriter. So welcome Brian, I'm happy to have you, man.
Happy to be here, thank you Tyler.
Awesome. The first question I have for you is, what's the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
In 2014, I had a life-threatening illness. I had the H1N1 swine flu virus and pneumonia. It put me in the hospital for 2 weeks. I was in ICU for 8 days and in a regular room for 6 days after that, and a 3-week recovery after that at home on an oxygen machine. I was told toward the end of my visit that there were several people on the medical staff who had doubts about whether I would live or not. So that was a little daunting and very, very humbling. But I would say the very short answer to your question is I had 3 3 very specific life lessons that I drew from this experience. Number 1, I would say be aggressively thankful for everything. And I mean aggressively thankful. Gratitude is such an important part of my life. And when I interview people on the show, that is a theme that does tend to come up a lot is the idea of gratitude. So, be aggressively thankful for everything. Number 2, treasure your friends and family because you don't know when they will be taken away from you. And number 3, take nothing for granted. For the exact same reason.
And what's the most valuable piece of information we should know that's within your expertise or industry?
Create content and repurpose it as often as possible. The radio show is the basis for everything that I do, and so I have since repurposed that content into Facebook Lives, into blog posts, into my magazine, which some of the content in the magazine is curated from the show, but the rest of it is curated from experts that I've had on the show or people that I know very well. Also books, compilation books. So you create content and use it over and over and over again because here's the thing, you may hear my show, but you may never see my magazine. Someone else may see my magazine, but they might not see my blog post. That person might see my blog post but never see my book. So if you are everywhere, you can't count on everyone seeing you everywhere, but if you are everywhere, you can count on somebody seeing you somewhere and you don't know where that somewhere will be. Create content and repurpose it as often and as on many platforms as you can.
I agree with that wholeheartedly. Next question is, is what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily like industry-specific.
Write a book.
Mm-hmm.
And I'm sure, I'm sure you would agree with this. Yeah, here's the thing, here's the thing. If you are competing for somebody's business and there are 5 people that you are competing against, for a contract or for a speaking job or for a ghostwriting project. If you've written a book, there is the perception of authority. And again, I say perception because hopefully you really are an expert if you're writing a book. But someone who doesn't know any of the 5 of you might not know any of you very well, but if you have a book and the others don't, it gives you an automatic advantage. And so writing a book can lead to a lot of things, as you well know. It can lead to speaking, it can lead to coaching, it can lead to masterminds, it can lead to creating other kinds of content. Where people have a chance to see you over and over again and more often. So write a book because everyone has a book inside them. I firmly believe it. And many people have more than one book inside them. So write a book. It proves your expertise. And we all are very good at something. I believe all of us have a zone of genius somewhere, and it's our job in life to find that first.
And you're right. If anyone agrees with that statement, it's 100% me. Next one is, if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
I would believe in myself a lot sooner because I had worthiness issues when I was younger, not believing that I was good enough, not believing that someone would listen to me, not believing that someone would pay attention to anything I had to say because there's always someone in the world who's better at what you do than you are. Only one person can be the best. And in some industries, for example, this industry, you know, speaking or writing, The evaluation of that talent is very subjective to start with. However, if you can embrace the idea that you have a zone of genius in something, if you can embrace the idea that you have a unique message— God does not create junk. Everyone has a reason and a purpose for being here. And sometimes that purpose is simply to make an impact on one person's life. If you have an impact on someone's life and that person turns out to be Beethoven, as an example. Isn't that a great service? Sometimes, sometimes you are the person behind the person that becomes great, and sometimes you are great yourself. But believe in yourself. You have a worthy message to share with the world.
And in your opinion, what's the key to happiness?
Be true to yourself. Know what you stand for. Know what you will not stand for. Know what you're willing to put up with and what you are not willing to put up. Have standards. Have a clearly defined set of values. If your number one value in life is integrity, it means that you will not lie to someone to get a sale. It means that you will not intentionally screw someone over. It means that you value people more than you value money. I've been in businesses, I've had jobs where I felt like people first and then money next was the correct value order. But then I noticed as that company grew, the value orders got flipped around. And so when you start to perceive money as more important than people, you make a whole different set of choices. So be true to yourself, know who you are, be true to your values, and do not compromise your values for anyone or any reason.
And what's the best book you've read and what was the number one thing you learned from it?
I really like The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. I bought that in 2005 when it came up, and he was on my show in 2015 to promote the 10th anniversary edition of The Success Principles. I have more than one takeaway, but real quickly, I would say write a bucket list. Write down your list of 101 things that you want to do before you pass away from this world. And I would say as a caveat to that, or as a corollary to that, dream much, much, much bigger than you currently are. You are fully capable and more powerful and stronger than you think you are. So don't underestimate your talents.
And what's your favorite quote and why?
Tony Robbins, in his book Unleash the Power Within, had a chapter about life metaphors. And basically what that means is that we all have life metaphors that govern the way that we make decisions about things. And one of my favorites that he talked about was that life is like a Jeopardy game. All the answers are on the board. The winner is the one who comes up with the right questions. I love this because it presupposes that there is an answer for everything, and that gives me a lot of hope. There is no hopeless situation at all. If you have not found the answer you're looking for yet, it's because you haven't asked the right question or a good enough question. So that guides me when I feel hopeless, that there is an answer, I just haven't asked the right question yet.
I have not heard that quote. That's an amazing quote, so thanks for sharing that. You're welcome. Thank you for coming on, Brian. Last question I have for you is where can people best find you online?
Okay, my website is briankwright.com. That's B-R-I-A-N, the letter K, last name Wright, W-R-I-G-H-T, briankwright.com. You can also hear my show at successprofilesradio.com. You can also download and subscribe to the show on iTunes, and you can find Success Profiles magazine at successprofilesmagazine.com. I would love it if you would subscribe. I also have a new book coming out on April 3rd called Success Profiles: Conversations with High Achievers, which is based on some of my favorite interviews from my show. You can preorder it right now, and I would love it if you do that.
Perfect. Thanks again, Brian. We really appreciate it.
You're very welcome. Thanks for having me.
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